George thought that this exaggerated regret was out of place. "Oh well, in the country," he said, "you have got to take things as you find them. It is almost part of the whole thing."
Heinrich would not admit the soundness of this point of view. He began to develop a plan for the erection of seven hotels on the borders of the Wienerwald, and was calculating that one would need at the outside three or four millions, when Leo Golowski suddenly appeared. He was inmufti, which, as was frequently the case with him, was not without a certain element of bizarreness. He wore to-day, in addition to a light-grey lounge suit, a blue velvet waistcoat and a yellow silk cravat with a smooth steel tie-ring. Both the others greeted him with delight and expressed their astonishment.
Leo sat down by them. "I heard you fixing up your excursion yesterday evening, and when we were discharged from the barracks at nine o'clock to-day, I at once thought how nice it would be to have a chat for an hour or so in the open air with a couple of keen and congenial men. So I went home, threw myself into mufti and started off." He spoke in his usual tone, which always fascinated George with its charm and semi-naïveté, though when he thought of it afterwards it always seemed to possess a certain touch of irony, of insincerity in fact. He had a knack of conducting serious conversations with a cut-and-dried definiteness that really impressed George. He had recently had an opportunity of listening to discussions in the café between Leo and Heinrich on questions dealing with the theory of art, especially the relation between the laws of music and mathematics. Leo thought he was on the track of the fundamental cause of major and minor keys affecting the human soul in such different ways. George took pleasure in following the chain of his acute and lucid analysis, even though he was instinctively on his guard against the audacious attempt to ascribe all the magic and mystery of sound to the rule of laws, which were as inexorable as those in accordance with which the earth and the planets revolved, and must necessarily spring from the same origin as those eternal principles. It was only when Heinrich tried to carry Leo's theories still further, and to apply them for instance to the products of literary style, that George became impatient and immediately felt himself tacit ally of Leo who invariably smiled gently at Heinrich's tangled and fantastic expositions.
The meal was served and the young men ate with appetite; Heinrich not less than the others, in spite of the fact that he expressed his opinion of the inferiority of the cooking in the most disparaging terms, and was inclined to regard the conduct of the proprietor, not merely as a sign of his personally low mind, but as characteristic of the decay of Austria in many other spheres. The conversation turned on the military position of the country, and Leo gave a satirical description of his comrades and superiors, with which both the others were very much amused. Much merriment, especially, was occasioned by a First-Lieutenant who had introduced himself to the volunteer contingent with the ominous words: "I shan't give you anything to laugh about, I am a fiend in human form."
While they were still eating a gentleman came up to the table, clicked his heels together, put his hand to his cycle cap by way of salutation, addressed them with a facetious "All hail," added a friendly "Hallo" for the benefit of Leo, and introduced himself to Heinrich. "My name is Josef Rosner." He then cheerily began the conversation with these words: "I suppose you gentlemen are also on a cycling expedition...." As no one answered him he continued: "One must make the best of the last fine days, the splendid weather won't last much longer."
"Won't you sit down, Herr Rosner?" asked George politely.
"Much obliged but...." He pointed to his party.... "We have only just started out, we have still got a lot in front of us; going to ride down to Tull and then via Stockerau to Vienna. Excuse me, gentlemen." He took a wooden vesta from the table and lighted his cigarette with dignity.
"What kind of a club are you in then, old chap?" asked Leo, and George was surprised at the "old chap," till it occurred to him that they had both known each other from boyhood.
"This is the Sechshauser Cycle Club," replied Josef. In spite of the fact that no astonishment was expressed, he added: "Of course you are surprised, gentlemen, at a real Viennese like myself belonging to this suburban club, but it is only because a great friend of mine is the captain there. You see that fat chap there, just slipping into his coat. That is Jalaudek, the son of the town councillor and member of Parliament."
"Jalaudek ..." repeated Heinrich with obvious loathing in his voice, and said nothing more.
"Oh yes," said Leo, "that's the man, you know, who in a recent debate about the popular education board gave this magnificent definition of science. Didn't you read it?" He turned to the others.
They did not remember.
"'Science,'" quoted Leo, "'Science is what one Jew copies from another.'"
All laughed. Even Josef, who, however, immediately started explaining: "He is really not that sort at all—I know him quite well—only he is so crude in political life ... simply because the opposing parties scratch each other's eyes out in our beloved Austria. But in ordinary life he is a very affable gentleman. The boy is much more Radical."
"Is your club Christian Socialist or National German?" asked Leo courteously.
"Oh, we don't make any distinction. Only of course as things are going nowadays...." He stopped with sudden embarrassment.
"Come, come," said Leo encouragingly. "It is perfectly obvious that your club is not tainted by a single Jew. Why, one notices that a mile off."
Josef thought it was best form to laugh. He then said: "Excuse me, no politics in the mountains! Anyway, as we are on this topic you are labouring under a delusion, gentlemen. For instance, we have a man in the club who is engaged to a Jewish girl. But they are beckoning to me already. Goodbye, gentlemen; so long, Leo; goodbye, all." He saluted again and swaggered off.
The others, smiling in spite of themselves, followed him with their eyes. Then Leo suddenly turned to George and asked: "And how is his sister getting on with her singing?"
"What?" said George, startled and blushing slightly.
"Therese has been telling me," went on Leo quietly, "that you and Anna do music together sometimes. Is her voice all right now?"
"Yes," replied George, hesitating, "I believe so; at any rate I think it is very pleasant, very melodious, especially in the deeper registers. It is a pity in my view that it is not big enough for larger rooms."
"Not big enough?" repeated Leo meditatively.
"How would you describe it?"
Leo shrugged his shoulders and looked quietly at George. "It is like this," he said. "I personally like the voice very much, but even when Anna had the idea of going on the stage ... to speak quite frankly, I never thought anything would come of it."
"You probably knew," replied George with deliberate casualness, "that Fräulein Anna suffers from a peculiar weakness of the vocal chords."
"Yes, of course I knew that, but if she were cut out for an artistic career, really had it in her, I mean, she would certainly have overcome that weakness."
"You think so?"
"Yes, I do. That is my decided opinion. That's why I think that expressions like 'peculiar weakness' or 'her voice is not big enough' are more or less euphemisms for something more fundamental, more psychological. It's quite clear that her fate line says nothing about her being an artist, that's a fact. She was, so to speak, predestined from the beginning to end her days in respectable domesticity."
Heinrich enthusiastically caught up the theory of the fate line, and led their thoughts in his own erratic way from the sphere of cleverness to the sphere of sophistry, and from the sphere of sophistry to the sphere of the nonsensical.
He then suggested that they should bask for half an hour in the meadow in the sun. "It will probably not shine so warm again during this year."
The others agreed.
A hundred yards from the inn George and Leo stretched themselves out on their cloaks. Heinrich sat down on the grass, crossed his arms over his knees, and looked in front of him. At his feet the sward sloped down to the forest. Still deeper down rested the villas of Neuwaldegg, buried in loose foliage. The spire-crosses and dazzling windows of the town shone out from the bluish-grey clouds, and far away, as though lifted up by a moving haze, the plain swept away to a gradual darkness.
Pedestrians were walking over the fields towards the inn. Some gave them a greeting as they passed, and one of them, a slim young man who led a child by the hand, remarked to Heinrich: "This is a really fine day, just like May."
Heinrich felt at first his heart go out as it were involuntarily, as it often did towards casual and unexpected friendliness of this description. But he immediately pulled himself together, for of course he realised that the young man was only intoxicated, as it were, with the mildness of the day and the peace of the landscape; that at the bottom of his soul he too felt hostile to him, just like all the others who had strolled past him so harmlessly, and he himself found difficulty in understanding why the view of these gently sloping hills and the town merging into twilight should affect him with so sweet a melancholy, in view of the fact that the men who lived there meant so little good by him, and meant him even that little but rarely. The cycling club whizzed along the street which was quite close to them. The jauntily-worn coats fluttered, the badges gleamed and crude laughter rang out over the fields.
"Awful people," said Leo casually without changing his place.
Heinrich motioned down below with a vague movement of his head. "And fellows like that," he said with set teeth, "imagine that they are more at home here than we are."
"Oh, well," answered Leo quietly, "they aren't so far out in that, those fellows there."
Heinrich turned scornfully towards him: "Excuse me, Leo, I forgot for a moment that you yourself wish to count as only here on sufferance."
"I don't wish that for a minute," replied Leo with a smile, "and you need not misunderstand me so perversely. One really can't bear a grudge against these people if they regard themselves as the natives and you and me as the foreigners. After all, it is only the expression of their healthy instinct for an anthropological fact which is confirmed by history. Neither Jewish nor Christian sentimentalism can do anything against that and all the consequences which follow from it." And turning to George he asked him in a tone which was only too courteous: "Don't you think so too?"
George reddened and cleared his throat, but had no opportunity of answering, for Heinrich, on whose forehead two deep furrows now appeared, immediately began to speak with considerable bitterness.
"My own instinct is at any rate quite as much a rule of conduct for me as the instinct of Herren Jalaudek Junior and Senior, and that instinct tells me infallibly that my home is here, just here, and not in some land which I don't know, the description of which doesn't appeal to me the least bit and which certain people now want to persuade me is my fatherland on the strength of the argument that that was the place from which my ancestors some thousand years ago were scattered into the world. One might further observe on that point that the ancestors of the Herren Jalaudek and even of our friend Baron von Wergenthin were quite as little at home here as mine and yours."
"You mustn't be angry with me," retorted Leo, "but your standpoint in these matters is really somewhat limited. You are always thinking about yourself and the really quite irrelevant circumstance ... excuse my saying irrelevant circumstance, that you are an author who happens to write in the German language because he was born in a German country, and happens to write about Austrian people and Austrian conditions because he lives in Austria. But the primary question is not about you, or about me either, or even about the few Jewish officials who do not get promoted, the few Jewish volunteers who do not get made officers, the Jewish lecturers who either get their Professorship too late or not at all—those are sheer secondary inconveniences so to speak; we have to deal, in considering this question, with quite another class of men whom you know either imperfectly or not at all. We have to deal with destinies to which, I assure you, my dear Heinrich, that in spite of your real duty to do so, I am sure you have not yet given sufficient thorough thought. I am sure you haven't.... Otherwise you wouldn't be able to discuss all these matters in the superficial and the ... egoistic way you are now doing."
He then told them of his experiences at the Bâle Zionist Congress in which he had taken part in the previous year, and where he had obtained a deeper insight into the character and psychological condition of the Jewish people than he had ever done before. With these people, whom he saw at close quarters for the first time, the yearning for Palestine, he knew it for a fact, was no artificial pose. A genuine feeling was at work within them, a feeling that had never become extinguished and was now flaming up afresh under the stress of necessity. No one could doubt that who had seen, as he had, the holy scorn shine out in their looks when a speaker exclaimed that they must give up the hope of Palestine for the time being and content themselves with settlements in Africa and the Argentine. Why, he had seen old men, not uneducated men either, no, learned and wise old men, weeping because they must needs fear that that land of their fathers, which they themselves would never be able to tread, even in the event of the realisation of the boldest Zionist plans, would perhaps never be open to their children and their children's children.
George listened with surprise, and was even somewhat moved.
But Heinrich, who had been walking up and down the field during Leo's narrative, exclaimed that he regarded Zionism as the worst affliction that had ever burst upon the Jews, and that Leo's own words had convinced him of it more profoundly than any previous argument or experience.
National feeling and religion, those had always been the words which had embittered him with their wanton, yes malignant, ambiguity. Fatherland.... Why, that was nothing more than a fiction, a political idea floating in the air, changeable, intangible. It was only the home, not the fatherland which had any real significance ... and so the feeling of home was synonymous with the right to a home. And so far as religions were concerned, he liked Christian and Jewish mythology quite as much as Greek and Indian; but as soon as they began to force their dogmas upon him, he found them all equally intolerable and repulsive. And he felt himself akin with no one, no, not with any one in the whole world: with the weeping Jews in Ble as little as with the bawling Pan-Germans in the Austrian Parliament; with Jewish usurers as little as with noble robber-knights; with a Zionist bar-keeper as little as with a Christian Socialist grocer. And least of all would the consciousness of a persecution which they had all suffered, and of a hatred whose burden fell upon them all, make him feel linked to men from whom he felt himself so far distant in temperament. He did not mind recognising Zionism as a moral principle and a social movement, if it could honestly be regarded in that light, but the idea of the foundation of a Jewish state on a religious and national basis struck him as a nonsensical defiance of the whole spirit of historical evolution. "And you too, at the bottom of your heart," he explained, standing still in front of Leo, "you don't think either that this goal will ever prove attainable; why, you don't even wish it, although you fancy yourself in your element trying to get there. What is your home-country, Palestine? A geographical idea. What does the faith of your father mean to you? A collection of customs which you have now ceased to observe and some of which seem as ridiculous and in as bad taste to you, as they do to me."
They went on talking for a long time, now vehemently and almost offensively, then calmly, and in the honest endeavour to convince each other. Frequently they were surprised to find themselves holding the same opinion, only again to lose touch with each other the next moment in a new contradiction. George, stretched on his cloak, listened to them. His mind soon took the side of Leo, whose words seemed to thrill with an ardent pity for the unfortunate members of his race, and who would turn proudly away from people who would not treat him as their equal. Soon he felt nearer again in spirit to Heinrich, who treated with anger and scorn the attempt, as wild as it was short-sighted, to collect from all the corners of the world the members of a race whose best men had always merged in the culture of the land of their adoption, or had at any rate contributed to it, and to send them all together to a foreign land, a land to which no homesickness called them. And George gradually appreciated how difficult those same picked men about whom Heinrich had been speaking, the men who were hatching in their souls the future of humanity, would find it to come to a decision. How dazed must be their consciousness of their existence, their value and their rights, tossed to and fro as they were between defiance and exhaustion, between the fear of appearing importunate and their bitter resentment at the demand that they must needs yield to an insolent majority, between the inner consciousness of being at home in the country where they lived and worked, and their indignation at finding themselves persecuted and insulted in that very place. He saw for the first time the designation Jew, which he himself had often used flippantly, jestingly and contemptuously, in a quite new and at the same time melancholy light. There dawned within him some idea of this people's mysterious destiny, which always expressed itself in every one who sprang from the race, not less in those who tried to escape from that origin of theirs, as though it were a disgrace, a pain or a fairy tale that did not concern them at all, than in those who obstinately pointed back to it as though to a piece of destiny, an honour or an historical fact based on an immovable foundation.
And as he lost himself in the contemplation of the two speakers, and looked at their figures, which stood out in relief against the reddish-violet sky in sharply-drawn, violently-moving lines, it occurred to him, and not for the first time, that Heinrich who insisted on being at home here, resembled both in figure and gesture some fanatical Jewish preacher, while Leo, who wanted to go back to Palestine with his people, reminded him in feature and in bearing of the statue of a Greek youth which he had once seen in the Vatican or the Naples museum. And he understood again quite well, as his eye followed with pleasure Leo's lively aristocratic gestures, how Anna could have experienced a mad fancy for her friend's brother years ago in that summer by the seaside.
Heinrich and Leo were still standing opposite each other on the grass, while their conversation became lost in a maze of words. Their sentences rushed violently against each other, wrestled convulsively, shot past each other and vanished into nothingness, and George noticed at some moment or other that he was only listening to the sound of the speeches, without being able to follow their meaning.
A cool breeze came up from the plain, and George got up from the sward with a slight shiver. The others, who had almost forgotten his presence, were thus called back again to actualities, and they decided to leave. Full daylight still shone over the landscape, but the sun was couched faint and dark on the long strip of an evening cloud.
"Conversations like this," said Heinrich, as he strapped his cloak on to his cycle, "always leave me with a sense of dissatisfaction, which even goes as far as a painful feeling in the neighbourhood of the stomach. Yes really. They just lead absolutely nowhere. And after all, what do political views matter to men who don't make politics their career or their business? Do they exert the slightest influence on the policy and moulding of existence? You, Leo, are just like myself; neither of us will ever do anything else, can ever do anything else, than just accomplish that which, in view of our character and our capacities, we are able to accomplish. You will never migrate to Palestine all your life long, even if Jewish states were founded and you were offered a position as prime-minister, or at any rate official pianist——"
"Oh, you can't know that," interrupted Leo.
"I know it for a certainty," said Heinrich. "That's why I'll admit, into the bargain, that in spite of my complete indifference to every single form of religion I would positively never allow myself to be baptised, even if it were possible—though that is less the case to-day than ever it was—of escaping once and for all Anti-Semitic bigotry and villainy by a dodge like that."
"Hum," said Leo, "but supposing the mediæval stake were to be lighted again."
"In that case," retorted Heinrich, "I hereby solemnly bind myself to take your advice implicitly."
"Oh," objected George, "those times will certainly not come again."
Both the others were unable to help laughing at George being kind enough to reassure them in that way about their future, in the name, as Heinrich observed, of the whole of Christendom.
In the meanwhile they had crossed the field.
George and Heinrich pushed their cycles forward up the bumpy by-road, while Leo at their side walked on the turf with his cloak fluttering in the wind. They were all silent for quite a time, as though exhausted. At the place where the bad path turned off towards the broad high road, Leo remained stationary and said: "We will have to leave each other here, I am afraid." He shook hands with George and smiled. "You must have been pretty well bored to-day," he said.
George blushed. "I say now, you must take me for a...."
Leo held George's hand in a firm grip. "I take you for a very shrewd man and also for a very good sort. Do you believe me?"
George was silent.
"I should like to know," continued Leo, "whether you believe me, George. I am keen on knowing." His voice assumed a tone of genuine sincerity.
"Why, of course I believe you," replied George, still, however, with a certain amount of impatience.
"I am glad," said Leo, "for I really feel a sympathy between us, George." He looked straight into his eyes, then shook hands once more with him and Heinrich and turned to go.
But George suddenly had the feeling that this young man who with his fluttering cloak and his head slightly bent forward was striding down-hill in the middle of the broad street was not waiting to any "home," but to some foreign sphere somewhere, where no one could follow him. He found this feeling all the more incomprehensible since he had not only spent many hours recently with Leo in conversation at the café, but had also received all possible information from Anna about him, his family and his position in life. He knew that that summer at the seaside, which now lay six years back, as did Anna's youthful infatuation, had marked the last summer which the Golowski family had enjoyed free from trouble, and that the business of the old man had been completely ruined in the subsequent winter. It had been extraordinary, according to Anna's account, how all the members of the family had adapted themselves to the altered conditions, as though they had been long prepared for this revolution. The family removed from their comfortable house in the Rathaus quarter to a dismal street in the neighbourhood of the Augarten. Herr Golowski undertook all kinds of commission business while Frau Golowski did needlework for sale.
Therese gave lessons in French and English and at first continued to attend the dramatic school. It was a young violin player belonging to an impoverished noble Russian family who awakened her interest in political questions. She soon abandoned her art, for which, as a matter of fact, she had always shown more inclination than real talent, and in a short time she was in the full swing of the Social Democratic movement as a speaker and agitator. Leo, without agreeing with her views, enjoyed her fresh and audacious character. He often attended meetings with her, but as he was not keen on being impressed by magniloquence, whether it took the form of promises which were never fulfilled or of threats which disappeared into thin air, he found it good fun to point out to her, on the way home, with an irresistible acuteness, the inconsistencies in her own speeches and those of the members of her party. But he always made a particular point of trying to convince her that she would never have been able to forget so completely her great mission for days and weeks on end, if her pity for the poor and the suffering were really as deep an emotion as she imagined.
Leo's own life, moreover, had no definite object. He attended technical science lectures, gave piano lessons, sometimes went so far as to plan out a musical career, and practised five or six hours a day for weeks on end. But it was still impossible to forecast what he would finally decide on. Inasmuch it was his way to wait almost unconsciously for a miracle to save him from anything disagreeable, he had put off his year of service till he was face to face with the final time-limit, and now in his twenty-fifth year he was serving for the first time.
Their parents allowed Leo and Therese to go their own way, and in spite of their manifold differences of opinion there seemed to be no serious discord in the Golowski family. The mother usually sat at home, sewed, knitted and crocheted, while the father went about his business with increasing apathy, and liked best of all to watch the chess-players in the café, a pleasure which enabled him to forget the ruin of his life. Since the collapse of his business he seemed unable to shake off a certain feeling of embarrassment towards his children, so that he was almost proud when Therese would give him now and again an article which she had written to read, or when Leo was good enough to play a game on Sundays with him on the board he loved so well.
It always seemed to George as though his own sympathy for Leo were fundamentally connected with Anna's long-past fancy for him. He felt, and not for the first time, curiously attracted to a man to whom a soul which now belonged to him, had flown in years gone by.
George and Heinrich had mounted their cycles, and were riding along a narrow road through the thick forest that loomed darker and darker. A little later, as the forest retreated behind them again on both sides, they had the setting sun at their back, while the long shadows of their bodies kept running along in front of their cycles. The slope of the road became more and more pronounced and soon led them between low houses which were overhung with reddish foliage. A very old man sat in a seat in front of the door, a pale child looked out of an open window. Otherwise not a single human being was to be seen.
"Like an enchanted village," said George.
Heinrich nodded. He knew the place. He had been here with his love on a wonderful summer day this year. He thought of it and burning longing throbbed through his heart. And he remembered the last hours that he had spent with her in Vienna in his cool room with the drawn-down blinds, through whose interstices the hot August morning had glittered in: he remembered their last walk through the Sunday quiet of the cool stone streets and through the old empty courtyards—and the complete absence of any idea that all this was for the last time. For it was only the next day that the letter had come, the ghastly letter in which she had written that she had wished to spare him the pain of farewell, and that when he read these words, she would already be quite a long way over the frontier on her journey to the new foreign town.
The road became more animated. Charming villas appeared encircled with cosy little gardens, wooded hills sloped gently upwards behind the houses. They saw once again the expanse of the valley as the waning day rested over meadows and fields. The lamps had been lit in a great empty restaurant garden. A hasty darkness seemed to be stealing down from every quarter simultaneously. They were now at the cross-roads. George and Heinrich got off and lit cigarettes.
"Right or left?" asked Heinrich.
George looked at his watch. "Six,... and I've got to be in town by eight."
"So I suppose we can't dine together?" said Heinrich.
"I am afraid not."
"It's a pity. Well, we'll take the short cut then through Sievering."
They lit their lamps and pushed their cycles through the forest in a long serpentine. One tree after another in succession sprang out of the darkness into the radiance of the globes of light and retreated again into the night. The wind soughed through the foliage with increased force and the leaves rustled underneath. Heinrich felt a quite gentle fear, such as frequently came over him when it was dark in the open country. He felt, as it were, disillusioned at the thought of having to spend the evening alone. He was in a bad temper with George, and was irritated into the bargain at the latter's reserve towards himself. He resolved also, and not for the first time, not to discuss his own personal affairs with George any more. It was better so. He did not need to confide in anybody or obtain anybody's sympathy. He had always felt at his best when he had gone his own way alone. He had found that out often enough. Why then reveal his soul to another? He needed acquaintances to go walks and excursions with, and to discuss all the manifold problems of life and art in cold shrewd fashion—he needed women for a fleeting embrace; but he needed no friend and no mistress. In that way his life would pass with greater dignity and serenity. He revelled in these resolutions, and felt a growing consciousness of toughness and superiority. The darkness of the forest lost its terror, and he walked through the gently rustling night as though through a kindred element.
The height was soon reached. The dark sky lay starless over the grey road and the haze-breathing fields that stretched on both sides towards the deceptive distance of the wooded hills. A light was shining from a toll-house quite near them. They mounted their cycles again and rode back as quickly as the darkness permitted. George wished to be soon at the journey's end. It struck him as strangely unreal that he was to see again in an hour and a half that quiet room which no one else knew of besides Anna and himself; that dark room with the oil-prints on the wall, the blue velvet sofa, the cottage piano, on which stood the photographs of unknown people and a bust of Schiller in white plaster; with its high narrow windows, opposite which the old dark grey church towered aloft.
Lamps were burning all the way along. The roads again became more open and they were given a last view of the heights. Then they went at top speed, first between well-kept villas, finally through a populous noisy main road until they got deeper into the town. They got off at the Votive Church.
"Good-bye," said George, "and I hope to see you again in the café to-morrow."
"I don't know ..." replied Heinrich, and as George looked at him questioningly he added: "It is possible that I shall go away."
"I say, that is a sudden decision."
"Yes, one gets caught sometimes by...."
"Lovesickness," filled in George with a smile.
"Or fear," said Heinrich with a short laugh.
"You certainly have no cause for that," said George.
"Do you know for certain?" asked Heinrich.
"You told us so yourself."
"What!"
"That you have news every day."
"Yes, that is quite true, every day. I get tender ardent letters. Every day by the same post. But what does that prove? Why, I write letters which are yet more ardent and even more tender and yet...."
"Yes," said George, who understood him. And he hazarded the question: "Why don't you stay with her?"
Heinrich shrugged his shoulders. "Tell me yourself, George, wouldn't it strike you as slightly humorous for a man to burn his boats on account of a love affair like that and trot about the world with a little actress...."
"Personally, I should regret it very much ... but humorous ... where does the humour come in?"
"No, I have no desire to do it," said Heinrich in a hard voice.
"But if you ... but if you were to take it very seriously ... if you asked her point blank ... mightn't the young lady perhaps give up her career?"
"Possibly, but I am not going to ask her, I don't want to ask her. No, better pain than responsibility."
"Would it be such a great responsibility?" asked George. "What I mean is ... is the girl's talent so pronounced, is she really so keen on her art, that it would be really a sacrifice for her to give the thing up."
"Has she got talent?" said Heinrich. "Why, I don't know myself. Why, I even think she is the one creature in the world about whose talent I would not trust myself to give an opinion. Every time I have seen her on the stage her voice has rung in my ears like the voice of an unknown person, and as though, too, it came from a greater distance than all the other voices. It is really quite remarkable.... But you are bound to have seen her act, George. What's your impression? Tell me quite frankly."
"Well, quite frankly ... I don't remember her properly. You'll excuse me, I didn't know then, you see.... When you talk of her I always see in my mind's eye a head of reddish-blonde hair that falls a little over the forehead—and very big black roving eyes with a small pale face."
"Yes, roving eyes," repeated Heinrich, bit his lips and was silent for a while. "Good-bye," he said suddenly.
"You'll be sure to write to me?" asked George.
"Yes, of course. Any way I am bound to be coming back again," he added, and smiled stiffly.
"Bon voyage," said George, and shook hands with him with unusual affection. This did Heinrich good. This warm pressure of the hand not only made him suddenly certain that George did not think him ridiculous, but also, strangely enough, that his distant mistress was faithful to him and that he himself was a man who could take more liberties with life than many others.
George looked after him as he hurried off on his cycle. He felt again as he had felt a few hours before, on Leo's departure, that some one was vanishing into an unknown land; and he realised at this moment that in spite of all the sympathy he felt for both of them he would never attain with either that unrestrained sense of intimacy which had united him last year with Guido Schönstein and previously with poor Labinski.
He reflected whether perhaps the fundamental reason for this was not perhaps the difference of race between him and them, and he asked himself whether leaving out of account the conversation between the two of them, he would of his own initiative have realised so clearly this feeling of aloofness. He doubted it. Did he not as a matter of fact feel himself nearer, yes even more akin, to these two and to many others of their race than to many men who came from the same stock as his own? Why, did he not feel quite distinctly that deep down somewhere there were many stronger threads of sympathy running between him and those two men, than between him and Guido or perhaps even his own brother? But if that was so, would he not have been bound to have taken some opportunity this afternoon to have said as much to those two men? to have appealed to them? "Just trust me, don't shut me out. Just try to treat me as a friend...." And as he asked himself why he had not done it, and why he had scarcely taken any part in their conversation, he realised with astonishment that during the whole time he had not been able to shake off a kind of guilty consciousness of having not been free during his whole life from a certain hostility towards the foreigners, as Leo called them himself, a kind of wanton hostility which was certainly not justified by his own personal experience, and had thus contributed his own share to that distrust and defiance with which so many persons, whom he himself might have been glad to take an opportunity to approach, had shut themselves off from him. This thought roused an increasingmalaisewithin him which he could not properly analyse, and which was simply the dull realisation that clean relations could not flourish even between clean men in an atmosphere of folly, injustice and disingenuousness.
He rode homewards faster and faster, as though that would make him escape this feeling of depression. Arrived home, he changed quickly, so as not to keep Anna waiting too long. He longed for her as he had never done before. He felt as though he had come home from a far journey to the one being who wholly belonged to him.
George stood by the window. The stone backs of the bearded giants who bore on their powerful arms the battered armorial bearings of a long-past race were arched just beneath him. Straight opposite, out of the darkness of ancient houses the steps crept up to the door of the old grey church which loomed amid the falling flakes of snow as though behind a moving curtain. The light of a street lamp on the square shone palely through the waning daylight. The snowy street beneath, which, though centrally situated, was remote from all bustle, was even quieter than usual on this holiday afternoon, and George felt once more, as indeed he always did when he ascended the broad staircase of the old palace that had been transformed into an apartment house, and stepped into the spacious room with its low-arched ceiling, that he was escaping from his usual world and had entered the other half of his wonderful double life.
He heard a key grating in the door and turned round. Anna came in. George clasped her ecstatically in his arms, and kissed her on the forehead and mouth. Her dark-blue jacket, her broad-rimmed hat, her fur boa were all covered with snow.
"You have been working then," said Anna, as she took off her things and pointed to the table where music paper with writing on it lay close to the green-shaded lamp.
"I have just looked through the quintette, the first movement, there is still a lot to do to it."
"But it will be extraordinarily fine then."
"We'll hope so. Do you come from home, Anna?"
"No, from Bittner's."
"What, to-day, Sunday?"
"Yes, the two girls have got a lot behind-hand through the measles, and that has to be made up. I am very pleased too, for money reasons for one thing."
"Making your fortune!"
"And then one escapes for an hour or two at any rate from the happy home."
"Yes," said George, put Anna's boa over the back of a chair and stroked the fur nervously with his fingers. Anna's remark, in which he could detect a gentle reproach, as it were, a reproach too which he had heard before, gave him an unpleasant feeling. She sat down on the sofa, put her hands on her temples, stroked her dark blonde wavy hair backwards and looked at George with a smile. He stood leaning on the chest of drawers, with both hands in his jacket pocket, and began to tell her of the previous evening, which he had spent with Guido and his violinist. The young lady had, at the Count's wish, been for some weeks taking instruction in the Catholic religion with the confessor of an Arch-duchess; she, on her side, made Guido read Nietzsche and Ibsen. But according to George's account the only result of this course of study which one could report so far was that the Count had developed the habit of nicknaming his Mistress "the Rattenmamsell," after that wonderful character out ofLittle Eyolf.
Anna had nothing very bright to communicate about her last evening. They had had visitors. "First," Anna told him, "my mother's two cousins, then an office friend of my father's to play tarok. Even Josef was domesticated for once and lay on the sofa from three to five. Then his latest pal, Herr Jalaudek, who paid me quite a lot of attention."
"Really, really."
"Hewasfascinating. I'll just tell you: a violet cravat with yellow spots which puts yours quite into the shade. He paid me the honour too of suggesting that I should help him in a so-called charity-performance at the 'Wild Man,' for the benefit of the Wahringer Church Building Society."
"Of course you accepted?"
"I excused myself on account of my lack of voice and want of religious feeling."
"So far as the voice is concerned...."
She interrupted him. "No, George," she said lightly, "I have given up that hope at last."
He looked at her and tried to read her glance, but it remained clear and free. The organ from the church sounded softly and dully.
"Right," said George, "I have brought you the ticket for to-morrow's 'Carmen.'"
"Thanks very much," she answered, and took the card. "Are you going too, dear?"
"Yes, I have a box in the third tier, and I have asked Bermann to come. I am taking the music with me, as I did the other day at Lohengrin, and I shall practise conducting again. At the back, of course. You can have no idea what you learn that way. I should like to make a suggestion," he added hesitatingly. "Won't you come and have supper somewhere with me and Bermann after the theatre?"
She was silent.
He continued: "I should really like it if you got to know him better. With all his faults he is an interesting fellow and...."
"I am not a Rattenmamsell," she interrupted sharply, while her face immediately assumed its stiff conventional expression.
George compressed the corners of his mouth. "That doesn't apply to me, my dear child. There are many points of difference between Guido and me. But as you like." He walked up and down the room.
She remained sitting on the ottoman. "So you are going to Ehrenbergs' this evening?" she asked.
"You know I am. I have already refused twice recently, and I couldn't very well do so this time."
"You needn't make any excuses, George, I am invited too."
"Where to?"
"I am going to Ehrenbergs' too."
"Really?" he exclaimed involuntarily.
"Why are you so surprised?" she asked sharply; "it is clear that they don't yet know that I am not fit to be associated with any more."
"My dear Anna, what is the matter with you to-day? Why are you so touchy? Supposing they did know ... do you think that would prevent people from inviting you? Quite the contrary. I am convinced that you would really go up in Frau Ehrenberg's respect."
"And the sweet Else, I suppose, would positively envy me. Don't you think so? Anyway, she wrote me quite a nice letter. Here it is. Won't you read it?" George ran his eye over it, thought its kindness was somewhat deliberate, made no further remark and gave it back to Anna.
"Here is another one too, if it interests you."
"From Doctor Stauber. Indeed? Would he mind if he knew that you gave it to me to read?"
"Why are you so considerate all of a sudden?" and as though to punish him she added, "there are probably a great many things that he would mind."
George read the letter quickly through to himself. Berthold described in his dry way, with an occasional tinge of humour, the progress of his work at the Pasteur Institute, his walks, his excursions and the theatres he had visited, and quite a lot of remarks also of a general character. But in spite of his eight pages the letter did not contain the slightest allusion to either past or future. George asked casually "How long is he staying in Paris?"
"As you see he doesn't write a single word about his return."
"Your friend Therese was recently of opinion that his colleagues in the party would like to have him back again."
"Oh, has she been in the café again?"
"Yes. I spoke to her there two or three days ago. She really amuses me a great deal."
"Really?"
"She starts off, of course, by always being very superior, even with me. Presumably because I am one of those who rot away their life with art and silly things like that, while there are so many more important things to do in the world. But when she warms up a bit it turns out that she is every bit as interested as we ordinary people in all kinds of silly things."
"She easily gets warmed up," said Anna imperturbably.
George walked up and down and went on speaking. "She was really magnificent the other day at the fencing tournament in the Musikverein rooms. By-the-bye, who was the gentleman who was up there in the gallery with her?"
Anna shrugged her shoulders. "I did not have the privilege of being at the tournament, and besides, I don't know all Therese's cavaliers."
"I presume," said George, "it was a comrade, in every sense of the term. At any rate he was very glum and was pretty badly dressed. When Therese clapped Felician's victory he positively collapsed with jealousy."
"What did Therese really tell you about Doctor Berthold?" asked Anna.
"Ho, ho!" said George jestingly, "the lady still appears to be keenly interested."
Anna did not answer.
"Well," reported George, "I can give you the information that they want to make him stand in the autumn for the Landtag. I can quite understand it too, in view of his brilliant gifts as a speaker."
"What do you know about it? Have you ever heard him speak?"
"Of course I have; don't you remember? At your place."
"There is really no occasion for you to make fun of him."
"I assure you I'd no idea of doing so."
"I noticed at once that he struck you at the time as somewhat funny. He and his father, too. Why, you immediately ran away from them."
"Not at all, Anna. You are doing me a great injustice in making such insinuations."
"They may have their weaknesses, both of them, but at any rate they belong to the people whom one can count on. And that is something."
"Have I disputed that, Anna? Upon my word, I have never heard you talk so illogically. What do you want me to do then? Did you want me by any chance to be jealous about that letter?"
"Jealous? that would be the finishing touch. You with your past."
George shrugged his shoulders. Memories swam up in his mind of similar wrangles in the course of previous relationships, memories of those mysterious sudden discords and estrangements which usually simply meant the beginning of the end. Had he really got as far as all that already with his good sensible Anna? He walked up and down the room moodily and almost depressed. At times he threw a fleeting glance towards his love who sat silent in her corner of the sofa, rubbing her hands lightly as though she were cold. The organ rang out more heavily than before in the silence of the room that had suddenly become so melancholy; the voices of singing men became audible and the window-panes rattled softly. George's glance fell on the little Christmas-tree which stood on the sideboard and whose candles had burnt the evening before last for the benefit of Anna and himself. Half-bored, half-nervous, he took a wooden vesta out of his pocket and began to light the little candles one after another.
Then Anna's voice suddenly rang out to him. "There is no one I should prefer to old Doctor Stauber to confide in about anything serious."
George turned coldly towards her and blew out a burning vesta which he still held in his hand. He knew immediately what Anna meant, and felt surprised that he had never given it another thought since their last meeting. He went up to her and took hold of her hand. Now for the first time she looked up. Her expression was impenetrable, her features immobile. "I say, Anna...." He sat down by her side on the ottoman with both her hands in his.
She was silent.
"Why don't you speak?"
She shrugged her shoulders. "There is nothing new to tell you," she explained simply.
"I see," he said slowly. It passed through his mind that her strange sensitiveness to-day was to be regarded as symptomatic of the condition to which she was alluding, and the uneasiness in his soul increased. "But you can't tell definitely for a good time yet," he said in a somewhat cooler tone than he really meant. "And ... even supposing ..." he added with artificial cheerfulness.
"So you would forgive me?" she asked with a smile.
He pressed her to him and suddenly felt quite transported. A vivid and almost pathetic feeling of love flamed up in him for the soft good creature whom he held in his arms, and who could never occasion him, he felt deeply convinced, any serious suffering. "It really wouldn't be so bad," he said cheerily, "you would just leave Vienna for a time, that's all."
"Well, it certainly wouldn't be as simple as you seem all of a sudden to think it would."
"Why not? You can soon find an excuse; besides, whom does it concern? Us two. No one else. But as far as I am concerned. I can get away any day as you know; can stay away too as long as I want to. I have not yet signed any contract for next year," he added with a smile. He then got up to put out the Christmas candles, whose tiny flames had almost burnt down to the end, and went on speaking with increasing liveliness. "It would be positively delightful; just think of it, Anna! We should go away at the end of February or the beginning of March. South, of course, Italy, or perhaps the sea. We would stay at some quiet place where no one knows us, in a beautiful hotel with enormous grounds. And wouldn't one be able to work there, by Jove?"
"So that's why!" she said, as though she suddenly understood him. He laughed, held her more tightly in his arms and she pressed herself against his breast. There was no longer any noise from outside. The last sounds of the organ and the men's voices had died away. The snow curtains swept down in front of the window.... George and Anna were happy as they had never been before.
While they were at peace in the darkness he spoke about his musical plans for the near future, and told her, so far as he was able, about Heinrich's opera plot. The room became filled with shimmering shadows. The clatter of a wedding-feast swept through the fantastic hall of an ancient king. A passionate youth stole in and thrust his dagger into the prince. A dark sentence was pronounced more sinister than death itself. A sluggish ship sailed on a darkling flood towards an unknown goal. At the youth's feet there rested a princess, who had once been the betrothed of a duke. An unknown man approached the shining boat with strange tidings; fools, star-gazers, dancers, courtiers swept past. Anna had listened in silence. When he had finished George was curious to learn what impression the fleeting pictures had made upon her.
"I can't say properly," she replied. "I certainly feel quite puzzled to-day, how you are going to make anything real out of this more or less fantastic stuff."
"Of course you can't realise it yet to-day—particularly after just hearing me describe it.... But you do feel, don't you? the musical atmosphere. I have already noted down a fewmotifs—and I should be really very glad if Bermann would soon get to work seriously."
"If I were you, George ... may I tell you something?"
"Of course, fire ahead."
"Well, if I were you, I'd first get the quintette really finished. It can't want much doing to it now."
"Not much, and yet ... besides, you mustn't forget that I've started all kinds of other things lately. The two pianoforte pieces, then the orchestrascherzo—I've already got pretty far with that. But it certainly ought to be made part of a symphony."
Anna made no answer. George noticed that her thoughts were roving, and he asked her where she had run away to this time.
"Not so far," she replied; "it only just passed through my mind what a lot of things can happen before the opera is really ready."
"Yes," said George slowly, with a slight trace of embarrassment. "If one could just look into the future."
She sighed quite softly and he pressed her nearer to him, almost as though he pitied her. "Don't worry, my darling, don't worry," he said. "I am here all right, and I always shall be here." He thought he felt what she was thinking; can't he say anything better than that?... anything stronger? anything to take away all my fear—take it away from me for ever? And he asked her disingenuously, as though conscious of running a risk: "What are you thinking of?" And as she was obstinately silent he said once more: "Anna, what are you thinking of?"
"Something very strange," she answered gently.
"What is it?"
"That the house is already built, where it will come into the world—that we have no idea where ... that is what I couldn't help thinking of."
"Thinking of that!" he said, strangely moved. And pressing her to his heart with a love that flamed up afresh, "I will never desert you, you two...."
When the room was lighted again they were in very good spirits, plucked the last forgotten sweets from the branches of the little Christmas-tree and looked forward to their next meeting among people who were absolutely indifferent to them, as though it were quite a jolly adventure, laughed and talked exuberant nonsense.
As soon as Anna had gone away George locked his music manuscript up in a drawer, put out the lamp and opened the window. The snow was falling lightly and thinly. An old man was coming up the steps and his laboured breathing sounded through the still air. Opposite the silent church towered aloft ... George remained awhile standing at the window. He felt almost convinced at this moment that Anna was mistaken in her surmise. He felt almost reassured as there came into his mind that remark of Leo Golowski's that Anna was destined to end her days in respectable middle-class life. Having a child by a lover really could not be part of her fate line. It was not part of his fate line either to carry the burden of serious obligation, to be tied fast from to-day and perhaps for all time to a person of the other sex; to become a father when he was still so young, a father ... the word sank into his soul, oppressive, almost sinister.
He went into the Ehrenbergs' drawing-room at eight o'clock in the evening. He was met by the sound of waltz music. Old Eissler sat at the piano with his long grey beard almost drooping on to the keys. George remained at the entrance in order not to disturb him, and met welcoming glances from every quarter. Old Eissler was playing his celebrated Viennese dances and songs with a soft touch and powerful rhythm, and George enjoyed, as he always did, the sweet crooning melodies.
"Splendid," said Frau Ehrenberg, when the old man got up.
"Keep your big words for great occasions, Leonie," answered Eissler, whose time-honoured privilege it was to call all women and girls by their Christian names. And it seemed to do everybody good to hear themselves spoken to by this handsome old man with his deep ringing voice, in which there quivered frequently, as it were, a sentimental echo of the vivid days of his youth.
George asked him if all his compositions had appeared in print.
"Very few, dear Baron. Unfortunately I can scarcely write a single note."
"It would certainly be an awful pity if these charming melodies were to be absolutely lost."
"Yes, I have often told him that," put in Frau Ehrenberg, "but unfortunately he is one of those men who have never taken themselves quite seriously."
"No, that is a mistake, Leonie. You know how I began my artistic career: I wanted to compose a great opera. Of course I was seventeen years old at the time and madly in love with a great singer."
Frau Oberberger's voice rang out from the table towards the corner: "I am sure it was a chorus girl."
"You are making a mistake, Katerina," answered Eissler. "Chorus girls were never my line. It was, as a matter of fact, a platonic love, like most of the great passions of my life."
"Were you so clumsy?" queried Frau Oberberger.
"I was often that as well," replied Eissler, in his sonorous voice and with dignity. "For as far as I can see I could have had as much luck as a hussar riding-master, but I don't regret having been clumsy."
Frau Ehrenberger nodded appreciatively.
"Then one would not be making a mistake, Herr Eissler," remarked Nürnberger, "if one attributed the chief part in your life to melancholy memories?"
Frau Ehrenberger nodded again. She was delighted whenever any one was witty in her drawing-room.
"Why did you say," she inquired, "that you could have had as much happiness as a hussar riding-master? It is not true for a minute that officers have any particular luck with women, even though my sister-in-law once had an affair with a First-Lieutenant...."
"I don't believe in platonic love," said Sissy, and beamed through the room.
Frau Wyner gave a slight shriek.
"Fräulein Sissy is probably right," said Nürnberger; "at any rate I am convinced that most women take platonic love either as an insult or an excuse."
"There are young girls here," Frau Ehrenberg reminded him gently.
"One sees that already," said Nürnberger, "from the fact of their joining in the conversation."
"All the same, I would like to take the liberty of adding a little anecdote to the chapter of platonic love," said Heinrich.
"But not a Jewish one," put in Else.
"Of course not. A blonde little girl...."
"That proves nothing," interrupted Else.
"Please let him finish his story," remonstrated Frau Ehrenberg.
"Well then, a blonde little girl," began Heinrich again, "once expressed her conviction to me, quite different, you see, from Fräulein Sissy, that platonic love did, as a matter of fact, exist, and do you know what she suggested as a proof of it? giving ... an experience out of her own life. She had, you know, once spent a whole hour in a room with a lieutenant and...."
"That is enough!" cried Frau Ehrenberg nervously.
"And," finished Heinrich, quite unperturbed and in a reassuring voice, "nothing at all happened in that hour."
"So the blonde girl says," added Else.
The door opened. George saw a strange lady enter in a clear blue square-cut dress, pale, simple and dignified. It was only when she smiled that he realised that the lady was Anna Rosner, and he felt something like pride in her.
When he shook hands with his love he felt Else's look turn towards him.
They went into the next room, where the table was laid with a moderate show of festivity. The son of the house was not there. He was at Neuhaus at his father's factory. But Herr Ehrenberg suddenly turned up at the table when the supper was served. He had just come back from his travels, which as a matter of fact had taken him to Palestine. When he was asked by Hofrat Wilt about his experiences he was at first reluctant to let himself go; finally it turned out that he had been disappointed in the scenery, annoyed by the fatigue of the journey, and had practically seen nothing of the Jewish settlements which, according to reliable information, were in process of springing up.
"So we have some ground to hope," remarked Nürnberger, "that we may keep you here even in the event of a Jewish state being founded in the imminent future?"
Ehrenberg answered brusquely: "Did I ever tell you that I intended to emigrate? I am too old for that."
"Really," said Nürnberger, "I didn't know that you had only visited the district for the benefit of Fräulein Else and Herr Oskar."
"I am not going to quarrel with you, my dear Nürnberger. Zionism is really too good to serve as small talk at meals."
"We'll take it for granted," said Hofrat Wilt, "that it is too good, but it is certainly too complicated, if only for the reason that everybody understands something different by it."
"Or wants to understand," added Nürnberger, "as is usually the case with most catchwords, not only in politics either—that's why there is so much twaddle talked in the world."
Heinrich explained that of all human creatures the politician represented in his eyes the most enigmatic phenomenon. "I can understand," he said, "pickpockets, acrobats, bank—directors, hotel—proprietors, kings ... I mean I can manage without any particular trouble to put myself into the souls of all these people. Of course the logical result is that I should only need certain alterations in degree, though no doubt enormous ones, to qualify myself to play in the world the rôle of acrobat, king or bank-director. On the other hand I have an infallible feeling that even if I could raise myself to thenth power I could never become what one calls a politician, a leader of a party, a member, a minister."
Nürnberger smiled at Heinrich's theory of the politician representing a particular type of humanity, inasmuch as it was only one of the superficial and by no means essential attributes of his profession to pose as a special human type, and to hide his greatness or his insignificance, his feats or his idleness behind labels, abstractions and symbols. What the nonentities or charlatans among them represented, why, that was obvious: they were simply business people or swindlers or glib speakers, but the people who really counted, the people who did things—the real geniuses of course, they at the bottom of their souls were simply artists. They too tried to create a work, and one, too, that raised in the sphere of ideas quite as much claim to immortality and permanent value as any other work of art. The only difference was that the material in which they worked was one that was not rigid or relatively stable, like tones or words, but that, like living men, it was in a continual state of flux and movement.
Willy Eissler appeared, apologised to his hostess for being late, sat down between Sissy and Frau Oberberger and greeted his father like a friend long lost. It turned out that though they both lived together they had not seen each other for several days.
Willy was complimented all round on his success in the aristocratic amateur performance where he had played the part of a marquis with the Countess Liebenburg-Rathony in a French one-act play. Frau Oberberger asked him, in a voice sufficiently loud for her neighbours to catch it, where his assignations with the countess took place and if he received her in the samepied-à-terrequarter as his more middle-class flames. The conversation became more lively, dialogues were exchanged and became intertwined all over the room.
But George caught isolated snatches, including part of a conversation between Anna and Heinrich which dealt with Therese Golowski. He noticed at the same time that Anna would occasionally throw a dark inquisitive look at Demeter Stanzides, who had appeared to-night in evening dress with a gardenia in his buttonhole; and though he had no actual consciousness of jealousy he felt strangely affected. He wondered if at this moment she was really thinking that she was perhaps bearing a child by him under her bosom. The idea of "the depths ..." came to him again. She suddenly looked over to him with a smile, as though she were coming home from a journey. He felt an inner sense of relief and appreciated with a slight shock how much he loved her. Then he raised his glass to his lips and drank to her. Else, who up to this time had been chatting with her other neighbour Demeter, now turned to George. With her deliberately casual manner and with a look towards Anna she remarked: "She does look pretty, so womanly. But that's always been her line. Do you still do music together?"
"Frequently," replied George coolly.
"Perhaps I'll ask you to start accompanying me again at the beginning of the new year. I don't know why we have not done so before."
George was silent.
"And how are you getting on"—she threw a look at Heinrich—"with your opera?"
"Nothing is done so far. Who knows if anything will come of it?"
"Of course nothing will come of it."
George smiled. "Why are you so stern with me to-day?"
"I am very angry with you."
"With me! Why?"
"That you always go on giving people occasion to regard you as a dilettante."
This was a home thrust. George actually felt a slight sense of malice against Else, then quickly pulled himself together and answered: "That perhaps is just what I am. And if one isn't a genius it is much better to be an honest dilettante than ... than an artist with a swollen head."
"Nobody wants you to do great things all at once, but all the same one really should not let oneself go in the way you do in both your inner and your outward life."
"I really don't understand you, Else. How can one contend.... Do you know that I am going to Germany in the autumn as a conductor?"
"Your career will be ruined by your not turning up to the rehearsals at ten o'clock sharp."
The taunt was still gnawing at George. "And who called me a dilettante, if I may ask?"
"Who did? Good gracious, why it has already been in the papers."
"Really," said George feeling reassured, for he now remembered that after the concert in which Fräulein Bellini had sung his songs a critic had described him as an aristocratic dilettante. George's friends had explained at the time that the reason for this malicious critique was that he had omitted to call on the gentleman in question, who was notoriously vain. So that was it once again. There were always extrinsic reasons for people criticising one unfavourably, and Else's touchiness to-day, what was it at bottom but sheer jealousy....
The table was cleared. They went into the drawing-room.
George went up to Anna, who was leaning on the piano, and said gently to her: "You do look beautiful, dear."
She nodded with satisfaction.
He then went on to ask: "Did you have a pleasant talk with Heinrich? What did you speak about? Therese, isn't that so?"
She did not answer, and George noticed with surprise that her eyelids suddenly drooped and that she began to totter. "What is the matter?" he asked, frightened.
She did not hear him, and would have fallen down if he had not quickly caught hold of her by the wrists. At the same moment Frau Ehrenberg and Else came up to her.
"Did they notice us?" thought George.
Anna had already opened her eyes again, gave a forced smile and whispered: "Oh, it is nothing. I often stand the heat so badly."
"Come along!" said Frau Ehrenberg in a motherly tone. "Perhaps you will lie down for a moment."
Anna, who seemed dazed, made no answer and the ladies of the house escorted her into an adjoining room.
George looked round. The guests did not seem to have noticed anything. Coffee was handed round. George took a cup and played nervously with his spoon. "So after all," he thought, "she will not finish up in middle-class life." But at the same time he felt as far away from her psychologically, as though the matter had no personal interest for him.
Frau Oberberger came up to him. "Well, what do you really think about platonic love? You are an expert, you know."
He answered absent-mindedly. She went on talking, as was her way, without bothering whether he was listening or answering. Suddenly Else returned. George inquired how Anna was, with polite sympathy.
"I am certain it is not anything serious," said Else and looked him strangely in the face.
Demeter Stanzides came in and asked her to sing.
"Will you accompany me?" She turned to George.
He bowed and sat down at the piano.
"What shall it be?" asked Else.
"Anything you like," replied Wilt, "but nothing modern." After supper he liked to play the reactionary at any rate in artistic matters.
"Right you are," said Else, and gave George a piece of music.
She sang theDas Alte Bildof Hugo Wolf in her small well-trained and somewhat pathetic voice. George played a refined accompaniment, though he felt somewhatdistrait. In spite of his efforts he could not help feeling a little annoyed about Anna. After all no one seemed to have really noticed the incident except Frau Ehrenberg and Else.
After all, what did it really come to?... Supposing they did all know?... Whom did it concern? Yes, who bothered about it? Why, they are all listening to Else now, he continued mentally, and appreciating the beauty of this song. Even Frau Oberberger, though she is not a bit musical, is forgetting that she is a woman for a few minutes and her face is quiet and sexless. Even Heinrich is listening spell-bound and perhaps for the moment is neither thinking of his work, nor of the fate of the Jews, nor of his distant mistress. Is perhaps not even giving a single thought to his present mistress, the little blonde girl, to please whom he has recently begun to dress smartly. As a matter of fact he does not look at all bad in evening dress, and his tie is not a ready-made one, such as he usually wears, but is carefully tied.... Who is standing so close behind me? thought George, so that I can feel her breath over my hair.... Perhaps Sissy.... If the world were to be destroyed to-morrow morning it would be Sissy whom I should choose for to-night. Yes, I am sure of it. And there goes Anna with Frau Ehrenberg; it seems I am the only one who notices it, although I have got to attend simultaneously to both my own playing and Else's singing. I welcome her with my eyes. Yes, I welcome you, mother of my child.... How strange life is!...