X

He took Eva with him to Toledo. He had rented a house there in which, men said, the painter El Greco had once dwelled.

The building was a grey cube, rather desolate within. Cats shared the dwelling, and owls, bats, and mice.

Several rooms were filled with books, and these books became Eva’s silent friends in the years that came now, and during which she saw almost no one but Rappard and Susan.

In this house she learned to know loneliness and work and utter dedication to a task.

She entered the house full of fear of him who had forced her into it. His speech and behaviour intimidated her so that she had terror-stricken visions when she thought of him. But Susan did all in her power to soothe the girl.

Susan would relate stories concerning her brother at morning or in the evening hours, when Eva lay with her body desperately exhausted, too exhausted often to sleep. She had not been spoiled. The life with the troupe of jugglers had accustomed her to severe exertions. But the ceaseless drill, the monotonous misery of the first few months, in which everything seemed empty and painful, without allurement or brightness or intelligible purpose, made her ill and made her hate her own limbs.

It was Susan’s hollow voice that besought her to be patient; it was Susan who massaged her arms and legs, who carried her to bed and read to her. And she described her brother, who in her eyes was a magician and an uncrowned king, and on whose eyes and breath she hung, described him through his past, which she retold in its scenes and words, at times too fully and confusedly, at others so concretely and glowinglythat Eva began to suspect something of the good fortune of the coincidence that had brought her to his attention.

Finally came a day on which he spoke to her openly: “Do you believe that you were born to be a dancer?” “I do believe it,” she answered. Then he spoke to her concerning the dance, and her wavering feeling grew firmer. Gradually she felt her body growing lighter and lighter. When they parted on that day, ambition was beginning to flame in her eyes.

He had taught her to stand with outstretched arms and to let no muscle quiver; to stand on the tips of her toes so that her crown touched a sharp arrow; to dance definite figures outlined by needles on the floor with her naked feet, and, when each movement had passed into her very flesh, to brave the needles blindfolded. He taught her to whirl about a taut rope adjusted vertically, and to walk on high stilts without using her arms.

She had had to forget how she had walked hitherto, how she had stridden and run and stood, and she had to learn anew how to walk and stride and run and stand. Everything, as he said, had to become new. Her limbs and ankles and wrists had to adjust themselves to new functions, even as a man who has lain in the mire of the street puts on new garments. “To dance,” he would say, “means to be new, to be fresh at every moment, as though one had just issued from the hand of God.”

He inducted her into the meaning and law of every movement, into the inner structure and outer rhythm of every gesture.

He created gestures with her. And about every gesture he wove some experience. He showed her the nature of flight, of pursuit, of parting, of salutation, of expectancy and triumph and joy and terror; and there was no motion of a finger in which the whole body did not have a part. The play of the eyes and of facial expression entered this art so little that the swathing of the face would not have diminished the effect that was aimed at.

He drew the kernel from each husk; he demanded the quintessential only.

“Can you drink? Let me see you!” It was wrong. “Your gesture was a shopworn phrase. The man who had never seen another drink did not drink thus.”

“Can you pray? Can you pluck flowers, swing a scythe, gather grain, bind a veil? Give me an image of each action! Represent it!” She could not. But he taught her.

Whenever she fell into a flat imitation of reality he foamed with rage. “Reality is a beast!” he roared, and hurled one of his crutches against the wall. “Reality is a murderer.”

In the statues and paintings of great artists he pointed out to her the essential and noble lines, and illustrated how all that had been thus created and built merged harmoniously again with nature and her immediacy of truth.

He spoke of the help of music to her art. “You need no melody and scarcely tone. The only thing that matters is the division of time, the audibly created measure which leads and restrains the violence, wildness, and passion, or else the softness and sustained beauty of motion. A tambourine and a fife suffice. Everything beyond that is dishonesty and confusion. Beware of a poetry of effect that does not issue from your naked achievement.”

At night he took her to wine rooms and taverns, where the girls of the people danced their artless and excited dances. He revealed to her the artistic kernel of each, and let her dance a bolero, a fandango, or a tarantella, which in this new embodiment had the effect of cut and polished jewels.

He reconstructed antique battle-dances for her, the Pyrrhic and the Karpaian; the dance of the Muses about the altar of Zeus on Helicon; the dance of Artemis and her companions; the dance of Delos, which imitated the path of Theseus through the labyrinth; the dance of the maidens in honour of Artemis, during which they wore a short chiton and a structure of willow on their heads; the vintners’ dance preserved on thecup of Hiero, which includes all the motions used by the gatherers of the vine and the workers at the winepress. He showed her pictures of the vase of François, of the geometrical vase of Dipylon, of many reliefs and terracotta pieces, and made her study the figures that had an entrancing charm and incomparable rhythm of motion. And he procured her music for these dances, which Susan copied from old manuscripts, and which he adapted.

And from these creative exercises he led her on to a higher freedom. He now stimulated her to invent for herself, to feel with originality and give that feeling a creative form. He vivified her glance, that was so often in thrall to the technical or merely beautiful, liberated her senses, and gave her a clear vision of that deaf, blind swarm and throng whom her art would have to affect. He inspired her with love for the immortal works of man, armoured her heart against seduction by the vulgar, against a game but for the loftiest stakes, against action without restraint, being without poise.

But it was not until she left him that she understood him wholly.

When he thought her ripe for the glances of the world he gave her recommendations to smooth the way, and also Susan. He was willing to be a solitary. Susan had trained a young Castilian to give him the care he needed. He did not say whether he intended to stay in Toledo or choose some other place. Since they had left him, neither Eva nor Susan had heard from him: he had forbidden both letters and messages.

Often in the night Susan would sit in some dark corner, and out of her deep brooding name her brother’s name. Her thoughts turned about a reunion with him. Her service to Eva was but a violent interruption of the accustomed life at his side.

She loved Eva, but she loved her as Lucas Anselmo’s workand projection. If Eva gained fame it was for him, if she gathered treasure it was for him, if she grew in power it was for him. Those who approached Eva and felt her sway were his creatures, his serfs, and his messengers.

After the incident with Christian Wahnschaffe, as Susan crouched at Eva’s feet and, as so often, embraced the girl’s knees, she thought: Ah, he has breathed into her an irresistible soul, and made her beautiful and radiant.

But always she harboured a superstitious fear. She trembled in secret lest the irresistible soul should some day flee from Eva’s body, and the radiance of her beauty be dulled, and nothing remain but a dead and empty husk. For that would be a sign to her that Lucas Anselmo was no more.

For this reason it delighted her when ecstasy and glee, glow and tumult reigned in Eva’s life, and she was cast down and plagued by evil presentiments when the girl withdrew into quietness and remained silent and alone. So long as Eva danced and loved and was mobile and adorned her body, Susan dismissed all care concerning her brother. Therefore she would sit and fan the flame from which his spirit seemed to speak to her.

“Just because you’ve chosen the Englishman, you needn’t send the German away,” she said. “You may take the one and let the other languish a while longer. You can never tell how things will change. There are many men: they rise and fall. Cardillac is going down-hill now. I hear all kinds of rumours.”

Eva, hiding her face in her hands, whispered: “Eidolon.”

It vexed Susan. “First you mock him, then you sigh for him! What folly is this?”

Eva sprang up suddenly. “You shan’t speak of him to me or praise him, wretched woman.” Her cheeks glowed, and the brightly mocking tone in which she often spoke to Susan became menacing.

“Golpes para besos,” Susan murmured in Spanish. “Blowsfor kisses.” She arose in order to comb Eva’s hair and braid it for the night.

The next day Crammon appeared. “I found you one whose laughter puts to shame the laughter of the muleteer of Cordova,” he said with mock solemnity. “Why is he rejected?”

His heart bled. Yet he wooed her for his friend. Much as he loved and admired Denis Lay, yet Christian was closer to him. Christian was his discovery, of which he was vain, and his hero.

Eva looked at him with eyes that glittered, and replied: “It is true that he knows how to laugh like that muleteer of Cordova, but he has no more culture of the heart than that same fellow. And that, my dear man, is not enough.”

“And what is to become of us?” sighed Crammon.

“You may follow us to England,” Eva said cheerfully. “I’m going to dance at His Majesty’s Theatre. Eidolon can be my page. He can learn to practise reverence, and not to chaffer for horses when beautiful poems are being read to me. Tell him that.”

Crammon sighed again. Then he took her hand, and devoutly kissed the tips of her fingers. “I shall deliver your message, sweet Ariel,” he said.

Cardillac and Eva fell out, and that robbed the man of his last support. The danger with which he was so rashly playing ensnared him; the abysses lured him on.

The external impetus to his downfall was furnished by a young engineer who had invented a hydraulic device. Cardillac had persuaded him with magnificent promises to let him engage in the practical exploitation of the invention. It was not long before the engineer discovered that he had been cheated of the profits of his labour. Quietly he accumulated evidence against the speculator, unveiled his dishonest dealings, and presented to the courts a series of annihilatingcharges. Although Cardillac finally offered him five hundred thousand francs if he would withdraw his charges, the outraged accuser remained firm.

Other untoward circumstances occurred. The catastrophe became inevitable. On a single forenoon the shares he had issued dropped to almost nothing. In forty-eight hours three hundred millions of francs had been lost. Innumerable well-established fortunes plunged like avalanches into nothingness, eighteen hundred mechanics and shop-keepers lost all they had in the world, twenty-seven great firms went into bankruptcy, senators and deputies of the Republic were sucked down in the whirlpool, and under the attacks of the opposition the very administration shook.

Felix Imhof hurried to Paris to save whatever was possible out of the crash. Although he had suffered painful losses, he was ecstatic over the grandiose spectacle which Cardillac’s downfall presented to the world.

Crammon laughed and rubbed his hands in satisfaction, and pointed to Imhof. “He wanted to seduce me, but I was as chaste as Joseph.”

On the following evening Imhof went with his friends to visit Eva Sorel. She had left the palace which Cardillac had furnished for her, and had rented a handsome house in the Chaussée d’Antin.

Imhof spoke of the curious tragedy of these modern careers. As an example he related how three days before his collapse Cardillac had appeared at the headquarters of his bitterest enemies, the Bank of Paris. The directors were having a meeting. None was absent. With folded hands and tear-stained face the sorely beset man begged for a loan of twelve millions. It was a drastic symptom of his naïveté that he asked help of those whom he had fleeced on the exchange year in and year out, whose losses had glutted his wealth, and whom he wanted to fight with the very loan for which he begged.

Christian scarcely listened. He stood with Crammon besidea Chinese screen. Opposite them sat Eva in a curiously dreamy mood, and not far from her was Denis Lay. Others were present too, but Christian gave them no attention.

Suddenly there was a commotion near the door. “Cardillac,” some one whispered. All glances sought him.

It was indeed Cardillac who had entered. His boots were muddy, his collar and cravat in disorder. He seemed not to have changed his garments for a week. His fists were clenched; his restless eyes wandered from face to face.

Eva and Denis remained calmly as they were. Eva pressed her foot against the edge of a copper jar filled with white lilies. No one moved. Only Christian, quite involuntarily, approached Cardillac by a few paces.

Cardillac became aware of him, and drew him by the sleeve toward the door of the adjoining room. They had scarcely crossed the threshold when Cardillac whispered in an intense but subdued tone: “I must have two thousand francs or I’m done for! Advance me that much, monsieur, and save me. I have a wife and a child.”

Christian was astonished. No one dreamed that the man had a family. And why turn precisely to him? Wiguniewski, d’Autichamps, many others knew him far better.

“I must be at the station in half an hour,” he heard the man say, and his hand sought his purse.

Wife and child! The words flitted through his head, and there arose in him the violent aversion he always felt in the presence of beggars. What had he to do with it all? He took out the bank notes. Two thousand francs, he thought, and remembered the huge sums which one was accustomed to name in connection with the man who stood before him begging.

“I thank you.” Cardillac’s voice came to him as through a wall.

Then Cardillac passed him with bent head. But two men had in the meantime appeared in the other room. At the open folding-door the lackeys stood behind them with anembarrassed expression, for the men were police officials who were seeking Cardillac and had followed him here.

Cardillac, seeing them and guessing their errand, recoiled with a gurgling noise in his throat. His right hand disappeared in his coat-pocket, but instantly the two men leaped on him and pinioned his arms. There was a brief, silent struggle. Suddenly he was made fast.

Eva had arisen. Her guests crowded about her. She leaned against Susan’s shoulder and turned her head a little aside, as though a touch of uncanny terror brushed her. But she still smiled, though now with pallid cheeks.

“He’s magnificent, magnificent, even at this moment,” Imhof whispered to Crammon.

Christian stared at Cardillac’s huge back. It was, he couldn’t help thinking, like the back of an ox dragged to slaughter. The two men between whom he stood hand-cuffed had greasy necks, and the hair on the back of their heads was dirty and ill-trimmed.

An unpleasant taste on his palate tormented Christian. He asked a servant for a glass of champagne.

Cardillac’s words, “I have a wife and a child,” would not leave his mind. On the contrary, they sounded ever more stridently within him. And suddenly a second, foolish, curious voice in him asked: How do you suppose they look—this wife, this child? Where are they? What will become of them?

It was as annoying and as painful as a toothache.

In Devon, south of Exeter, Denis Lay had his country seat. The manor stood in a park of immemorial trees, velvety swards, small lakes that mirrored the sky, and flowerbeds beautiful in the mildest climate of such a latitude on earth.

“We’re quite near the Gulf Stream here,” Crammon explained to Christian and Eva, who, like himself, were Lay’s guests. And he had an expression as though with his ownhands he had brought the warm current to the English coast from the Gulf of Mexico simply for the benefit of his friends.

With a gesture of sisterly tenderness Eva walked for hours among the beds of blossoming violets. Large surfaces were mildly and radiantly blue. It was March.

A company of English friends was expected, but not until two days later.

The four friends, going for a walk, had been overtaken by showers and came home drenched. When they had changed their clothes, they met for tea in the library. It was a great room with wainscoting of dark oak and mighty cross-beams. Halfway up there ran along the walls a gallery with carved balustrades, and at one end, between the pointed windows, appeared the gilded pipes of an organ.

The light was dim and the rain swished without. Eva held an album of Holbein drawings, and turned the pages slowly. Christian and Crammon were playing at chess. Denis watched them for a while. Then he sat down at the organ and began to play.

Eva looked up from the pictures and listened.

“I’ve lost the game,” Christian said. He arose and mounted the steps to the gallery. He leaned over the balustrade and looked down. In an outward curve of the balustrade there lay, like an egg in its cup, a globe on a metal stand.

“What were you playing?” Eva asked, as Denis paused.

He turned around. “I’ve been trying to compose a passage from the Song of Songs,” he answered. He played again and sang in an agreeable voice: “Arise, thou lovely one, for the winter is past.”

The sound of the organ stirred a feeling of hatred in Christian. He gazed upon Eva’s form. In a gown of sea-green, slim, far, estranged, she sat there. And as he looked at her there blended with his hatred of the music another feeling—one of oppression and of poignant pain, and his heart began to throb violently.

“Arise, thou lovely one, and come with me,” Denis sang again, and Crammon softly hummed the air too. Eva looked up, and her glance met Christian’s. In her face there was a mysterious expression of loftiness and love.

Christian took the globe from its stand and played with it. He let it roll back and forth between his hands on the flat balustrade like a rubber ball. The sphere suddenly slipped from him, fell and rolled along the floor to Eva’s feet.

Denis and Crammon gathered about it; Christian came down from the gallery.

Eva picked up the globe and went toward Christian. He took it from her, but she at once held out her hands again. Then she held it daintily poised upon the fingertips of her right hand. Her left hand, with fingers spread out, she held close to it; her head was gently inclined, her lips half open.

“So this is the world,” she said, “your world! The blue bits are the seas, and that soiled yellow the countries. How ugly the countries are, and how jagged! They look like a cheese at which mice have nibbled. O world, the things that creep about on you! The things that happen on you! I hold you now, world, and carry you! I like that!”

The three men smiled, but a psychical shudder passed through them. For they could no longer stand in human erectness on this little round earth. A breath of the dancer could blow them down into the immeasurable depths of the cosmos.

And Christian saw that Denis, fighting with an impulse, regarded him. Suddenly the Englishman came up to him and held out his hand. And Christian took the hand of his victorious rival, and knew in his secretest mind that an ultimate advantage was his. For between Eva’s face and the smudged globe he seemed to see a ghostly little figure which charmed her with its glance and which was a tiny image of himself—Eidolon.

They planned that summer to return to the manor and huntthe deer, as was the custom of the gentlemen of that region. But when summer came all things had changed, and Denis had glided from the smooth sphere of earth into the depth.

One day in London Crammon came to Christian, sat down affectionately beside him, and said: “I am leaving.”

“Where are you going?” Christian asked in surprise.

“North, to fish salmon,” Crammon replied. “I’ll join you later or you can join me.”

“But why go at all?”

“Because I’ll go straight to the dogs if I have to see this woman any longer without possessing her. That’s all.”

Christian looked at Crammon with a flame in his eyes, and checked a gesture of angry jealousy. Then his face assumed its expression of friendly mockery again.

So Crammon departed.

Eva Sorel became the undisputed queen of the London season. Her name was everywhere. The women wore hats à la Eva Sorel, the men cravats in her favourite colours. She threw into the shade the most sought-after celebrities of the day—including the Negro bruiser, Jackson. Fame came to her in full draughts, and gold by the pailfuls.

May was very hot in London that year. Denis and Christian planned a night’s pleasure on the Thames. They rented a steam yacht named “Aldebaran,” ordered an exquisite meal on board, and Denis sent out invitations to his friends.

Fourteen members of his set joined the party. The yacht lay near the houses of Parliament, and shortly before midnight the guests appeared in evening dress. The son of the Russian ambassador was among them, the Honourable James Wheely, whose brother was in the ministry, Lord and Lady Westmoreland, Eva Sorel, Prince Wiguniewski, and others.

On the stroke of twelve the “Aldebaran” started out, and the small orchestra of well-chosen artists began to play.

When the yacht on its way upstream had reached the railway bridge of Battersea, there became visible on the left bank in the dim light of the street lamps an innumerable throng of men and women, close-packed, head by head, thousands upon thousands.

They were strikers from the docks. Why they stood here, so silent and so menacing in their silence, was known to no one on board. Perhaps it was a demonstration of some sort.

Denis, who had had a good deal of champagne, went to the railing, and in his recklessness shouted three cheers across the river. No sound answered him. The human mass stood like a wall, and in the sombre faces that turned toward the gleam of the yacht’s light no muscle moved.

Then Denis said to Christian, who had joined him: “Let’s swim across. Whoever reaches shore first is victor of the race, and must ask those people what they are waiting for and why they don’t go home at this hour of the night.”

“Swim over tothem?” Christian shook his head. He was asked to touch slimy worms with his hands and pretend they were trophies.

“Then I’ll do it alone!” Denis exclaimed, and threw his coat and waistcoat down on the deck.

He was known to be an admirable swimmer. The company therefore took his notion as one of the bizarre pranks for which he was known. Only Eva tried to restrain him. She approached him and laid her hand on his arm. In vain. He was quite ready to jump, when the captain grasped his shoulder and begged him to desist, since the river, despite its calm appearance, had a strong undercurrent. But Denis eluded him, ran to the promenade deck, and in another moment his slender body flew into the black water.

No one had a presentiment of disaster. The swimmer advanced with powerful strokes. The watchers on board weresure that he would easily reach the Chelsea shore. But suddenly, in the bright radiance of a searchlight from shore, they saw him throw up his arms above his head. At the same moment he cried piercingly for help. Without hesitation a member of the little orchestra, a cellist, sprang overboard in all his garments to help the drowning man. But the current caused by the ebbtide was very powerful, and both Denis and the musician were whirled onward by it, and disappeared in the inky waves.

Suddenly the confusion caused by these happenings lifted from Christian’s mind, and before any could restrain him, he was in the water. He heard a cry, and knew that it came from Eva’s lips. The ladies and gentlemen on board scurried helplessly to and fro.

Christian could no longer make out the forms of the other two. The water seemed to bank itself against him and hinder his movements. A sudden weakness took possession of him, but he felt no fear. Raising his head he saw the silent masses of the workers, men and women with such expressions as he had never seen. Although the glance which he directed toward them was but a momentary one, he felt almost sure that their sombre earnestness of gaze was fixed on him, and that these thousands and thousands were waiting for him, and for him alone. His weakness increased. It seemed to arise from his heart, which grew heavier and heavier. At that moment a life-boat reached him.

At three o’clock in the morning, in the earliest dawn, the bodies of Denis and the musician were found jammed between two beams near the arches of a bridge. Now they lay on deck and Christian could contemplate them. The guests had left the ship. Eva, too, had gone. She had been deeply shaken, and Prince Wiguniewski had accompanied her home.

The sailors had gone to their bunks. The deck was empty, and Christian sat alone with the two dead men.

The sun arose. The waters of the river began to glow. Thepavements of the desolate streets, the walls and the windows of the houses flushed with the red of dawn. Sea-gulls circled about the smokestack.

Christian sat alone with the dead men. He was huddled in an old coat which the captain had thrown around his shoulders. Steadily he gazed upon the faces of the dead. They were swollen and ugly.

North of Loch Lomond, Christian and Crammon wandered about shooting snipes and wild ducks. The land was rough and wild; always within their hearing thundered the sea; storm-harried masses of cloud raced across the sky.

“My father will be far from pleased,” said Christian. “I’ve spent two hundred and eighty thousand marks in the last ten months.”

“Your mother will persuade him to bear it,” Crammon answered. “Anyhow, you’re of age. You can use several times that much without any one hindering you.”

Christian threw back his head, and drew the salty air deep into his lungs. “I wonder what little Letitia is doing,” he said.

“I think of the child myself at times. She shouldn’t be left entirely to that old schemer,” Crammon replied.

Her kiss no longer burned on Christian’s lips, for other flames had touched them since. Like laughingputtiin a painting, the lovely faces fluttered about him. Many of them, to be sure, were laughing now no more.

In a dark gown, emerging from between two white columns, Eva had taken leave of him. He seemed to see her still—the brunette pallor of her face, her inexpressibly slender hand, the most eloquent hand in the world.

Jestingly and familiarly she had spoken to him in the language of her German homeland, which seemed more piercingly sweet and melodious in her mouth than in any other’s.

“Where are you going, Eidolon?” she had asked carelessly.

He had answered with a gesture of uncertainty. He evidently thought that his going or coming was indifferent to her.

“It isn’t nice of you to go without asking leave,” she said, and put her hands on his shoulders. “But perhaps it is just as well. You confuse me. I am beginning to think of you, and I don’t want to do that.”

“Why not?”

“Because I don’t. Why do you need reasons?”

The dead and swollen face of Denis Lay rose up before them, and they both saw it in the empty air.

After a little he had dared to ask: “When shall we meet again?”

“It depends on you,” she had answered. “Always let me know where you are, so that I can send for you. Of course, it’s nonsense, and I won’t. But it might just happen that in some whim I may want you and none other. Only you must learn——” She stopped and smiled.

“What, what must I learn?”

“Ask your friend Crammon. He’ll teach you.” After these words she had left him.

The sea roared like a herd of steers. Christian stopped and turned to Crammon. “Listen, Bernard, there’s a matter that comes back curiously into my mind. When I last talked to Eva she said there was something I was to learn before I could see her again. And when I asked after her meaning, she said that you could give me a hint. What is it? What am I to learn?”

Crammon answered seriously: “You see, my boy, these things are rather complicated. Some people like their steak overdone, others almost raw, most people medium. Well, if you don’t know a certain person’s taste and serve the steak the way you yourself prefer it, you risk making a blunder and looking like a fool. People are far from simple.”

“I don’t understand you, Bernard.”

“Doesn’t matter a bit, old chap! Don’t bother your handsome head about it. Let’s go on. This damned country makes me melancholy.”

They went on. But there was an unknown sadness in Christian’s heart.

AN OWL ON EVERY POSTI

Letitiafelt vague longings.

She accompanied her aunt, the countess, to the south of Switzerland, and loitered in wonder at the foot of blue glaciers; she lay on the shore of Lake Geneva, dreaming or reading poetry. When she appeared smiling on the promenade, admiring glances were all about her. Enthusiastically conscious of her youth and of her emotional wealth, she enjoyed the day and the evening as each came, pictures and books, fragrances and tones. But her longings did not cease.

Many came and spoke to her of love—some frankly and some by implication. And she too was full of love—not for him who spoke, but for his words, expressions, presages. If a delighted glance met hers, it delighted her. And she lent her ear with equal patience to wooers of twenty or of sixty.

But her yearnings were not assuaged.

Her aunt, the countess, said: “Have nothing to do with aristocrats, my dear. They are uncultivated and full of false pride. They don’t know the difference between a woman and a horse. They would nail your young heart to a family tree, and if you don’t appreciate that favour sufficiently, they stamp you as déclassée for life. If they have no money they are too stupid to earn any; if they have it they don’t know how to spend it sensibly. Have no dealings with them. They’re not quite human.”

The countess’ experiences with the aristocracy had been very bitter. “You can imagine, my dear,” she said, “that I was hard pressed in my time to be forced to say these things now.”

Letitia sat on the edge of her bed and regarded her silk stocking, which had a little hole in it, and still felt the same longing.

Judith wrote her: “We expect you and the countess so soon as we are settled in our new house near Frankfort. It’s a kind of fairy palace that papa has built us, and it’s to be the family seat hereafter. It’s situated in the forest of Schwanheim, and is only ten minutes by motor from the city. Everybody who has seen it is mad about it. Felix Imhof says it reminds him of the palace of the Minotaur. There are thirty-four guest-rooms, a gallery fifty metres long with niches and columns, and a library that’s been modelled after the cupola of St. Peter’s at Rome. There are twenty thousand perfectly new books in it. Who’s to read them all?”

“I love the thought of them,” said Letitia, and pressed her hand against her heart.

She had had a golden charm made in the likeness of a tiny toad. She did not wear it about her neck, but kept it in a little leathern case, from which she often took it, and brooded over it lovingly.

In Schwetzingen she had met a young Argentinian of German descent. He was studying law at Heidelberg, but he confessed to her frankly that he had come to Europe to get him a German wife. He gave her this information at noon. At night he gave her to understand that in her he had met his goal.

His name was Stephen Gunderam. His skin was olive, his eyes glowing, his hair coal black and parted in the middle. Letitia was fascinated by his person, the countess by the rumours of his wealth. She made inquiries, and discovered that the rumours had not been exaggerated. The lands of the Gunderams on the Rio Plata were more extensive than the Duchy of Baden.

“Now, sweetheart, there’s a husband for you!” said the countess. But when she considered that she would have topart with Letitia, she began to cry, and lost her appetite for a whole forenoon.

Stephen Gunderam told them about his far, strange country, about his parents, brothers, servants, herds, houses. He declared that the bride he brought home would be a queen. He was so strong that he could bend a horse-shoe. But he was afraid of spiders, believed in evil omens, and suffered from frequent headaches. At such times he would lie in bed, and drink warm beer mixed with milk and the yolk of eggs. This was a remedy which an old mulatto woman had once given him.

Letitia barely listened. She was reading:

“And have you seen an inmost dreamFled from you and denied?Then gaze into the flowing stream,Where all things change and glide.”

“And have you seen an inmost dreamFled from you and denied?Then gaze into the flowing stream,Where all things change and glide.”

“And have you seen an inmost dreamFled from you and denied?Then gaze into the flowing stream,Where all things change and glide.”

“And have you seen an inmost dream

Fled from you and denied?

Then gaze into the flowing stream,

Where all things change and glide.”

“You really must hurry, darling,” the countess admonished her again.

But Letitia was so full of longing.

In a city on the Rhine, Christian and Crammon were delayed by an accident. Something had happened to the motor of their car, and the chauffeur needed a whole day for repairs.

It was a beautiful evening of September, so they left the city streets and wandered quietly along the bank of the river. When darkness fell, they drifted by chance into a beer-garden near the water. The tables and benches, rammed firmly into the earth, stood among trees full of foliage, and were occupied by several hundred people—tradesmen, workingmen, and students.

“Let us rest a while and watch the people,” said Crammon. And near the entrance they found a table with two vacant seats. A bar-maid placed two pitchers of beer before them.

Under the trees the air had something subterranean about it, for it was filled with the odour of the exudations of so many people. The few lamps had iridescent rings of smoke about them. At the adjoining table sat students with their red caps and other fraternity insignia. They had fat, puffed-out faces and insolent voices. One of them hit the table three times with his stick. Then they began to sing.

Crammon opened his eyes very wide, and his lips twitched mockingly. He said: “That’s my notion of the way wild Indians act—Sioux or Iroquois.” Christian did not answer. He kept his arms quite close to his body, and his shoulders drawn up a little. There was a good deal of noise at all the tables, and, after a while, Christian said: “Do let us go. I’m not comfortable here.”

“Ah, but my dear boy, this is the great common people!” Crammon instructed him with a mixture of arrogance and mockery. “Thus do they sing and drink and—smell. ‘And calmly flows the Rhine.’ Your health, your Highness!” He always called Christian that among strangers, and was delighted when those who overheard showed a respectful curiosity. As a matter of fact, several of the men at their table looked at them in some consternation, and then whispered among themselves.

A young girl with blond braids of hair wreathed about her head had entered the garden. She stopped near the entrance, and looked searchingly from table to table. The students laughed, and one called out to her. She hesitated shyly. Yet she went up to him. “Whom are you looking for, pretty maiden?” a freshman asked. The girl did not answer. “Hide in the pitcher for your forwardness,” a senior cried. “It is for me to ask.” The freshman grinned, and took a long draught of beer. “What do you desire, little maiden?” the senior asked in a beery voice. “Have you come to fetch your father, who clings too lovingly to his jug?” The girl blushed and nodded. She was asked to give her name, and said itwas Katherine Zöllner. Her father, she said, was a boatman. She spoke softly, yet so that Christian and Crammon understood what she said. Her father was due to join his ship for Cologne at three o’clock in the morning. “For Cologne,” the senior growled. “Give me a kiss, and I’ll find your father for you.”

The girl trembled and recoiled. But the fraternity approved of the demand, and roared applause. “Don’t pretend!” the senior said. He got up, put his arms roughly about her waist, and, despite her resistance and fright, he kissed her.

“Me, too! Me, too!” The cries arose from the others. The girl had already been passed on to a second, a third snatched her, then a fourth, fifth, sixth. She could not cry out. She could scarcely breathe. Her resistance grew feebler, the roaring and the laughter louder. The fellows at the neighbouring table grew envious. A fat man with warts on his face called out: “Now you come to us!” His comrades brayed with laughter. When the last student let her go, it was this man who grasped her, kissed her and threw her toward his neighbour. More and more men arose, stretched out their arms, and demanded the defenceless victim. Nothing happened except that they kissed her. Yet there spread through the crowd a wildness of lust, so that even the women screeched and cried out. The students, in the meantime, proud of their little game, raised their rough voices and sang a foolish song.

The body of the girl, now an unresisting and almost lifeless thing, was whirled from arm to arm. Christian and Crammon had arisen. They gazed into the quivering throng under the trees, heard the shrieks, the cries, the laughter, saw the girl, now far away, and the hands stretched out after her, and her face with eyes that were now closed, now open again in horror. At last one was found who had compassion. He was a young workingman, and he hit the man who was just kissing the girl square between the eyes. Two others then attacked him, and there ensued a rough fight, while the girl with herlittle remaining strength reeled toward the fence where the ground was grassy. Her hair fell loose, her blue bodice was torn and showed her naked bosom, her face was covered with ugly bruises. She tried to keep erect, groped about, but fell. A few thoughtful people now came up, helped her, and asked each other what was to be done.

Christian and Crammon followed the shore of the river back to the city. The students had begun a new ditty, that sounded discordantly through the night, until the distance gradually silenced it.

In the middle of the night Christian left his couch, slipped into a silk dressing gown and entered Crammon’s room. He lit a candle, sat down by the side of Crammon’s bed, and shook his sleeping friend by the shoulder. Crammon battled with sleep itself, and Christian turned his head away in order not to see the struggling, primitive face.

At last, after much grunting and groaning, Crammon opened his eyes. “What do you want?” he asked angrily. “Are you practising to play a ghost?”

“I would like to ask you something, Bernard,” Christian said.

This enraged Crammon all the more. “It is crazy to rob a man of his well-deserved rest. Are you moonstruck, or have you a bellyache? Ask what you want to ask, but hurry!”

“Do you believe I do right to live as I do?” asked Christian. “Be quite honest for once, and answer me.”

“There is no doubt that he’s moonstruck!” Crammon was truly horrified. “His mind is wandering. We must summon a physician.” He half-rose, and fumbled for the electric button.

“Don’t do that!” Christian restrained him mildly, and smiled a vexed smile. “Try to consider what I’ve said. Rub your eyes if you aren’t quite awake yet. There’s time enoughfor sleep. But I am asking you, Bernard, for your quite sincere opinion: Do you think I am right in living as I do?”

“My dear Christian Wahnschaffe, if you can tell me by what process this craze has——”

“Don’t jest, Bernard,” Christian interrupted him, frowning. “This is no time for a jest. Do you think that I should have remained with Eva?”

“Nonsense,” said Crammon. “She would have betrayed you; she would have betrayed me. She would betray the emperor, and yet stand guiltless in the sight of God. You can’t reckon with her, you can’t really be yourself with her. She was fashioned for the eye alone. Even that little story of the muleteer of Cordova was a trick. Be content, and let me sleep.”

Christian replied thoughtfully. “I don’t understand what you say, and you don’t understand what I mean. Since I left her I feel sometimes as though I had grown hunchbacked. Jesting aside, Bernard, I get up sometimes and a terror comes over me. I stretch myself out. I know that I’m straight, and yet I feel as though I were hunchbacked.”

“Completely out of his head,” Crammon murmured.

“And now tell me another thing, Bernard,” Christian continued, undeflected by his friend, and his clear, open face assumed an icy expression. “Should we not have helped the boatman’s daughter, you and I? Or should I not have done so, if you did not care to take the trouble? Tell me that!”

“The devil take it! What boatman’s daughter?”

“Are you so forgetful? The girl in the beer-garden. She even gave her name—Katherine Zöllner. Don’t you remember? And how those ruffians treated her?”

“Was I to risk my skin for a boatman’s daughter?” Crammon asked, enraged. “People of that sort may take their pleasures in their own fashion. What is it to you or to me? Did you try to hold back the paws of the wild beasts that tore up Adda Castillo? And that was a good deal worse thanbeing kissed by a hundred greasy snouts. Don’t be an idiot, my dear fellow, and let me sleep!”

“I am curious,” said Christian.

“Curious? What about?”

“I’m going to the house where she lives and see how she is. I want you to go along. Get up.”

Crammon opened his mouth very wide in his astonishment. “Go now?” he stammered, “at night? Are you quite crazy?”

“I knew you’d scold,” Christian said softly and with a dreamy smile. “But that curiosity torments me so that I’ve simply been turning from side to side in bed.” And in truth his face had an expression of expectation and of subtle desire that was new to Crammon. He went on: “I want to see what she is doing, what her life is like, what her room looks like. One should know about all that. We are hopelessly ignorant about people of that kind. Do please come on, Bernard.” His tone was almost cajoling.

Crammon sighed. He waxed indignant. He protested the frailty of his health and the necessity of sleep for his wearied mind. Since Christian, however, opposed to all these objections an insensitive silence, and since Crammon did not want to see him visit a dangerous and disreputable quarter of the city alone by night, he finally submitted, and, grumbling still, arose from his bed.

Christian bathed and dressed with his accustomed care. Before leaving the hotel they consulted a directory, and found the address of the boatman. They hired a cab. It was half-past four in the morning when their cab reached the hut beside the river bank. There was light in the windows.

Crammon was still at a loss to comprehend. With the rusty bell-pull in his hand, his confused and questioning eyes sought Christian once more. But the latter paid no attention to his friend. A care-worn, under-nourished woman appeared at the door. Crammon was forced to speak, and, with inner vexation, said that they had come to ask after her daughter. The woman, who immediately imagined that her daughter had had secret affairs with rich gentlemen, stepped aside and let the two pass her.

What Crammon saw and what Christian saw was not the same thing.

Crammon saw a dimly lit room, with old chests of drawers that were smoke-stained, with a bed and the girl Katherine on it covered by the coarse, red-checked linen, with a cradle in which lay a whining baby. He saw clothes drying by the oven, the boatman sitting and eating potato soup, a bench on which a lad was sleeping, and many other unclean, ugly things.

To Christian it was like a strange dream of falling. He, too, saw the boatman and the poor woman and the girl, whose glassy eyes and convulsed features brought home to him at once the reason for his visit. But he saw these things as one sees pictures while gliding down a shaft, pictures that recur at intervals, but are displaced by others that slip in between them.

Thus he saw Eva Sorel feeding a walnut to one of her little monkeys.

The boatman got up and took off his cap. And suddenly Christian saw Denis Lay and Lord Westmoreland giving each other their white-gloved hands. It was an insignificant thing; but his vision of it was glaring and incisive.

Now the lad on the bench awakened, stretched himself, sat up with a start, and gave a sombre stare of astonishment at the strangers. The girl, ill from her horrible experience, turned her head away, and pulled the coverlet up to her chin. And suddenly Christian saw the charming vision of Letitia, playing at ball in the great room crossed by the gleams of lightning; and each thing that he saw had a relation to some other thing in that other world.

The curiosity that had brought him hither still kept that unwonted smile on his face. But he looked helplessly at Crammon now, and he was sensitive to the indecency of his silent, stupid presence there, the purposelessness and folly of the whole nocturnal excursion. It seemed almost intolerable to him now to stay longer in this low-ceiled room, amid the odour of ill-washed bodies, and clothing that had been worn for years.

Up to the last moment he had imagined that he would talk to the girl. But it was precisely this that he found it impossible to do. He did not even dare to turn his head to where she lay. Yet he was acutely conscious of her as he had seen her out there, reeling from the tables with loose hair and torn bodice.

When he thought over the words that he might say to her, each seemed strikingly superfluous and vulgar.

The boatman looked at him, the woman looked at him. The lad stared with malevolently squinting eyes, as though he planned a personal attack. And now there emerged also an old man from behind a partition where potatoes were stored, and regarded him with dim glances. In the embarrassment caused him by all these eyes, he advanced a few steps toward Katherine’s bed. She had turned her face to the wall, and did not move. In his sudden angry despair he put his hands into pocket after pocket, found nothing, hardly knew indeed what he sought, felt the diamond ring on his finger which was a gift of his mother, hastily drew it off, and threw it on the bed, into the very hands of the girl. It was the act of one who desired to buy absolution.

Katherine moved her head, saw the magnificent ring, and contempt and astonishment, delight and fear, struggled in her face. She looked up, and then down again, and grew pale. Her face was not beautiful, and it was disfigured by the emotions she had experienced during the past hours. An impulse that was utterly mysterious to himself caused Christian suddenly to laugh cheerfully and heartily. At the same time heturned with a commanding gesture to Crammon, demanding that they go.

Crammon had meantime determined to ease the painfulness of the situation in a practical way. He addressed a few words to the boatman, who answered in the dialect of Cologne. Then he drew forth two bank notes and laid them on the table. The boatman looked at the money; the hands of the woman were stretched out after it. Crammon walked to the door.

Five minutes after they had entered the house, they left it again. And they left it swiftly, like men fleeing.

While the cab drove over the rough stones of the street, Crammon said peevishly: “You owe your paymaster a hundred marks. I won’t charge you for anything except the money. You can’t, I suppose, give me back my lost sleep.”

“I shall give you for it the Chinese apple of amber-coloured ivory about which you were so enthusiastic at Amsterdam,” Christian replied.

“Do that, my son,” Crammon said, “and do it quickly, or my rage over this whole business will make me ill.”

When he got up at noon thoroughly rested, Crammon reflected on the incident with that philosophic mildness of which, under the right circumstances, he was capable. After they had had a delightful breakfast, he filled his short pipe, and discoursed: “Such extravagances in the style of Haroun al Rashid get you nowhere, my dear boy. You can’t fathom those sombre depths. Why hunt in unknown lands, when the familiar ones still have so many charms? Even your humble servant who sits opposite you is still a very treasure of riddles and mysteries. That is what a wise poet has strikingly expressed:

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