“Still man will take up arms against all who breathe;Compelled by pride and dread he consumes himself in conflict, and destroys the lovelyFlower of his peace that is brief of blooming.”
“Still man will take up arms against all who breathe;Compelled by pride and dread he consumes himself in conflict, and destroys the lovelyFlower of his peace that is brief of blooming.”
“Still man will take up arms against all who breathe;Compelled by pride and dread he consumes himself in conflict, and destroys the lovelyFlower of his peace that is brief of blooming.”
“Still man will take up arms against all who breathe;
Compelled by pride and dread he consumes himself in conflict, and destroys the lovely
Flower of his peace that is brief of blooming.”
On their first evening in Hamburg, Crammon rented a box in the playhouse, and invited Christian, Johanna Schöntag, and Herr Livholm, one of the directors of the Lloyd, to be his guests. He had made the latter’s acquaintance in the hotel where he had gone to pay Eva a visit of welcome. He had liked the man, who cut a good figure, and so he had added him to the party in order, as he put it, to keep the atmosphere normal by the presence of an entirely neutral person.
“Social skill,” he was accustomed to say, “is not unlike skill in cookery and serving. Between two heavy, rich dishes there must be one like foam that stimulates the palate quite superficially. Otherwise the meal has no style.”
The play was a mediocre comedy, and Christian was frankly bored. Crammon thought it his duty to show a condescending and muffled amusement, and now and then he gave Christian a gentle poke, to persuade him also to show some appreciation of the performance. Johanna was the only one who was genuinely amused. The source of her amusement wasan actor to whom a serious rôle had been assigned, but who talked with such silly affectation and false importance that every time he appeared she had to hold her lacy handkerchief to her lips to smother her laughter.
Occasionally Christian gave the girl a far and estranged glance. She wasn’t either agreeable or the reverse; he did not know what to make of her. This feeling of his had not changed since he had first seen her during the journey in Eva’s company.
She felt the coldness of his glance. Her merriment did not vanish; but on the lower part of her face appeared a scarcely perceptible shadow of disappointment.
As though seeking for help, she turned to Christian. “The man is terribly funny, don’t you think so?” It was characteristic of her to end a question with a negative interrogation.
“He’s certainly worth seeing,” Christian agreed politely.
The door of the box opened, and Voss entered. He was faultlessly dressed for the occasion; but no one had expected or invited him. They looked at him in astonishment. He bowed calmly and without embarrassment, stood quite still, and gave his attention to the stage.
Crammon looked at Christian. The latter shrugged his shoulders. After a while Crammon arose, and with sarcastic courtesy pointed to his seat. Voss shook his head in friendly refusal, but immediately thereafter assumed once more his air of humility and abjectness. He stammered: “I was in the stalls and looked up. I thought there was no harm in paying a visit.” Suddenly Crammon went out, and was heard quarrelling with the usher. Johanna had become serious, and looked down at the audience. Christian, as though to ward off disagreeable things, ducked his shoulders a little. The people in the near-by seats became indignant at the noise Crammon was making. Herr Livholm felt that the proper atmosphere had hardly been preserved.Amadeus Voss alone showed himself insensitive to the situation.
He stood behind Johanna, and thought: “The hair of this woman has a fragrance that turns one dizzy.” At the end of the act he withdrew, and did not return.
Late at night, when he had him alone, Crammon vented his rage on Christian. “I’ll shoot him down like a mad dog, if he tries that sort of thing again! What does the fellow think? I’m not accustomed to such manners. Damned gallow’s bird—where’d he grow up? Oh, my prophetic soul! I always distrusted people with spectacles. Why don’t you tell him to go to hell? In the course of my sinful life, I’ve come in contact with all kinds of people; I know the best and I know the dregs; but this fellow is a new type. Quite new, by God! I’ll have to take a bromide, or I won’t be able to sleep.”
“I believe you are unjust, Bernard,” answered Christian, with lowered eyes. But his face was stern, reserved, and cold.
Amadeus Voss submitted the following plan to Christian: to go to Berlin, first as an unmatriculated student, and later to prepare himself for the state examination in medicine.
Christian nodded approvingly, and added that he intended to go to Berlin shortly too. Voss walked up and down in the room. Then he asked brusquely: “What am I to live on? Am I to address envelopes? Or apply for stipends? If you intend to withdraw your friendship and assistance, say so frankly. I’ve learned to wade through the mud. The new kind won’t offer more resistance than the old.”
Christian was thoroughly surprised. A week ago, in Holland, he had given Amadeus ten thousand francs. “How much will you need?” he asked.
“Board, lodging, clothes, books....” Voss went over the items, and his expression was that of one who formulates demands and uses the tone of request only as a matter of courtesy. “I’ll be frugal.”
“I shall order two thousand marks a month to be sent you,” Christian said, with an air of aversion. The impudent demand for money pained him. Possession weighed upon him like a mountain. He could not get his arms free nor lift his chest, and the weight grew heavier and heavier.
In a bowl of chrysolite on the table lay a scarf-pin with one large, black pearl. Voss, whose hands always groped for some occupation, had taken it up, and held it between his thumb and index finger against the light. “Do you want the pin?” Christian asked. “Take it,” he persuaded Amadeus, who was hesitating. “I really don’t care about it.”
Voss approached the mirror, and with a curious smile stuck the pin into his cravat.
When Christian was left alone, he stood for a while quite lost in thought. Then he sat down, and wrote to his manager at Christian’s Rest. He wrote in his lanky script and his no less awkward style. “My dear Herr Borkowski:—I have determined to sell Christian’s Rest, together with all furnishings and objects of art, as well as the park, woods, and farms. I herewith commission you to find a capable and honest real estate dealer, who might telegraph me any favourable offers. You know people of that sort, and need merely drive over to Frankfort. Have the kindness to settle the matter as quietly as possible. No advertisements are to appear in the press.”
Then he wrote a second letter to the manager of his racing stable at Waldleiningen. To write this he had to do more violence to his heart than the first had cost him, for he saw constantly fixed upon him the gentle or spirited eyes of the noble animals. He wrote: “My dear Herr Schaller:—Ihave determined to discontinue my racing stable. The horses are to be sold at auction or quietly to fanciers. I should prefer the latter method, and I suppose you share that feeling. Baron Deidinger of Deidingshausen was at one time much interested in Columbus and the mare Lovely. Inquire of him whether he wants them. Admirable and Bride o’ the Wind could be offered either to Prince Pless or Herr von Strathmann. Have my friend Denis Lay’s Excelsior sent to Baden-Baden, and boarded temporarily in the stables of Count Treuberg. I don’t wish him to remain at Waldleiningen alone.”
When he had sealed the letters, he sighed with relief. He rang, and gave the letters to his valet. The latter had turned to go, when Christian called him back. “I’m very sorry to have to give you notice, Wilhelm,” he said. “I’m going to attend to myself hereafter.”
The man could not trust his ears. He had been with Christian for three years, and was genuinely devoted to him.
“I’m sorry, but it’s necessary,” said Christian, looked past the man, and had almost the same strange smile with which he had watched Amadeus Voss at the mirror putting the black pearl pin into his cravat.
Crammon asserted that Amadeus Voss was paying his attentions to Johanna Schöntag. Johanna was annoyed, and tapped him with her long gloves. “I congratulate you on your conquest, Rumpelstilzkin,” Crammon teased her. “To have a monster like that in leash is no small achievement. I should advise muzzling the monster, however. What do you think, Christian, wouldn’t you advise a muzzle, too?”
“A muzzle?” answered Christian. “Yes, if it would keep people from talking. So many talk too much.”
Crammon bit his lips. The reproof struck him as harsh.Somewhere beneath the downs of life on which he lay and enjoyed himself, there was, evidently, a stone. The stone hurt. He sought for it, but the softness of the down calmed him again, and he forgot his pain.
“I was sitting in the breakfast room, and waiting for Madame Sorel,” Johanna began in a voice whose every shading and inflection sought to woo Christian’s ear, “when Herr Voss came in and marched straight up to me. ‘What does that bad man want of me?’ I asked myself. He asked me, as though we’d been bosom friends for years, whether I didn’t want to go with him to St. Paul’s to hear the famous itinerant preacher Jacobsen. I couldn’t help laughing, and he stalked away insulted. But this afternoon, as I was leaving the hotel, he seemed suddenly to spring from the earth, and invited me to a trip around the harbour. He had rented a motor launch, and was looking for a companion. He had the same gruff familiarity, and when he left he was quite as insulted as before. And you call that paying attentions? I felt much more as though he were going to drag me off and murder me. But perhaps that’s only his manner.” She laughed.
“You’re the only person, at all events, whom he distinguishes by observing at all,” Crammon said, with the same mockery.
“Or the only one whom he considers his equal,” Johanna said, with a childlike frown.
Christian was wondering: “Why does she laugh so often? Why are her hands so pudgy and so very pink?” Johanna felt his disapproval, and was as though paralysed. And yet Christian felt himself drawn toward her by some hidden power.
Why should he resist? Why be so ceremonious? Such was his thought, as Johanna arose, and he, with unobtrusive glances, observed her graceful form that still possessed the flexibility of immaturity. He saw the nape of her slender neck, in which were expressed both the weakness of her will and the finenessof her temper. He knew these signs; he had often been guided by them and used them.
Crammon, massive and magnificent in a great easy chair, spoke with some emphasis of Eva’s appearance on the morrow. The whole city was in a state of expectancy. But Christian and Johanna had suddenly become truly aware of one another.
“Are you coming along?” Christian turned carelessly, and with a sense of boredom, to Crammon.
“Yes, my boy, let us eat!” Crammon cried. He called Hamburg the Paradise of Saint Bernard, concerning whom, as his patron saint and namesake, he had instituted especial investigations, and who, according to him, had been a mighty trencherman during his lifetime at Tours.
A frightened, subtle, and very feminine smile hovered about Johanna’s lips. As she preceded the two men, the motions of her dainty body expressed a vague oppression of the spirit, and at the same time a humorous rebellion against her own unfreedom.
Amadeus Voss knew that he had no one’s sympathy, no one’s except Christian’s. And him he suspected, watching him, weighing and analysing his words and actions. In his terror of hypocrisy and treachery, he practised both himself. Nothing healed or convinced or reconciled him. Least of all did he pardon Christian the fact that the latter’s glance and presence had the effect of subduing him. His bitterness moaned from his very dreams.
He read in the Scriptures: “There was a certain house-holder, which planted a vineyard, and hedged it round about, and digged a winepress in it, and built a tower, and let it out to husbandmen, and went into a far country: and when the time of the fruit drew near, he sent his servants to the husbandmen that they might receive the fruits of it. And the husbandmen took his servants, and beat one, and killedanother, and stoned another. Again he sent other servants, more than the first, and they did unto them likewise. But last of all, he sent unto them his son, saying, They will reverence my son. But when the husbandmen saw the son, they said among themselves, This is the heir; come, let us kill him, and let us seize on his inheritance. And they caught him, and cast him out of the vineyard, and slew him.”
Sometimes he would not leave Christian’s side for hours. He would study his gestures and the expressions of his countenance, and all these perceptions fed the corrosive fire in his brain. For this was the heir! Then he would flee and bruise and stamp upon his very soul, until his consciousness of guilt cast him down into the very dust. He would return, and his demeanour would be a silent confession: “I can thrive only in your presence.” It seemed to him that this silence of his was like a cry; but it was not heard, and so his brother seemed again to become his foe. Thus he kept passing from darkness, through fires and fumes, back into the darkness.
He suffered from his own embarrassment and importunateness. In the midst of luxury and plenty, into which he had been transferred by a fabulous turn of fortune, he suffered from the memories of his former poverty, still felt how it had bound and throttled him, and still rebelled against what was gone. He could not freely take what was given him, but closed his eyes, and shuddered with both desire and a pang of conscience. He would not look upon the pattern of his web of life. He turned its texture around, and brooded over the significance of the intricately knotted threads. And there was no human relationship which did not rouse his suspicion, no harmless conversation in which he did not seek a sting directed toward himself, no face that did not feed his hatred, no beauty whose counter part of ugliness he did not see. To him everything turned to poison and decay, all blossoms became noxious weeds, all velvet a Nessus shirt, all light an evil smouldering, everystimulus a wound: on every wall he saw the flaming letters,mene tekel upharsim.
He could not yield himself or conquer the stubbornness of his heart. With the object of his desire in his very hands, his envy burned on. Whatever had once humiliated him spurred his vengefulness through retrospection. Chastisements which his father had inflicted distorted the old man’s image beyond the grave; his fellow pupils in the seminary had once strewn pepper into his coffee, and he could not forget it; he could not forget the expression on the face of Adeline Ribbeck with which she had given him his first month’s salary in a closed envelope; he remembered the contempt and contumely of hundreds, who had inflicted upon him their revenge for the oppression or degradation which they themselves had endured. He could not conquer these things nor forgive fate. The marks that had been burned into his flesh throbbed like new wounds.
But at other times he would cast himself into the dust in prayer and in great need of forgiveness. Religious scruples plagued him into remorse; he panted for an hour’s release from consciousness, judged himself with cruel severity, and condemned himself to ascetic practices.
And these hurled him into the other extreme of a wild, undiscriminating, and senseless dissipation and a mad waste of money. He could no longer resist the excitement of gambling, and fell into the hands of sharpers, drifted into loathsome dives, where he acted the part of a wealthy man and an aristocrat in incognito, for he desired to test this human mask and prove its worthlessness to himself. Since his companions took him seriously in this rôle, which filled his own mind with shame and despair, he took his high losses with apparent calm, and overlooked the open cheating. One evening the den in which he happened to be was raided by the police, and he escaped by a hair’s breadth. One creature clung to him, frightened him with possible dangers ahead, threatened exposure, and wrung from him a considerable sum of hush money.
He became the prey of cocottes. He bought them jewels and frocks and instituted nightly revels. In his eyes they were outcasts that he used as a famishing man might slake his thirst at a mud puddle with no clean water within reach. And he was brutally frank with them. He paid them to endure his contempt. They were surprised, resisted only his most infamous abuses, and laughed at his unconquerable traits of the churchly hypocrite. Once he remained alone with a girl who was young and pretty. He had blindfolded himself. But suddenly he fled as though the furies were at his heels.
Thrice he had set the date for his departure and as many times had put it off. The image of Johanna had joined that of Eva in his soul, and both raged in his brain. Both belonged to an unattainable world. Yet Johanna seemed less alien; she might conceivably hear his plea. Eva and her beauty were like a strident jeer at all he was. He had heard so much and read so much of her art that he determined to await her appearance, in order (as he told Christian) to form a judgment of his own, and be no longer at the mercy of those who fed her on mere adulation and brazen flattery.
The audience was in full evening dress. Amadeus sat next to Christian in the magnificent and radiant hall, in which had gathered royal and princely persons, the senators of the free city, the heads of the official and financial world, and representatives of every valley and city of Germany. Christian had bought seats near the stage. Crammon, who was an expert in matters of artistic perspective, had preferred the first row in the balcony. With him were Johanna and Botho von Thüngen, to whom he had emphatically explained that the play of the dancer’s feet and legs was interfered with by the dark line of the stage below, while from their present position its full harmony would be visible.
Amadeus Voss had almost determined to remain rigid in mind. He hardly resisted actively, for he did not expect anything powerful enough to make resistance worth while.He was cold, dull, unseeing. Suddenly there floated upon the stage a bird-like vision, a being miraculously eased of human heaviness, one who was all rhythm, and turned the rhythm of motion into music. She broke the chains of the soul, and made every emotion an image, every action a myth, every step a conquest over space and matter. But the face of Amadeus seemed to say: How can that serve me? How does that serve you? Filled by the fury of sex, he saw only a scabrous exhibition, and when the thunder of applause burst out, he showed his teeth.
Eva’s last number was a little dramatic episode, a charmingjeu d’esprit, which she had invented and worked out, to be accompanied by a composition of Delibes. It was very simple. She was Pierrot playing with a top. She regulated and guided the whimsical course of the toy. In ever new positions, turns, and rhythms, she finally drove the top toward a hole into which it disappeared. But this trivial action was so filled with life by the wealth and variety of her rhythmic gestures, so radiant with spirit and swiftest grace, so fresh in inspiration, so heightened in the perfection of its art, that the audience watched breathlessly, and released its own tensity in a fury of applause.
In the foyer Crammon rushed up to Christian, and drew him through the crowd along the dim passage way that led back of the stage. Amadeus Voss, unnoticed by Crammon, followed them unthinkingly and morosely. The sight of the wings, of cliffs and trees, of discarded drops, electrical apparatus and pulleys and of the hurrying stage-hands, stirred in him a dull and hostile curiosity.
An excited crowd thronged toward Eva’s dressing-room. She sat in the silken Pierrot costume of black and white, the dainty silver whip still in her hand, amid a forest of flowers. Before her kneeled Johanna Schöntag with an adoring moisture in her eyes. Susan gave her mistress a glass of cool champagne. Then in a mixture of five or six languages she tried to make itclear to the unbidden guests that they were in the way. But each wanted a look, a word, a smile of Eva for himself.
Next to the room in which Eva sat, and separated from it by a thin partition with an open door, was a second dressing-room, which contained only her costumes and a tall mirror. Accidentally pushed in that direction, and not through any will of his own, Amadeus Voss suddenly found himself alone in this little chamber. Having entered it, his courage grew, and he ventured a little farther in.
He looked around and stared at the garments that lay and hung here—the shimmering silks, the red, green, blue, white, and yellow shawls and veils, the fragrant webs of gauze, batiste, and tulle. There were wholly transparent textures and the heaviest brocades. One frock glowed like pure gold, another gleamed like silver; one seemed made of rose-leaves, another knitted of spun glass, one of white foam and one of amethyst. And there stood dainty shoes—a long row of them, shoes of Morocco leather and of kid and silk; and there were hose of all colours, and laces and ribands and antique beads and brooches. The air was drenched with a fragrance that stung his senses—a fragrance of precious creams and unguents, of a woman’s skin and hair. His pulses throbbed and his face turned grey. Involuntarily he stretched out his hand, and grasped a painted Spanish shawl. Angrily, greedily, beside himself, he crushed it in his hands, and buried his mouth and nose in it and trembled in every limb.
At that moment Susan Rappard saw him, and pointed to him with a gesture of astonishment. Eva saw him too, gently thrust Johanna aside, arose, and approached the threshold. When she saw the man in his strange and absorbed ecstasy, she felt as though she had been spattered with filth, and uttered a soft, brief cry. Amadeus Voss twitched and dropped the shawl. His eyes were wild and guilty. With a light laugh and an expression of transcendent contempt, which summed up a long dislike, Eva raised the little silver whip and struck himfull in the face. His features grew very white, in a contortion of voluptuousness and terror.
In the tense silence Christian went up to Eva, took the silver whip from her hand, and said in a tone scarcely distinguishable from his habitual one: “Oh, no, Eva, I shall not let you do that.” He held the handle of the whip firmly at both ends, and bent it until the fragile metal snapped. Then he threw the two pieces on the floor.
They gazed at each other. Disgust at Amadeus still flamed in Eva’s face. It yielded to her astonishment at Christian’s temerity. But Christian thought: “How beautiful she is!” And he loved her. He loved her in her black and white Pierrot’s costume with the black velvet buttons, he loved her with that little cap and its impudent little tassel on her head; he loved her, and she seemed incomparable to him, and his blood cried out after her as in those nights from which she had driven him forth. But he also asked himself: “Why has she grown evil?” And a strange compassion for her stole over him, and a stranger sense of liberation. And he smiled. But to all who were watching, this smile of his seemed a little empty.
Again Amadeus Voss read in the Scripture: “What mean ye that ye beat my people to pieces, and grind the faces of the poor? Because the daughters of Zion are haughty, and walk with stretched forth necks and wanton eyes, walking and mincing as they go, and making a tinkling with their feet: Therefore the Lord will strike with a scab the crown of the head of the daughters of Zion, and the Lord will discover their secret parts. In that day will the Lord take away the bravery of their tinkling ornaments about their feet, and their cauls, and their round tires like the moon, the chains, and the bracelets, and the mufflers, the bonnets, and the ornaments of the legs, and the headbands, and the tablets, and the earrings, the rings, and nose jewels, the changeable suits of apparel, and the mantles, and the wimples, and the crisping pins, the glasses, and the fine linen, and the hoods and the veils. And itshall come to pass, that instead of sweet smell there shall be stink; and instead of a girdle a rent; and instead of well set hair baldness; and instead of a stomacher a girding of sack-cloth; and burning instead of beauty. Thy men shall fall by the sword, and thy mighty in the war. And her gates shall lament and mourn; and she being desolate shall sit upon the ground.”
On the same evening he left for Berlin.
Lorm and Judith had a magnificent apartment near the Tiergarten in Berlin.
Edgar Lorm flourished. Order and regularity ruled his life. With childlike boastfulness he spoke of his home. His manager and friend, Dr. Emanuel Herbst, congratulated him on his visible rejuvenation.
He introduced to Judith the people whom he had long valued; but she judged most of them sharply and without sympathy. Her characteristic arrogance drove away many who meant well. But under the sway of his new comforts Lorm submitted to her opinions.
But he would not give up Emanuel Herbst. When Judith mocked at his waddling gait, his homeliness, his piping voice, his tactless jokes, Lorm grew serious. “I’ve known him for over twenty years. The things that annoy you endear him to me quite as much as those precious qualities in him which I know well, and which you’ve had no chance to discover.”
“No doubt he’s a monster of virtue,” Judith replied, “but he bores me to extinction.”
Lorm said: “One should get used to the idea that other people don’t exist exclusively for our pleasure. Your point of view is too narrowly that of use and luxury. There are human qualities that I value more highly than a handsome face or polished manners. One of these is trustworthiness. People with whom one has professional dealings often refuse to honourthe demands of common decency—especially in regard to the keeping of their given word—with a calm frivolity that makes one’s gorge rise. So I’m intensely grateful to Herbst, since it means so infinitely much to me, for this—that our relations have never been shadowed by distrust, and that our simplest verbal agreements are as firm and as valid as a written contract.”
Judith recognized that in this case she would have to change her tactics. She was amiable, as though she were convinced of his virtues, and sought to gain his favour. Dr. Herbst saw through her, but showed no consciousness of his insight. He treated her with an elaborate courtesy that seemed a trifle old-fashioned, and effectually concealed his reservations.
Sometimes in the evening she would sit with the two men, and join in their shop talk of playwrights and plays, actors and actresses, successes and failures. And while she seemed attentive, and even asked an occasional question, she thought of her dressmaker, of her cook, of her weekly account, or of her old life, that was so different and had perished so utterly. And her eyes would grow hard.
It would happen that she would pass through the rooms with a bitter expression on her face and a hostile glance for the things about her. She hated the many mirrors which Lorm required, the rugs that had been recently bought, the pretentious furniture and paintings, the countless bibelots, photographs, ornaments, books, and piously guarded souvenirs.
She had never before lived in a house where other tenants above and below reminded her of their repulsive and unfamiliar lives. She listened to the slightest noises, and felt that she had fallen into a slum.
It was hardly in harmony with her nature to wait each morning until her husband happened to rise, to see that the breakfast was complete, to stand aside while the barber, the masseur, the chauffeur, the messenger of the theatre, and the secretary had completed their tasks or received their instructions; to wait again until he returned from rehearsal, tired, annoyed, and hungry, and then to watch him at luncheon—a meal that he required to be both rich and exquisite—gobble his food; to guard him from noise and interruption when he memorized his lines; to answer strange voices on the telephone, to give information, refuse invitations, to send the troublesome away and to soothe the impatient. She was wholly out of her natural element, but she forced herself to endure even as she had endured bodily pain when the long needle had been thrust through her arm.
Emanuel Herbst, who was a keen observer and a learned student of human nature, quietly analysed the relations of this husband and this wife. He said to himself: “Lorm is not fulfilling her expectations; so much is clear. She fancied she could peel him the way one peels an onion, and that the removal of each layer would reveal something so new and surprising as to make up to her for all she has renounced. She will soon discover her miscalculation, for Lorm is always the same. He can’t be stripped. He wears his costumes and puts on make-up. She will soon reproach him for this very ability to fill empty forms with a beautiful content, and to remain, in his own person, but a humble servitor of his art. And the more guilty he becomes in her eyes, the more power over him will she gain. For he is tired—tired to death of the affected, the flatterers and sentimentalists, of the sweets and easements of his daily life. Terribly spoiled as he is, he yearns unconsciously for chains and a keeper.”
The result of his reflection filled Emanuel Herbst with anxious apprehension.
But Judith remembered her dream—how she had lain beside a fish because it pleased her, and then beaten it in sudden rage over its cool, moist, slippery, opalescent scales. And she lay beside the fish and struck it, and the fish became more and more subservient and her own.
Her constant terror was this thought: “I am poor, impoverished, dependent, without security.” The thought tormented her to such a degree that she once expressed it to the housekeeper. The latter was astonished and replied: “But in addition to your pin money, the master gives you two thousand marks a month for the house. Why should you yield to morbid fancies?”
Judith looked at the woman suspiciously. She distrusted all whom she paid. The moment they mentioned money she fancied herself robbed.
One day the cook gave notice. She was the fourth since the establishment of the household. A quantity of sugar was missing. There was a quarrel, an ugly one, and Judith was told things that no one had ever dared to tell her before.
The secretary mislaid a key. When at last it was found Judith rushed to the drawer which it fitted to see whether the stationery, the pencils, and the pen-points were intact.
The housekeeper had bought twenty yards of linen. Judith thought the price paid too high. She drove to the shop herself. The taxi-fare amounted to more than she could possibly have saved on the purchase. Then she chaffered with the clerk for a reduction, until it was granted her through sheer weariness. She told Lorm the story with a triumphant air. He neglected to praise her. She jumped up from the table, locked herself in her room, and went to bed. Whenever she thought that she had some reason for anger, she went to bed.
Lorm came to her door, knocked softly, and asked her to open it. She let him stand long enough to regret his conduct, and then opened the door. She told her story all over, and he listened with a charming curiosity on his face. “You’re a jewel,” he said, and stroked her cheek and hand.
But it would also happen, if she really wanted something, that she would spend sums out of all proportion to her wretched little economies. She would see a hat, a frock, an ornament in a show window, and not be able to tear herself away. Then she would go into the shop, and pay the price asked at once.
One day she visited an auction sale, and happened to come in just as an old Viennese bon-bon dish was offered for sale. It was one of those objects that make little show, but which delight the collector’s heart. At first the dish didn’t tempt her at all. Then the high bidding for it excited her, and she herself began to bid for it. It kindled something in her, and she made bid after bid, and drove all competitors from the field.
Hot and excited, she came home and rushed into Lorm’s study. Emanuel Herbst was with him. The two men sat by the fire in familiar talk. Judith disregarded Herbst. She stood before her husband, unwrapped the dish, and said: “Look at this exquisite thing I bought, Edgar.”
It was toward evening, but no lights had been lit. Lorm loved the twilight and the flicker of the fire in his chimney, which was, alas, only a metropolitan imitation of a log fire. In the rich, red, wavering reflection of the glow, Judith looked charming in her delight and mobility.
Lorm took the dish, regarded it with polite interest, drew up his lips a little, and said: “It’s pretty.” Herbst’s face puckered into innumerable ironical little wrinkles.
Judith grew angry. “Pretty? Don’t you see that it’s magical, a perfect little dream, the sweetest and rarest thing imaginable? The connoisseurs were wild after it! Do you know what it cost? Eighteen hundred marks. And I had six or seven rabid competitors bidding against me. Pretty!” She gave a hard little laugh. “Give it to me. You handle it too clumsily.”
“Calm yourself, sweetheart,” said Lorm gently. “I suppose its virtues are subtle.”
But Judith was hurt, more by Herbst’s silent mockery than by Lorm’s lack of appreciation. She threw back her head, rustled through the room, and slammed the door behind her. When she was angry, her own manners had, at times, a touch of commonness.
For a while the two men were silent. Then Lorm, embarrassed and with a deprecating smile, said: “A little dream ... for eighteen hundred marks.... Oh, well! There’s something childlike about her.”
Emanuel Herbst rubbed his tongue up and down between his teeth and his upper lip. It made him look like an ancient baby. Then he ventured: “You ought to make it clear to her that eighteen hundred marks are one thousand eight hundred times one mark.”
“She won’t get that far,” answered Lorm. “Somebody who has always lived on the open sea, and is suddenly transported to a little inland lake, finds it hard to get the new measurements and perspectives. But women are queer creatures.” He sighed and smiled. “Have a nip of whiskey, old man?”
Sorrowfully Herbst rocked his Cæsarean head. “Why queer? They are as they are, and one must treat them accordingly. Only one mustn’t be under any mistaken impression as to what one has. For instance: A horseshoe is not birch wood. It looks like a bow, but you can’t bend it—not with all your might. If you string it, the string droops slackly and will never propel your arrow. All right, let’s have your whiskey.”
“But occasionally,” Lorm replied cheerfully, and filled the tiny glasses, “you can turn a horseshoe into the finest Damascene steel.”
“Bravo! A good retort! You’re as ready as Cardinal Richelieu. Your health!”
“If you’ll let me be Richelieu, I’ll appoint you to be my Father Joseph. A great rôle, by the way. Your health, old man!”
Crammon and Johanna Schöntag planned to drive to Stellingen to see Hagenbeck’s famous zoological gardens, and Crammon begged Christian to lend them his car. They were just about to start when Christian issued from the hotel. “Why don’t you come along?” Crammon asked. “Have you anything better to do? The three of us can have a very amusing time.”
Christian was about to refuse, when he caught Johanna’s urgent and beseeching look. She had the art of putting her wishes into her eyes in such a way that one was drawn by them and lost the power to resist. So he said: “Very well, I’ll come along,” and took the seat next to Johanna’s. But he was silent on the whole drive.
It was a sunny day of October.
They wandered through the park, and Johanna made droll comments on the animals. She stopped in front of a seal, and exclaimed: “He looks quite like Herr Livholm, don’t you think so?” She talked to a bear as though he were a simple sort of man, and fed him bits of sugar. She said that the camels were incredible, and only pretended to look that way to live up to the descriptions in the books of natural history. “They’re almost as ugly as I am,” she added; and then, with a crooked smile: “Only more useful. At least I was told at school that their stomachs are reservoirs of water. Isn’t the world a queer place?”
Christian wondered why she spoke so contemptuously of herself. She bent over a stone balustrade, and the sight of her neck somehow touched him. She seemed to him a vessel of poor and hurt things.
Crammon discoursed. “It is very curious about animals. Scientists declare they have a great deal of instinct. But what is instinct? I’ve usually found them to be of an unlimited stupidity. On the estate where I passed my childhood, we had a horse, a fat, timid, gentle horse. It had but one vice: it was very ticklish. I and my playmates were strictly enjoined from tickling it. Naturally we were constantly tempted to tickle it. There were five of us little fellows—no higher than table legs. Each procured a little felt hat with a cock’s feather in it. And as the horse stood dull-eyed in front of the stable, we marched in single file under the belly of the stupidbeast, tickling it with our feathers as we passed. The feathers tickled so frightfully that he kicked with all fours like a mule. It’s a riddle to me to this day how one of us, at least, failed to be killed. But it was amusing and grotesque, and there was no sign of instinct anywhere.”
They went to the monkey house. A crowd stood about a little platform, on which a dainty little monkey was showing off its tricks under the guidance of a trainer. “I have a horror of monkeys,” said Crammon. “They annoy me through memory. Science bids me feel a relationship with them; but after all one has one’s pride. No, I don’t acknowledge this devilish atavism.” He turned around, and left the building in order to wait outside.
Alone with Christian, a wave of courage conquered Johanna’s timidity. She took Christian’s arm and drew him nearer to the platform. She was utterly charmed, and her delight was childlike. “How dear, how sweet, how humble!” she cried. A spiritual warmth came from her to Christian. He yielded himself to it, for he needed it. Her boyish voice, however, stirred his senses and aroused his fear. She stood very close by him; he felt her quiver, the response to the hidden erotic power that was in him, and the other voices of his soul were silenced.
He took her hand into his. She did not struggle, but a painful tension showed in her face.
Suddenly the little monkey stopped in its droll performance and turned its lightless little eyes in terror toward the spectators. Some shy perception had frightened it; it seemed, somehow, to think and to recollect itself. As it became aware of the many faces, the indistinctness of its vision seemed to take on outline and form. Perhaps for a second it had a sight of the world and of men, and that sight was to it a source of boundless horror. It trembled as in a fever; it uttered a piercing cry of lamentation; it fled, and when the trainer tried to grasp it, it leaped from the platform and frantically sought a hiding-place.Tears glittered in its eyes and its teeth chattered, and in spite of the animal characteristics of these gestures and expressions, there was in them something so human and soulful that only a few very coarse people ventured to laugh.
To Christian there came from the little beast a breath from an alien region of earth and forests and loneliness. His heart seemed to expand and then to contract. “Let us go,” he said, and his own voice sounded unpleasantly in his ears.
Johanna listened to his words. She was all willingness to listen, all tension and all sweet humility.
Randolph von Stettner had arrived. There were still several days before the date of his sailing, and he was on his way to Lübeck, where he wished to say good-bye to a married sister. Christian hesitated to promise to be in Hamburg on his friend’s return. Only after much urging did he consent to stay.
They dined in Christian’s room, discussed conditions in their native province, and exchanged reminiscences. Christian, laconic as usual, was silently amazed at the distance of all these things from his present self.
When the waiter had removed the dishes, Stettner gave an account of all that had driven him to the determination to expatriate himself. While he talked he stared with an unchanging look and expression at the table cover.
“You know that for some years I’ve not been comfortable in my uniform. I saw no aim ahead except the slow and distant moments of advancement. Some of my comrades hoped for war. Well, the life makes that hope natural. In war one can prove one’s self in the only way that has any meaning to a professional soldier in any army. But personally I couldn’t share that hope. Others marry money, still others go in for sports and gambling. None of these things attracted me. The serviceitself left me utterly dissatisfied. I seemed to myself in reality an idler who lives pretentiously on others.
“Imagine this: you stand in the barracks yard; it’s raining, the water makes the sand gleam; the few wretched trees drip and drip; the men await some command with the watchfulness of well-trained dogs; the water pours from their packs, the sergeant roars, the corporals grit their teeth in zeal and rage; but you? With a monotony like that of the drops that trickle from your cap, you think: ‘What will to-night be like? And to-morrow morning? And to-morrow night?’ And the whole year lies ahead of you like a soaked and muddy road. You think of your desolate room with its three dozen books, the meaningless pictures, and the carpet worn thin by many feet; you think of the report you’ve got to hand in, and the canteen accounts you’ve got to audit, and the stable inspection, and the next regimental ball, where the arrogant wives of your superior officers will bore you to the point of illness with their shallow talk; you think your way through the whole circle of your life, and find nothing but what is trivial and cheerless as a rainy day. Is that endurable?
“One day I put the question to myself: What was I really accomplishing, and what was the nature of my reward? The answer was that, from a human and intellectual point of view, my accomplishment was an absolute zero. My reward consisted of a number of privileges, the sum of which raised me very high in the social scale, but gave me this position only at the cost of surrendering my personality wholly. I had to obey my superiors and to command my inferiors. That was all. The power to command was conditioned in the duty to obey. And each man in the service, whatever his station, is bound in the identical way, and is simply a connective apparatus in a great electrical circuit. Only the humblest, the great mass of privates, were confined to obedience. The ultimate responsibility at the very top was lost in the vague. In spite of its ultimate primitiveness, the structure of every militaryorganization has a mystery at its core. But between the arbitrary will of a very few and the touching and incomprehensible humility of the great mass, the parts function according to iron laws. Whoever refuses to function, or rebels, is crushed.
“There are those who assert that this compulsion has a moral effect and subserves a higher conception of freedom. I was myself of that opinion for a long time; but I did not find it permanently tenable. I felt myself weakening, and a rebellion seething in my blood. I pulled myself together, and fought against criticism and doubt. In vain. Something had gone out of me. I lost the readiness to obey and the security to command. It was torment. Above me I saw implacable idols, below me defenceless victims. I myself was both idol and victim, implacable and defenceless at once. It seemed to me that humanity ceased where the circle of my activity began. My life seemed to me no longer a part of the general life of mankind, but a fossilized petrefaction conditioned in certain formulæ of command and obedience.
“This condition could, of course, not remain hidden. My comrades withdrew their confidence from me. I was observed and distrusted. Before I had time to clarify either my mind or my affairs, an incident occurred which forced me to a decision. A fellow officer in my regiment, Captain von Otto, was engaged to the daughter of an eminent judge. The wedding, although the date had been set, could not take place. Otto had a slight attack of pulmonary trouble and had to go South for cure. About four weeks after his departure, there was a celebration in honour of the emperor’s birthday, and among the ladies invited was the captain’s betrothed. Everybody was rather gay and giddy that evening, especially a dear friend of mine, Georg Mattershausen, a sincere, kindly chap who had just received a promotion in rank. The captain’s betrothed, who had been his neighbour at table, was infected by his merriment, and on the way home he begged her for akiss. She refused, and he was going to steal one. She now grew very serious; he at once came to his senses, apologized with the utmost sincerity, and, at the very door of her paternal house, received her solemn promise to mention the incident to no one. When, however, seventeen weeks later, Captain von Otto returned, the girl was seized by some queer scruple, and thought it her duty to tell him of the incident between herself and Mattershausen. The result was a challenge. The conditions were extraordinarily severe: ten paces distance, drawn revolvers, half a minute to aim, exchange of shots to the disablement of either combatant. I was Mattershausen’s second. Otto, who had held himself to be affronted and had sent the challenge, had the first shot. He aimed carefully at the head of his adversary. I saw that. But the bullet whistled past my friend’s ear. Mattershausen aimed, but his revolver did not go off. This was counted a shot. New pistols were brought. Otto aimed as carefully as before and this time shot Mattershausen straight through the heart. Death was immediate.
“I wonder whether you, too, think that that was a harsh punishment for a moment of youthful thoughtlessness and impropriety. To me it seemed terribly harsh. I felt profoundly that a crime had been committed against my friend. Our fossilized caste had perpetrated a murder. Two days later, in the officers’ mess, I expressed this opinion quite frankly. There was general astonishment. One or two sharp replies were made. Some one asked me what I would have done in such a situation. I answered that I would certainly not have sent a challenge, that I could never approve a notion of honour so morbid and self-centred as to demand a human life for a trifle. Even if the young girl’s over-tender conscience had persuaded her to break her promise, I would have caused no further trouble, and let the little incident glide into forgetfulness. At that there was general indignation—a great shaking of heads, angry or troubled faces, an exchange of significantglances. But I kept on. Mattershausen’s wretched end had hit me damned hard, and I relieved my whole mind. So I added that, if I had been in Mattershausen’s place, I would have refused the challenge, quite regardless of consequences. That statement fell among them like a bomb, and a painful silence followed. ‘I imagine you would have reconsidered,’ said the ranking major, ‘I don’t think you would have disregarded all the consequences.’ ‘All,’ I insisted, ‘certainly, all!’ At that moment Captain von Otto, who had been sitting at another table, arose, and asked frostily: ‘You would have risked the odium of cowardice?’ I too arose, and answered: ‘Under such circumstances I would have risked that too.’ Captain von Otto smiled a contorted smile, and said with an emphasis that could not be misinterpreted: ‘Then I don’t understand your sitting at the same table with officers of His Majesty.’ He bowed stiffly, and went out.
“The die had been cast. No one was curious as to what I would do; no one doubted but that there was only one thing left for me to do. But I was determined to push the matter to its logical conclusion. That super-idol, known as the code of honour, had issued its decree; but I was determined to refuse obedience and take the consequences upon myself. That very evening, when I came home, two comrades were awaiting me to offer me their services. I refused courteously. They looked at me as though I had gone mad, and went off in absurd haste.
“The inevitable consequences followed. You can understand that I could no longer breathe in that air. You cannot outrage the fetishes of your social group and go unpunished. I had to avoid insult, and learned what it was to be an outcast. And that is bad. The imagination alone cannot quite grasp the full horror of it. I saw clearly that there was no place left for me in my fatherland. The way out was obvious.”
Christian had listened to his friend’s story with unmoved countenance. He got up, took a few turns through the room, and returned to his seat. Then he said: “I think you did theright thing. I am sorry you must leave us, but you did right.”
Stettner looked up. How strange that sounded: You did right. A question hovered on his lips. But it was not uttered. For Christian feared that question, and silenced it by a sudden conventionality of demeanour.
Christian, the brothers Maelbeek, who had followed Eva from Holland, Botho von Thüngen, a Russian councillor of state named Koch, and Crammon sat at luncheon in the dining hall of the hotel.
They were talking about a woman of the streets who had been murdered. The police had already caught the murderer. He was a man who had once belonged to good society, but had gradually gone to the dogs. He had throttled the woman and robbed her in a sailor’s tavern.
Now all the prostitutes in the city had unanimously determined to show their sister, who had sacrificed her life to her calling, a last and very public mark of respect, and to follow her coffin to the grave. The respectable citizens of Hamburg felt this to be a sort of challenge and protested. But there was no legal provision by which the demonstration could be stopped.
“We ought to see the spectacle,” said Crammon, “even if we have to sacrifice our siesta.”
“Then there’s no time to be lost,” the elder Maelbeek declared, and looked at his watch. “The friends will assemble at the house of mourning at three sharp.” He smiled, and thought this way of putting the matter rather witty.
Christian said that he would go too. The motor took them to a crossing that had been closed by the police. Here they left the car, and Herr von Thüngen persuaded the police captain to let them pass.
They were at once surrounded by a great throng of humble folk—sailors, fishermen, workingmen, women, and children.The windows of the houses were thronged with heads. The Maelbeeks and Koch stopped here, and called Thüngen to join them. Christian walked farther. Somehow the behaviour of his companions irritated him. He felt the kind of curiosity which filled them as something disagreeable. He was curious too, but in another way. Or, at least, it seemed different to him.
Crammon remained by his side. But the throng grew rowdy. “Where are you going?” Crammon asked peevishly. “There is no use in going farther. Let us wait here.”
Christian shook his head.
“Very well. I take my stand here,” Crammon decided, and separated from Christian.
The latter made his way up to the dirty, old house at the door of which the hearse was standing. It was a foggy day. The black wagon was like a dark hole punched into the grey. Christian wanted to go a little farther, but some young fellows purposely blocked his way. They turned their heads, looked him over, and suspected him of being a “toff.” Their own garb was cheap and flashy; their faces and gestures made it clear what trade they drove. One of them was a young giant. He was half a head taller than Christian, and his brows joined over the bridge of his nose. On the index finger of his left hand he wore a huge carnelian ring.
Christian looked about him quite unintimidated. He saw hundreds of women, literally hundreds, ranging in age from sixteen to fifty, and in condition from bloom to utter decay, and from luxury to rags and filth.
They had all gathered—those who had passed the zenith of their troubled course, and those who had barely emerged from childhood, frivolous, sanguine, vain, and already tainted with the mire of the great city. They had come from all streets; they were recruited from all nations and all classes; some had escaped from a sheltered youth, others had risen from even direr depths; there were those who felt themselves pariahs and had the outcast’s hatred in their eyes, and there were otherswho showed a certain pride in their calling and held themselves aloof. He saw cynical and careworn faces, lovely and hardened ones, indifferent and troubled, greedy and gentle faces. Some were painted and some pallid; and the latter seemed strangely naked.
He was familiar with them from the streets and houses of many cities, as every man is. He knew the type, the unfailing stamp, the acquired gesture and look—this hard, rigid, dull, clinging, lightless look. But he had never before seen them except when they were exercising their function behind the gates of their calling, dissembling their real selves and under the curse of sex. To see many hundreds of them separated from all that, to see them as human beings stripped of the stimulus and breath of a turbid sexuality—that was what seemed to sweep a cloud from his eyes.
Suddenly he thought: “I must order my hunting lodge to be sold, and the hounds too.”
The coffin was being carried from the house. It was covered with flowers and wreaths; and from the wreaths fluttered ribands with gilt inscriptions. Christian tried to read the inscriptions, but it was impossible. The coffin had small, silver-plated feet that looked like the paws of a cat. By some accident one of these had been broken off, and that touched Christian, he hardly knew why, as unbearably pitiful. An old woman followed the coffin. She seemed more vexed and angry than grief-stricken. She wore a black dress, but the seam under one arm was ripped open. And that too seemed unbearably pitiful.
The hearse started off. Six men carrying lighted candles walked in front of it. The murmur of voices became silent. The women, walking by fours, followed the hearse. Christian stood still close pressed against a wall, and let the procession pass him by. In a quarter of an hour the street was quite desolate. The windows of the houses were closed. He remained alone in the street, in the fog.
As he walked away he reflected: “I’ve asked my father to take care of my collection of rings. There are over four thousand of them, and many are beautiful and costly. They could be sold too. I don’t need them. I shall have them sold.”
He wandered on and on, and lost all sense of the passing of time. Evening came, and the city lights glowed through the fog. Everything became moist, even to the gloves on his hands.
He thought of the missing foot on the coffin of the murdered harlot, and of the torn seam of the old woman’s dress.
He passed over one of the great bridges of the Elbe, and then walked along the river bank. It was a desolate region. He stopped near the light of a street lamp, gazed into the water, drew forth his wallet, took out a bank note of a hundred marks, turned it about in his hands, shook his head, and then, with a gesture of disgust, threw it into the water. He took a second and did the same. There were twenty bank notes in his wallet. He took them out one by one, and with that expression half of disgust, half of dreaminess, he let them glide into the river.
The street lamps illuminated the inky water for a short distance, and he saw the bank notes drift away.
And he smiled and went on.
When he reached the hotel he felt an urgent need of warmth. By turns he entered the library, the reception hall, the dining-room. All these places were well heated, but their warmth did not suffice him. He attributed his chill to walking so long in the damp.
He took the lift and rode up to his own rooms. He changed his clothes, wrapped himself warmly, and sat down beside the radiator, in which the steam hissed like a caged animal.
Yet he did not grow warm. At last he knew that his shivering was not due to the moisture and the fog, but to some inner cause.
Toward eleven o’clock he arose and went out into the corridor. The stuccoed walls were divided into great squares by gilt moulding; the floor was covered by pieces of carpet that had been joined together to appear continuous. Christian felt a revulsion against all this false splendour. He approached the wall, touched the stucco, and shrugged his shoulders in contempt.
At the end of the long corridor was Eva’s suite. He had passed the door several times. As he passed it again he heard the sound of a piano. Only a few keys were being gently touched. After a moment’s reflection he knocked, opened the door, and entered.
Susan Rappard was alone in the room. Wrapped in a fur coat, she sat at the piano. On the music rack was propped a book that she was reading. Her fingers passed with ghostly swiftness over the keys, but she struck one only quite rarely. She turned her head and asked rudely: “What do you want, Monsieur?”
Christian answered: “If it’s possible, I should like to speak to Madame. I want to ask her a question.”
“Now? At night?” Susan was amazed. “We’re tired. We’re always tired at night in this hyperborean climate, where the sun is a legend. The fog weighs on us. Thank God, in four days we have our last performance. Then we’ll go where the sky is blue. We’re longing for Paris.”
“I should be very happy if I could see Madame,” Christian said.
Susan shook her head. “You have a strange kind of patience,” she said maliciously. “I hadn’t suspected you of being so romantic. You’re pursuing a very foolish policy, I assure you. Go in, if you want to, however.Ce petit laideron est chez elle, demoiselle Schöntag.She acts the part of a court fool. Everything in the world is amusing to her—herself not least. Well, that is coming to an end too.”
Voices and clear laughter could be heard. The door ofEva’s rooms opened, and she and Johanna appeared on the threshold. Eva wore a simple white garment, unadorned but for one great chrysoprase that held it on the left shoulder. Her skin had an amber gleam, the quiver of her nostrils betrayed a secret irritation. The beautiful woman and the plain one stood there side by side, each with an acute feminine consciousness of her precise qualities: the one vital, alluring, pulsing with distinction and freedom; the other all adoration and yearning ambition for that vitality and that freedom.
Tenderly and delicately Johanna had put her arm about Eva and touched her friend’s bare shoulder with her cheek. With her bizarre smile she said: “No one knows how it came that Rumpelstilzkin is my name.”
They had not yet observed Christian. A gesture of Susan’s called their attention to him. He stood in the shadow of the door. Johanna turned pale, and her shy glance passed from Eva to Christian. She released Eva, bowed swiftly to kiss Eva’s hand, and with a whispered good-night slipped past Christian.
Although Christian’s eyes were cast down, they grasped the vision of Eva wholly. He saw the feet that he had once held naked in his hands; under her diaphanous garment he saw the exquisite firmness of her little breasts; he saw the arms that had once embraced him and the perfect hands that had once caressed him. All his bodily being was still vibrantly conscious of the smoothness and delicacy of their touch. And he saw her before him, quite near and hopelessly unattainable, and felt a last lure and an ultimate renunciation.
“Monsieur has a request,” said Susan Rappard mockingly, and preparing to leave them.
“Stay!” Eva commanded, and the look she gave Christian was like that she gave a lackey.
“I wanted to ask you,” Christian said softly, “what is the meaning of the name Eidolon by which you used to call me. My question is belated, I know, and it may seem foolish to-day.”He smiled an embarrassed smile. “But it torments me not to know when I think about it, and I determined to ask you.”
Susan gave a soundless laugh. In its belated and unmotivated urgency, the question did, indeed, sound a little foolish. Eva seemed amused too, but she concealed the fact. She looked at her hands and said: “It is hard to tell you what it means—something that one sacrifices, or a god to whom one sacrifices, a lovely and serene spirit. It means either or perhaps both at once. Why remind ourselves of it? There is no Eidolon any more. Eidolon was shattered, and one should not exhibit the shards to me. Shards are ugly things.”
She shivered a little, and her eyes shone. She turned to Susan. “Let me sleep to-morrow till I wake. I have such evil dreams nowadays, and find no rest till toward morning.”
Passing back through the corridor Christian saw a figure standing very still in the semi-darkness. He recognized Johanna, and he felt that this thing was fated—that she should be standing here and waiting for him.
She did not look at him; she looked at the floor. Not until he came quite close to her did she raise her eyes, and then she looked timidly away. Her lips quivered. A question hovered on them. She knew all that had passed between Eva and Christian. That they had once been lovers only increased her enthusiastic admiration for them both. But what happened between them now—her brief presence made her sure of its character—seemed to her both shameful and incomprehensible.
She was imaginative and sensitive, and loved those who were nobly proud; and she suffered when such noble pride and dignity were humbled. Her whole heart was given over to her ideal of spiritual distinction. Sometimes she would misunderstand her own ideal, and take external forms and modes as expressions of it. And this division in her soul, to which shewas not equal, sometimes delivered her into the power of mere frivolity. “It is late,” she whispered timidly. It was not a statement; it was an attempt to save herself. Each time that Christian had been mentioned, three things had struck her mind: his elegance, his fine pride, his power over all hearts. That was the combination that called to her and stirred her and filled her days with longing.
Thus she had followed Crammon in search of the great adventure, although she had said of him but an hour after she had met him: “He is grandiosely and grotesquely comic.” She had followed him like a slave to a market of slaves, hoping to catch the eye of the khalif.
But she had no faith in her own power. Voluntarily and intentionally she crumbled the passions of her being into small desires. She suffered from that very process and jeered at herself. She was too timid to take greatly what she wanted. She nibbled at life and had not the adventurousness of great enjoyments. And she mocked at her own unhappy nature, and suffered the more.
And now he stood before her. It frightened and surprised her, even though she had waited for him. Since he stayed, she wanted to think him bold and brave. But she could not, and at once she shrank into self-contempt. “It is late,” she whispered again, nodded a good-night, and opened the door of her room.
But Christian begged silently with an expression that was irresistible. He crossed the threshold behind the trembling girl. Her face grew hard. But she was too fine to play a coquettish game. Before her blood was stirred her eyes had yielded. The pallor of her face lit it with a new charm. There was no hint of plainness any more. The stormy expectation of her heart harmonized the lines of her features and melted them into softness, gentleness, and delicacy.
Of her power over the senses of men she was secure. She had tested her magnetism on those whom one granted littleand who gave less. Flirtations had been used as anodynes in her social group. One had played with false counters, and by a silent compact avoided serious moments. But her experience failed her to-night, for here there was not lightness but austerity. She yielded herself to this night, oblivious of the future and its responsibilities.