“What know we of the stars, of water or of wind?What of the dead, to whom the earth is kind?Of father and mother, or of child and wife?Our hearts are hungry, but our eyes are blind.”
“What know we of the stars, of water or of wind?What of the dead, to whom the earth is kind?Of father and mother, or of child and wife?Our hearts are hungry, but our eyes are blind.”
“What know we of the stars, of water or of wind?What of the dead, to whom the earth is kind?Of father and mother, or of child and wife?Our hearts are hungry, but our eyes are blind.”
“What know we of the stars, of water or of wind?
What of the dead, to whom the earth is kind?
Of father and mother, or of child and wife?
Our hearts are hungry, but our eyes are blind.”
Christian smiled coolly. Verses, he thought contemptuously, verses....
When they reached the magnificent structure in the forest of Schwanheim, they found a great restlessness there and a crowd of guests. Letitia had not yet arrived; Felix Imhof was expected hourly; purveyors and postmen came and went uninterruptedly. The place hummed like a hive.
Frau Wahnschaffe greeted Christian with restraint and dignity, although her joy gave her eyes a phosphorescent gleam. Judith looked exhausted, and paid little attention to her brother. But one evening she suddenly rushed into his arms, with a strange wild cry that betrayed the impatience and the hidden desires that had so long preyed on the cold and ambitious girl.
Christian felt the cry like a discord, and disengaged himself.
He and Crammon went hunting or took trips to the neighbouring cities. Nothing held Christian anywhere. He wanted always to go farther or elsewhere. His very eyes became restless. When they walked through the streets, he glanced surreptitiously into the windows of apartments and into the halls of houses.
One night they sat in a wine cellar at Mainz, drinking a vintage that was thirty years old and had a rare bouquet. Crammon, who was a connoisseur through and through, kept filling his glass with an enchanted air. “It’s sublime,” he said, and began eating his caviare sandwich, “simply sublime. These are the realities of life. Here are my altars, my books of devotion, my relics, the scenes of my silent prayers. The immortal soul is at rest, and the lofty and unapproachable lies in the dust behind me.”
“Talk like a decent man,” said Christian.
But Crammon, who felt the ecstasy of wine, was not to be deflected. “I have drunk the draught of earthly delight. I have done it, O friend and brother, in huts and palaces, Northand South, on sea and land. Only the final fulfilment was denied me. O Ariel, why did you cast me forth?”
He sighed, and drew from his inner pocket a tiny album in a precious binding. He always had it with him, for it contained twelve exquisite photographs of the dancer, Eva Sorel. “She is like a boy,” he said, wholly absorbed in the pictures, “a slender, swift, unapproachable boy. She stands on the mystic boundary line of the sexes; she is that equivocal and twofold thing that maddens men if they but think of flesh and blood. Elusive she is as a lizard, and chill in love as an Amazon. Do you not feel a touch of horror, Christian? Does not a cold ichor trickle through your veins, when you imagine her in your arms, breast to breast? I feel that horror! For there would be something of the perverse in it—something of an unnatural violation. He who has touched her lips is lost. We saw that for ourselves.”
Christian suddenly felt a yearning to be alone in a forest, in a dark and silent forest. He did feel a sense of horror, but in a way utterly alien to Crammon’s thought. He looked at the older man, and it was hard for him to comprehend that there, opposite him, sat his familiar friend, whose face and form he had seen a thousand times unreflectively.
Crammon, contemplating the photograph on which Eva appeared dancing with a basket of grapes, began again: “Sweetest Ariel, they are all harlots, all, all, all, whether shameless and wild or fearful and secretive: you alone are pure—a vestal, a half-ghost, a weaver of silk, like the spider, who conquers the air upon her half-spun web. Let us drink, O friend! We are made of dirt, and must be medicined by fire!”
He drained his glass, rested his head upon his hand, and sank into melancholy contemplation.
Suddenly Christian said: “Bernard, I believe that we must part.”
Crammon stared at him, as though he had not heard right.
“I believe that we must part,” Christian repeated softly and with an indistinct smile. “I fear that we are no longer suited to each other. You must go your ways, and I shall go mine.”
Crammon’s face became dark red with astonishment and rage. He brought his fist down on the table and gritted his teeth. “What do you mean? Do you think you can send me packing as though I were a servant? Me?” He arose, took his hat and coat, and went.
Christian sat there for long with his thoughts. The indistinct smile remained on his lips.
When Christian, on awakening next day, rang for his valet, Crammon entered the room in the man’s stead and made a deep bow. Over his left arm he had Christian’s garments, in his right hand his boots. He said good-morning quite in the valet’s tone, laid the clothes on a chair, set the boots on the floor, asked whether the bath was to be prepared at once, and what Herr Wahnschaffe desired for breakfast. And he did all this with complete seriousness, with an almost melancholy seriousness, and with a certain charm within the rôle he was assuming that could not fail to be pleasing.
Christian was forced to laugh. He held out his hand to Crammon. But the latter, refusing to abandon his acting, drew back, and bowed in embarrassment. He pulled the curtains aside, opened the windows, spread the fresh shirt, the socks, the cravat, and went, only to return a little later with the breakfast tray. After he had set the table and put the plates and cups in order, he stood with heels touching and head gently inclined forward. Finally, when Christian laughed again, the expression of his features altered, and he asked half-mockingly, half-defiantly: “Are you still prepared to assert that you can get along without me?”
“It’s impossible to close accounts with you, dear Bernard,” Christian answered.
“It is not one of my habits to leave the table when onlythe soup has been served,” Crammon said. “When my time comes I trundle myself off without urging. But I don’t permit myself to be sent away.”
“Stay, Bernard,” Christian answered. He was shamed by his friend. “Only stay!” And their hands clasped.
But it almost seemed to Christian that his friend had really in a sense become a servant, that he was one now, at all events, toward whom one no longer had the duty of intimate openness, with whom no inner bond united one—a companion merely.
From that time on, jests and superficial persiflage were dominant in their conversations, and Crammon either did not see or failed very intentionally to observe that his relations with Christian had undergone a fundamental change.
The arrival of the Argentinian caused a commotion among the guests of the house of Wahnschaffe. He had exotic habits. He pressed the hands of the ladies to whom he was presented with such vigour that they suppressed a cry of pain. Whenever he came down the stairs he stopped a few steps from the bottom, swung himself over the balustrade like an acrobat, and went on as though this were the most natural thing in the world. He had presented the countess with a Pekingese dog, and whenever he met the animal he tweaked its ear so that it howled horribly. And he did not do that merrily or with a smile, but in a dry, businesslike manner.
Among the numerous trunks that he brought with him, one was arranged in the form of a travelling pharmacy. Screwed down tightly in neat compartments there were all possible mixtures, powders, and medicaments; there were little boxes, tubes, jars, and glasses. If any one complained of indisposition, he at once pointed out the appropriate remedy in his trunk, and recommended it urgently.
Felix Imhof had taken an enthusiastic fancy to him. Whenever he could get hold of him, he took him aside, and questioned him regarding his country, his plans and undertakings, his outer and his inner life.
Judith, who was jealous, resented this bitterly. She made scenes for the benefit of Felix, and reproached Letitia for her failure to absorb Stephen Gunderam’s attention.
Letitia was astonished, and her eyes grew large. With innocent coquetry she asked: “What can I do about it?”
Judith’s answer was cynical. “One must study to please the men.”
She hated the Argentinian. Yet when she was alone with him she sought to ensnare him. Had it been possible to alienate him from Letitia, she would have done so out of sheer insatiableness.
Her eyes glittered with a constant and secret desire. She went to the theatre with Imhof, Letitia, and Stephen to see Edgar Lorm in “The Jewess of Toledo.” The applause which was so richly given to the actor stirred the very depth of her soul and filled it with more piercing desire. But whether she desired the man or the artist, his art or his fame, she was herself unable to tell.
She waited impatiently for Crammon, of whose friendship with Lorm she had heard. He was to bring the actor to the house with him. She was accustomed to have all men come after whom she cast her hook. They usually bit, were served up, and then enjoyed in proportion to their excellence of flavour. The household consumption of people was large.
But Crammon and Christian did not return until Lorm’s visit to Frankfort was over. So Judith fell into an evil mood, and tormented all about her without reason. Had her wish been fulfilled, her flickering soul, that needed ever new nourishment, might have been calmed. Now she buried herself stubbornly in the thought of what had passed by her.
Crammon and Christian had been spending a week with Clementine and Franz Lothar von Westernach in Styria. Clementine had summoned Crammon for the sake of her brother, who had recently returned from a stay in Hungary with a deeply shaken mind.
Crammon and Franz Lothar were very old friends. The latter’s profession of diplomacy had made the frank and flexible man reserved and difficult. He took his profession seriously, although he did not love it. A hypochondriacal state of the nerves had developed in him, even in his youth.
Christian’s sympathy went out to him in his present state. He felt tempted to question the man who sat so still and with a dim stare in his eyes. Clementine, in her empty chattering manner, gave Crammon directions for his behaviour, at which he shrugged his shoulders.
She said that she had written to her cousin, Baron Ebergeny, on whose estate in Syrmia Franz had been a guest. But the baron, who was half a peasant, had been able to give her no explanation of any real import. He had merely pointed out that he and Franz Lothar, on one of the last days of the latter’s presence, had witnessed the burning of a barn at Orasje, a neighbouring village, during which many people had lost their lives.
No information was to be obtained from Franz Lothar himself. He was steadily silent. His sister redoubled her care, but his sombre reticence only increased. Perhaps Crammon was capable of some tone, some glance, that pierced and melted his petrified soul. One evening, at all events, the unexpected happened. Crammon learnt that the burning of the barn was the real cause of his morbid melancholy.
According to her custom, Clementine had gone to bed early. Christian, Crammon, and Franz Lothar sat silently together. Suddenly—without any external impetus—Franz covered hisface with his hands, and deep sobs came from his breast. Crammon sought to soothe him. He stroked his hair and grasped his hands. In vain. The sobbing became a convulsion that shook the man’s body violently.
Christian sat without moving. A bitterness rose in his throat, for there came to him with unexpected power a sense of the essential reality of the spiritual pain that was being uttered here.
The convulsion ceased as suddenly as it had begun. Franz Lothar arose, walked up and down with dragging footsteps, and said: “You shall hear how it was.” Thereupon he sat down and told them.
In the village of Orasje a dance had been planned. No hall was available, and so the large, well-boarded barn of a peasant was prepared. Numerous lamps were hung up, and the wooden walls adorned with flowers and foliage. According to a local custom, the magnates on all the neighbouring estates and their families received invitations to attend the festivity. A mounted messenger delivered these solemnly by word of mouth.
Franz Lothar begged his brother to take him to the peasants’ ball. He had long heard stories in praise of the picturesqueness of these feasts: the snow-white garments of the men, the strong and varied colours of the women’s, the national dances, the primitive music. There was a promise in all these, both of pleasure and of a knowledge of new folk-ways.
They intended to drive over at a late hour when the dancing had already begun. Two young countesses and the latters’ brother, all members of their circle, planned to join them. But in the end the others went first, for the young ladies did not want to miss any of the dancing. Franz Lothar had long and cordially admired the Countess Irene, who was the older of the two.
Several days before the ball, however, a quarrel had broken out between the youths and maidens of Orasje. On the way to church, a lad, whom a seventeen-year-old beauty had given toorude an evidence of her dislike, had put a live mouse on her naked shoulder. The girl ran crying to her companions, and they sent an envoy to the youths, demanding that the guilty one apologize.
The demand was refused. There was laughter and teasing. But they insisted on this punishment, although they were repeated their demand in a more drastic form. When it was refused a second time they determined to invite to their ball the young men of Gradiste, between whom and those of Orasje there was a feud of many years’ standing. They knew the insult they were inflicting on the youths of their own village. But they insisted on this punishment, although they were warned even by their fathers and mothers, and by loud and silent threats which should have inspired them with fear.
The youths of Gradiste were, of course, loudly triumphant over their cheap victory. On the evening of the dance they appeared without exception, handsomely dressed, and accompanied by their own village band. Of the youths of Orasje not one was to be seen. In the twilight they passed in ghostly procession through the streets of the village, and were then seen no more.
The elders and the married folk of Orasje sat at tables in their yards and gardens, and chatted. But they were not as care-free as on other festive evenings, for they felt the vengeful mood of their sons, and feared it. They drank their wine and listened to the music. In the barn over three hundred young people were assembled. The air was sultry, and the dancers were bathed in sweat. Suddenly, while they were dancing a Czarda, the two great doors of the barn were simultaneously slammed to from without. Those who saw it and heard it ceased dancing. And now a powerful and disturbing noise broke in upon the loud and jubilant sound of the instruments. It was the sound of hammers, and a sharp and terror-shaken voice called out: “They are nailing up the doors.”
The music stopped. In a moment the atmosphere hadbecome suffocating. As though turned to stone, they all stared at the doors. Their blood seemed to congeal under the terrible blows of the hammers. Loud and mingled voices came to them from without. The older people there raised their protesting voices. The voices grew loud and wild, and then rose to desperate shrieks and howls. Then it began to crackle and hiss. The blows of the hammers had shaken down a lamp. The petroleum had caught on fire, and the dry boarding of the floor flared like tinder that could no longer be extinguished.
All reason and all human restraints fled. In the twinkling of an eye the three hundred became like wild beasts. With the violence of mania the youths hurled themselves against the locked doors; but these had been built of heavy oak, and resisted all exertions. The girls shrieked madly; and since the smoke and the fumes did not all float out through the cracks in the walls and through the small, star-shaped window-holes, the girls drew up their skirts about their heads. Others threw themselves moaning to the floor; and when they were trodden on by the others, who surged so madly to and fro, they writhed convulsively, and stretched out their arms. Soon the dry woodwork had become a mass of flame. The heat was intolerable. Many tore off their garments, both youths and maidens, and in the terror and the torment of death, united in the wild embraces of a sombre ecstasy, and wrung from their doomed lives an ultimate sting of delight.
These embracing couples Franz Lothar saw later with his own eyes as lumps of cinders amid the smoking ruins. He arrived with his cousin, when the whole horror had already taken place. They had seen the reflection of the flames in the sky from afar, and whipped up their horses. From the neighbouring villages streamed masses of people. But they came too late to help. The barn had been burned down within five minutes, and all within, except five or six, had found their death.
Among the victims was also the Countess Irene, her sisterand brother. Terrible as this was, it added but little to the unspeakable horror of the whole catastrophe. The image of that place of ruins; the sight of the smouldering corpses; their odour and the odour of blood and burned hair and garments; the pied, short-haired village dogs, who crept with greedy growls about this vast hearth of cooked flesh; the distorted faces of the suffocated, whose bodies lay untouched amid the other burned and blackened ones; the loud or silent grief of mothers, fathers, brothers; the Syrmian night, fume-filled to the starry sky,—these things rained blow on blow upon the spirit of Franz Lothar, and caused a black despair to creep into the inmost convolutions of his brain.
It eased him that he had at last found the release of speech. He sat by the window, and looked out into the dark.
Crammon, a sinister cloud upon his lined forehead, said: “Only with a whip can the mob be held in leash. What I regret is the abolition of torture. The devil take all humanitarian twaddle!” Then he went out and put his arms about Lothar and kissed him.
But Christian felt a sense of icy chill and rigidness steal over him.
Their departure was set for the next morning. Crammon entered the room of Christian, who was so lost in thoughts that he did not reply to the greeting of his friend. “Look here, what’s wrong with you?” Crammon exclaimed, as he examined him. “Have you looked in the glass?”
Christian had dispensed with his valet on this trip, or the slight accident could not have happened. The colours of his suit and his cravat presented an obvious discord.
“I’m rather absent-minded to-day,” Christian said, half-smiling. He took off the cravat, and replaced it by another. It took him three times as long as usual. Crammon walked impatiently up and down.
Confusion seized upon Christian whenever he sought to think about the condition in which he found himself.
In his breast there was an emptiness which nothing could fill from without, and about him was a rigid armour that hindered all freedom of movement. He yearned to fill the emptiness and to burst the armour.
His mother became anxious, and said: “You look peaked, Christian. Is anything wrong with you?” He assured her that there was nothing. But she knew better, and inquired of Crammon: “What ails Christian? He is so still and pale.”
Crammon answered: “Dear lady, that is his style of personality. Experiences carve his face. Has it not grown nobler and prouder? You need fear nothing. He follows his road firmly and unwaveringly. And so long as I am with him, nothing evil can happen to him.”
Frau Wahnschaffe was moved in her faint way, though still in doubt, and gave him her hand.
Crammon said to Christian: “The countess has made a great catch—a person from overseas. Quite fitting.”
“Do you like the man?” Christian asked, uncertainly.
“God forbid that I should think evil of him,” Crammon replied, hypocritically. “He is from so far away, and will go so far away again, that I cannot but find him congenial. If he takes that child Letitia with him, he shall be accompanied by my blessings. Whether it will mean her happiness, that is a matter I refuse to be anxious about. Such remote distances have, at all events, something calming. The Argentine, the Rio de la Plata! Dear me, it might just as well be the moon!”
Christian laughed. Yet the figure of Crammon, as it stood there before him, seemed to dissolve into a mist, and he suppressed what he still had to say.
Twenty-three of the guest rooms were occupied. Peoplearrived and left. Scarcely did one begin to recognize a face, when it disappeared again. Men and women, who had met but yesterday, associated quite intimately to-day, and said an eternal farewell to-morrow. A certain Herr von Wedderkampf, a business associate of the elder Wahnschaffe, had brought his four daughters. Fräulein von Einsiedel arranged to settle down for the winter, for her parents were in process of being divorced. Wolfgang, who was spending his vacation at home, had brought with him three student friends. All these people were in a slightly exalted mood, made elaborate plans for their amusement, wrote letters and received them, dined, flirted, played music, were excited and curious, witty and avid for pleasure, continued to carry on their worldly affairs from here, and assumed an appearance of friendliness, innocence, and freedom from care.
Liveried servants ran up and down the stairs, electric bells trilled, motor car horns tooted, tables were laid, lamps shone, jewels glittered. Behind one door they flirted, behind another they brewed a scandal. In the hall with the fair marble columns sat smiling couples. It was a world thoroughly differentiated from those quite accidental modern groupings at places where one pays. It was full of a common will to oblige, of secret understandings, and of social charm.
Letitia had gone with her aunt to spend a week in Munich. She did not return until the third day after Christian’s arrival. Christian was glad to see her. Yet he could not bring himself to enter into conversation with her.
One morning he sat at breakfast with his father. He marvelled how strange to him was this gentleman with the white, parted hair, with the elegantly clipped and divided beard and the rosy complexion.
Herr Wahnschaffe treated him with very great courtesy. He inquired after the social relations that Christian hadformed in England, and commented upon his son’s frugal answers with instructive remarks concerning men and things. “It is well for Germans to gain ground there—useful and necessary.”
He discussed the threatening clouds in the political sky, and expressed his disapproval of Germany’s attitude during the Moroccan crisis. But Christian remained silent, through want of interest and through ignorance, and his father became visibly cooler, took up his paper, and began to read.
What a stranger he is to me, Christian thought, and searched for a pretext that would let him rise and leave. At that moment Wolfgang came to the table, and talked about the results of the races at Baden-Baden. His voice annoyed Christian, and he escaped.
It happened that Judith was sitting in the library and teased him about Letitia. Then Letitia herself and Crammon entered chatting. Felix Imhof soon joined them. Letitia took a book, and carefully avoided, as was clear, looking in Christian’s direction. Then those three left the room again, and Judith listened with pallor to their retreating voices, for she had heard Felix pay Letitia a compliment. “Perhaps she is committing a great folly,” she said. Then she turned to her brother. “Why are you so silent?” She wrinkled her forehead, and rested her folded hands on his shoulder. “We are all merry and light hearted here, and you are so changed. Don’t you like to be among us? Isn’t it lovely here at home? And if you don’t like it, can’t you go at any time? Why are you so moody?”
“I hardly know; I am not moody,” Christian replied. “One cannot always be laughing.”
“You’ll stay until my wedding, won’t you?” Judith continued, and raised her brows. “I’ll never forgive you if you don’t.” Christian nodded, and then she said with a friendly urgency, “Why don’t you ever talk to me, you bear? Ask me something!”
Christian smiled. “Very well, I’ll ask you something,” he said. “Are you contented, Judith? Is your heart at peace?”
Judith laughed. “That’s asking too much at once! You used not to be so forthright.” Then she leaned forward, with her elbows on her knees, and spread out her hands. “We Wahnschaffes can never be contented. All that we have is too little, for there is always so much that one has not. I’m afraid I shall be like the fisherman’s wife in the fairy tale. Or, rather, I’m not afraid but glad at the thought that I’ll send my fisherman back to the fish in the sea again and again. Then I shall know, at least, what he is willing to risk.”
Christian regarded his beautiful sister, and heard the temerity of her words. There was an audacity about her gestures, her words, her bright, clear voice, and the glow of her eyes. He remembered how he had sat one evening with Eva Sorel; and she had been as near him as Judith was now. In silent ecstasy he had looked at Eva’s hands, and she had raised her left hand and held it against the lamp, and though the radiance outlined only the more definitely the noble form of the rosy translucence of her flesh, the dark shadow of the bony structure had been plainly visible. And Eva had said: “Ah, Eidolon, the kernel knows nothing of beauty.”
Christian arose and asked almost sadly: “You will know what he risks. But will that teach you to know what you gain?”
Judith looked up at him in surprise, and her face darkened.
One day he entered the sitting-room of his mother, but she was not there. He approached the door that led to her bedroom, and knocked. When he received no answer, he opened it. She was not in this room either. Looking about, he became aware of a brown silk dress trimmed with lace that belonged to his mother and that had been put on a form. And for a second he seemed to see her before him, but without a head. Hefell to thinking, and the same thought came to him that he had had in his father’s presence: What a stranger she is to me! And the dress, that hid only the wicker form, became an image of his mother, more recognizable to him than her living body.
For there was about her something impenetrable and inexplicable—the rigid attitude, the hopeless mien, the dull eye, the rough voice that had no resonance, her whole joyless character. She, in whose house all made merry, and whose whole activity and being seemed dedicated to give others the opportunity of delight, was herself utterly barren of joy.
But she had the most magnificent pearls in Europe. And all men knew this and esteemed her for it and boasted of it.
Christian’s self-deception went so far, that he was about to talk to that hollow form more intimately than he would have done to his living mother. A question leaped to his lips, a tender and cheerful word. Then he heard her footsteps, and was startled. He turned around, and seemed to see her double.
She was not surprised at meeting him here. She was rarely surprised at anything. She sat down on a chair and her eyes were empty.
She discussed Imhof, who had introduced a Jewish friend of his to the house. She deprecated association with Jews as a practice. She added that Wahnschaffe—she always called her husband so—agreed with her.
She expressed her disapproval of Judith’s engagement. “Wahnschaffe is really opposed to this marriage too,” she said, “but it was difficult to find a pretext to refuse. If Judith sets her heart on anything! Well, you know her! I am afraid her chief ambition was to get ahead of her friend Letitia.”
Christian looked up in amazement. His mother did not observe it, and continued: “With all his good qualities Imhof does not seem reliable. He is a plunger, and restless and changeable as a weather vane. Of the ten millions which his foster father left him, five or six are already lost throughspeculation and extravagance. What is your judgment of him?”
“I haven’t really thought about it,” Christian answered. This conversation was beginning to weary him.
“Then, too, his origin is obscure. He was a foundling. Old Martin Imhof, whom Wahnschaffe knew, by the way, and who belonged to one of the first patrician families of Düsseldorf, is said to have adopted him under peculiar circumstances. He was an old bachelor, and had a reputation for misanthropy. At last he was quite alone in the world, and absolutely adored this strange child. Hadn’t you heard about that?”
“Some rumour, yes,” Christian said.
“Well, now tell me something about yourself, my son,” Frau Wahnschaffe asked, with a changed expression and with a smile of suffering.
But Christian had no answer. His world and his mother’s world—he saw no bridge between the two. And as the knowledge came to him, another matter also became clear. And it was this, that there was likewise no bridge between the world of his conscious life and another that lay far behind it, misty and menacing, luring and terrible at once, which he did not understand, nor know, of which he had not even a definite presage, but which had come to him only as a vision through flashes of lightning, or as a dream or in a swift touch of horror.
He kissed his mother’s hand, and hastened out.
In spite of a gently persistent rain, he walked with Letitia through the twilit park. Many times they wandered up and down the path from the hot-houses to the pavillion, and heard the sound of a piano from the house. Fräulein von Einsiedel was playing.
At first their conversation was marked by long pauses. Something in Letitia was beseeching: Take me, take me!Christian understood. He wore his arrogant smile, but he did not dare to look at her. “I love music heard from afar,” Letitia said. “Don’t you, Christian?”
He drew his raincoat tighter about him, and replied: “I care little about music.”
“Then you have a bad heart, or at least a hard one.”
“It may be that I have a bad heart; it is certainly hard.”
Letitia flushed, and asked: “What do you love? I mean what things. What?” The archness of her expression did not entirely conceal the seriousness of her question.
“What things I love?” he repeated lingeringly, “I don’t know. Does one have to love things? One uses them. That is all.”
“Oh, no!” Letitia cried, and her deep voice brought a peculiar warmth to Christian. “Oh, no! Things exist to be loved. Flowers, for instance, and stars. One loves them. If I hear a beautiful song or see a beautiful picture, at once something cries within me: That is mine, mine!”
“And do you feel that too when a bird suddenly drops down and dies, as you have seen it happen? Or when a wounded deer dies before you when you are hunting?” Christian asked, hesitatingly.
Letitia was silent, and looked at him with a touch of fear. The glance of her eyes was inexpressibly grateful to him. Take me, take me, that silent voice pleaded with him again. “But those are not things,” she said softly, “they are living beings.”
His voice was gentler than hitherto when he spoke again: “All things that are fragrant and glowing, that serve adornment and delight are yours indeed, Letitia. But what are mine?” He stood still, and asked again with a look of inner distress which shook Letitia’s soul. Never had she expected such words or such a tone of him.
Her glance reminded him: you kissed me once! Think of it—you kissed me once!
“When is your wedding going to be?” he asked, and his lids twitched a little.
“I don’t know exactly. We’re not even formally engaged at present,” Letitia answered, laughing. “He has declared that I must be his wife and won’t be contradicted. Christmas my mother is coming to Heidelberg, and then, I suppose, the wedding will take place. What I do look forward to is the voyage overseas and the strange country.” And in her radiant eyes flamed up the impassioned plea: Oh, take me, take me! My yearning is so great! But with a coquettish turn of the head, she asked: “How do you like Stephen?”
He did not answer her question, but said softly: “Some one is watching us from the house.”
Letitia whispered: “He is jealous of the very earth and air.” It began to rain harder, and so they turned their steps toward the house. And Christian felt that he loved her.
An hour later he entered the smoking room. Imhof, Crammon, Wolfgang, and Stephen Gunderam sat about a round table, and played poker. The demeanour of each accorded with his character: Imhof was superior and talkative, Crammon absent-minded and sombre, Wolfgang distrustful and excited. Stephen Gunderam’s face was stonily impassive. He was as utterly dedicated to his occupation as a somnambulist. He has been winning uninterruptedly, and a little mountain of bank notes and gold was rising in front of him. Crammon and Imhof moved aside to make room for Christian. At that moment Stephen jumped up. Holding his cards in his hand, he stared at Christian with eyes full of hatred.
Christian regarded him with amazement. But when the other three, rather surprised, also moved to get up, Stephen Gunderam sank back into his chair, and said with sombre harshness: “Let us play on. May I ask for four cards?”
Christian left the neighbourhood of the table. He felt that he loved Letitia. His whole heart loved her, tenderly and with longing.
A discharged workman had lain in wait one evening for the automobile of Herr Albrecht Wahnschaffe. When the car slowed up and approached the gate of the park, the assassin, hidden by the bushes, had stealthily shot at his former employer.
The bullet only grazed its victim’s arms. The wound was slight, but Albrecht Wahnschaffe had to remain in bed for several days. After his deed the criminal had escaped under cover of darkness. It was not until next morning that the police succeeded in catching him.
This happening, inconsiderable as were its consequences, had disturbed for a little the merry life in the house of Wahnschaffe. Several persons left. Among these was Herr von Wedderkampf, who told his daughters that the ground here was getting too hot for his feet.
But on the third evening every one was dancing again.
It surprised Christian. He did not understand such swift forgetfulness. He was surprised at the equanimity of his mother, the care-free mood of his sister and brother.
He wished to learn the name of that workingman, but no one knew. He was told that the man’s name was Müller. Also that it was Schmidt. He was surprised. Nor did any one seem to know exactly what motive impelled the man to his deed. One said that it had been mere vengefulness, the result of the flame of class hatred systematically fanned. Another said that only a lunatic could be capable of such a deed.
Whatever it was, this shot fired from ambush by an unknown man for an unknown cause was not quite the same to Christian as it was to all the others who lived about him and sought their pleasure in their various ways. It forced him to meditation. His meditation was aimless and fruitless enough. But it was serious, and caused him strange suffering.
He would have liked to see the man. He would have liked to look into his face.
Crammon said: “Another case that makes it clear as day that the discarding of torture has simply made the canaille more insolent. What admirable inventions for furthering discipline and humanity were the stocks and the pillory!”
Christian visited his father, who sat in an armchair with his arm in a sling. A highly conservative newspaper was spread out before him. Herr Wahnschaffe said: “I trust that you and your friends are not practising any undue restraint. I could not endure the thought of darkening the mood of my guests by so much as a breath.”
Christian was astonished at this courtesy, this distinction and temperance, this amiable considerateness.
Deep in the woods, amid ruins, Stephen Gunderam demanded of Letitia that she decide his fate.
A picnic in very grand style had been arranged; Letitia and Stephen had remained behind here; and thus it had happened.
Around them arose the ancient tree-trunks and the immemorial walls. Above the tree-tops extended the pallid blue of the autumnal sky. His knees upon the dry foliage, a man, using sublime and unmeasured words, asserted his eternal love. Letitia could not withstand the scene and him.
Stephen Gunderam said: “If you refuse me nothing is left me but to put a bullet through my head. I have had it in readiness for long. I swear to you by the life of my father that I speak truly.”
Could a girl as gentle and as easily persuaded as Letitia assume the responsibility for such blood-guiltiness? And she gave her consent. She did not think of any fetter, nor of the finality of such a decision, nor of time nor of its consequences, nor of him to whom her soul was to belong. She thought onlyof this moment, and that there was one here who had spoken to her these sublime and unmeasured words.
Stephen Gunderam leaped up, folded her in his arms and cried: “From now on you belong to me through all eternity—every breath, every thought, every dream of yours is mine and mine only! Never forget that—never!”
“Let me go, you terrible man!” Letitia said, but with a shiver of delight. She felt herself carried voluptuously upon a wave of romance. Her nerves began to vibrate, her glance shimmered and broke. For the first time she felt the stir of the flesh. With a soft cry she glided from his grasp.
Even on the way home they received congratulations. Crammon slunk quietly away. When Christian came and gave Letitia his hand, there was in her eyes a restless expectation, a fantastic joy that he could not understand at all. He could not fathom what she hid behind this expression. He could not guess that even at this moment she was faithlessly withdrawing herself from him to whom she had just entrusted her life, its every breath and thought and dream, and that in her innocent but foolish way she desired to convey to Christian a sense of this fact.
He loved her. From hour to hour his love grew. He felt it to be almost an inner law that he must love her—a command which said to him: This is she to whom you must turn; a message whose burden was: In her shall you find yourself.
He seemed to be hearing the voice of Eva: Your path was from me to her. I taught you to feel. Now give that feeling to a waiting heart. You can shape it and mould it and yourself. Let it not be extinguished nor flicker out and die.
Thus the inner voice seemed to speak.
Crammon, the thrice hardened, had a dream wherein some one reproved him for standing by idly, while his flesh and blood was being sold to an Argentinian ranchman. So hewent to the countess, and asked her if she indeed intended to send the tender child into a land of savages. “Don’t you feel any dread at the thought of her utter isolation in these regions of the farthest South?” he asked her, and rolled his hands in and out, which gave him the appearance of an elderly usurer.
“What are you thinking of, Herr von Crammon?” The countess was indignant. “What right have you to question me? Or do you happen to know a better man for her, a wealthier, more distinguished, more presentable one? Do you imagine one can be happy only in Europe? I’ve had a look at a good many people. They ran after us by the dozen at Interlaken, Aix-les-Bains, at Geneva and Zürich and Baden-Baden—old and young, Frenchmen and Russians, Germans and Englishmen, counts and millionaires. We didn’t start out with any particular craze for the exotic. Your friend Christian can bear witness to that! But he, I dare say, thought himself too good for us. It’s bad enough that I have to let my darling go across the ocean, without your coming to me and making my heart heavier than ever!”
But Crammon was not to be talked down. “Consider the matter very carefully once more,” he said. “The responsibility is tremendous. Do you realize that venomous snakes exist in those regions whose bite kills within five seconds? I have read of storms that uproot the most powerful trees and overturn houses nine stories high. So far as I have been informed, certain tribes native to Terra del Fuego still practise cannibalism. Furthermore, there are species of ants that attack human beings and devour them bodily. The heat of summer is said to be insufferable, and equally so the cold of winter. It is an inhospitable region, countess, and a dirty one with dangerous inhabitants. I want you to consider the whole matter carefully once more.”
The countess was rather overcome. Delighted with the effect of his words, Crammon left her with head erect.
That evening, when Letitia was already in bed, the countess, with arms crossed on her bosom, walked up and down in the girl’s room. Her conscience was heavy, but she hardly knew how to begin a discussion. All afternoon she had been writing letters and addressing announcements of the engagement, and now she was tired. The little dog, Puck, meanwhile sat on a silken pillow in the adjoining room, and barked shrilly and without cause from time to time.
Letitia stared into the dim space above her with eyes that gleamed softly with the mystery of dreams. So rapt was she that if one had pressed a pin into her flesh she would not have noticed it.
At last the countess conquered herself sufficiently. She sat down near the bed, and took Letitia’s hands into her own. “Is it true, sweetheart,” she began, “and did Stephen tell you about all these things that Herr von Crammon speaks of—venomous snakes and cannibals and tornadoes and wild ants and frightful heat and cold in this terrible country that you’re going to? If all this is true, I want to beseech you to reconsider very thoroughly this step that you’re about to take.”
Letitia laughed a deep and hearty laugh. “Are you beginning to get frightened now, auntie?” she cried, “just as I’ve been dreaming about the future! Crammon has played an ill-timed prank. That is all. Stephen never lies, and according to his description the Argentine is a veritable earthly paradise. Do listen, auntie!” She said this with an air of mystery, moved to the edge of her bed, and regarded the countess full of confidence and delight. “The land is full of peaches as large as a child’s head and of the most exquisite flavour. They are so plentiful that those that cannot be eaten or sold are piled up in great heaps and burned. They have game of all sorts, which they prepare in wonderful ways quite unknown in Europe, and fishes and fowl and honey, the rarest vegetables, and everything that the heart can desire.”
The countess’ face brightened. She petted Letitia’s arm,and said: “Well, of course, in that case, and if it is really so....”
But Letitia went on: “When I’ve become thoroughly acclimated and familiar with everything, I’ll ask you, dear aunt, to come out to us. You’ll have a house of your own, a charming villa all overgrown with flowers. Your pantries shall be filled afresh daily and you shall have a marble bath next to your bedroom. You’ll be able to get into it as often as you like, and you will have Negro women to wait on you.”
“That is right, my darling,” the countess answered, and her face was transfigured with delight. “Whether it’s a paradise or not, I am pretty sure that it will be dirty. And dirt, as you know, is something I hate almost as much as poisonous serpents or cannibals.”
“Don’t be afraid, auntie,” said Letitia, “we’ll lead a wonderful life there.”
The countess was calmed, and embraced Letitia with overwhelming gratitude.
In order to escape from the confusion at Wahnschaffe Castle, as the new house was known, Christian and Crammon retired for several days to Christian’s Rest. Scarcely had they settled down, when they were joined by Judith and her companion, by Letitia and Fräulein von Einsiedel.
The countess and Stephen Gunderam had gone to Heidelberg, where they were expecting Frau von Febronius. Letitia was to follow them a week later. Felix had been summoned to Leipzig, where he was to join in the founding of a great new publishing house. After his return to the castle, his and Judith’s wedding was to take place.
Judith announced that she intended to enjoy the last days of her liberty. It had not needed much persuasion to bring Letitia with her. The companion and Fräulein von Einsiedel were regarded as chaperones, and so with laughter and merriment these four surprised Christian and Crammon suddenly.
The weather was beautiful, though somewhat cold. They passed most of their time out of doors, walking in the woods, playing golf, arranging picnics. The evenings flew by in cheerful talk. Once Crammon read to them Goethe’s “Torquato Tasso,” and imitated the intonation and the rhythms of Edgar Lorm so deceptively that Judith grew excited and could not hear enough. She was attracted by the very imitation that he practised; to Letitia the verses were like wine; Fräulein von Einsiedel, who had been mourning a lost love for years, struggled with her tears at many passages. Judith, on the other hand, saw an adored image in a magic mirror, and when the reading was over, turned the conversation to Lorm, and besought Crammon to tell her about him.
Crammon did as she desired. He told her of the actor’s romantic friendship with a king, of his first marriage to a fair-haired Jewess. He had loved her madly, and she had left him suddenly and fled to America. He had followed her thither, and tracked her from place to place, but all his efforts to win her back had been in vain. He had returned in grave danger of losing himself and wasting his talent. Lonely and divided in his soul, he had tried to settle in various places. He had broken his contracts, been outlawed by the managers, and barely tolerated by the public as a dangerous will o’ the wisp. At last, however, his genius had fought down all unfortunate circumstances as well as the weaknesses of his own nature, and he was now the most radiant star in the heaven of his art.
When Crammon had ended, Judith came up to him and stroked his cheeks. “That was charming, Crammon. I want you to be rewarded.”
Crammon laughed in his deepest bass voice, and answered: “Then I ask as my reward that you four ladies return to-morrow morning to the castle, and leave my friend Christianand me to each other’s silence. Isn’t it true, Christian, dear boy? We like to brood over the mysteries of the world.”
“The brute!” they cried out, “the traitor! The base intriguer!” But it was only a jesting indignation. Their return had really been set for the next day.
Christian arose and said: “Bernard is not wrong when he says we desire silence. It is lovely to be surrounded by loveliness. But you girls are too restless and unquiet.” He had spoken in jest. But as he passed his hand over his forehead, one could see the deep seriousness in his heart.
They all looked at him. There was something strangely proud about his appearance. Letitia’s heart beat. When he looked at her, her eyes fell and she blushed deeply. She loved all that he was, all that lay behind him, all that he had experienced, all women he had loved, all men from whom he came or to whom he went.
Suddenly she remembered the little golden toad. She had brought it with her and she determined to give it to him to-day. But to do that she wanted to be alone with him.
It was her wish that their meeting be at night, and she gave him a sign. Unnoticed by the others, she succeeded in whispering to him that she would come to him that night with a gift. He was to wait for her.
He looked at her without a word. When she glided away, his lips throbbed.
After midnight, when all were asleep in the house, she left her chamber, and mounted to the upper floor where Christian had his rooms. She went softly but without especial fear. Bending her head forward, she held in her hands the folds of the white silken over-garment that she wore. Its transparent texture was more like a white shimmer, a pearly gleam upon her flesh than a garment. It was doubled only about her waist and bosom, and her steps were impeded by a satin riband abouther knees. Thus, while her pulses throbbed, she had to trip, to her own amusement, like the Geisha girls she had seen in a theatre.
When Christian had locked the door behind her, she leaned against it in sudden weakness.
Gently he took her wrists, and breathed a kiss upon her forehead, smiled, and asked: “What did you want to bring to me, Letitia? I long to know.”
Suddenly she was aware that she had forgotten the golden toy. Shortly before she had left her room, she had laid it in readiness; and yet she had forgotten it. “How stupid of me!” The words slipped out, and she gazed in shame at her little shoes of black velvet. “How stupid of me! There was a little toad made of gold that I meant to bring to you.”
It startled him. Then he recalled the words that he had spoken so many months ago. The intervening time seemed thrice its natural length. He wondered now how he could ever have been frightened of a toad. He could, to be sure, hear his own words again: “Have a little toad made of gold, that the evil magic may disappear.” But the monition had no validity to-day. The spell had been broken without a talisman.
And as he saw the girl stand before him, quivering and intoxicated, the trembling and the ecstasy seized him too. Many others had come to him—none so innocent and yet so guilty, none so determined and so deluded at once. He knew those gestures, that silent yearning, the eye that flamed and smouldered, the half-denial and the half-assent, the clinging and repulsing, the sighs and the magical tears that tasted like warm and salty dew. He knew! And his senses urged him with all their power to experience and to taste it all again.
But there were things that stood between him and his desire. There was a pallid brunette face whose eyes were upon him with unimaginable clearness. There was a blood-soaked face to which the black hair clung. There was a face that had once been beautiful, swollen by the waters of theThames. And there was a face full of hatred and shame against the coarse linen of a bed, and another in the storeroom of a hotel which was swathed in a white cloth. There were other faces—faces of men and women, thousands upon thousands, on the shore of a river, and still others that were stamped upon and charred, which he had seen as though they were concrete realities through the eyes of another. All these things stood between him and his desire.
And his heart opposed it too. And the love that he felt for Letitia.
He grew a little paler, and a chill crept into his fingertips. He took Letitia by the hand, and led her to the middle of the room. She looked about her timidly, but every glance was his who filled her whole being. She asked him concerning the pictures that hung on the wall, and admired a picture of himself which was among them. She asked after the meaning of a little sculptured group which he had bought in Paris: a man and a woman emerging from the earth of which they were made, contending with primitive power.
Her deep voice had a more sensuous note than ever. And as he answered her, the temptation assailed him anew to touch with his lips the warm, rosy, throbbing curve of her shoulder, which was like a ripe fruit. But an inescapable voice within him cried: Resist once! Resist but this single time!
It was difficult, but he obeyed.
Letitia did not know what was happening to her. She shivered, and begged him to close the window. But when he had done so, her chill increased. She looked at him furtively. His face seemed arrogant and alien. They had sat down on a divan, and silence had fallen upon them. Why did I forget the little toad? Letitia thought. My folly is to blame for everything. And instinctively she moved away from him a little.
“Letitia,” he said, and arose, “perhaps you will understand it all some day.” Then he kneeled on the floor at her feet, and took her cool hands and laid them against his cheeks.
“No, I don’t understand,” Letitia whispered, and her eyes were wet, although she smiled, “and I shall never understand.”
“You will! Some day you will!”
“Never,” she asserted passionately, “never!” All things were confused within her. She thought of flowers and stars, of dreams and images. She thought of birds that fell dead out of the air, as he had described them once, and a deer dying at the hunter’s feet. She thought of paths upon which she would go, of far sea-faring, and of jewels and costly garments. But none of these images held her. They were formed and dissolved. A chain broke in her soul, and she felt a need to lie down and weep for a while. Not for long. And it was possible that, when the weeping was over, she might look forward with delight once more to the coming day and to Stephen Gunderam and to their wedding.
“Good-night, Christian,” she said, and gave him her hand as after a simple chat. And all the objects in the room had changed their appearance. On the table stood a cut-glass bowl full of meadow-saffron, and their white stalks were like the antennæ of a polypus. The night outside was no longer the same night. One seemed quite free now in a peculiar way—in a defiant and vengeful way.
Christian was amazed by her gesture and posture. He had not touched her; yet it was a girl who had come to him, and it was a woman who went. “I will think about it,” she said, and nodded to him with a great, dark look. “I will learn to understand it.”
So she went—went on into her rich, poverty-stricken, adventurous, difficult, trifling life.
Christian listened to the dying echo of her tread beyond the door. He stood without moving, and his head was bent. To him, too, the night had changed into another. Despite his obedience to the inner voice, a doubt gnawed at his soul whether what he had done was right or wrong, good or evil.
One day Christian received a letter that bore the signature of Ivan Michailovitch Becker. Becker informed him that he was staying for a short time in Frankfort, and that a woman, a mutual friend, had insisted that he should visit Christian Wahnschaffe. But this he would not do for well-considered reasons. If, however, Christian Wahnschaffe’s state of mind was such as their friend seemed to assume, he would be glad to see him on some evening.
Eva’s name was not mentioned. But twice he spoke of that woman who was their mutual friend—twice. And Becker had added the street where he lived and the number of the house.
Christian’s first impulse was to ignore the invitation. He told himself that there was nothing in common between him and Becker. The Russian had not been congenial to him. He had disapproved and arrogantly overlooked the man’s friendship with Eva. Whenever he thought of his ugly face, his dragging gait, his sombre, silent presence, a sense of discomfort seized upon him. What did the man want? Why this summons in which there was a shadow of menace?
After he had tried in vain to keep from brooding over this incident, he showed the letter to Crammon, in the secret hope that his friend would warn him against any response. Crammon read the letter, but shrugged his shoulders and said nothing. Crammon was in a bad humour; Crammon was hurt. He had felt for some time that Christian excluded him from his confidence. In addition he was thinking far more of Eva Sorel than was good for the peace of his soul. He paid ardent attention to Fräulein von Einsiedel, nor was that lady unresponsive. But this triumph could not restore the equilibrium of his mind, and Becker’s letter opened his old wound anew.
Christian put an end to his vacillation by a sudden decision, and started out to find Becker. The house was in the suburbs,and he had to climb the four flights of stairs of a common tenement. He was careful to come in contact with neither the walls nor the balustrades. When he had reached the door and pulled the bell, he was pale with embarrassment and disgust.
When Christian had entered the shabbily furnished room and sat opposite Becker, what impressed him most was the stamp of suffering on the Russian’s face. He asked himself whether this was new or whether he had merely not perceived it before. When Becker spoke to him, his answers were shy and awkward.
“Madame Sorel is going to Petrograd in the spring,” Ivan Michailovitch told him. “She has signed a three-months’ contract with the Imperial Theatre there.”
Christian expressed his pleasure at this information. “Are you going to stay here long?” he asked, courteously.
“I don’t know,” was the answer. “I’m waiting for a message here. Afterwards I shall join my friends in Switzerland.”
“My last conversation with Madame Sorel,” he continued, “was exclusively about you.” He watched Christian attentively out of his deep-set eyes.
“About me? Ah....” Christian forced himself to a conventional smile.
“She insisted on my remaining in communication with you. She said that it meant much to her, but gave no reason. She never does give reasons, though. She insisted likewise that I send her a report. Yet she did not even give me a message for you. But she kept repeating: ‘It means something to me, and it may mean very much to him.’ So you see that I am only her instrument. But I hope that you are not angry with me for annoying you.”
“Not in the least,” Christian asserted, although he felt oppressed. “Only I can’t imagine what is in her mind.” He sat there wondering, and added: “She has her very personal ways!”
Ivan Becker smiled, and the moisture of his thick lips became unpleasantly visible. “It is very true. She is an enthusiastic creature, and a woman of great gifts. She has power over others, and is determined to use that power.”
A pause ensued.
“Can I be of assistance to you?” Christian asked conventionally.
Becker regarded him coldly. “No,” he said, “not of the least.” He turned his eyes to the window, from which one could see the chimneys of the factories, the smoke, and the sinister snow-fraught air. Since the room was unheated, he had a travelling rug spread across his knees, and under it he hid his crippled hand. A movement of his limbs shifted the rug, and the hand became visible. Christian knew the story of it. Crammon had told him at the time in Paris of his meeting and his talk with Becker. He had heard it with indifference, and had avoided looking at the hand.
Now he regarded it. Then he got up, and with a gesture of freedom and assurance, which astonished even Becker, despite the Russian’s superficial knowledge of him, he held out his own hand. Ivan Michailovitch gave him his left hand, which Christian held long and pressed cordially. Then he left without speaking another word.
But on the following day he returned.
Ivan Michailovitch told him the story of his life. He offered him a simple hospitality, made tea, and even had the room heated. He spoke rather disconnectedly, with half-closed eyes and a morbid, suffering smile. Now he would relate episodes of his youth, now of his later years. The burden was always the same: oppression, need, persecution, suffering—suffering without measure. Wherever one went, one saw crushed hearts, happiness stamped out, and personalities destroyed. His parents had gone under in poverty, his brothersand sisters had drifted away and were lost, his friends had fallen in wars or died in exile. It was a life without centre or light or hope—a world of hate and malevolence, cruelty and darkness.
Christian sat there and listened until late into the night.
Next they met in a coffee house, an ugly place which Christian would once not have endured, and sat until far into the night. Often they sat in silence; and this silence tormented Christian, and kept him in a state of unbearable tension. But his expression was a gentle one.
They took walks along the river, or through the streets and parks in the snow. Ivan Michailovitch spoke of Pushkin and Byelinsky, of Bakunin and Herzen, of Alexander I and the legend of his translation to heaven, and of the peasants—the poor, dark folk. He spoke of the innumerable martyrs of forgotten names, men and women whose actions and sufferings beat at the heart of mankind, and whose blood, as he said, was the red dawn of the sunrise of a new and other age.
So Christian kept disappearing from his home, and no one knew where he went.
Once Ivan Michailovitch said: “I am told that a workingman made a murderous assault on your father. The man was condemned to seven years in the penitentiary yesterday.”
“Yes, it is true,” Christian replied. “What was his name? I have forgotten it.”
It turned out that the man’s name was neither Schmidt nor Müller, but Roderick Kroll. Ivan Michailovitch knew it. “There’s a wife and five little children left in extreme distress,” he said. “Have you ever tried for a moment to grasp imaginatively what that means—real distress? Is your imagination powerful enough to realize it? Have you ever seen the countenance of a human being that suffered hunger? There is this woman. She bore five children, and loves these children just as your mother loves hers. Very well. The drawers are empty, the hearth is cold, the bedding is in pawn, their clothes andshoes are in rags. These children are human, each one, just as you and I are. They have the same instinctive expectation of content, bread, quiet sleep, and pure air, that you have or Herr von Crammon or countless others, who never realize reflectively that all these things are theirs. Very well. Now the world does not only feign to know nothing of all this, not only resents being reminded of it, but actually demands of these beings that they are to be silent, that they accept and endure hunger, nakedness, cold, disease, the theft of their natural rights, and the insolent injustice of it all, as something quite natural and inevitable. Have you ever thought about that?”
“It seems to me,” Christian replied, softly, “that I have never thought at all.”
“This man,” Ivan Michailovitch continued, “this Roderick Kroll, so far as I have been able to learn, was systematically exasperated to the very quick. He was an enthusiastic socialist, but somewhat of an annoyance even to his own party on account of his extreme views and his violent propaganda. The masters dug the ground from under his feet. They embittered him by the constant sting of small intrigues, and drove him to despair. The intention was to render him harmless and to force him to silence. But tell me this: is there an extreme on the side of the oppressed that is so unfair, so insolent, so damnable as the extreme on the other side—the arrogance, luxury, revelling, the hardness of heart, and the insensate extravagance of every day and every hour? You did not even know the name of that man!”
Christian stood still. The wind blew the snow into his face, and wet his forehead and cheeks. “What shall I do, Ivan Michailovitch?” he asked, slowly.
Ivan Michailovitch stopped too. “What shall I do?” he cried. “That is what they all ask. That is what Prince Jakovlev Grusin asked, one of our chief magnates and marshal of the nobility in the province of Novgorod. After he hadstarved his peasants, plundered his tenants, sent his officials to Siberia, violated girls, seduced women, driven his own sons to despair, spent his life in gluttony, drunkenness, and whoring, and heaped crime upon crime—he went into a monastery in the seventy-fourth year of his age, and day after day kneeled in his cell and cried: ‘What shall I do? My Lord and Saviour, what shall I do?’ And no one, naturally, had an answer for him. I have heard the question asked softly by another, whose soul was clean and white. He was going to his death, and his age was seventeen. Nine men with their rifles stood by the trench of the fortress. He approached, reeling a little, and his guiltless soul asked: ‘Father in Heaven, what shall I do? What shall I do?’”
Ivan Michailovitch walked on, and Christian followed him. “And we poor men, we terribly poor men,” Ivan Becker said, “what shallwedo?”