KAREN ENGELSCHALLI
Onthe appointed hour of the appointed day Crammon arrived. He had prepared himself to stay and to be festive; but he was disappointed. Eva and her train were on the point of leaving. Maidanoff had proceeded to Paris, whither Eva was to follow him.
Crammon had been informed of this new friendship of his idol. All other news came to him too, and so he was aware that a quarrel had arisen between Christian and Eva. He was the more astonished to see Christian determined to follow Eva to Hamburg.
They had exchanged but a few words, when the transformation in Christian struck him. He laid his hand on the young man’s shoulder, and asked sympathetically: “Have you nothing to confide?”
He spent the evening with Wiguniewski. “It isn’t possible,” he said; “you’re mistaken. Or else the world is topsy-turvy and I can no longer tell a man from a woman.”
“I had no special liking for Wahnschaffe from the start,” Wiguniewski confessed. “He’s too impenetrable, mysterious, spoiled, cold, and, if you will, too German. Nevertheless I knew from the first that he was the very man for Eva Sorel. You couldn’t see the two together without a sense of delight—the sort of delight that a beautiful composition gives you, or anything that is spiritually fitting and harmonious.”
Crammon nodded. “He has a strange power over women,” he said. “I’ve just had another instance which is the more remarkable as it developed from a mere sight of his picture. At the Ashburnhams’ in Yorkshire, where I’ve been staying, I made the acquaintance of a Viennese girl, a banker’s daughter,rather ugly, to be frank, but with a peculiar little sting and charm and wit of her own. Not a bad figure, though rather—shall we say scanty? Yes. Her name is Johanna Schöntag, though that matters little. I called her nothing but Rumpelstilzkin. That fitted her like a glove. God knows how she got there. Her sister, a russet-haired person who looks as though she’d jumped out of a Rubens, is married to an attaché of some minor legation, Roumanian or Bulgarian or something like that. The big capitalists fit their daughters into society that way. Well, anyhow, this Rumpelstilzkin and I agreed to amuse each other in the murky boredom of Lord and Lady Ashburnham’s house. So one day I showed the girl a miniature of Christian which Gaston Villiers painted for me in Paris. She looked at the picture and her merry face grew grave, absorbed, and she handed it back to me silently. A couple of days later she asked to see it again, and it had the same effect on her. She asked me about the man, and I, of course, became very eloquent, and happened to remark, too, that I expected to meet Christian here. She insisted at once that she must meet him, and that I must plan to have her do so. Remember she’s rather unapproachable as a rule, fastidious, turning up her nose—her worst feature by the way—at things that please most people. The request was unexpected and rather a nuisance. One mustn’t, as you know, bring the wrong people together and land one’s self in difficulties. So I said at once: ‘The Almighty forbid!’ I admonished her gently to change her mind, and painted the danger in its darkest hues. She laughed at me, and asked me whether I’d grown strait-laced; then she at once developed a most cunning plan. She had time enough. She wasn’t expected home till the first of November, which gave her seven weeks. So she would announce her intention of studying the Dutch galleries, the pursuit of culture being always respectable. She had a companion and chaperone, as it was, and her sister, who was broad-minded in such matters, could be taken into her confidence. Her energy and astuteness made me feel weak, and forced me into the conspiracy. Well, she arrived yesterday. She’s at the Hotel de la Plage, a little scared, like a bird that’s dropped out of its nest, a little dissatisfied with herself, vexed by little attacks of morality; and I, for my part, don’t know what to do with her. I bethought me too late that Christian isn’t to be caught by such tricks, and now I’ve got to make it clear to the girl. All this is by the way, prince—a sort of footnote to your discourse, which I did not intend to interrupt.”
Wiguniewski had listened with very slight sympathy. He began again: “These past months, as I’ve said, have given us all an unforgettable experience. We have seen two free personalities achieving a higher form of union than any of the legitimized ones. But suddenly this noble spectacle turns into a shabby farce; and it is his fault. For such a union has its organic and natural close. A man of subtle sensitiveness knows that, and adjusts himself accordingly. Instead of that, he actually lets it get to the point of painful scenes. He seeks meetings that humiliate him and make him absurd. When she is out he waits in her rooms for her return, and endures her passing him by with a careless nod. Once he sat waiting all night and stared into a book. He lets the Rappard woman treat him insolently, and doesn’t seem to mind that the fruits and flowers he sends daily are regularly refused. What is it? What does it mean?”
“It points to some sorrow, and assuredly to a great sorrow for me,” Crammon sighed. “It’s incomprehensible.”
“She entertained at dinner day before yesterday,” Wiguniewski continued. “As though to mock him he was placed at the lower end of the table. I didn’t even know the people who sat by him. It seems to arouse a strange cruelty in her that he doesn’t refuse to bear these humiliations; he, on the other hand, seems to find some inexplicable lure in his suffering. He sat down that evening in silence. Afterwards a curious thing happened. Groups had been formed after dinner.He stood a few feet from Eva and gazed at her steadily. His face had a brooding look as he observed her. She wore Ignifer, which is his gift, and looked like Diana with a burning star above her forehead.”
“That’s excellently well put, prince,” Crammon exclaimed.
“The conversation touched upon many subjects without getting too shallow. You know her admirable way of checking and disciplining talk. Finally there arose a discussion of Flemish literature, and some one spoke of Verhaeren. She quoted some verses of a poem of his called ‘Joy.’ The sense was somewhat as follows: My being is in everything that lives about me; meadows and roads and trees, springs and shadows, you become me, since I have felt you wholly. There was a murmur of appreciation. She went to a shelf and took down a volume of Verhaeren’s poems. She turned the pages, found the poem she sought, and suddenly turned to Wahnschaffe. She gave him the book with a gesture of command; he was to read the poem. He hesitated for a moment, then he obeyed. The effect of the reading was both absurd and painful. He read like a schoolboy, low, stammering, and as though the content were beyond his comprehension. He felt the absurdity and painfulness of the incident himself, for his colour changed as the ecstatic stanzas came from his lips like an indifferent paragraph in a newspaper; and when he had finished the reading, he laid the book aside, and left without a glance at any one. But Eva turned to us, and said as though nothing had happened: ‘The verses are wonderful, aren’t they?’ Yet her lips trembled with fury. But what was her purpose? Did she want to prove to us his inability to feel things that are beautiful and delicate? Did she want to put him to shame, to punish him and publicly expose the poverty of his nature? Or was it only an impatient whim, the annoyance at his dumb watchfulness and his searching glances? Mlle. Vanleer said later: ‘If he had read the verses like a divine poet, she would have forgiven him.’ ‘Forgiven him what?’ I asked. She smiled,and answered: ‘Her own faithlessness.’ There may be something in that. At all events, you should get him out of this situation, Herr von Crammon.”
“I shall do all in my power,” said Crammon, and the lines of care about his mouth grew deeper. He wiped his forehead. “Of course I don’t know how far my influence goes. It would be empty boastfulness to guarantee anything. I’ve been told too that he frequents all sorts of impossible dives with impossible people. I could weep when I think of it. He was the flower of modern manhood, the pride of my lengthening years, the salt of the earth! Unfortunately he had, even when I left him, certain attacks of mental confusion, but I put those down to the account of that suspicious fellow, Ivan Becker.”
“Don’t speak of him! Don’t speak of Becker!” Wiguniewski interrupted sharply. “Not at least in that manner, I must beg and insist.”
Crammon opened his eyes very wide, and the tip of his tongue became visible, like a red snail peering out of its shell. He choked down his discomfort and shrugged his shoulders.
Wiguniewski said: “At all events you’ve given me an indication. I never considered such a possibility. It throws a new light on many things. It’s true, by the way, that Wahnschaffe associates with questionable people. The queerest of them all is Amadeus Voss, a hypocrite and a gambler. One must not couple such persons with Ivan Becker. Becker may have set him upon a certain road. If we assume that, a number of incidents become clear. But anything really baneful comes from Voss. Save your friend from him!”
“I haven’t seen the fellow yet,” Crammon murmured. “What you tell me, Prince, doesn’t take me quite unawares. Nevertheless, I’m grateful. But let that scoundrel beware! May I never drink another drop of honest wine, if he escape me! Let me never again glance at a tempting bosom, if I don’t grind this infamous cur to pulp. So help me!”
Wiguniewski arose, and left Crammon to plan his revenge.
The morning sun of late September was gilding sea and land, when Crammon entered Christian’s room. Christian was sitting at his curved writing table. The bright blue tapestries on the walls gleamed; chairs and tables were covered by a hundred confused objects. Everything pointed to the occupant’s departure.
“Don’t let me disturb you, dear boy; I have time enough,” said Crammon. He swept some things from a chair, sat down, and lit his pipe.
But Christian put down his pen. “I don’t know what’s the matter with me,” he said angrily, without looking at Crammon, “I can’t get two coherent sentences down on paper. However carefully I think it out, by the time it’s written it sounds stiff and silly. Have you the same experience?”
Crammon answered: “There are those who have the trick. It takes, primarily, a certain impudence. You must never stop to ask: Is that correct? Is it true? Is it well-founded? Scribble ahead, that’s all. Be effective, no matter at what cost. The cleverest writers are often the most stupid fellows. But to whom are you writing? Is the haste so great? Letters can usually be put off.”
“Not this time. It is a question of haste,” Christian answered. “I have a letter from Stettner and I can’t make out his drift. He tells me that he’s quitting the service and leaving for America. Before he goes he wants to see me once more. He takes ship at Hamburg on October 15. Now it fortunately happens that I’ll be in Hamburg on that date, and I want to let him know.”
“I don’t see any difficulty there,” Crammon said seriously. “All you need say is: I’ll be at such a place on such a day, and expect or hope, et cetera. Yours faithfully or sincerely or cordially, et cetera. So he’s going to quit? Why? And run off to America? Something rotten in the state of Denmark?”
“He was challenged to a duel, it appears, and refused the challenge. That’s the only reason he gives. He adds that matters shaped themselves so that he is forced to seek a new life in the New World. It touches me closely; I was always fond of him. I must see him.”
“I’d be curious too to know what really happened,” said Crammon. “Stettner didn’t strike me as a chap who’d lightly run away and risk his honour. He was an exemplary officer. I’m afraid it’s a dreary business. But I observe that it gives you a pretext for going to Hamburg.”
Christian started. “Why a pretext?” He was a little embarrassed. “I need no pretext.”
Crammon bent his head far forward, and laid his chin on the ivory handle of his stick. His pipe remained artfully poised in one corner of his mouth, and did not move as he spoke. “You don’t mean to assert, my dearest boy, that your conscience doesn’t require some additional motive for the trip,” he began, like a father confessor who is about to use subtle arguments to force a confession from a stubborn malefactor, “and you’re not going to try to make a fool of an old boon-companion and brother of your soul. One owes something to a friend. You should not forget under whose auspices and promises you entered the great world, nor what securitiesheoffered—securities of the heart and mind—who was the author and master of your radiant entry. Even Socrates, that rogue and revolutionary, recalled such obligations on his death bed. There was a story about a cock—some sort of a cock, I believe. Maybe the story doesn’t fit the case at all. No matter. I always thought the ancients rather odious. What does matter is that I don’t like your condition, and that others who love you don’t like it. It rends my very heart to see you pilloried, while people who can’t tell a stud-horse from a donkey shrug their shoulders at you. It’s not to be endured. I’d rather we’d quarrel and exchange shots at a distance of five paces. What has happened to you? What has come over you? Have youstopped gathering scalps to offer your own head? The hares and the hounds, I tell you, are diverse creatures. I understand all things human, but the divine order must be kept intact. It’s flying in the face of providence that you should stand at the gate like a beggar. You used to be the one who showed others the door; they whined and moaned after you—and that was proper. I had an uncle who was something of a philosopher, and he used to say: when a woman, a lawyer, and a stove are at their hottest—turn your back to them. I’ve always done that, and kept my peace of mind and my reputation. There are extenuating circumstances in your case, I admit. There is but one such woman in a century, and whoever possesses her may well lose his reason. But even that should not apply to you, Christian. Splendour is your natural portion: it is for you to grant favours; at your board the honey should be fresh each day. And now tell me what you intend to do.”
Christian had listened to this lengthy though wise and pregnant discourse with great patience. At times there was a glint of mockery or anger in his eyes. Then again he would lower them and seem embarrassed. Sometimes he grasped the sense of Crammon’s words, sometimes he thought of other things. It cost him an effort to recall clearly by what right this apparently complete stranger interfered in his life and sought to influence his decisions. And then again he felt within himself a certain tenderness for Crammon in the memory of common experiences and intimate talks; but all that seemed so far away and so estranged from the present.
He looked out of the window, from which the view was free to the horizon where sea and sky touched. Far in the distance a little white cloud floated like a white, round pillow. The same tenderness that he felt for Crammon, he now felt for that little cloud.
And as Crammon sat before him and waited for an answer, there suddenly came into his mind the story of the ring which Amadeus had told him. He began: “A young candidate forHoly Orders, who was tutor to the children of a banker, fell under the suspicion of having stolen a costly ring. He told me the story himself, and from his words I knew that the ring, when he saw it on the hand of his employer’s wife, aroused his desire. In addition he loved this woman, and would have been happy to have had something by which to remember her. But he was utterly innocent of the disappearance of the ring, and some time after he had left that house, his innocence received the most striking confirmation. For the lady sent him the ring as a gift. He was wretchedly poor, and the ring would have meant much to him; but he went and threw it into a well, a deep old-fashioned well. The costliest thing he had ever possessed in life, he threw without hesitation or reflection into a well—that’s what this man did.”
“Oh, well, very well. Although ... no, I don’t quite see your meaning,” said Crammon, discontentedly, and shifted his pipe from the right to the left corner of his mouth. “What good did the ring do the poor fool? How absurd to take something that reaches you in a manner so delicate and discreet, and throw it into a well? Would not a box have served, or a drawer? There at least it could have been found. It was a loutish trick.”
Crammon’s way of sitting there with his legs crossed, showing his grey silk socks, had something about it so secure and satiated, that it reminded one of an animal that basks in the sun and digests its food. Christian’s disgust at his words quieted, and was replaced by a gentle, almost compassionate tenderness. He said: “It is so hard to renounce. You can talk about it and imagine it; you can will it and even believe yourself capable of it. But when the moment of renunciation comes, it is hard, it is almost impossible to give up even the humblest of things.”
“Yes, but why do you want to renounce?” Crammon murmured in his vexation. “What do you mean exactly by renunciation? What is it to lead to?”
Christian said almost to himself: “I believe that one must cast one’s ring into a well.”
“If you mean by that that you intend to forget our wonderful Queen Mab, all I have to say is—the Lord help you in your purpose,” Crammon answered.
“One holds fast and clings because one fears the step into the unknown,” Christian said.
Crammon was silent for a few minutes and wrinkled his forehead. Then he cleared his throat and asked: “Did you ever hear about homœopathy? I’ll explain to you what is meant by it. It means curing like with like. If for instance some food has disagreed with you violently, and I give you a drug that would, in a state of health, have sickened you even more violently than your food—that would be a homœopathic treatment.”
“So you want to cure me?” Christian asked, and smiled. “From what and with what?”
Crammon moved his chair nearer to Christian’s, laid a hand on his knees, and whispered astutely: “I’ve got something for you, dear boy. I’ve made an exquisite find. There’s a woman in your horoscope, as the sooth-sayers put it. Some one is yearning for you, is immensely taken with you, and dying of impatience to know you. And it’s something quite different, a new type, something prickling and comical, indeterminate, sensitive, a little graceless and small and not beautiful, but enormously charming. She comes from the bourgeoisie at its most obese, but she struggles with both hands and feet against the fate of being a pearl in a trough. There’s your chance for employment, distraction, and refreshment. It won’t be a long affair,—an interlude of her holidays, but instructive, and, in the homœopathic sense, sure to work a cure. For look you: Ariel, she is a miracle, a star, the food of the gods. You can’t live on such nourishment; you need bread. Descend, my son, from the high tower where you still grasp after themiraculum cœlithat once flamed on your bosom. Put it out of your mind;descend, and be contented with mortality. To-night at seven in the dining-room of the Hotel de la Plage. Is it a bargain?”
Christian laughed, and got up. On the table stood a vase filled with white pinks. He took out one of the flowers, and fastened it into Crammon’s button-hole.
“Is it a bargain or not?” Crammon asked severely.
“No, dear friend, there’s nothing in that for me,” Christian answered, laughing more heartily. “Keep your find to yourself.”
The veins on Crammon’s forehead swelled. “But I’ve promised to bring you, and you mustn’t leave me in the lurch.” He was in a rage. “I don’t deserve such treatment, after all the slights which you have put on me for months. You give rights to an obscure vagabond that astonish the whole world, and you cast aside heartlessly an old and proved friend. That does hurt and embitter and enrage one. I’m through.”
“Calm yourself, Bernard,” said Christian, and stooped to pick up some blossoms that had fallen on the floor. And as he put back the flowers into the vase, there came to him the vision of Amadeus Voss’ white face, showing his bleeding soul and paralyzed by desire and renunciation, even as it was turned toward the fat, morose Walloon woman. “I don’t comprehend your stubbornness,” he continued. “Why won’t you let me be? Don’t you know that I bring misfortune to all who love me?”
Crammon was startled. Despite Christian’s equivocal smile, he felt a sudden twinge of superstitious fear. “Idiotic!” he growled. He arose and took his hat, and still tried to wring from Christian a promise for the evening. At that moment a knock sounded at the door, and Amadeus Voss entered.
“I beg your pardon,” he stammered, and looked shyly at Crammon, who had at once assumed an attitude of hostility. “I merely wanted to ask you, Christian, whether we are going to leave. Shall the packing be done? We must know what to do.”
Crammon was furious. “Fancy the scoundrel taking such a tone,” he thought. He could hardly force himself to assume the grimace of courtesy that became inevitable when Christian, quite hesitatingly, introduced them to each other.
Amadeus bowed like an applicant for some humble office. His eyes behind their lenses clung to Crammon, like the valves of an exhaust pump. He found Crammon repulsive at once; but he thought it advisable not only to hide this feeling but to play the part of obsequiousness. His hatred was so immediate and so violent, that he was afraid of showing it too soon, and stripping himself of some chance of translating it into action.
Crammon sought points of attack. He treated Voss with contempt, looked at him as though he were a wad of clothes against the wall, neither answered him nor listened to what he said, deliberately prolonged his stay, and paid no attention to Christian’s nervousness. Voss continued to play the part he had selected. He agreed and bowed, rubbed the toe of one of his boots against the sole of the other, picked up Crammon’s stick when the latter dropped it; but as he seemed determined not to be the first to yield, Crammon at last took pity on the silent wonder and torment in Christian’s face. He waved his well-gloved left hand and withdrew. He seemed to swell up in his rage like a frog. “Softly, Bernard,” he said to himself; “guard your dignity, and do not step into the ordure at your feet. Trust in the Lord who said: Vengeance is mine.” He met a little dog on his path, and administered a kick to it, so that the beast howled and scurried into an open cellar.
Across the table Christian and Voss faced each other in silence. Voss pulled a flower from the vase, and shredded its calyx with his thin fingers. “So that was Herr von Crammon,” he murmured. “I don’t know why I feel like laughing. But I can’t help it. I do.” And he giggled softly to himself.
“We leave to-morrow,” said Christian, held a handkerchiefto his mouth, and breathed the delicate perfume that aroused in him so many tender and slowly fading images.
Voss took a blossom, tore it in two, gazed tensely at the parts, and said: “Fibre by fibre, cell by cell. I am done with this life of sloth and parasitism. I want to cut up the bodies of men and anatomize corpses. Perhaps one can get at the seat of weakness and vulgarity. One must seek life at its source and death at its root. The talent of an anatomist stirs within me. Once I wanted to be a great preacher like Savonarola; but it’s a reckless thing to try in these days. One had better stick to men’s bodies; their souls would bring one to despair.”
“I believe one must work,” Christian answered softly. “It does not matter at what. But one must work.” He turned toward the window. The round, white cloud had vanished; the silver sea had sucked it up.
“Have you come to that conclusion?” Voss jeered. “I’ve known it long. The way to hell is paved with work; and only hell can burn us clean. It is well that you have learned that much.”
Crammon and Johanna Schöntag were sitting in a drawing-room of the hotel. They had had dinner together. Johanna’s companion, Fräulein Grabmeier, had already retired.
“You must be patient, Rumpelstilzkin,” said Crammon. “I’m sorry to say that he hasn’t bitten yet. The bait is still in the water.”
“I’ll be patient, my lord,” said Johanna, in her slightly rough, boyish voice, and a gleam of merriment, in which charm and ugliness were strangely blended, passed over her face. “I don’t find it very hard either. Everything is sure to go wrong with me in the end. If ever unexpectedly a wish of mine is fulfilled, and something I looked forward to does happen, I’m as wretched as I can be, because it’s never as niceas I thought it would be. The best thing for me, therefore, is to be disappointed.”
“You’re a problematic soul,” said Crammon musingly.
Johanna gave a comical sigh. “I advise you, dear friend and protector, to get rid of me by return post.” She stretched her thin little neck with an intentionally bizarre movement. “I simply interfere with the traffic. I’m a personified evil omen. At my birth a lady by the name of Cassandra appeared, and I needn’t tell you the disagreeable things that have been said of her. You remember how when we were at target practice at Ashburnhill I hit the bull’s-eye. Everybody was amazed, yourself included; but I more so than any one, because it was pure, unadulterated chance. The rifle had actually gone off before I had taken aim. Fate gives me such small and worthless gifts, in order to seem friendly and lull me into security. But I’m not to be deceived. Ugh! A nun, a nun!” she interrupted herself. Her eyes became very large, as she looked into the garden where an Ursuline nun was passing by. Then she crossed her arms over her bosom, and counted with extraordinary readiness: “Seven, six, five, four, three, two, one.” Then she laughed, and showed two rows of marvellous teeth.
“Is it your custom to do that whenever a nun appears?” Crammon asked. His interest in superstitions was aroused.
“It’s the proper ritual to follow. But she was gone before I came to one, and that augurs no good. By the way, dear baron, your sporting terminology sounds suspicious. What does that mean: ‘he hasn’t bitten yet; the bait is still in the water’? I beg you to restrain yourself. I’m an unprotected girl, and wholly dependent on your delicate chivalry. If you shake my tottering self-confidence by any more reminiscences of the sporting world, I’ll have to telegraph for two berths on the Vienna train. For myself and Fräulein Grabmeier, of course.”
She loved these daring little implications, from which shecould withdraw quite naïvely. Crammon burst into belated laughter, and that fact stirred her merriment too.
She was very watchful, and nothing escaped her attentive eyes. She took a burning interest in the characters and actions of people. She leaned toward Crammon and they whispered together, for he could tell a story about each form and face that emerged from the crowd. The chronicle of international biography and scandal of which he was master was inexhaustible. If ever his memory failed him, he invented or poetized a little. He had everything at his tongue’s end—disputes concerning inheritances, family quarrels, illegitimate descent, adulteries, relationships of all sorts. Johanna listened to him with a smile. She peered at all the tables and carefully observed every uncommon detail. She picked up and pinned down, as an entomologist does his beetles, any chance remark or roguish expression, any silliness or peculiarity of any of these unconscious actors of the great world or the half world.
Suddenly the pupils of her greyish blue eyes grew very large, and her lips curved in a bow of childlike delight. “Who is that?” she whispered, and thrust her chin out a little in the direction of a door at Crammon’s back. But she at once knew instinctively who it was. She would have known it without the general raising of heads and softening of voices, of which she became aware.
Crammon turned around and saw Eva amid a group of ladies and gentlemen. He arose, waited until Eva glanced in his direction, and then bowed very low. Eva drew back a little. She had not seen him since the days of Denis Lay. She thought a little, and nodded distantly. Then she recognized him, kicked back her train with an incomparable grace, and, speaking in every line before her lips moved, went up to him.
Johanna had arisen too. Eva remarked the little figure. She gave Crammon to understand that he had a duty toward his companion, and that she would not refuse an introduction to the unknown girl, on whose face enthusiasm and homage wereso touchingly to be seen. Crammon introduced Johanna in his most ceremonious manner. Johanna grew pale and red and curtsied. She seemed to herself suddenly so negligible that she was overcome with shame. Then she tore off the three yellow roses at her corsage, and held them out to Eva with a sudden and yet timid gesture. Eva liked this impulse. She felt its uniqueness and veracity, and therefore knew its value.
Christian and Amadeus wandered across the Quai Kokerill in Antwerp.
A great transatlantic liner lay, silent and empty, at the pier. The steerage passengers waited at its side for the hour of their admission. They were Polish peasants, Russian Jews, men and women, young ones and aged ones, children and sucklings. They crouched on the cold stones or on their dirty bundles. They were themselves dirty, neglected, weary, dully brooding—a melancholy and confused mass of rags and human bodies.
The mighty globe of the sun rolled blood-red and quivering over the waters.
Christian and Amadeus stopped. After a while they went on, but Christian desired to turn back, and they did so. At a crossing near the emigrants’ camp, a line of ten or twenty donkey-carts cut off the road. The carts looked liked bisected kegs on wheels, and were filled with smoked mackerels.
“Buy mackerels!” the cart-drivers cried. “Buy mackerels!” And they cracked their whips.
A few of the emigrants approached and stared hungrily; they consulted with others, who were already looking for coins in their pockets, until finally a few determined ones proceeded to make a purchase.
Then Christian said to Voss: “Let us buy the fish and distribute them. What do you think?”
Amadeus was ill pleased. He answered. “Do as you wish. Great lords must have their little pleasures.” He felt uncomfortable amid the gathering crowd.
Christian turned to one of the hucksters. It was difficult to make the man understand normal French, but gradually he succeeded. The huckster summoned the others, and there followed excited chatter and gesticulations. Various sums were named and considered and rejected. This process bored Christian; it threatened to be endless. He offered a sum that represented a considerable increase over the highest price named, and handed his wallet to Amadeus that the men might be paid. Then he said to the increasing throng of emigrants in German: “The fish are yours.”
A few understood his words, and conveyed their meaning to the others. Timidly they ventured forward. A woman, whose skin was yellow as a lemon from jaundice, was the first to touch a fish. Soon hundreds came. From all sides they brought baskets, pots, nets, sacks. A few old men kept the crowd in order. One of these, who wore a flowing white beard and a long Jewish coat, bowed down thrice before Christian. His forehead almost touched the earth.
A sudden impulse compelled Christian to see in person to the just distribution of the fish. He turned up his sleeves, and with his delicate hands threw the greasy, malodourous fish into the vessels held out for them. He laughed as he soiled his fingers. The hucksters and some idle onlookers laughed too. They thought him a crazy, young Englishman out for a lark. Suddenly his gorge rose at the odour of the fish, and even more at the odour of these people. He smelled their clothes and their breath, and gagged at the thought of their teeth and fingers, their hair and shoes. A morbid compulsion forced him to think of their naked bodies, and he shuddered at the idea of their flesh. So he stopped, and slipped away into the twilight.
His hands still reeked of the smoked fish. He walkedthrough the streets that had had nothing to do with his adventure and the night seemed empty.
Amadeus Voss had escaped. He waited in front of the hotel. There the line of motor cars had gathered that was to accompany Eva on her journey to Germany. Among the travellers were Crammon and Johanna Schöntag.
In October the weather turned hot on the Rio de la Plata. All day one had to stay in the house. If one opened a window, living fire seemed to stream in. Once Letitia fainted, when she wanted to air her stuffy room, and opened one of the wooden shutters.
The only spot that offered some shade and coolness toward evening was an avenue of palms beside the river. Sometimes, during the brief twilight, Letitia and her young sister-in-law Esmeralda would steal away to that place. Their road passed the ranchos, the wretched cave-like huts in which the native workmen lived.
Once Letitia saw the people of the ranchos merrily feasting and in their best garments. She asked for the reason, and was told that a child had died. “They always celebrate when some one dies,” Esmeralda told her. “How sad must their lives be to make them so in love with death.”
The avenue of palms was forbidden ground. When darkness came, the bushes rustled, and furtive men slipped back and forth. Not long before the mounted police had caught a sailor here who was wanted for a murder in Galveston. Somehow Letitia dreamed of him. She was sure he had killed his man through jealousy and bore the marks of a beautiful tragedy.
One evening she had met in this spot a young naval officer, who was a guest on a neighbouring estate. Letitia exchanged glances with him, and from that time on he sought some way of approaching her. But she was like a prisoner, orlike a Turkish woman in a harem. So she determined to outwit her guards; she really fell in love with the young officer. Her imagination made an heroic figure of him, and she began to long for him.
The heat increased. Letitia could not sleep at night. The mosquitoes hummed sweetishly, and she cried like a little child. By day she locked herself in her room, stripped off her clothes, and lay down on the cold tiles.
Once she was lying thus with arms outstretched. “I’m like an enchanted princess,” she thought, “in an enchanted castle.”
Some one knocked at the door, and she heard Stephen’s voice calling her. Idly she raised her head, and from under her heavy lids gazed down at her naked body. “What a bore it is,” she thought, “what a terrible bore always to be with the same man. I want others too.” She did not answer, and let her head droop, and rubbed her glowing cheek against the warm skin of her upper arm. It pleased the master of the harem out there to beg for admission; but Letitia did not open the door.
After a while she heard a tumult in the yard—laughter, the cracking of whips, the report of rifles, and the cries of beasts in torment. She jumped up, slipped into a silk dressing gown, opened the window that gave on the verandah, and peered out.
Stephen had tied together the tails of two cats by means of a long fuse. Along the fuse were fastened explosive bits of firework. The hissing little rockets singed the cats’ fur, and the glowing cord burned into their flesh. The cats tumbled about in their agony and howled. Stephen goaded them and followed them. His brothers, bent over the balustrade, roared with delight. Two Indians, grave and silent, watched from the gate.
Stephen had, of course, counted on Letitia’s opening the door in her curiosity. A few great leaps, and he was besideher. Esmeralda, who was in the plot, had at once faced Letitia and prevented her from locking the door. White with rage, and with raised fist, he stormed across the threshold. She fell to her knees, and hid her face in her hands.
“Why do you beat me?” she moaned, in horror and surprise. But he did not touch her.
His teeth gnashed. “To teach you to obey.”
She sobbed. “Be careful! It’s not only me you’re hurting now!”
“Damnation, what are you saying?” He stared at her crouching figure.
“You’re hurting two now.” Letitia enjoyed fooling him. Her tears were now tears of pity for herself.
“Woman, is that true?” he asked. Letitia peered furtively between her fingers, and thought mockingly: “It’s like the last act of a cheap opera.” She nodded with a gesture of pain, and determined to deceive him with the naval officer.
Stephen gave a howl of triumph, danced about, threw himself down beside her, and kissed her arms, her shoulders, and her neck. At the windows and doors appeared Doña Barbara, Esmeralda, Stephen’s brothers, and the servants. He lifted Letitia on his strong shoulders, and carried her about on the verandah. He roared his orders: a feast was to be prepared, an ox slaughtered, champagne to be put on ice.
Letitia had no qualms of conscience. She was glad to have made a fool of him.
When old Gunderam learned the cause of the rejoicing in his house, he chuckled to himself. “Fooled all the same, my sly lawyer man. In spite of the written agreement, you won’t get the Escurial, not for a good while, even if she has a whole litter.” With an unappetizing, broken little comb he smoothed his iron grey beard, and poured eau de Cologne on his head, until his hair, which was still thick, dripped.
But, strangely enough, the lie that Letitia had told in her terror turned out to be the truth. In a few days shewas sure. Secretly she was amazed. Every morning she stood before the mirror, and looked at herself with a strange respect and a subtle horror. But she was unchanged. Her mood became gently melancholy, and she threw a kiss to her image in the glass.
Since they were now afraid of crossing her wishes, she was permitted to attend a ball given by Señor and Señora Küchelbäcker, and it was there that she made the formal acquaintance of the naval lieutenant, Friedrich Pestel.
Felix Imhof and the painter Weikhardt met at the exhibition of the “secessionists” in Munich. For a while they strolled through the rooms, and looked at the paintings; then they went out on the terrace, and sat down at a table that commanded a view of the park.
It was in the early afternoon, and the odours of oil and turpentine from within blended with the fragrance of the sun-warmed plants.
Imhof crossed his long legs, and yawned affectedly. “I’m going to leave this admirable home of art and letters for some months,” he declared. “I’m going to accompany the minister of colonial affairs to South West Africa. I’m anxious to see how things are going there. Those people need looking after. Then, too, it’s a new experience, and there will be hunting.”
Weikhardt was utterly self-absorbed. He was full of his own annoyances, his inner and outer conflicts, and therefore spoke only of himself. “I am to copy a cycle by Luini for the old Countess Matuschka,” he said. “She has several blank walls in her castle in Galicia, and she wants tapestries for them. But the old creature is close as the bark on the tree, and her bargaining is repulsive.”
Imhof also pursued his own thoughts. “I’ve read a lot about Stanhope recently,” he said. “A tremendous fellow,modern through and through, reporter and conquistador at the same time. The blacks called him the ‘cliff-breaker.’ It makes one’s mouth water. Simply tremendous!”
Weikhardt continued: “But I dare say I’ll have to accept the commission. I’ve come to the end of my tether. It’ll be good to see the old Italians again, too. In Milan there’s a Tintoretto that’s adorable. I’m on the track of a secret. I’m doing things that will count. The other day I finished a picture, a simple landscape, and took it to an acquaintance of mine. He has a rather exquisite room, and there we hung it. The walls had grey hangings, and the furnishings were in black and gold. He’s a rich man and wanted to buy the picture. But when I saw how much he liked it, and saw, too, the delicate, melancholy harmony of its colours with the tints of the room, I felt a sudden flash of encouragement. I couldn’t bear to talk money, and I simply gave him the thing. He accepted it quietly enough, but he continued saying: ‘How damned good it is!’”
“It’ll take my thoughts off myself, this little trip to the Southern Hemisphere,” said Imhof. “I’m not exactly favoured of fortune just now. To be frank—everything’s in the deuce of a mess. My best horse went to smash, my favourite dog died, my wife took French leave of me, and my friends avoid me—I don’t know why. My business is progressing backward, and all my speculations end in losses. But, after all, what does it matter? I say to myself: Never say die, old boy! Here’s the great, beautiful world, and all the splendour and variety of life. If you complain, you deserve no better. My sandwich has dropped into the mud. All right; I must get a fresh one. Whoever goes to war must expect wounds. The main thing is to stick to your flag. The main thing is faith—quite simple faith.”
It was still a question which of the two would first turn his attention from himself, and hear his companion’s voice. Weikhardt, whose eyes had grown sombre, spoke again: “Othis dumb loneliness in a studio, with one’s hundred failures, and the ghosts of one’s thousand hours of despair! I have a chance to marry, and I’m going to take it, too. The girl has no money, to be sure, but she has a heart. She’s not afraid of my poverty, and comprehends the necessary quixotism of an artist’s life. She comes of a Protestant family of very liberal traditions, but two years ago she became a Catholic. When I first met her I was full of suspicion, and assumed all sorts of reasons for her step except the simple and human ones. It’s very difficult to see the simple and the human things, and still more difficult to do them. Gradually I understood what it means—to believe! and I understood what is to be reverenced in such faith. It is faith itself that is sacred, not that in which the faith is placed. It doesn’t matter what one has faith in—a book, a beast, a man, a star, a god. But it must be pure faith—immovable and unconquerable. Yes, I quite agree with you—we need simple faith.”
So they had found each other through a word. “When do I get my picture, your Descent from the Cross?” Imhof inquired.
Weikhardt did not answer the question. As he talked on, his smooth, handsome, boyish face assumed the aspect of a quarrelsome old man’s. Yet his voice remained gentle and slow, and his bearing phlegmatic. “Humanity to-day has lost its faith,” he continued. “Faith has leaked out like water from a cracked glass. Our age is tyrannised by machinery: it is a mob rule without parallel. Who will save us from machinery and from business? The golden calf has gone mad. The spirit of man kowtows to a warehouse. Our watchword is to be up and doing. We manufacture Christianity, a renaissance, culture, et cetera. If it’s not quite the real thing, yet it will serve. Everything tends toward the external—toward expression, line, arabesque, gesture, mask. Everything is stuck on a hoarding and lit by electric lamps.Everything is the very latest, until something still later begins to function. Thus the soul flees, goodness ceases, the form breaks, and reverence dies. Do you feel no horror at the generation that is growing up? The air is like that before the flood.”
“Create, O artist, and don’t philosophize,” Imhof said gently.
Weikhardt was shamed a little. “It’s true,” he said, “we have no means of knowing the goal of it all. But there are symptoms, typical cases that leave little room for hope. Did you hear the story of the suicide of the German-American Scharnitzer? He was pretty well known among artists. He used to go to the studios himself, and buy whatever took his fancy. He never bargained. Sometimes he would be accompanied by a daughter of eighteen, a girl of angelic beauty. Her name was Sybil, and he used to buy pictures for her. She was especially fond of still-life and flower pieces. The man had been in California and made millions in lumber. Then he returned to the fatherland to give the girl an atmosphere of calm and culture. Sybil was his one thought, his hope, his idol and his world. He had been married but a short time. His wife, it is said, ran away from him. All that a life of feverish activity had left him of deep feeling and of hope for the future was centred in this child. He saw in her one girl in a thousand, a little saint. And so indeed she seemed—extraordinarily dainty, proud and ethereal. One would not have dared to touch her with one’s finger. When the two were together, a delightful sense of harmony radiated from them. The father, especially, seemed happy. His voluntary death caused all the more consternation. No one suspected the motive; it was assumed that he had suffered a moment of madness. But he left behind him a letter to an American friend which explained everything. He had been indisposed one day, and had had to stay in bed. Sybil had invited several girl friends to tea, and the little company was in a room at the other end of their suite. But all the doors between were open, even the last was slightly ajar, so that the murmur of the girls’ voices came to him inarticulately. A sudden curiosity seized him to know what they were saying. He got up, slipped into a dressing gown, went softly through the intervening rooms, and listened at the door. The conversation was about the future of these girls—the possibilities of love, happiness, and marriage. Each gave her ideas. Finally it was Sybil’s turn to speak her thoughts. At first she refused; but they urged her again and again. She said she took no interest in emotions of any sort; she didn’t yearn for love; she wasn’t able to feel even gratitude to any one. What she expected of marriage was simply liberation from a galling yoke. She wanted a man who could give her all that life held—boundless luxury and high social position—and who, moreover, would be abjectly at her feet. That, she said, was her program, and she intended to carry it out too. The other girls fell silent. None answered. But that hour poisoned the father’s soul. This cynicism, uttered by the pure and spiritual voice of the child he adored and thought a miracle of depth and sweetness, the child on whom he had wasted all he was and had, plunged him into an incurable melancholy, and caused him finally to end his life.”
“My dear fellow,” cried Imhof, and waved his arm, “that man wasn’t a lumber merchant, he was a minor poet.”
“It’s possible that he was,” Weikhardt replied, and smiled; “quite possible. What does it alter? I admire a man who cannot survive the destruction of all his ideals. It’s better than to be a cliff-breaker, I assure you. Most people haven’t any ideals to be destroyed. They adapt themselves endlessly, and become vulgar and sterile.” Again his eyes grew sombre, and he added, half to himself: “Sometimes I dream of one who neither rises nor falls, of one who walks onearth whole and unchangeable, unswerving and unadaptable. Perfectly unadaptable. It is of such an one that I dream.”
Imhof jumped up, and smoothed his coat. “Talk, talk!” he rattled, in the disagreeable military tone that he assumed in his moments of pseudo-virility. “Talk won’t improve things.” He passed his arm through Weikhardt’s, and as they left the terrace, which had been gradually filling with other guests, he recited, boldly, unashamed, and in the same tone, the alcaic stanza of Hölderlin: