The Sommerhaidenweg ran into the forest, and George took the broad Villenweg, which crossed the valley at this point and curved downwards. In a few minutes he found himself in the street, at the end of which stood the little villa in which Anna lived. It was close to the forest, near unpretentious yellow bungalows and only raised above their level by its attic and balcony with its triangular wooden gable. He crossed the plot of ground in front of the house where the little blue clay angel welcomed him on its square pedestal in the middle of the lawn between the flower-beds, and went through the narrow passage near which the kitchen lay, and the cool middle room on whose floor the rays of the sun were playing through the dilapidated green Venetian blinds and stepped on to the verandah. He turned towards the left and cast a glance through the open window into Anna's room, which he found empty. He then went into the garden and walking along the lilac and currant-bushes towards the bottom, soon saw Anna some way off, sitting on the white seat under the pear-tree in her loose blue dress. She did not see him coming, but seemed quite plunged in thought. He slowly approached. She still did not look up. He loved her very much at moments like this when she thought she was unobserved and the goodness and peacefulness of her character floated serenely around her clear forehead. The grasshoppers chirruped on the gravel at their feet. Opposite them on the grass the strange St. Bernard dog lay sleeping. It was the animal which first noticed George's arrival as it woke up. It got up and jogged clumsily towards George. Anna now looked up and a happy smile swept over her features. Why am I so seldom here? was the thought which ran through George's mind. Why don't I live out here and work on top on the balcony under the gable, which has a beautiful view on to the Sommerhaidenweg? His forehead had grown damp, for the late afternoon sun was still blazing.
He stood in front of Anna, kissed her on the eyes and mouth and sat down at her side. The animal had slunk after him and stretched itself out at his feet. "How are you, my darling?" he asked, while he put his arm around her neck.
She was very well, as usual, and to-day was a particularly fine day. She had been left quite to herself since the morning, for Frau Golowski had to go to town again to look after her family. It was really not so bad to be so completely alone with oneself. One could sink then into one's dreams undisturbed. They were of course always the same, but they were so sweet that one did not get tired of them. She had let herself dream about her child. How much she loved it to-day, even before it was born! She would never have considered it possible. Did George understand it too?... And as he nodded absent-mindedly she shook her head. No, no ... a man could not understand that, even the very best and kindest man. Why, she could feel the little being already moving, could detect the beating of its tender heart, could feel this new incomprehensible soul breathe within her, just in the same way as she felt the flowering and awakening within her of its fresh young body. And George looked in front of him as though ashamed that she was facing the near future. It was true of course that a being would exist, begotten by himself, like himself and itself destined again to give life to new beings; it was true that within the blessed body of that woman, for which he had ceased for a long time now to feel any desire, there was swelling, according to the eternal laws, a life that only a year ago had been undreamt-of, unwished-for, lost in infinity, but which now was forcing its way up to the light like something predestined from time immemorial; it was true that he knew that he was irresistibly drawn into that forged chain that stretched from primal ancestor to future descendant and which he grasped as it were with both hands ... but he did not feel that this miracle made so potent an appeal to him as it really ought.
And they spoke to-day more seriously than usual about what was to happen after the child's birth. Anna, of course, would keep it with her during the first week, but then they would have to give it to strangers; but at any rate it should live quite near, so that Anna could see it at any time without any difficulty.
"I say, dear," she said quite lightly and suddenly, "will you often come and visit us?"
He looked into her arch smiling face, took both her hands and kissed her. "Dearest, what am I to do? Tell me yourself. You can imagine how hard it will be for me. But what else is there for me to do? I've got to make a beginning. I've already told you we've given notice to leave the apartment," he added hastily, as though that cut off all retreat. "Felician is probably going to Athens. Yes, it would of course be fine if I could take you with me. But I am afraid that isn't possible. There ought above all to be something more or less certain, I mean one ought—ought at least to be certain that I shall remain in the same place for a longish time."
She had listened with quiet seriousness. She then started to speak about her latest idea. He must not believe, she said, that she was thinking of putting the whole burden of responsibility upon him. She was determined as soon as it was feasible to found a music-school. If he left her alone for a long time the school would be here in Vienna. If he soon came to fetch her it would be wherever she and he had their home. And when she was once in an independent position she meant to take and keep her child whether she was his wife or not. She was very far from being ashamed of it, he knew that quite well. She was rather proud ... yes, proud of being a mother.
He took her hands in his and stroked them. It would all come right enough, he said, feeling somewhat depressed. He suddenly saw himself sitting at supper between wife and child, beneath the modest light of a hanging lamp in an extremely simple home. And this family scene of his imagination wafted towards him, as it were, an atmosphere of troubled boredom. Come, it was still too early for that, he was still too young. Was it possible, then, that she was to be the last woman whom he was to embrace? Of course it might come in years, even in months, but not to-day. As for bringing lies and deceit into a well-ordered home, he had a horror of the idea. Yet the thought of rushing away from her to others whom he desired, with the consciousness that he would find Anna again just as he had left her, was at once tempting and reassuring.
The well-known whistle was heard from outside. The dog got up, made George stroke her yellow-spotted back once again and sadly slunk away.
"By Jove," said George, "I had almost forgotten all about it. Heinrich will be here any minute." He told Anna about his visit and did not suppress the fact that he had made the acquaintance of the faithless actress.
"Did she succeed then?" exclaimed Anna, who did not fancy ladies with roving eyes.
"I don't think that she succeeded at all," replied George. "Heinrich was rather annoyed at her turning up, so far as I could see."
"Well, perhaps he'll bring her along too," said Anna jestingly, "then you will have some one to flirt with again, as you did with the regicide at Lugano."
"Upon my word," said George innocently, and then added casually: "But what's the matter with Therese? why doesn't she come to see you any more? Demeter is no longer in Vienna. She would have plenty of time."
"She was here only a few days ago. Why, I told you so. Don't pretend."
"I'd really forgotten it," he answered honestly. "What did she tell you then?"
"All there was to tell. The Demeter affair is over. Her heart is throbbing once more only for the poor and the miserable—until it is called back." And Anna confided Therese's winter plans to him under the seal of a most rigid silence. Disguised as a poor woman she meant to undertake expeditions through shelters, soup- and tea-kitchens, refuges for the homeless and workmen's dwellings, with a view to shedding a light into the most hidden corners for the benefit of the so-called golden heart of Vienna. She seemed quite ready for it and was perhaps a little sanguine of discovering some horrors.
George looked in front of him. He remembered the stylish lady in the white dress who had stood in the sunshine in Lugano in front of the post-office, far from all the cares of the world. "Strange creature," he thought.
"Of course she'll make a book out of it," said Anna. "But mind you don't tell any one, not even your friend Bermann."
"Shouldn't think of it! But I say, Anna, hadn't you better get something ready for this evening?"
She nodded. "Come, take me downstairs. I'll see what there is and consult Marie too ... so far as is possible to do so."
They got up. The shadows had lengthened. The children were making a noise in the next garden. Anna took her lover's arm and walked slowly with him. She told him the newest instances of the fantastic stupidity of the maid.
The idea of my being a husband, thought George, and listened reflectively. When they got to the house he announced his intention of going to meet Heinrich, left Anna and went into the street.
At this precise moment a one-horse carriage jogged up. Heinrich got out and paid the driver. "Hallo!" he said to George, "have you really waited for me after all? It's not so late then?"
"Not at all. You're very punctual. We'll go for a short walk if it suits you."
"Delighted."
They walked on into the forest past the yellow inn with the red terraces.
"It is wonderful here," said Heinrich, "and your villa too looks awfully nice. Why don't you live out here?"
"Yes, it's absurd not to," agreed George without further explanation. Then they were silent for a while.
Heinrich was in a light grey summer suit and carried his cloak over his arm, letting it trail a little behind him. "Did you recognise her again?" he asked suddenly, without looking up.
"Yes," replied George.
"She only came up for one day from her summer engagement. She goes back by train to-night. A surprise attack, so to speak. But it didn't come off." He laughed.
"Why are you so hard?" asked George, and thought of the big envelope with the grey seals and the silly inscription. "There is really no occasion for you to be so. It is only a fluke that she did not get anonymous letters just like you did, Heinrich. And who knows, if you hadn't left her alone for God knows what reasons...."
Heinrich shook his head and looked at George almost as though he pitied him. "Do you mean by any chance that it is my intention to punish her or avenge myself? Or do you think I'm one of those mugs who don't know what to make of the world because something has happened to them which they know has already happened to thousands before them and will happen to thousands after them? Do you think I despise the 'faithless woman' or that I hate her? Not a bit of it. Of course I don't mean to say that I don't at times assume the pose of hatred and contempt, only of course to produce better results upon her. But as a matter of fact I understand all that has happened far too well for me to...." He shrugged his shoulders.
"Well, if you do understand it?..."
"But, my dear friend, understanding a thing is no earthly good at all. Understanding is a game like anything else. A very 'classy' game and a very expensive one. One can spend one's whole soul over it and finish up a poor devil. But understanding hasn't got the least thing in the world to do with our feelings, almost as little as it has to do with our actions. It doesn't protect us from suffering, from revulsion, from ruin. It leads absolutely nowhere. It's a kind ofcul-de-sac. Understanding always signifies the end."
As they walked slowly and silently up a side path with a moderate incline, each one engrossed in his own thoughts, they emerged out of the woods into open meadowland, which gave a clear view of the valley. They looked out over the town and then further on towards the haze-breathing plain through which the river ran shining; they looked towards the far line of the mountains, over which a thin haze was spreading. Then in the peace of the evening sun they walked on further towards George's favourite seat on the border of the forest. The sun was not visible. George watched the track of the Sommerhaidenweg on the other side of the valley run along the wooded hills; it looked pale and cooled. He then looked down and knew that in the garden at his feet there was a pear-tree, beneath which he had sat a few hours before with some one who was very dear to him, and who carried his child under her bosom, and he felt moved. He felt a slight contempt for the women who were perhaps waiting for him somewhere, but that did not extinguish his desire for them. Summer visitors were walking about down below on the path between the garden and the meadows. A young girl looked up and whispered something to another.
"You are certainly a popular personality in the place here," remarked Heinrich, contracting the corners of his mouth ironically.
"Not that I know of."
"Those pretty girls looked at you with great interest. People always find an inexhaustible source of excitement in other people not being married. Those holiday-makers down there are bound to look upon you as a kind of Don Juan and ... your friend as a seduced maiden who has gone wrong, don't you think so?"
"I don't know," said George, anxious to cut short the conversation.
"And I wonder what I represented," continued Heinrich unperturbed, "to the theatrical people in the little town. Clearly the deceived lover. Consequently an absolutely ridiculous character. And she? Well, one can imagine. Things are awfully simple for lookers-on. But when one gets to close quarters everything looks utterly different. But the question is whether the complexion it has in the distance isn't the right one? Whether one does not persuade oneself into believing a lot of rot, if one's got a part to play in the comedy oneself?"
He might quite as well have stayed at home, thought George. But as he could not send him home, and with the object at any rate of changing the conversation, he asked him quickly: "Do you hear anything from the Ehrenbergs?"
"I had a rather sad letter from Fräulein Else a few days ago," replied Heinrich.
"You correspond with her?"
"No, I don't correspond with her. At any rate I have not yet answered her."
"She is taking the Oskar business much more to heart than she will own," said George. "I spoke to her once in the nursing-home. We remained standing quite a time outside in the passage in front of the white varnished door behind which poor Oskar was lying. At that time they were afraid of the other eye as well. It's really a tragic affair."
"Tragi-comic," corrected Heinrich with hardness.
"You see the tragi-comic in everything. I'll tell you why, too. Because you're more or less callous. But in this case the comic element takes a back seat."
"You make a mistake," replied Heinrich. "Old Ehrenberg's box on the ear was a piece of crudeness, Oskar's suicide a piece of stupidity, his making such a bad shot at himself a piece of bungling. These elements certainly can't produce anything really tragic. It is a rather disgusting business, that's all."
George shook his head angrily. He had felt genuine sympathy for Oskar since his misfortune. He was also sorry for old Ehrenberg, who had been staying in Neuhaus since then, was only living for his work and refused to see any one. They had both paid their penalty, which was heavier than they had deserved. Couldn't Heinrich see that and feel it just as he did? They really got on one's nerves at times, these people, with their exaggerated Jewish smartness and their relentless psychology—these Bermanns and Nürnbergers. Their principal object in life was to be surprised by nothing whatsoever. What they lacked was kindness. It was only when they grew older that a certain gentleness came over them. George thought of old Doctor Stauber, of Frau Golowski, of old Eissler, but so long as they were young ... they always kept on thequi vive. Their one ideal was not to be scored off! A disagreeable lot. He felt more and more that he missed Felician and Skelton, who as a matter of fact were really quite clever enough. He even missed Guido Schönstein.
"But in spite of all her melancholy," said Heinrich after a time, "Fräulein Else seems to be having a pretty good time of it. They are having people down again at Auhof. The Wyners were there the other day, Sissy and James. James got his doctor's degree the other day at Cambridge. Classy, eh?"
The word Sissy darted through George's heart like a flashing dagger. He realised it all of a sudden. He would be with her in a few days. His desire surged up so strongly that he himself scarcely understood it.
The dusk came down. George and Heinrich got up, went down the fields and entered the garden. They saw Anna come down the centre path accompanied by a gentleman.
"Old Doctor Stauber," said George. "You know him, I suppose?"
They exchanged greetings.
"I am very glad," said Anna to Heinrich, "that you should come and see us at last."
"Us!" repeated George to himself, with a sense of surprise which he immediately repudiated. He went in front with Doctor Stauber. Heinrich and Anna slowly followed.
"Are you satisfied with Anna?" George asked the doctor.
"Things couldn't be going on better," replied Stauber, "only she must continue to take exercise regularly and properly."
It struck George, who had not seen the doctor before since his return, that he had not yet given him back the books which he had borrowed and he made his apologies.
"There's time enough for that," replied Stauber. "I am only too glad if they came in handy." And he asked what impressions he had brought home from Rome.
George told him of his wanderings through the old imperial palaces, of his drives through the Campagna in the evening light, of a sultry hour in Hadrian's garden just before a storm. Doctor Stauber begged him to stop, otherwise he might be induced to leave all his patients here in the lurch so as to run away at once to the city he loved so much. Then George made polite inquiries after Doctor Berthold. Was there any foundation for the rumour that he would be engaged again in active political life in the approaching winter?
Doctor Stauber shrugged his shoulders. "He comes back in September, that's the only thing certain so far. He has been very industrious at Pasteur's and he wants to elaborate at the pathological institute here a great piece of serum research work which he began in Paris. If he takes my advice he'll stick to it, for in my humble opinion what he is now doing is much more important for humanity than the most glorious revolution. Of course talents vary, and I've certainly nothing to say against revolutions now and again. But speaking between ourselves, my son's talent is far more on the scientific side. It's rather his temperament which drives him in the other direction ... perhaps only his temper. Well, we shall see. But how about your plans for the autumn?" he added suddenly, as he looked at George with his good-natured fatherly expression. "Where are you going to swing your bâton?"
"I only wish I knew myself," replied George.
Doctor Stauber was walking by his side, his lids half closed and his cigar in his mouth, and while George told him about his efforts and his prospects with self-important emphasis he thought he felt that Doctor Stauber simply regarded everything he said as nothing more than an attempted justification of his putting off his marriage with Anna. A slight irritation against her arose within him; she seemed to be standing behind them and perhaps was enjoying quietly that he was, as it were, being cross-examined by Doctor Stauber.
He deliberately assumed a lighter and lighter tone, as though his own personal plans for the future had nothing at all to do with Anna, and finished up by saying merrily: "Why, who knows where I shall be this time next year? I may finish up in America."
"You might do worse," replied Doctor Stauber quietly. "I have a cousin who is a violinist in Boston, a man named Schwarz, who earns there at least six times as much as he gets here at the opera."
George did not like being compared with violinists of the name of Schwarz and asserted with an emphasis which he himself thought rather exaggerated that it was not at all a question of money-making, at any rate at the beginning. Suddenly, he did not know where the thought came from, the idea ran through his mind: "Supposing Anna dies.... Supposing the child were her death...." He felt deeply shocked, as though he had committed a crime by the very thought, and he saw in his imagination Anna lying there with the shroud drawn over her chin and he saw the candlelight and daylight streaming over her wax-pale face. He turned round almost anxiously, as though to assure himself that she was there and alive. The features of her face were blurred in the darkness and this frightened him. He remained standing with the doctor till Anna arrived with Heinrich. He was happy to have her so near him. "You must be quite tired now, dear," he said to her in his tenderest tone.
"I've certainly honestly performed my day's work," she replied. "Besides," and she pointed to the verandah, where the lamp with the green paper shade was standing on the laid table, "supper will soon be ready. It would be so nice, Doctor, if you could stay; won't you?"
"I'm afraid it's impossible, my dear child. I ought to have been back in town ages ago. Remember me kindly to Frau Golowski. See you again soon. Good-bye, Herr Bermann. Come," he added, "is one going to get another chance soon of seeing or reading one of your fine pieces of work?"
Heinrich shrugged his shoulders, vouchsafed a social smile and was silent. Why, he thought, are even the best-bred men usually tactless when they meet people like myself? Do I ask him about his affairs?
The doctor went on to express in a few words his sympathy with Heinrich over old Bermann's death. He remembered the dead man's celebrated speech in opposition to the introduction of Tschech as the judicial language in certain Bohemian districts. At that time the Jewish provincial advocate had come within an ace of being Minister of Justice. Yes, times had changed.
Heinrich started to listen. After all this could be made use of in the political comedy.
Doctor Stauber took his leave. George accompanied him to the carriage which was waiting outside, and availed himself of the opportunity to ask the doctor some medical questions. The latter was able to reassure him in every respect.
"It's only a pity," he continued, "that circumstances do not allow Anna to nurse the child herself."
George stood still meditatively. It could not hurt her, could it?... At any rate, only the child? Or her as well?... He asked the doctor.
"Why talk about it, my dear Baron, if it's not practicable? That's all right, don't you worry," he added, with one foot already in the carriage. "One needn't be nervous about the child of people like you two."
George looked him straight in the eye and said: "I will at any rate take care that he lives the first years of his life in healthy air."
"That's very nice," said Doctor Stauber gently. "But speaking generally there is no healthier air in the world for children than their parents' home."
He shook hands with George and the carriage rolled away.
George remained standing for a moment and felt a lively irritation against the doctor. He vowed mentally that he would never allow the conversation with him to take a turn that would as it were entitle him to give unsolicited advice or make veiled reproaches. What did the old man know? What did he really understand about the whole thing? George's antagonism became more and more violent. When I choose to, he said to himself, I will marry her. Can't she have the child with her anyway? Hasn't she said herself that she will be proud of having a child? I am not going to repudiate it either, and I will do everything in my power. And later on sometime.... But I should be doing an injustice to myself, to her, to the child if I were to make up my mind to-day to do something which at any rate is still premature.
He had slowly walked past the short side of the house into the garden. He saw Anna and Heinrich sitting on the verandah. Marie was just coming out of the house, very red in the face, and putting a warm dish on the table, from which the steam mounted up. How quiet Anna sits there, thought George, and remained standing in the darkness. How serene, how free from care, as though she could trust me implicitly, as though there were no such things as death, poverty, treacherous desertion, as though I loved her as much as she deserves. And again he felt alarmed. Do I love her less? Is she not right in trusting me? When I sit over there on my seat on the edge of the forest so much tenderness often wells up in me that I can scarcely stand it. Why do I feel so little of that now? He was standing only a few paces away and watched her first carve and then stare into the darkness out of which he was to come, while her eyes began to shine as he stepped suddenly into the light. My one true love, he thought.
When he sat down by the others Anna said to him: "You've had a very long consultation with the doctor."
"It wasn't a consultation. We were chatting. He also told me about his son who is coming back soon."
Heinrich inquired after Berthold. The young man interested him and he hoped very much to make his acquaintance next winter. His speech last year on the Therese Golowski case, together with his open letter to his constituents, in which he had explained the reasons for his resignation, yes, they had been really first-class performances.... Yes, and more than that—documents of the period.
A light almost proud smile flew over Anna's face. She looked down to her place and then quickly up to George. George also was smiling. Not a trace of jealousy stirred within him. Did Berthold have any idea...? Of course. Did he suffer?... Probably. Could he forgive Anna? To think of having to forgive at all! What nonsense.
A dish of mushrooms was served. On its appearance Heinrich could not refrain from asking if it were at all poisonous.
George laughed.
"You needn't make fun of me," said Heinrich. "If I wanted to kill myself I wouldn't choose either poisoned mushrooms or decayed sausage, but a nobler and swifter poison. At times one is sick of life, but one is never sick of health, even in one's last quarter of an hour. And besides, nervousness is a perfectly legitimate, though usually shamefully repudiated, daughter of reason. What does nervousness really mean? considering all the possibilities that may result from an action, the bad and good ones equally. And what is courage? I mean, of course, real courage, which is manifested far more rarely than one thinks. For the courage which is affected or the result of obedience or simply a matter of suggestion doesn't count. True courage is often really nothing else than the expression of an as it were metaphysical conviction of one's own superfluity."
"Oh, you Jew!" thought George, though without malice, and then said to himself, "Perhaps he isn't so far out after all."
They found the beer so good, although Anna did not drink any, that they sent Marie to the inn for a second jugful. Their mood became genial. George described his trip again. The days at Lugano in the broiling sun, the journey over the snowy Brenner, the wandering through the roofless city, which after a night of two thousand years had surged up again to the light; he conjured up again the minute in which they had been present, he and Anna, when workmen were carefully and laboriously excavating a pillar out of the ashes. Heinrich had not yet seen Italy. He meant to go there next spring. He explained that he was frequently torn by a desire for, if not exactly Italy, at any rate foreign lands, distance, the world. When he heard people talking about travels he often got heart palpitation like a child the evening before its birthday. He doubted whether he was destined to end his life in his home. It might be, perhaps, that after wandering about for years on end he would come back and find in a little house in the country the peace of his later manhood. Who knew—life was so full of coincidences—if he were not destined to finish his life in this very house in which he was now a guest and felt better than he had for a long time?
Anna thanked him with an air which indicated that she was not merely the hostess of the country house but of the whole world itself with its evening calm.
A soft light began to shine out of the darkness of the garden. A warm moist odour came from the grass and flowers. The long fields which ran down to the railing swept into view in the moonlight and the white seat under the pear-tree shimmered as though very far away. Anna complimented Heinrich on the verses in the opera libretto which George had read to her the other day.
"Quite right," remarked George, smoking a cigar with his legs comfortably crossed, "have you brought us anything fresh?"
Heinrich shook his head. "No, nothing."
"What a pity!" said Anna, and suggested that Heinrich should tell them the plot consecutively and in detail. She had been wanting to know about it for a long time. She was unable to get any clear idea of it from George's account.
They looked at each other. There came up in their minds that sweet dark hour when they had lain in peace with breast close to breast in a dark room in front of whose windows, behind its floating curtain of snow, a grey church had loomed, and into which the notes of an organ had boomed heavily. Yes, they now knew where the house stood in which the child was to come into the world. Perhaps another house, too, thought George, stands somewhere or other in which the child that has not yet been born will end its life. Death! As a man—or as an old man, or.... Oh, what an idea, away with it ... away with it!
Heinrich declared his readiness to fulfil Anna's wish, and stood up. "I shall perhaps find it useful myself," he said apologetically.
"But mind you don't suddenly switch off into your political tragi-comedy," remarked George. And then, turning to Anna: "He's writing a piece, you know, with a National German corps student for its hero who poisons himself with mushrooms through despair of emancipation of the Jews."
Heinrich nodded dissent. "One glass of beer less and you'd never have made that epigram."
"Jealousy!" replied George. He felt extraordinarily pleased with life, particularly now that he had firmly made up his mind to leave the day after to-morrow. He sat quite close to Anna, held her hand in his and seemed to hear the melody of future days singing in the deepest recesses of his soul.
Heinrich had suddenly gone into the garden outside the verandah, reached over the railing, took his cloak from the chair and threw it romantically around him. "I'm going to begin," he said. "Act I."
"First, an overture in D. minor," interrupted George. He whistled an impressive melody, then a few notes and finished with an "and so on."
"The curtain rises," said Heinrich. "Feast in the King's garden. Night. The princess is to be married to the Duke Heliodorus next day. I call him Heliodorus for the time being, he will probably have another name though. The king adores his daughter and can't stand Heliodorus, who is a kind of popinjay with the tastes of a mad Cæsar. The king has really given the feast to annoy Heliodorus, and not only are all the nobles in the land invited but the youth of all classes, in so far as they have won a right to be invited by their beauty. And on this evening the princess is to dance with any one who pleases her. And there is some one in particular, his name is Ägidius, with whom she seems quite infatuated. And no one is more pleased about it than the king. Jealousy on the part of Heliodorus. Increased pleasure on the part of the king. Scene between Heliodorus and the king. Scorn. Enmity. Then something highly unexpected takes place. Ägidius draws his dagger against the king. He wants to murder him. The motives for this attempted murder of course would have to be very carefully worked in if you had not been kind enough, my dear George, to set the thing to music! So it will be enough to hint that the youth hates tyrants, is a member of a secret society, is perhaps a fool or a hero off his own bat. I don't know yet, you see. The attempted murder fails. Ägidius is arrested. The king wishes to be left alone with him. Duet. The youth is proud, self-possessed, great. The king superior, cruel, inscrutable. That's about my idea of him. He had already sent many men to their death and already seen many die, but his own inner consciousness is so awfully vivid and intense that all other men seem to him to be living in a state of mere semi-consciousness, so that their death has practically no other significance except the step from twilight into gloom. A death like that strikes him as too gentle or too banal for a case like this. He wishes to plunge this youth from a daylight such as no mortal has yet enjoyed into the most dreadful darkness. Yes, that's how his mind works. How much he says or sings about this I don't yet know of course. Ägidius is taken away just like a prisoner condemned, so everybody thinks, to immediate death, and on the very same ship, too, as that on which Heliodorus was to have started on his journey with the princess in the evening. The curtain falls. The second act takes place on the deck. The ship under weigh. Chorus. Isolated figures come up. Their significance is only revealed later. Dawn. Ägidius is led up from the hold below. To his death, as he is bound, of course, to think. But it turns out otherwise. His fetters are loosed. All bow down to him. He is hailed as a prince. The sun rises. Ägidius has an opportunity of noticing that he is in the very best society—beautiful women, nobles. A sage, a singer, a fool, are intended for important parts. But who should come out of the chorus of women but the princess herself; she belongs absolutely to Ägidius, like everything else on the ship."
"What a splendid father and king!" said George.
"No price is too dear for him to pay!" explained Heinrich, "for a really ingenious idea. That's his line. There follows a splendid duet between Ägidius and the princess. Then they sit down to the meal. After the meal dancing. High spirits. Ägidius naturally thinks he has been saved. He is not inordinately surprised, because his hatred for the king was always to a great extent inspired by admiration. The twilight begins to loom. Suddenly a stranger is at Ägidius' side. Perhaps he has been there for a long time, one among the many, unnoticed, mute. He has a word to say to Ägidius. The feasting and dancing proceed meanwhile. Ägidius and the stranger. 'All this is yours,' says the stranger. 'You can rule according to your humour. You can take possession and kill just as you wish. But to-morrow ... or in two or seven years or in one year or in ten, or still later, this ship will approach an island on whose shore a marble hall towers aloft upon a cliff. And there death waits for you—death. Your murderer is with you on the ship. But only the one whose mission it is to be your murderer knows it. Nobody else knows who he is. Nay, nobody else on this ship has any inkling that you are consecrated to death. Remember that. For when you let any one notice that you yourself know your fate you are doomed to death that very hour.'"
Heinrich spoke these words with exaggerated pathos, as though to conceal his embarrassment. He went on more simply. "The stranger vanishes. Perhaps I shall have him disembarked on the mainland by two silent attendants who have accompanied him. Ägidius remains among the hundreds of men and women of which one or the other is his murderer. Which one? The sage or the fool? The star-gazer yonder? One of those yonder, ruminating in the darkness? Those men stealing up the steps yonder? One of the dancers? The princess herself? She comes up to him again, is very tender, nay, passionate. Hypocrite? Murderess? His love? Does she know? At any rate she is his. All this is to be his to-day. Night on the sea. Terror. Delight. The ship goes slowly on towards that shore that lies hours or years away in the distance of the far-off mist. The princess is nestling at his feet. Ägidius stares into the night and watches." Heinrich stopped as though personally affected.
Melodies rang in George's ear. He heard the music for the scene when the stranger disappears escorted by the mutes, and then gradually the noise of the feast comes to the front of the stage. He did not feel it within him as a mere melody, but he already felt it with all its fulness of instruments. Were there not flutes sounding and oboes and clarionets? Was not the 'cello singing and the violin? Was not a faint beat of a drum droning out of a corner of the orchestra? Involuntarily he held up his right arm, as though he had his conductor's bâton in his hand.
"And the third act?" asked Anna, as Heinrich remained silent.
"The third act," repeated Heinrich, and there was a touch of depression in his voice. "The scene of the third act, of course, will be laid in that hall on the cliff—don't you think so? It must, I think, begin with a dialogue between the king and the stranger. Or with a chorus? There are no choruses on uninhabited islands. Anyway, the king is there and the ship is in sight. But look here, why should the island be uninhabited?" He stopped.
"Well?" asked George impatiently.
Heinrich laid both his arms on the railing of the verandah. "I'll tell you something. This isn't an opera at all...."
"What do you mean?"
"There are very good reasons for my not getting as far as this part of it. It is a tragedy clearly. I just haven't got the courage to write it. Do you know what would have to be described? The inner change in Ägidius would have to be described. That is clearly both the difficulty and the beauty of the subject-matter. In other words it is a thing which I daren't do. The opera idea is simply a way of getting out of it, and I don't know if I ought to take on anything like that." He was silent.
"But at any rate," said Anna, "you must tell us the end of the opera as you have got it in your mind. I must really admit that I'm quite excited."
Heinrich shrugged his shoulders and answered in a tired voice: "Well, the ship hoves to. Ägidius lands. He is to be hurled into the sea."
"By whom?" asked Anna.
"I've no idea at all," replied Heinrich unhappily. "From this point my mind is an absolute blank."
"I thought it would be the princess," said Anna, and waving her hand through the air executed a death signal.
Heinrich smiled gently. "I thought of that, of course, also, but...." He broke off and suddenly looked up to the night sky in a state of nervous tension.
"It was to finish with a kind of pardon, so far as your original draft went," remarked George irritably. "But that, of course, is only good enough for an opera. But now, as your Ägidius is the hero of a tragedy, of course he will have to be really hurled into the sea."
Heinrich raised his forefinger mysteriously and his features became animated again. "I think something is just dawning upon me. But don't let's talk about it for the time being, if you don't mind. It's perhaps really been a sound thing that I told you the beginning."
"But if you think that I am going to doentr'actemusic for you," said George, without particular emphasis, "you are under a delusion."
Heinrich smiled, guiltily, indifferently and yet quite good-humouredly. Anna felt with concern that the whole business had fizzled out. George was uncertain whether he ought to be irritated at his hopes being disappointed or be glad at being relieved of a kind of obligation. But Heinrich felt as though the creations of his own mind were deserting him in shadowy confusion, mockingly, without farewell and without promising to come again.
He found himself alone and deserted in a melancholy garden, in the society of quite a nice man whom he knew very well, and a young lady who meant nothing at all to him. He could not help thinking all of a sudden of a person who was travelling at this very hour in a badly-lighted compartment in despair and with eyes red with crying, towards dark mountains, worrying whether she would get there in time to-morrow for her rehearsal. He now felt again that since that had come to an end he was going downhill, for he had nothing left, he had no one left. The suffering of that wretched person, the victim of his own agonizing hatred, was the only thing in the world. And who knew? She might be smiling at another the very next day, with those tearful eyes of hers, with her grief and longing still in her soul and a newjoie de vivrealready in her blood.
Frau Golowski appeared on the verandah. She was flurried and somewhat late, and still carried her umbrella and had her hat on. Therese sent her remembrances from town and wanted to arrange to come and see Anna again the next day or so.
George, who was leaning up against a wooden pillar of the verandah, turned to Frau Golowski with that studious politeness which he always ostentatiously assumed when talking to her. "Won't you ask Fräulein Therese in both our names if she wouldn't care to stay out here for a day or two? The top room is quite at her service. I'm on the point of going into the mountains for a short time, you know," he added, as though he regularly slept in the little room at all other times.
Frau Golowski expressed her thanks. She would tell Therese. George looked at his watch and saw that it was time to start for home. He and Heinrich then said good-bye. Anna accompanied both of them as far as the garden door, remained standing a little while and watched them till they got on to the height where the Sommerhaidenweg began.
The little village at the bottom of the valley flowed past them in the moonlight. The hills loomed pale like thin walls. The forest breathed darkness. In the distance thousands of lights glittered out of the night mist of the summer town. Heinrich and George walked by each other in silence and a sense of estrangement arose between them. George remembered that walk in the Prater in the previous autumn, when their first almost confidential talk had brought them near to each other. How many talks had they not had since? But had they not all, as it were, gone into thin air? And to-day, too, George was unable to walk through the night with Heinrich without exchanging a word, as he used to do many a time with Guido or with Labinski without feeling any loss of real sympathy. The silence became a strain. He began to talk of old Stauber, as that was the first subject to occur to him, and praised his reliability and versatility. Heinrich was not very taken with him and thought him somewhat intoxicated with the sense of his own kindness, wisdom and excellence. That was another kind of Jew which he could not stand—the self-complacent kind. The conversation then turned on young Stauber, whose vacillation between politics and science had something extremely attractive about it for Heinrich. From that they turned into a conversation about the composition of parliament, about the squabbles between the Germans and the Tschechs and the attacks of the Clericals on the Minister of Education. They talked with that strained assiduousness with which one is accustomed to talk about things which are absolutely indifferent to one in one's heart of hearts. Finally they discussed the question whether the Minister ought to remain in office or not after the dubious figure he had cut over the civil marriage question, and had the vaguest ideas after they had finished as to which of them had been in favour of his resignation and which of them against it. They walked along the churchyard. Crosses and gravestones towered over the walls and floated in the moonlight. The path inclined downwards to the main road. They both hurried so as to catch the last tram, and standing on the platform in the sultry scented night air drove towards the town. George explained that he thought of doing the first part of his tour on his cycle. Obeying a sudden impulse, he asked Heinrich if he wouldn't like to join him. Heinrich agreed and after a few minutes manifested great keenness. They got out at the Schottentor, found out a neighbouring café and after an exhaustive consultation managed, with the help of special maps which they found in encyclopædias, to decide on every possible route. When they left each other their plan was not indeed quite definite, but they already knew that they would leave Vienna early, the day after the next, and would mount their cycles at Lambach.
George stood quite a long time by the open window of his bedroom. He felt intensely awake. He thought of Anna, from whom he was to part to-morrow for a few days, and visualised her as sleeping at this hour out there in the country in the pale twilight between the moonlight and the morning. But he felt dully as though this image had nothing at all to do with his own fate, but with the fate of some unknown man, who himself knew nothing about it. And he was absolutely unable to realise that within that slumbering being there slept another being in still deeper mystery, and that this other being was to be his own child. Now that the sober mood of the early dawn stole almost painfully through his senses the whole episode seemed more remote and improbable than it had ever been before. A clearer and clearer light showed above the roofs of the town, but it would be a long time before the town woke up. The air was perfectly motionless. No breeze came from the trees in the park opposite, no perfume from the withered flower-beds. And George stood by the window; unhappy and without comprehension.
George slowly climbed up from the hold on narrow carpeted steps between long oblique mirrors and wrapped in a long dark green rug which trailed behind him, wandered up and down on the empty deck beneath the starry sky. Motionless as ever, Labinski stood in the stern and turned the wheel, while his gaze was directed towards the open sea. "What a career!" thought George. "First a dead man, then a minister, then a little boy with a muff and now a steersman. If he knew that I were on this ship he would certainly hail me." "Look out!" cried behind George the two blue girls, whom he had met on the sea-shore, but he rushed on, wrapped himself in his rug and listened to the flapping of white gulls over his head. Immediately afterwards he was in the saloon, down below, sitting at the table, which was so long that the people at the end were quite small. A gentleman near him, who looked like the elder Grillparzer, remarked irritably: "This boat's always late. We ought to have been in Boston a long time ago." George then felt very nervous; for if he could not show the three music scores in the green cover when he disembarked, he would certainly be arrested for high treason. That was why the prince who had been rushing all over the deck with the wheel all day long often cast such strange side-glances at him. And to intensify his suspicions still more he was compelled to sit at table in his shirtsleeves while all the other gentlemen wore generals' uniforms, as they always did on boats, and all the ladies wore red velvet dresses. "We shall soon be in America," said a raucous steward who was serving asparagus. "Only one more station."
"The others can sit there quietly," thought George. "They have nothing to do, but I must swim to the theatre straight away." The coast appeared opposite him in the great mirror; nothing but houses without roofs, whose tiers of terraces towered higher and higher, and the orchestra was waiting impatiently up above in a quiet kiosk with a broken stone cupola. The bell on the deck pealed and George tumbled down the steps into the park with his green rug and two pocket handkerchiefs. But they had shipped the wrong one across; it was the Stadtpark, as a matter of fact; Felician was sitting on a seat, an old lady in a cloak close to him put her fingers on her lips, whistled very loudly and Felician said, with an unusually deep voice: "Kemmelbach—Ybs." "No," thought George, "Felician never uses a word like that ..." rubbed his eyes and woke up.
The train was just starting again. Two red lamps were shining in front of the closed window of the compartment. The night ran past, silent and black. George drew his travelling rug closer round him and stared at the green shaded lamp in the ceiling. "What a good thing that I'm alone in the compartment," he thought. "I have been sound asleep for at least four or five hours. What a strange confused dream that was!" The white gulls first came back into his memory. Did they have any significance? Then he thought of the old woman in the cloak, who of course was no other than Frau Oberberger. The lady would not feel particularly flattered. But really, hadn't she looked quite like an old lady, when he had seen her a few days ago by the side of her beaming husband in the box of the little red-and-white theatre of the watering-place? And Labinski, too, had appeared to him in his dream as a steersman, strangely enough. And the girls in blue dresses, also, who had looked out of the hotel garden into the piano room through the window as soon as they heard him playing. But what was the really ghostly element in that dream?
Not the girls in blue, not even Labinski, and not the Prince of Guastalla, who had rushed like mad to the wheel over the deck. No, it was his own figure which had appeared to him so ghostly as it had slunk along by his side multiplied a hundred times over in the long oblique mirrors on both sides. He began to feel cold. The cool night air penetrated into the compartment through the ventilator in the ceiling. The deep black darkness outside gradually changed into a heavy grey and there suddenly rang in George's ears in a sad whisper the words he had heard only a few hours ago in a woman's low voice: How soon will it take you to forget me?... He did not wish to hear those words. He wished they had already become true, and in desperation he plunged back into the memory of his dream. It was quite clear that the steamer on which he had gone to America on his concert tour really meant the ship on which Ägidius had sailed towards his sinister fate. And the kiosk with the orchestra was the hall where Ägidius had waited for death. The starry sky which spread over the sea had been really wonderful. The air had been bluer and the stars more silvery than he had ever seen them in waking life, even on the night when he had sailed with Grace from Palermo to Naples. Suddenly the voice of the woman he loved rang through the darkness again, whispering and mournful: "How long will it take you to forget me?"... And he now visualised her as he had seen her a few hours ago, pale and naked, with her dark hair streaming over the pillows. He did not want to think of it, conjured up other images from the depths of his memory and deliberately chased them past him. He saw himself going round a cemetery in the thawing February snow with Grace; he saw himself riding with Marianne over a white country road towards the wintry forest. He saw himself walking with his father over the Ringstrasse in the late evening; and finally a merry-go-round whirled past him. Sissy with her laughing lips and eyes was rocking about on a brown wooden horse. Else, graceful and ladylike, was sitting in a little red carriage, and Anna rode an Arab with the reins nonchalantly in her hand. Anna! How young and graceful she looked! Was that really the same being whom he was to see again in a few hours? and had he really only been away from her for ten days? And was he ever to see again all that he had left ten days ago? The little angel in blue clay between the flower-beds, the verandah with the wooden gable, the silent garden with the currant- and the lilac-bushes? It all seemed absolutely inconceivable. She will wait for me on the white seat under the pear-tree, he thought, and I will kiss her hands as though nothing had happened.
"How are you, George dear?" she will ask me. "Have you been true to me?" No.... That's not her way of asking, but she will feel without asking at all or my answering that I have not come back the same as I went away. If she only does feel it! If I am only saved from having to lie! But haven't I done so already? And he thought of the letters which he had written from the lake, letters full of tenderness and yearning, which had really been nothing but lies. And he thought of how he had waited at night with a beating heart, his ear glued to the door, till all was quiet in the inn; of how he had then stolen over the passage to that other woman who lay there pale and naked, with her dark eyes wide open, enveloped in the perfume and bluish shimmer of her hair. And he thought of how he and she one night, half drunken with desire and audacity, had stepped out on to the verandah, beneath which the water plashed so seductively. If any one had been out on the lake in the deep darkness of this hour he would have seen their white bodies shining through the night. George thrilled at the memory. We were out of our senses, he thought; how easily it might have happened that I should be lying to-day with a bullet through my heart six feet under the ground. Of course there's still a chance of it. They all know. Else knew first, though she scarcely ever came down from Auhof into the village. James Wyner, who saw me with the other woman one evening standing on the landing-stage is bound to have told her. Will Else marry him? I can understand her liking him so much. He is handsome, that chiselled face, those cold grey eyes which look shrewd and straight into the world, a young Englishman. Who knows if he wouldn't have turned into a kind of Oskar Ehrenberg in Vienna? And George remembered what Else had told him about her brother. He had struck George as so self-possessed, almost mature in fact, on his sick-bed in the nursing-home. And now he was said to be leading a wild life in Ostend, to be gambling and gadding about with the most evil associates, as though he wanted to go thoroughly to the dogs. Did Heinrich still find the matter so tragi-comic? Frau Ehrenberg had grown quite white with grief. And Else had cried her eyes out in front of George one morning in the grounds; but had she only been crying about Oskar?
The grey in front of the compartment window slowly cleared. George watched the telegraph wires outside sweeping and shifting across each other with swift movements and he thought of how, yesterday afternoon, his own lying words to Anna had travelled across one of these wires: "Shall be with you early to-morrow morning. Fondest love, your own George."... He had hurried back straight from the post-office to an ardent and desperate final hour with the other woman, and he could not realise that even at this very minute, when he had already been away from her for a whole eternity, she should still be lying asleep and dreaming in that same room with the fast-closed windows. And she will be home this evening with her husband and children. Home—just as he would be. He knew that it was so and he could not understand it. For the first time in his life he had been near doing something which people would probably have had to call madness. Only one word from her ... and he would have gone out with her into the world, have left everything behind, friends, mistress and his unborn child. And was he not still ready to do so? If she called him would he not go? And if he did do so would he not be right? Was he not far more cut out for adventures of that kind than for the quiet life full of responsibilities which he had chosen for himself? Was it not rather his real line to career boldly and unhesitatingly about the world than to be stuck somewhere or other with his wife and child, with all the bothers about bread-and-butter, his career and at the best a little fame? In the days from which he had just come he had felt that he was living, perhaps for the first time. Each moment had been so rich and so full, and not only those spent in her arms. He had suddenly grown young again. The country had flowered with a greater splendour, the arc of the sky had grown wider, the air which he drank had exhaled a finer spice and strength, and melodies had rippled within him as never before. Had he ever composed anything better than that wordless song to be sung on the water with its sprightly rocking melody? And that fantasy had risen strangely by the shore of the lake one hour out of depths of his which he had never dreamt of, after he had seen the wondrous woman for the first time. Well, Herr Hofrat Wilt would no longer have occasion to regard him as a dilettante. But why did he think of him of all people? Did the others know what kind of a man he was any better? Didn't it often seem to him as though even Heinrich, who had once wanted to write an opera libretto for him, had failed to judge him any more accurately? And he heard again the words which the author had spoken to him that morning when they had cycled from Lambach to Gmunden through the dew-wet forest. "You need not do creative work in order to realise yourself ... you do not need work ... only the atmosphere of your art...." He suddenly remembered an evening in the keeper's lodge on the Alamsee when a huntsman of seventy-three had sung some jolly songs and Heinrich had wondered at any one of that age being still so jolly, since one would be bound to feel oneself so near one's death. Then they had gone to bed in an enormous room which echoed all their words, philosophised about life and death for a long time, and suddenly fallen asleep.
George was still motionless as he lay stretched out in his rug and considered whether he should tell Heinrich anything about his meeting with his actress. How pale she had grown when she had suddenly seen him. She had listened, with roving eyes, to his account of the cycle tour with Heinrich and then begun to tell him straight away about her mother and her little brother who could draw so wonderfully finely. And the other members of the company had kept staring all the time from the stage door, particularly a man with a green tyrol hat, in which a chamois' beard was stuck. And George had seen her play the same evening in a French farce, and asked himself if the pretty young person who acted and pranced about so wildly down on the stage of the little holiday theatre could really be so desperate as Heinrich imagined. Not only he but James and Sissy as well had liked her very much. What a jolly evening it had been! And the supper after the theatre with James, Sissy, old mother Wyner and Willy Eissler! And next day the ride in the four-in-hand of old Baron Löwenstein, who drove himself. In less than an hour they had reached the lake. A boat was rowing near the bank in the early sunshine. And the woman he loved sat on the rowing-seat with a green silk shawl over her shoulders. But how was it that Sissy also had divined the relationship between him and her? And then the merry dinner at the Ehrenbergs' up at Auhof! George sat between Else and Sissy, and Willy told one funny story after the other. And then on the afternoon, George and Sissy had found each other without any rendezvous in the dark green sultriness of the park amid the warm scent of the moss and the pines, while all the others were resting. It had been a wonderful hour, which had floated through this day as lightly as a dream, without vows of troth and without fear of fulfilment. How I like thinking every single minute of it all over again, savouring it to the full, that golden day! I see both of us, Sissy and myself, going down over the fields to the tennis-court, hand in hand. I think I played better than I ever did in my life.... And I see Sissy again lounging in a cane chair, with a cigarette between her lips and old Baron Löwenstein at her side, while her looks flamed towards Willy. What had become of me at that moment, so far as she was concerned? And the evening! How we swam out in the twilight into the lake, while the warm water caressed me so deliciously. What a delight that was! And then the night ... the night....
The train stopped again. It was already quite light outside. George lay still, as before. He heard the name of the station called out; the voices of waiters, conductors and travellers; heard steps on the platform, station-signals of all kinds, and he knew that in an hour he would be in Vienna.... Supposing Anna had received information about him, just as Heinrich had about his mistress the previous winter? He could not imagine that a thing like that could make Anna lose control of herself, even if she believed in it. Perhaps she would cry, but certainly only to herself, quite quietly. He resolved firmly not to let her notice anything. Was not that his plain duty? What was the important thing now? Only this, that Anna should spend the last weeks quietly and without excitement, and that a healthy child should come into the world. That was all that mattered. How long had it been since he had heard Doctor Stauber say those words? The child...! How near the hour was, the child.... He thought again; but he could think of nothing except the mere word. He then endeavoured to imagine a tiny living being. But as though to mock him figures of small children kept appearing, who looked as though they had stepped out of a picture-book, drawn grotesquely and in crude colours. Where will it spend its first years? he thought. With peasants in the country, in a house with a little garden. But one day we will fetch it and take it home with us. It might, too, turn out differently. One gets a letter like this: Your Excellency, I have the honour to inform you that the child is seriously ill.... Or.... What is the point of thinking about things like that? Even though we kept it with us it might fall ill and die.
Anyway, it must be given to people who are highly responsible. I'll see about it myself.... He felt as though he were confronted with new duties which he had never properly considered and which he had not yet grown able to cope with. The whole business was beginning, as it were, over again. He came out of a world in which he had not bothered about all these things, where other laws had prevailed than those to which he must now submit.
And had it not been as though the other people, too, had felt that he was not really one of them, as though they had been steeped in a kind of respect, as though they had been seized by a feeling of veneration for the power and holiness of a great passion, whose sway they witnessed in their own neighbourhood? He remembered an evening on which the hotel visitors had disappeared from the piano-room one after another, as though they had been conscious of their duty to leave him alone with her. He had sat down at the piano and begun to improvise. She had remained in her dark corner in a big arm-chair. First of all he had seen her smile, then the dark shining of her eyes, then only the lines of her figure, then nothing more at all. But he had been conscious the whole time "She is there!" Lights flashed out on the other bank opposite. The two girls in the blue dresses had peered in through the window and had quickly disappeared again. Then he stopped playing and remained sitting by the pianoforte in silence. Then she had come slowly out of the corner like a shadow and had put her hand upon his head. How ineffably beautiful that had been! And it all came into his mind again. How they had rested in the boat in the middle of the lake, with shipped oars, while his head was in her lap! And they had walked through the forest paths on the opposite bank until they came to the seat under the oak. It had been there that he had told her everything—everything as though to a friend. And she had understood him, as never another woman had understood him before. Was it not she whom he had always been seeking? she who was at once mistress and comrade, with a serious outlook upon everything in the world, and yet made for every madness and for every bliss? And the farewell yesterday.... The dark brilliance of her eyes, the blue-black stream of her loosened hair, the perfume of her white naked body.... Was it really possible that this was over for ever? that all this was never, never to come again?
George crumpled the rug between his fingers in his helpless longing and shut his eyes. He no longer saw the softly moving lines of the wooded hills, which swept by in the morning light, and as though for one last happiness he dreamed himself back again into the dark ecstasies of that farewell hour. Yet against his will he was overcome by fatigue after the jar and racket of the night in the train, and he was swept away out of the images which he had himself called up, in a route of wild dreams which it was not vouchsafed him to control. He walked over the Sommerhaidenweg in a strange twilight that filled him with a deep sadness. Was it morning? Was it evening? Or just a dull day? Or was it the mysterious light of some star over the world that had not yet shone for any one except him? He suddenly stood upon a great open meadow where Heinrich Bermann ran up and down and asked him: Are you also looking for the lady's castle? I have been expecting you for a long time. They went up a spiral staircase, Heinrich in front, so that George could only see a tail of the overcoat which trailed behind. Above, on an enormous terrace which gave a view of the town and the lake, the whole party was assembled. Leo had started his dissertation on minor harmonies, stopped when George appeared, came down from his desk and himself escorted him to a vacant chair which was in the first row and next to Anna. Anna smiled ecstatically when George appeared. She looked young and brilliant in a splendiddécolletéeevening dress. Just behind her sat a little boy with fair hair, in a sailor suit with a broad white collar, and Anna said "That's he." George made her a sign to be silent, for it was supposed to be a secret. In the meanwhile Leo played theC sharp minorNocturne by Chopin in order to prove his theory, and behind him old Bösendorfer leaned against the wall in his yellow overcoat, tall, gaunt and good-natured. They all left the concert-room in a great crush. Then George put Anna's opera cloak round her shoulders and looked sternly at the people round him. He then sat in the carriage with her, kissed her, experienced a great delight in doing so and thought: "If it could only be like this always." Suddenly they stopped in front of the house in Mariahilf. There were already many pupils waiting upstairs by the window and beckoning. Anna got out, said good-bye to George with an arch expression and vanished behind the door, which slammed behind her.
"Excuse me, sir. Ten minutes more," some one said. George turned round. The conductor stood in the doorway and repeated: "We shall be in Vienna in ten minutes."
"Thank you," said George and got up, with a more or less confused head. He opened the window and was glad it was fine weather outside in the world. The fresh morning air quite cheered him up. Yellow walls, signal-boxes, little gardens, telegraph poles, streets, flew past him, and finally the train stood in the station. A few minutes later George was driving in an open fiacre to his apartment, saw workmen, shop girls and clerks going to their daily callings; heard the rattle of rolling shutters and in spite of all the anxiety which awaited him, in spite of all the desire which drew him elsewhere, he experienced the deep joy of once more being at home.
When he went into his room he felt quite hidden. The old secretary, covered with green baize, the malachite letter-weight, the glass ash-tray with its burnt-in cavalier, the slim lamp with the broad green thick glass shade, the portrait of his father and mother in the narrow mahogany frames, the round little marble table in the corner with its silver case for cigars, the Prince of the Electorate, after Vandyck on the wall, the high bookcase with its olive-coloured curtains; they all gave him a hearty greeting. And how it did one good to have that good home look over the tree tops in the park, towards the spires and roofs. An almost undreamt-of happiness streamed towards him from everything which he found again here, and he felt sore at heart that he would have to leave it all in a few weeks. And how long would it last until one had a home, a real home? He would have liked to have stopped for a few hours in his beloved room but he had no time. He had to be in the country before noon.
He had thrown off his clothes and let the warm water swirl round him deliciously in his white bath. To avoid going to sleep in his bath he chose a means he had often employed before. He rehearsed in his mind note by note a fugue of Bach's. He thought of a pianoforte that would have to be diligently practised and music scores which would have to be read. Wouldn't it really be more sensible to devote another year to study? Not to enter into negotiations straight away or to take a post, which he would turn out to be unable to fill? Rather to stay here and work. Stay here? But where? Notice had been given. It occurred to him for a moment to take the apartment in the old house opposite the grey church, where he had spent such beautiful hours with Anna, and it was as though he were remembering a long-past episode, an adventure of his youth, gay and yet a little mysterious, that had been over long ago....
He went back into his room, refreshed and wearing a brand-new suit, the first light one which he had put on since his father's death. A letter lay on the secretary which had just arrived by the first post, from Anna. He read it. It was only a few words: "You are here again, my love—I welcome you. I do long to see you. Don't keep me waiting too long. Your Anna...."
George got up. He did not himself know what it was in the short letter that touched him so strangely. Anna's letters had always retained, in spite of all their tenderness, a certain precise, almost conventional element, and he had frequently jokingly called them "proclamations." This was couched in a tone that reminded him of the passionate girl of by-gone days, of that love of his whom he had almost forgotten, and a strangely unexpected anxiety seized on his heart. He rushed downstairs, took the nearest fiacre and drove to the country. He soon felt agreeably distracted by the sight of the people in the streets who meant nothing to him at all; and later, when he was near the wood, he felt soothed by the charm of the blue summer day. Suddenly, sooner than George had anticipated, the vehicle stopped in front of the country house. Involuntarily George first looked up to the balcony under the gable. A little table was standing there with a white cover and a little basket on it. Oh yes, Therese had been staying here for a few days. He now remembered for the first time. Therese...! Where was it now? He got out, paid the carriage and went into the front garden where the blue angel stood on its unpretentious pedestal amid the faded flower-beds. He stepped into the house. Marie was just laying the table in the large centre room. "Madam's over there in the garden," she said.
The verandah door was open. The planks of its floor creaked underneath George's feet. The garden with its perfume and its sultriness received him. It was the old garden. During all the days in which George had been far away it had lain there silently, just as it was lying at this minute; in the dawn, in the sunshine, in the twilight, in the darkness of night; always the same.... The gravel path cut straight through the field to the heights. There were children's voices on the other side of the bushes from which red berries were hanging. And over there on the white seat, with her elbow on its arm, very pale, in her flowing blue morning dress, yes, that was Anna. Yes, really she. She had seen him now. She tried to get up. He saw it, and saw at the same time that she found it difficult. But why? Was she spell-bound by excitement? Or was the hour of trial so near? He signed to her with his hand that she was to remain seated, and she really did sit down again, and only just stretched out her arms lightly towards him. Her eyes were shining with bliss. George walked very quickly, with his grey felt hat in his hand, and now he was at her side.
"At last," she said, and it was a voice which came from as far back as those words in her letter of this morning. He took her hands, shook them in a strange clumsy way, felt a lump in his throat, but was still unable to articulate anything and just nodded and smiled. And suddenly he knelt before her on the grass, with her hands in his and his head in her lap. He felt her lightly taking her hands away, and putting them on his head; and then he heard himself crying quite softly. And he felt as though he were in a sweet vague dream, a little boy again and lying at his mother's feet, and this moment were already a mere memory, painful and far away, even while he was living it.
Frau Golowski came out of the house. George could see her from the top end of the garden as she stepped on to the verandah. He hurried excitedly towards her, but as soon as she saw him in the distance she shook her head.
"Not yet?" asked George.
"The Professor thinks," replied Frau Golowski, "some time before dark."
"Some time before dark," said George and looked at his watch. And now it was only three.
She held out her hand sympathetically and George looked into her kind eyes, which were somewhat tired by her nocturnal vigils. The white transparent curtain in front of Anna's window had just been slightly drawn back. Old Doctor Stauber appeared by the window, threw George a friendly reassuring glance, disappeared again and the curtains were drawn. Frau Rosner was sitting in the large centre room by the round table. George could only see from the verandah the outlines of her figure; her face was quite in the shade. Then a whimpering and then a loud groan forced their way from the room in which Anna lay. George stared up at the window, stood still for a while, then turned round and walked for the hundredth time to-day up the path to the top of the garden. It is clear that she is already too weak to shriek, he thought; and his heart pained him. She had lain in labour for two whole days and two whole nights. The third day was now approaching its end,—and now it was still to last until evening came. On the evening of the first day Doctor Stauber had called in the Professor, who had been there twice yesterday and had remained in the house since noon to-day. While Anna had gone to sleep for a few minutes, and the nurse was watching by her bed, he had walked up and down in the garden with George and had endeavoured to explain to him all the peculiar features of the case. For the time being there was no ground for anxiety. They could hear the child's heart beating quite clearly. The Professor was a still fairly young man with a long blonde beard, and his words trickled gently and kindly like drops of some anodyne drug. He spoke to the sick woman like a child, stroked her over the hair and forehead, caressed her hands and gave her pet names. George had learned from the nurse that this young doctor exhibited the same devotion and same patience at every sick-bed. What a profession! thought George, who had once, during these three bad days, fled to Vienna for a few hours, which enabled a man to have a sound dreamless sleep for six good hours up there in the attic this very night while Anna was writhing in pain.