Judith’s wedding was to be celebrated with great magnificence.
Even to the preliminary festival more than two hundred guests had been invited. There was no end to the line of motor cars and carriages.
The coal and iron barons of the whole province appeared, military and civil officials of high rank with their ladies, the chief patricians and financiers of Frankfort, members of the Court circles of Darmstadt and Karlsruhe, and friends from afar. A tenor from Berlin, a famous lyric singer, a Viennese comedian, a magician, and a juggler had been engaged to furnish the guests with amusement.
The great horse-shoe table in the dining-hall, radiant with gold, silver, and cut glass, had three hundred and thirty covers.
The festive throng surged up and down in the marble gallery and the adjoining rooms. Yellow and rose predominated in the toilettes of the ladies; the young girls were mostly in white.Bare shoulders were agleam with diamonds and pearls. The severe black and white of the men effectually softened the gorgeousness of the colour scheme.
Christian was walking up and down with Randolph von Stettner, a young lieutenant of hussars, stationed at Bonn. They had been friends since their boyhood, had not seen each other for several years, and were exchanging reminiscences. Randolph von Stettner said that he was not very happy in his profession; he would much rather have taken a university degree. He had a strong taste for the study of chemistry, and felt out of place as a soldier. “But it is futile to kick against the pricks,” he ended, sighing; “a man must merely take the bit between his teeth and keep still.”
Christian happened to observe Letitia, who stood in the centre of a circle of men. Upon her forehead was forgetfulness; she knew nothing of yesterday and nothing of to-morrow. There was no one else so absorbed by the passing hour as she.
A footman approached Christian and gave him a card. The footman frowned doubtfully, for the card was not quite clean. On it Christian read these pencilled words: “I. M. Becker must speak with you at once.” Hurriedly he excused himself and went out.
Ivan Michailovitch stood perfectly still in the outer hall. Newly arrived guests, who gave the footmen their hats and coats, passed by without noticing him. The men took mincing steps, the ladies sought the mirror for a final look with their excited eyes.
Ivan Michailovitch wore a long grey coat, shabby and wet. The black-bearded face was pale as wax. Christian drew him into an empty corner of the hall, where they were undisturbed.
“I beg you to forgive me for throwing a shadow on all this festivity,” Ivan Michailovitch began, “but I had no choice. I received a notification of expulsion from the police this afternoon. I must leave the city and the country within twelve hours. The simple favour I ask of you is to take this notebook into your keeping, until I myself or some properly identified friend asks it back.” He glanced swiftly about him, took a thin, blue notebook out of his pocket, and gave it to Christian, who slid it swiftly and unobtrusively into a pocket of his evening coat.
“It contains memoranda in Russian,” Ivan continued, “which have no value to any one but myself, but which must not be found on me. Since I am being expelled there is little doubt but that my person and effects will be searched.”
“Won’t you come and rest in my room?” Christian asked, timidly. “Won’t you eat or drink something?”
Ivan Michailovitch shook his head. From the hall floated the sound of the violins, playing an ingratiating air by Puccini.
“Won’t you at least dry your coat?” Christian asked again. The strains of the music, the splendour there within, the merriment and laughter, the fullness of beauty and happiness, all this presented so sharp a contrast to the appearance of this man in a wet coat, with wax-like face and morbidly flaming eyes, that Christian could no longer endure his apparently unfeeling position between these two worlds, of whose utter and terrible alienation from each other he was acutely aware.
Ivan Michailovitch smiled. “It is kind of you to think of my coat. But you can’t do any good. It will only get wet again.”
“I’d like to take you, just as you are,” said Christian, and he smiled too, “and go in there with you.”
Ivan Michailovitch shrugged his shoulders, and his face grew dark.
“I don’t know why I should like to do that,” Christian murmured. “I don’t know why it tempts me. I stand before you, and you put me in the wrong. Whether I speak or am silent does not matter. By merely being I am in the wrong. We should not be conversing here in the servants’ corner. You are making some demand of me, Ivan Michailovitch, are you not? What is it that you demand?”
The words bore witness to a confusion of the emotions that went to the very core of his being. They throbbed with the yearning to become and to be another man. Ivan Michailovitch, in a sudden flash of intuition, saw and understood. At first he had suspected that here was but a lordly whim, or that it was at best but the foolish and thoughtless defiance of a too swiftly ardent proselyte that urged this proud and handsome man to his words. He recognized his error now. He understood that he heard a cry for help, and that it came from the depth of one of those decisive moments of which life holds but few.
“What is it that I am to demand of you, Christian Wahnschaffe?” he asked, earnestly. “Surely not that you drag me in there to your friends, and ask me to regard that as a definite deed and as a triumph over yourself?”
“It would not be that,” Christian said, with lowered eyes, “but a simple confession of my friendship and my faith.”
“But consider what a figure I would cut in my blouse, taken so unwillingly and emphatically, to use the Russian proverb, into the realm of the spheres. You would be forgiven. You would be accused of an eccentricity, and laughed at; but it would be overlooked. But what would happen to me? You could guard me from obvious insult. The profound humiliation of my position would still be the same. And what purpose would such a boastful action serve? Do you see any promise of good in it—for myself, or you, or the others? I could accuse no one, persuade no one, convince no one. Nor would you yourself be convinced.”
He was silent for a few seconds, and then regarded Christian with a kind and virile glance. Then he continued. “Had I appeared in evening clothes, this whole conversation would be without meaning. That shows how trivial it is. Why, Christian Wahnschaffe, should I exhibit my blouse and coat amid the garb of your friends? Do you go with me to a placewhere your coat is a blasphemy and a stain, and where my rough, wet one is a thing of pride and advantage. I know such a house. Go with me!”
Christian, without answering a word, summoned a footman, took his fur-coat, and followed Ivan Becker into the open. The lackey hurried to the garage. In a few minutes the car appeared. Christian permitted Ivan Michailovitch to precede him into it, asked for the address, and sat down beside him. The car started.
Twice before this had Ivan Michailovitch visited the family of the imprisoned workman, Roderick Kroll. His interest in these people was not an immediate one. It had been evoked by the interest he took in Christian Wahnschaffe. There was something in Christian that moved him deeply. After their first conversation he had at once reflected long concerning his personality and his great charm, as well as concerning the circumstances of his life and the social soil from which he had sprung. And since the name of the industrial baron Wahnschaffe had been so closely connected with the trial of Roderick Kroll, and since that trial had made quite a stir in the world, his attention had naturally been drawn in this direction. It is possible that he had already weighed the step he was now taking. For he was immovably convinced that many men would be better, and deal more justly, if they could but be brought to see, or given an opportunity to see, the realities of the world.
Frau Kroll and her five children had found refuge in a mere hole of a garret at the top of a populous tenement on the extreme edge of the city. Before that she had inhabited one of the numerous cottages for workingmen that Albrecht Wahnschaffe had built near his factories. But she had been driven from this home, and had moved to the city.
The room she now had gave shelter not only to herself andher children, the oldest of whom was twelve, but to three lodgers: a rag-picker, a hurdy-gurdy man, and a chronically drunken vagabond. The room had a floor-space of sixty square feet; the lodgers slept on dirty straw sacks, the children on two ragged mattresses pushed close together, Frau Kroll on a shawl and a bundle of old clothes in the corner where the slanting ceiling met the floor.
On this particular day the agent of the landlord had appeared three times to demand the rent. The third time, since no money was forthcoming, he had threatened to evict them all that night. Fifteen minutes before the arrival of Ivan Becker and Christian he had appeared with the janitor and another helper in the dim, evil-smelling room, and had proceeded to make good his threat. His face had an expression of good nature rather than of harshness. He was proud of the touch of humour which he brought to the execution of his duties. Cries and lamentations did not disturb him in the least. He said: “Hurry, children! Come on there!” Or else: “Shoulder your guns and march! Let’s have no scenes! Don’t get excited! No use getting on your knees! Time is money! Quick work is good work!”
As was usual on such occasions, a commotion stirred all the neighbours, and they assembled in the hall. There was a yellow-haired woman in her shift; there was one in a scarlet dressing gown; there was a cripple without legs, an old man with a long beard, children who were fighting one another, a painted woman with a hat as large as a cart-wheel, another with a burning candle in her hand, while a man who had just come in from the street in her company sought to hide in the darkness near the roof.
What one heard was the wailing of the Kroll children, and the hard beseeching voice of the woman, who looked on with desperate eyes as the agent and his men heaped up her poor possessions. The vagabond cursed, the hurdy-gurdy man dragged his straw sack toward the door, the agent snapped hisfingers and said: “Hurry, good people, hurry! Let’s have no tender scenes! My supper is getting cold!”
Christian and Ivan Becker entered. They forced their way through the staring crowd. Christian had on his costly fur-coat. The agent stood still and his jaw dropped. His men instinctively touched their caps. Ivan Michailovitch wanted to close the door, but the woman in the big hat stood on the threshold and would not stir. “The door should be closed,” he said to the agent, who went forward and closed it, simply thrusting the woman roughly back. Ivan asked whether the woman and her children were to be evicted. The agent declared that she was unable to pay her rent, that one extension of time after another had been granted her, but that to continue would be to create disorder and institute a bad example. Ivan Michailovitch answered that he understood the situation. Then he turned to Christian, and repeated the words as though he needed to translate them into another tongue: “She cannot pay her rent.” A whistle sounded from without, and a woman screeched. The agent opened the door, cried out a command, and slammed it again. Silence ensued.
Frau Kroll was crouching among her children, her elbows dug into her lap. She had a robust figure, and a bony face that was pale as dough and deeply furrowed. It looked like the head of a corpse. The children looked at her in terror: two were mother naked, and one of these had the itch. The agent, assuming a benevolent tone, asked Ivan Becker whether something was to be done for these people; he evidently did not dare to address Christian. “I think we shall be able to do something for them,” Ivan answered, and turned to Christian.
Christian heard and saw. He nodded rapidly, and gave an impression of timidity and passionate zeal.
Christian’s attention somehow became fixed on a water jug with a broken handle. The jug was stamped with a greenishpattern and the banal arabesques bit into his mind. The snow-edged, slanting window in the roof troubled him, and the sight of a single muddy boot. Next a sad fascination came to him from a rope that dangled from the roof, and from a little coal-oil lamp with a smoky chimney. His mere bodily vision clung to these things. But they passed into his soul, and he merged into oneness with them. He himself was that broken jug with its green figures, the snow-edged window, the muddy boot, the dangling rope, the smoky lamp. He was being transformed as in a melting furnace, shape glided into shape; and although he was objectively aware of what was taking place and also of the people—the beggar, the woman, the children, Ivan Michailovitch, the agent, and those who waited outside—yet it cost him a passionate effort to keep them outside of himself for yet a little while, until they should plunge down upon his soul with their torment, despair, cruelty, and madness, like wild dogs throwing themselves upon a bone.
A sigh escaped him; a disturbed and fleeting smile hovered about his lips. One of the children, a boy of four, clad in a shapeless rag, came to him, and gazed up at him as though he were a tower. At once the eyes of the others were fixed on him too. At least, he felt them. His breast seemed a fiery crucible upborne and held high by the boy’s emaciated arms. In a moment he had filled his hand with gold pieces, and by a gesture encouraged the child to hold out its hands. He poured the gold into them. But they could grasp only a few. The coins rolled on the floor, and the people there watched them in dumb amazement.
He drew out his wallet, took from it with trembling fingers every bank note it held, looked about, and approached the cowering woman. Then suddenly there seized him a strange contempt for his own erectness while she crouched on the floor. And so he kneeled, kneeled down beside her, and let the notes slip into her lap. He did not know how much money there was. But it was found later that the sum was fourthousand six hundred marks. He arose and took Ivan’s arm, and the latter understood his glance.
There was a breathless silence when they left. The agent and his men, the lodgers, the children—all seemed turned to stone. The woman stared at the wealth in her lap. Then she uttered a loud cry and lost consciousness. The little boy played with the pieces of gold, and they clinked as only gold can, faintly sweet and without hardness.
Below, in the street, Ivan Michailovitch said to Christian: “That you kneeled down before her—that was it, and that alone! The gift—there was something fateful in it to me and something bitter! But that you kneeled down beside her—ah, that was it!” And with a sudden gesture he lifted himself on his toes, and took Christian’s head between his hands, and kissed him with a kiss that was a breath upon the forehead. Then he murmured a word of farewell, and hurried down the street without looking at the waiting car.
Christian ordered the chauffeur to drive out to Christian’s Rest. Two hours later he was there, in deep quietude, the quietude that he needed. He telephoned his family that unforeseen events had prevented him from staying to the end of the evening’s festivities, but that he would be present at the ceremony of Judith’s marriage without fail. Then he retired to the farthest room of his house, and held vigil all night.
Letitia married six weeks after Judith. At Stephen Gunderam’s desire, however, the wedding was a quiet one. There was a simple meal in a hotel at Heidelberg, and those present were Frau von Febronius, the countess, their two nephews Ottomar and Reinhold, and an Argentinian friend of Stephen’s—a raw-boned giant who had been sent to Germany for a year to acquire polish.
Ottomar recited an original poem in praise of his prettycousin, and Reinhold had composed an address in the style of Luther’s table-talk. Stephen Gunderam showed small appreciation of the literary culture of his new kinsman.
Frau von Febronius was silent even at the moment of farewell. The countess wept very copiously. She provided Letitia with all manner of rules and admonitions, but the most difficult of all she had delayed, out of sheer cowardice to the very last. She drew Letitia into her own room and, blushing and paling by turns, attempted to give the girl some notion of the physiology of marriage. But her courage failed her even now, and whenever she approached the real crux of her subject, she began to stammer and grow confused. It amused Letitia immensely.
Stephen Gunderam wanted to depart in haste, like some one anxious to secure his booty.
Frau von Febronius said to her sister: “I have evil presentiments in regard to this marriage, even though the child seems quite happy. It is only her own nature that protects her against unhappiness. It is her only dowry, but a wonderful one.” Then the countess folded her hands, and shed tears, and said: “If I have sinned, I pray God to forgive me.”
The voyage proved Letitia to be an excellent sailor. For a few days she and her husband stopped in Buenos Ayres and met many people. Stephen’s acquaintances regarded her with sympathetic curiosity; and everything was strange and fascinating to her—the people, the houses, animals, plants, the very earth and sky. But most fascinating and strange to her was still the jealous tyranny of the man she had married, although at times the fascination held a touch of fear. But when that assailed her, she jested even with herself, and drove it away.
Early one morning there drew up a firmly built, heavy little coach, with two small, swift horses, to carry them the thirty miles to the Gunderam estate. Generously provisioned they left the city. After a few hours the road ended as a brookis lost in sands, and before them stretched to the very horizon the pathless plain of the pampas.
Yet they were not unguided. On either side of the way which the horses had to travel, poles had been driven into the grassy earth. These poles were of about human height, and stood at intervals of about twenty yards. Thus the horses pursued their way calmly. The Negro on the box had no need to urge them on. The safe and monotonous journey permitted him to sleep.
There were no settlements at all. When the horses needed food or came upon water, a halt was made under the open sky. No house, no tree, no human being appeared from sun to sun, and a dread stole upon Letitia. She had long given up talking, and Stephen had long given up encouraging her. He slept like his coachman.
When the sun had sunk behind a veil of whitish clouds, Letitia stood up, and gazed searchingly over the endless plain of grass. The high wooden posts still projected with unwearying regularity at both sides of the uncut road.
But suddenly she saw on one of the posts a greyish-brown bird, moveless and bent, with huge, round, glowing eyes.
“What kind of a bird is that?” she asked.
Stephen Gunderam started from his slumber. “It’s an owl,” he answered. “Have you never seen one? Every evening, when darkness falls, they sit on the posts. Look, it is starting: there is one on each.”
Letitia looked and saw that it was true. On every post and on either side, far as one’s sight could reach, sat with its great, circular, glowing eyes a heavy, slothful, solemn owl.
OR EVER THE SILVER CORD BE LOOSEDI
Fraulein von Einsiedeltook Crammon’s tender trifling quite seriously. When Crammon observed this, he grew cold, and planned at once to rid himself of the threatened complication.
She sent him urgent little notes by her maid; he left them unanswered. She begged him for a meeting; he promised to come but did not. She reproached him and inquired after the reason. He cast down his eyes and answered sadly: “I was mistaken in the hour, dear friend. For some time my mind has been wandering. I sometimes wake in the morning and fancy that it is still evening. I sit down at table and forget to eat. I need treatment and shall consult a physician. You must be indulgent, Elise.”
But Elise did not want to understand. According to Crammon’s words of regretful deprecation, she belonged to the sort of woman who makes a kiss or a tender meeting an excuse for drawing all sorts of tiresome and impossible inferences.
He said to himself: “You must be robust of soul, Bernard, and not permit your innate delicacy to make a weakling of you. Here is a little trap for mice, and you can smell the cheese from afar. She is pretty and good, but alas, quite blind and deluded. As though a brief pleasure were not to be preferred to a long wretchedness!”
To be prepared for any event, he packed his belongings.
Crammon had discovered where and in whose company Christian had been on the night of the festival precedingJudith’s wedding. The chauffeur had been indiscreet. Then Crammon, in his brotherly concern, had made inquiries, and the rumours that had reached the castle had all been confirmed.
One morning, when they were both at Christian’s Rest, Crammon entered his friend’s room and said: “I can’t hold in any longer. The sorrow of it gnaws at me. You ought to be ashamed, Christian, especially of your secretiveness. You join fugitive disturbers of the peace and hurlers of bombs, and then you confuse the innocent poor by your brainless generosity. What is it to lead to?”
Christian smiled, and did not answer.
“How can you expose yourself in that fashion,” Crammon cried; “yourself and your family and your friends? I shall tell you this in confidence, dearest boy: If you imagine that you have really helped the woman to whom that Russian desperado dragged you, you are badly mistaken. Fortunately I can rob you of that illusion.”
“Did you hear anything about her?” Christian asked, with a surprising indifference in his tone and expression.
Crammon seemed to expand, and told his tale with breadth and unction: “Certainly I have. I have even had dealings with the police and saved you annoyance. The woman was to have been arrested and the money confiscated. Luckily I was able to prevent that. I believe that the State should keep order, but I don’t think it desirable that the government should interfere in our private affairs. Its duty is to safeguard us; there its function ends. So much for that! Concerning your protégée I have nothing pleasant to report. The rain of gold simply distracted the crowd in that house. They stuck to her and begged, and several of them stole. Naturally there was a fight, and some one plunged a knife into some one else’s bowels, and the maddened woman beat them both with a coal shovel. The police had to interfere. Then the woman moved into other quarters, and bought all sorts of trash—furniture,beds, clothing, kitchen utensils, and even a cuckoo clock. You have seen those little horrors. A cuckoo comes out of the clock and screams. I was once staying with people who had three of them. Whenever I went to sleep another cuckoo screeched; it was enough to drive one mad. In other respects my friends were charming.
“As for the Kroll woman—your gift robbed her of every vestige of common sense. She keeps the money in a little box, which she carries about and won’t let out of her sight by night or day. She buys lottery tickets, penny dreadfuls; the children are as dirty as ever and the household as demoralized. Only that dreadful cuckoo clock roars. So what have you accomplished? Where is the blessing? Common people cannot endure sudden accessions of fortune. You do not know their nature in the slightest degree, and the best thing you can do is to leave them in peace.”
Christian’s eyes wandered out to the cloudy sky. Then he turned to Crammon. He saw, as though he had never seen it before, that Crammon’s cheeks were rather fat, and that his chin was bedded in soft flesh and had a dimple. He could not make up his mind to answer. He smiled, and crossed his legs!
What shapely legs, Crammon thought and sighed, what superb legs!
A few days later Crammon appeared again with the intention of testing Christian.
“I don’t like your condition, my dear boy,” he began, “and I won’t pretend to you that I do. It’s just a week to-day that we’ve been perishing of boredom here. I grant you it’s a delightful place in spring and summer with agreeable companions, when one can have picnics in the open and think of the dull and seething cities. But now in the midst of winter, without orgies or movement or women—what is the use of it?Why do you hide yourself? Why do you act depressed? What are you waiting for? What have you in mind?”
“You ask so many questions, Bernard,” Christian replied. “You should not do that. It is as well here as elsewhere. Can you tell me any place where it is better?”
The last question aroused Crammon’s hopes. In the expectation of common pleasures his face grew cheerful. “A better place? My dearest boy, any compartment in a train is better. The greasy reception room of Madame Simchowitz in Mannheim is better. However, we shall be able to agree. Here is an admirable plan. Palermo, Conca d’Oro, Monte Pellegrino, and Sicilian girls with avid glances behind their virtuous veils. From there we shall take a flying trip to Naples to see my sweet little friend Yvonne. She has the blackest hair, the whitest teeth, and the most exquisite little feet in Europe. The regions between are—sublime. Then we can send a telegram to Prosper Madruzzi, who is nursing his spleen in his Venetian villa, and let him introduce us into the most inaccessible circles of Roman society. There one has dealings exclusively with contessas, marchesas, and principessas. The striking characters of all five continents swarm there as in a fascinating mad-house; cold-blooded American women commit indiscretions with passionate lazzaroni, who have magical names and impossible silk socks; every kennel there can claim to be a curiosity, every heap of stones adds to your culture, at every step you stumble over some masterpiece of art.”
Christian shook his head. “It doesn’t tempt me,” he said.
“Then I’ll propose something else,” Crammon said. “Go with me to Vienna. It is a city worthy of your interest. Have you ever heard of the Messiah? The Messiah is a person at whose coming the Jews believe time will come to an end, and whom they expect to welcome with the sound of shawms and cymbals. It is thus that every distinguished stranger is greeted in Vienna. If you cultivate an air of mystery, and are nottoo stingy in the matter of tipping, and occasionally snub some one who is unduly familiar—all Viennese society will be at your feet. A pleasant moral slackness rules the city. Everything that is forbidden is permitted. The women are simplyhors concours; the broiled meat at Sacher is incomparable; the waltzes which you hear whenever a musician takes up a fiddle are thrilling; a trip to the Little House of Delight—name to be taken literally, please—is a dream. I yearn for it all myself—the ingratiating air, the roast chicken, the apple-pudding with whipped cream, and my own little hut full of furniture of the age of Maria Theresa, and my two dear, old ladies. Pull yourself together, and come with me.”
Christian shook his head. “It is nothing for me,” he said.
A flush of indignation spread over Crammon’s face. “Nothing for you? Very well. I cannot place the harem of the Sultan at your disposal, nor the gardens promised by the Prophet. I shall leave you to your fate, and wander out into the world.”
Christian laughed, for he did not believe him. On the next day, however, Crammon said farewell with every sign of deep grief, and departed.
Christian remained at his country house. A heavy snow-fall came, and the year drew toward its end.
He received no visitors. He answered neither the letters nor the invitations of his friends. He was to have spent Christmas with his parents at the castle, but he begged them to excuse him.
Since he was of age, Christian’s Rest had now passed fully into his possession, and all his objects of art were gathered here—statuary, pictures, miniatures, and his collection of snuff-boxes. He loved these little boxes very much.
The dealers sent him their catalogues. He had a trusted agent at every notable auction sale. To this man he wouldtelegraph his orders, and the things would arrive—a beaker of mountain crystal, a set of Dresden porcelains, a charcoal sketch by Van Gogh. But when he looked at his purchases, he was disappointed. They seemed neither as rare nor as precious as he had hoped.
He bought a sixteenth century Bible, printed on parchment, with mani-coloured initials and a cover with silver clasps. It had cost him fourteen thousand marks, and contained the book-plate of the Elector Augustus of Saxony. Curiously he turned the pages without regarding the words, which were alien and meaningless to him. Nothing delighted him but his consciousness of the rarity and preciousness of the volume. But he desired other things even rarer and more precious.
Every morning he fed the birds. With a little basket of bread crumbs he would issue from the door, and the birds would fly to him from all directions, for they had come to know both him and the hour. They were hungry, and he watched them busy at their little meal. And doing this he forgot his desires.
Once he donned his shooting suit, and went out and shot a hare. When the animal lay before him, and he saw its dying eyes, he could not bear to touch it. He who had hunted and killed many animals could no longer endure this sport, and left his booty a prey to the ravens.
Most of his walks led him through the village, which was but fifteen minutes from his park. At the end of the village, on the high-road, stood the forester’s house. Several times he had noticed at one of its windows the face of a young man, whose features he seemed to recall. He thought it must be Amadeus Voss, the forester’s son. When he was but six he had often visited that house. Christian’s Rest had not been built until later, and in those early years his father had rented the game preserve here and had often lodged for some days at the forester’s. And Amadeus had been Christian’s playmate.
The face, which recalled his childhood to him, was pallid and hollow-cheeked. The lips were thin and straight, and the head covered with simple very light blond hair. The reflection of the light’s rays in the powerful lenses of spectacles made the face seem eyeless.
It amazed Christian that this young man should sit there for hours, day after day, without moving, and gaze through the window-panes into the street. The secret he felt here stirred him, and a power from some depth seemed to reach out for him.
One day Christian met the mayor of the village at the gate of his park. Christian stopped him. “Tell me,” he said, “is the forester Voss still alive?”
“No, he died three years ago,” the man answered. “But his widow still lives in the house. The present forester is unmarried, and lets her have a few rooms. I suppose you are asking on account of Amadeus, who has suddenly turned up for some strange reason—”
“Tell me about him,” Christian asked.
“He was to have been a priest, and was sent to the seminary at Bamberg. One heard nothing but good of him there, and his teachers praised him to the sky. He got stipends and scholarships, and every one expected him to do well for himself. Last winter his superiors got him a position as tutor to the boys of the bank president, Privy Councillor Ribbeck. You’re familiar with the name. Very big man. The two boys whose education Voss was to supervise lived at Halbertsroda, an estate in Upper Franconia, and the parents didn’t visit them very often. They say the marriage isn’t a happy one. Well, everything seemed turning out well. Considering his gifts and the patron he had now, Amadeus couldn’t have wanted for anything. Suddenly he drops down on us here, doesn’t budge from the house, pays no attention to any one, becomes a burden to his poor old mother, and growls like a dog at any one who talks to him. There must have been crazy doings at Halbertsroda. No one knows any details, you know. But every now and then the pot seethes over, and then you get the rumour that there was something between him and the Privy Councillor’s wife.”
The man was very talkative, and Christian interrupted him at last. “Didn’t the forester have another son?” A faint memory of some experience of his childhood arose in him.
“Quite right,” said the mayor. “There was another son. His name was Dietrich, and he was a deaf-mute.”
“Yes, I remember now,” Christian said.
“He died at fourteen,” the mayor went on. “His death was never properly explained. There was a celebration of the anniversary of the battle of Sedan, and he went out in the evening to look at the bonfires. Next morning they found his body in the fish-pond.”
“Did he drown?”
“He must have,” answered the mayor.
Christian nodded farewell, and went slowly through the gate toward his house.
Letitia and her husband were in the Opera house at Buenos Ayres. The operetta of the evening was as shallow as a puddle left by the rain in the pampas.
In the box next to theirs sat a young man, and Letitia yielded now and then to the temptation of observing his glances of admiration. Suddenly she felt her arm roughly grasped. It was Stephen who commanded her silently to follow him.
In the dim corridor he brought his bluish-white face close to her ear, and hissed: “If you look at that fool once more, I’ll plunge my dagger into your heart. I give you this warning. In this country one doesn’t shilly-shally.”
They returned to their box. Stephen smiled with a smile as glittering as a torero’s, and put a piece of chocolate intohis mouth. Letitia looked at him sidewise, and wondered whether he really had a dagger in his possession.
That night, when they drove home, he almost smothered her with his caresses. She repulsed him gently, and begged: “Show me the dagger, Stephen. Give it to me! I want so much to see it.”
“What dagger, silly child?” he asked, in astonishment.
“The dagger you were going to plunge into my heart.”
“Let that be,” he answered, in hollow tones. “This is no time to speak of daggers and death.”
But Letitia was stubborn. She insisted that she wanted to see it. He took his hands from her, and fell into sombre silence.
The incident taught Letitia that she could play with him. She no longer feared that sombre stillness of his, nor his great skull on his powerful neck, nor the thin mouth, nor the paling face, nor the great strength of his extraordinary small hands. She knew that she could play with him.
Great fire-flies flew through the air, and settled in the grass about them. When the carriage stopped at the villa, Letitia looked around with a cry of delight. Sparks seemed to be falling in a golden rain. The gleaming insects whirred about the windows, the roof, the flowery creepers on the walls. They penetrated into the hall.
Letitia stopped at the dark foot of the stairs, looked at the phosphorescent glimmer, and asked fearfully and with an almost imperceptible self-mockery in her deep voice: “Tell me, Stephen, couldn’t they set the house on fire?”
The Negro Scipio, who appeared with a lamp at the door, heard her words and grinned.
Around Twelfth Night Randolph von Stettner with several friends came to Christian’s Rest. The young men had called up Christian by telephone, and he had been alone so longthat he was glad to receive them and be their host. He was always glad to see Randolph. The latter brought with him two comrades, a Baron Forbach and a Captain von Griesingen, and also another friend, a young university teacher, who was fulfilling his required military service at Bonn and was therefore also in uniform. Christian had met him before at a celebration of the Borussia fraternity.
A delicious meal was served, followed by excellent cigars and liqueurs.
“It is consoling to see that you still don’t despise the comforts of the flesh,” Randolph von Stettner said to Christian.
Captain von Griesingen sighed: “How should one despise them? They torment us and they flit temptingly about us! Think of all that is desirable in the world—women, horses, wine, power, fame, money, love! There is a dealer of jewels in Frankfort, named David Markuse, who has a diamond that is said to be worth half a million. I have no desire for that special object. But the world is full of things that are possessed and give delight.”
“It is the diamond known as Ignifer,” Dr. Leonrod remarked, “a sort of adventurer among precious stones.”
“Ignifer is an appropriate name for a diamond,” said Randolph. “But why do you speak of it so gravely? What, except its price, makes it differ from other stones? Has it had so strange a fate?”
“Undoubtedly,” said Dr. Leonrod, “most strange. I happen to know the details because, as a professional mineralogist, I take a certain interest in precious stones, too.”
“Do tell us about it!” the young officers cried.
“Whoever buys Ignifer,” Dr. Leonrod began, “will show no little courage. The jewel is a tragic thing. It has been proved that its first owner was Madame de Montespan. No sooner did it come into her possession than the king dismissed her. Marie Antoinette owned it next. It weighed ninety-five carats at that time. But during the Revolution it was stolen anddivided, and did not reappear until fifty years later. The recovered stone weighed sixty carats. An Englishman, named Thomas Horst, bought it, and was soon murdered. The heirs sold it to an American. The lady who wore it, a Mrs. Malmcote, was throttled by a madman at a ball. Then Prince Alexander Tshernitsheff brought it to Russia, and gave it to an actress who was his mistress. Another lover shot and killed her on the stage. The prince was blown to pieces by a nihilist. Then the stone was brought to Paris, and purchased by the Sultan Abdul Hamid for his favourite wife. The woman was poisoned, and you all know what happened to the Sultan. After the Turkish Revolution Ignifer drifted West again, and then back to the Orient. For its new owner, Tavernier, took a voyage to India, and was shipwrecked and drowned. For a time it was thought that the diamond was lost. But that was an error; it had been deposited in a safety vault in a Calcutta bank. Now it is back in Europe, and for sale.”
“The stone must harbour an evil spirit,” said Randolph. “I confess that I have no desire for it. I am very little inclined to superstition; but when the facts are as compelling as in this case, the most enlightened scepticism seems rebuked.”
“What does all that matter if the stone is beautiful, if it really is incomparably lovely?” Christian cried, with a defiant look, that yet seemed turned inward upon his soul. After this he said little, even when the conversation drifted to other subjects.
Next day at noon he ordered his car and drove in to Frankfort to the shop of the jeweller David Markuse.
Herr Markuse knew Christian.
Ignifer was kept in the safe of a fire-proof and burglar-proof vault. Herr Markuse lifted the stone out of its case, laid it upon the green cloth of a table, stepped aside, and looked at Christian.
Christian looked silently at the concentrated radiance of the stone. His thought was: This is the rarest and costliest thing in the world; nothing can surpass it. And it was immediately clear to him that he must own the jewel.
The diamond had the faintest tinge of yellow. It had been cut so that it had many rich facets. A little groove had been cut into it near one end, so that a woman could wear it around her neck by a thin chain or a silken cord.
Herr Markuse lifted it upon a sheet of white paper and breathed upon it. “It is not of the first water,” he said, “but it has neither rust nor knots. There is no trace of veins or cracks, no cloudiness or nodules. Not a flaw. The stone is one of nature’s miracles.”
The price was five hundred and fifty thousand marks. Christian offered the half million. Herr Markuse consulted his watch. “I promised a lady that I would hold it,” he declared. “But the promised hour is past.” They agreed upon five hundred and twenty thousand marks. Half was to be paid in cash, the other in two notes running for different periods. “The name of Wahnschaffe is sufficient guarantee,” the merchant said.
Christian weighed the diamond in his hand, and laid it down again.
David Markuse smiled. “In my business one learns how to judge people,” he said without any familiarity. “You are making this purchase with a deeper intention than you yourself are probably conscious of. The soul of the diamond has lured you on. For the diamond has a soul.”
“Do you really mean that?” Christian was surprised.
“I know it. There are people who lose all shame when they see a beautiful jewel. Their nostrils quiver, their cheeks grow pale, their hands tremble uncertainly, their pupils expand, and they betray themselves by every motion. Others are intimidated, or bereft of their senses, or saddened. You gaincurious insights into human nature. The masks drop. Diamonds make people transparent.”
The indiscreet turn of the conversation irritated Christian. But he had often before become aware of the fact that something in him seemed to invite the communicativeness and confidence of others. He arose, and promised to return that evening.
“The lady of whom I was speaking,” Markuse continued, as he accompanied him to the door, “and who was here yesterday, is a very wonderful lady. When she came in, I thought: is it possible for mere walking to be so beautiful? Well, I soon found out that she is a famous dancer. She is stopping at the Palace Hotel for a day, on her way from Paris to Russia, merely in order to see Ignifer. I showed her the stone. She stood looking at it for at least five minutes. She did not move, and the expression of her face! Well, if the jewel didn’t represent a large part of all I have in the world, I would have begged her simply to keep it. Such moments are not exactly frequent in my business. She was to have returned to-day, but, as I have told you, she didn’t keep her engagement.”
“And you don’t know her name?” Christian asked, shyly.
“Oh, yes. Her name is Eva Sorel. Did you ever hear of her?”
The blood came into Christian’s face. He let go the knob of the door. “Eva Sorel is here?” he murmured. He pulled himself together, and opened the door to an empty room that was carpeted in red, and the walls of which were hidden by ebony cases. Almost at the same moment the opposite door was thrown open; and, followed by four gentlemen, Eva Sorel crossed the threshold.
Christian stood perfectly still.
“Eidolon!” Eva cried, and she folded her hands in that inimitably enthusiastic and happy gesture of hers.
Christian did not know the gentlemen who were with her. Their features and garments showed them to be foreigners. Accustomed to surprising events in Eva’s daily life, they regarded Christian with cool curiosity.
Eva’s whole form was wrapped in a grey mole-skin coat. Her fur cap was trimmed with an aigrette of herons’ feathers, held by a marvellous ruby clasp. From under the cap her honey-coloured hair struggled forth. The wintry air had given her skin an exquisite delicate tinge of pink.
With a few steps she came stormily to Christian, and her white gloved hands sought both of his. Her great and flaming looks drove his conscious joy and his perceptions of her presence back upon his soul, and fear appeared upon his features. He found himself as defenceless as a ball flung by another’s hand. He awaited his goal.
“Did you buy Ignifer?” That was her first question. Since he was silent, she turned with raised brows to David Markuse.
The merchant bowed and said: “I thought that I could no longer count on you, Madame. I am sorry with all my heart.”
“You are right. I hesitated too long.” Eva spoke her melodious German, with its slightly foreign intonation. Turning to Christian she went on: “Perhaps it makes no difference, Eidolon, whether you have it or I. It is like a heart that ambition has turned to crystal. But you are not ambitious. If you were, we should have met here like two birds swept by a storm into the same cave. The preciousness of the stone almost makes it ghostly to me, and I would permit no one to give it to me who was not conscious of its significance. And who is there? What do they give one? Wares from a shop, that is all.”
David Markuse looked at her in admiration, and nodded.
“It is said to bring misfortune to its possessors,” Christian almost whispered.
“Do you intend to test yourself, Eidolon, and put it to the proof? Will you challenge the demon to prevail against you? Ah, that is what allured me, too. Its name made me envious. As I held it, it seemed like the navel of Buddha, from which one cannot divert one’s thought, if one has once seen it.”
She noticed that the people about them seemed to make Christian hesitate, so she took his arm, and drew him behind the curtains of a window-niche.
“That it brings misfortune to people is certain,” Christian repeated mechanically. “How can I keep it, Eva, since you desired it?”
“Keep it and break the evil spell,” Eva answered, and laughed. But his seriousness remained unchanged; and she apologized for her laughter by a gesture, as though she were throwing aside the undue lightness of her mood. She watched him silently. In the sharp light reflected from the snow, her eyes were green as malachite. “What are you doing with yourself?” she asked. “Your eyes look lonesome.”
“I have been living rather alone for some time,” answered Christian. His utterances were dry and precise. “Crammon too has left me.”
“Ivan Becker wrote me about you,” Eva said in muffled tones. “I kissed the letter. I carried it in my bosom, and said the words of it over to myself. Is there such a thing as an awakening? Can the soul emerge from the darkness, as a flower does from the bulb? But there you stand in your pride, and do not move. Speak! Our time is short.”
“Why speak at all?”
Although his eyes seemed so unseeing, it did not escape him that Eva’s face had changed. A new severity was on it, and a heightened will controlled its nerves, even to the raising and lowering of her long lashes. Experience of men and things had lent it an austere radiance, and her unbounded mastery over them a breath of grandeur.
“I had not forgotten that this is the city where you dwell,”she said, “but in these driven hours there was no place for you. They count my steps, and lie in wait for the end of my sleeping. What I should have is either a prison or a friend unselfish enough to force me to be more frugal of myself. In Lisbon the queen gave me a beautiful big dog, who was so devoted to me that I felt it in my very body. A week later he was found poisoned at the gate of the garden. I could have put on mourning for him. How silent and watchful he was, and how he could love!” She raised her shoulders with a little shiver, dropped them again, and continued with hurry in her voice. “I shall summon you some day. Will you come? Will you be ready?”
“I shall come,” Christian answered very simply, but his heart throbbed.
“Is your feeling for me the same—changeless and unchangeable?” In her look there was an indescribably lyrical lift, and her body, moved by its spirit, seemed to emerge from veils.
He only bowed his head.
“And how is it in the matter ofcortesia?” She came nearer to him, so that he felt her breath on his lips. “He smiles,” she exclaimed, and her lips opened, showing her teeth, “instead of just once throwing himself on his knees in rage or jubilation—he smiles. Take care, you with your smile, that I am not tempted to extinguish your smiling some day.” She stripped the glove from her right hand, and gave the naked hand to Christian, who touched it with his lips. “It is a compact, Eidolon,” she said serenely now, and with an air of seduction, “and you will be ready.” Emerging from the niche, she turned to the gentlemen who had come with her, and who had been holding whispered conversations: “Messieurs, nous sommes bien pressés.”
She inclined her head to the jeweller, and the heron feathers trembled. The four gentlemen let her precede them swiftly, and followed her silently and reverently.
When next Christian went through the village and saw Amadeus Voss at the window, he stopped.
Voss got up suddenly and opened the window, and thereupon Christian approached.
It was a time of thaw. The water dripped from the roofs and gutters. Christian felt the moist air swept by tepid winds as something that gives pain.
Behind the powerful lenses the eyes of Amadeus Voss had a yellowish glitter. “We must be old acquaintances,” he said, “although it is very long ago since we hunted blackberries among the hedges. Very long.” He laughed a little weakly.
Christian had determined to lead the conversation to the dead brother of Amadeus. There was that event in the mist of the past concerning which he could gain no clearness, much as he might reflect.
“I suppose everybody is wondering about me,” Voss said, in the tone of one who would like to know what people are saying. “I seem to be a stumbling-block to them. Don’t you think so?”
“I mustn’t presume to judge,” Christian said, guardedly.
“With what an expression you say that!” Voss murmured, and looked Christian all over. “How proud you are. Yet it must have been curiosity that made you stop.”
Christian shrugged his shoulders. “Do you remember an incident that took place when I stayed here with my father?” he asked gently and courteously.
“What kind of an incident? I don’t know. Or—but wait! Do you mean that affair of the pig? When they killed the pig over there in the inn, and I——”
“Quite right. That was it,” Christian said with a faint smile. He had scarcely spoken when the scene and the incident appeared with unwonted clarity before his mind.
He and Amadeus and the deaf and dumb Dietrich had beenstanding at the gate. And the pig had begun to scream. At that moment Amadeus had stretched out his arms, and held them convulsively trembling in the air. The long, loud, and piercing cry of the beast’s death agony had been something new and dreadful to Christian too, and had drawn him running to the spot whence it came. He saw the gleaming knife, the uplifted and then descending arm of the butcher, the struggle of the short, bristly legs, and the quivering and writhing of the victim’s body. The lips of Amadeus, who had reeled after him, had been flecked with foam, and he pointed and moaned: “Blood, blood!” And Christian had seen the blood on the earth, on the knife, on the white apron of the man. He did not know what happened next. But Amadeus knew.
He said: “When the pig screamed, a convulsive rigour fell upon me. For many hours I lay stiff as a log. My parents were badly frightened, for I had never had any such attacks before. What you remember is probably how they tried to cheer me or shame me out of my collapse. They walked into the puddle of blood and stamped about in it so that the blood spurted. My dumb brother noticed that this only increased my excitement. He made noises in his throat, and raised his hands beseechingly, while my mother was hastening from the house. At that moment you struck him in the face with your fist.”
“It is true. I struck him,” said Christian, and his face became very pale.
“And why? Why did you do that? We haven’t met since that day, and we’ve only seen each other from afar. That is, I’ve seen you. You were far too proud and too busy with your friends to see me. But why did you strike Dietrich that day? He had a sort of silent adoration of you. He followed you about everywhere. Don’t you remember? We often laughed about it. But from that day on he was changed—markedly so.”
“I believe I hated him at that moment,” Christian said,reflectively. “I hated him because he could neither hear nor speak. It struck me as a sort of malevolent stubbornness.”
“Strange! It’s strange that you should have felt so.”
They both became silent. Christian started to leave. Voss rested his arms on the window ledge and leaned far out. “There’s a paragraph in the paper saying that you’ve bought a diamond for half a million. Is that true?”
“It is true,” Christian replied.
“A single diamond for over half a million? I thought it was merely a newspaper yarn. Is the diamond to be seen? Would you show it to me?” In his face there was something of horrified revolt, of panting desire, but also of mockery. Christian was startled.
“With pleasure, if you’ll come to see me,” he answered, but determined to have himself denied to Voss if the latter really came.
For a secret stirred him again, a depth opened at his feet, an arm was stretched out after him.
On a certain night Letitia awoke and heard dragging, running steps, the breathing of pursuers and pursued, whispers and hoarse curses, now nearer, now farther. She sat up and listened. Her bed-chamber opened upon gardens. Its doors led to the verandah that surrounded the entire house.
Then the hurrying steps approached; she saw forms that detached themselves in black from the greenish night and flitted by: one, and then another, and then a third, and after a little while a fourth. She was frightened, but she hated to call for help. To rouse Stephen, who slept in the adjoining room, was a risk for her, as it was for every one. At such times he would roar like a steer, and strike out wildly.
Letitia laughed and shuddered at the thought.
She fought her fear, got up, threw on a dressing gown, and stepped determinedly on the verandah. At that moment thickclouds parted and revealed the moon. Surprised by the unexpected light, the four forms stopped suddenly, collided against each other, and stood panting and staring.
What Letitia saw was old Gottlieb Gunderam and his three sons, Riccardo, Paolo, and Demetrios, the brothers of her husband. There was an unquenchable distrust between this father and his sons. They watched and lay in wait for each other. If there was cash in the house, the old man did not dare go to bed, and each of the brothers accused the rest of wanting to rob their father. Letitia knew that much. But it was new to her that in their dumb rage and malice they went so far as to chase each other at night, each pursuer and pursued at once, each full of hatred of the one in front and full of terror of the one behind him. She laughed and shuddered.
The old man was the first to slink away. He dragged himself to his room, and threw himself on the bed in his clothes. Beside the bed stood two huge travelling boxes, packed and locked. They had stood thus for twenty years. Daily, during all that period, he had determined at least once to flee to the house in Buenos Ayres, or even to the United States, whenever the conflict, first with his wife and later with his sons, became too much for him. He had never started on that flight; but the boxes stood in readiness.
Silently and secretively the brothers also disappeared. While Letitia stood on the verandah and looked at the moon, she heard the rattle of a phonograph. Riccardo had recently bought it in the city, and it often happened that he set it to playing at night.
Letitia stepped a little farther, and peered into the room in which the three brothers sat with sombre faces and played poker. The phonograph roared a vulgar waltz out of its brazen throat.
Then Letitia laughed and shuddered.
Christian wondered whether Amadeus would come. Two days passed in slightly depressing suspense.
He had really intended to go to Waldleiningen to look after his horses. Sometimes he could actually see their spirited yet gentle eyes, their velvet coats, and that fine nervousness that vibrated between dignity and restiveness. He recalled with pleasure the very odour of the stables.
The pure bred Scotch horse which he had bought of Denis Lay was to run in the spring races. His grooms told him that the beautiful animal had been in poor form for some weeks, and he thought that perhaps it missed his tender hand. Nevertheless he did not go to Waldleiningen.
On the third day Amadeus Voss sent a gardener to ask whether he might call that evening. Instead Christian went down to the forester’s house that afternoon at four, and knocked at the door.
Voss looked at him suspiciously. With the instinct of the oppressed classes he divined the fact that Christian wanted to keep him from his house. But Christian was far from being as clear about his own motives as Amadeus suspected. He scented a danger. Some magic in it drew him on half-consciously to go forth to meet it.
Looking about in the plain but clean and orderly room Christian saw on the tinted wall above the bed white slips of paper on which verses of Scripture had been copied in a large hand. One was this: “He was led as a sheep to the slaughter; and like a lamb dumb before his shearer, so opened he not his mouth.” And another was this: “For it is a day of trouble, and of treading down, and of perplexity by the Lord God of hosts in the valley of vision, breaking down the walls, and of crying to the mountains.” And this other: “The Lord said unto me, Within a year, within the years of an hireling, and all the glory of Kedar shall fail.” And finally there was this:“I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot; I would thou were cold or hot. So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold or hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth.”
Christian looked at Amadeus Voss long and curiously. Then he asked, in a very careful voice, and yet not without an inevitable tinge of worldly mockery: “Are you very religious?”
Amadeus frowned and answered: “Whether I answer one way or the other it will mean equally little to you. Did you come to cross-question me? Have we anything in common that an answer to that question could reveal? Amadeus Voss and Christian Wahnschaffe—are those not the names of sundered poles? What image is there that could express the differences that divide us? Your faith and mine! And such things are possible on the same earth!”
“Was your youth especially hard?” Christian asked, innocently.
Voss gave a short laugh, and looked at Christian sidewise. “D’you know what meal days are? Of course you don’t. Well, on such days you get your meals at strangers’ houses who feed you out of charity. Each day of the week you’re with another family. Each week repeats the last. Not to be thought ungrateful you must be obedient and modest. Even if your stomach revolts at some dish, you must pretend it’s a delicacy. If the grandfather laughs, you must laugh too; if an uncle thinks he’s a wit, you must grin. If the daughter of the house chooses to be insolent, you must be silent. If they respond to your greeting, it’s a great favour; the worn overcoat with ragged lining they gave you when winter came binds you in eternal gratitude. You come to know all the black moods of all these people with whom you sit at table, all their shop-worn opinions, their phrases and hypocritical expressions; and for the necessary hour of each day you must learn topractise its special kind of dissembling. That is the meaning of meal days.”
He got up, walked to and fro, and resumed his seat. “The devil appeared to me early,” he said in a hollow voice. “Perhaps I took a certain experience of my childhood more grievously to heart than others, perhaps the poison of it filtered deeper into me. But you cannot forget. It is graven upon my soul that my drunken father beat my mother. He did it every Saturday night with religious regularity. That image is not to be obliterated.”
Christian did not take his eyes from the face of Amadeus.
Softly, and with a rigid glance, Voss continued: “One night before Easter, when I was eight years old, he beat her again. I rushed into the yard, and cried out to the neighbours for help. Then I looked up at the window, and I saw my mother stand there wringing her hands in despair. And she was naked.” And his voice almost died into silence as he added: “Who is it that dare see his own mother naked?”
Again he arose and wandered about the room. He was so full of himself that his speech seemed indeed addressed to himself alone. “Two things there are that made me reflect and wonder even in my childhood. First, the very many poor creatures, whom my father reported because they stole a little wood, and who were put in prison. I often heard some poor, little old woman or some ragged half-starved lad beg for mercy. There was no mercy here. My father was the forester, and had to do his duty. Secondly, there were the many rich people who live in this part of the country in their castles, on their estates, in their hunting-lodges, and to whom nothing is denied that their wildest impulses demand. Between the two one stands as between two great revolving cylinders of steel. One is sure to be crushed to bits in the end.”
For a while he gazed into emptiness. “What is your opinion of an informer?” he asked, suddenly.
Christian answered with a forced smile: “It’s not a good one.”
“Listen to me. In the seminary I had a fellow-student named Dippel. His gifts were moderate, but he was a decent chap and a hard worker. His father was a signalman on the railroad—one of the very poor, and his son was his one hope and pride. Dippel happened to be acquainted with a painter in whose studio he came across an album of photographs displaying the female form in plastic poses. The adolescent boy gazed at them again and again, and finally begged the painter to lend him the album. Dippel slept in my dormitory. I was monitor, and I soon observed the crowding and the sensuous atmosphere about Dippel, who had shown the pictures to a few friends. It was like a spreading wound. I went into the matter and ruthlessly confiscated the pictures. I informed the faculty. Dippel was summoned, sternly examined, and expelled. Next day we found him swinging dead from the apple tree.”
Christian’s face flushed hotly. The tone of equanimity with which it was recited was more repulsive than the story itself.
Amadeus Voss continued: “You think that was a contemptible action. But according to the principles that had been impressed on us I was merely doing my duty. I was sixteen; and I seemed to be, and was, in a dark hole. I needed to get out to the air and light. I was like one squeezed in by a great throng, who cannot see what happens beyond. The fumes of impatience throttled me, and everything in me cried out for space and light. It was like living on the eternally dark side of the moon. I was afraid of the might of evil; and all that I heard of men was more or less evil. The scales rose and fell in my breast. There are hours in which one can either become a murderer or die on the cross. I yearned for the world. Yet I prayed much in those days, and read many books of devotion, and practised cruel penances. Late at night, when all others slept, a priest found me absorbed in prayer with the hair-shirt about my body. During mass or choral singing an incomparable and passionate devotion streamed through me. But then again I saw flags in the streets of the city, or well-dressed women, or I stood in the railway station, and a train of luxurious cars seemed to mock me. Or I saw a man who had hurled himself out of a window and whose brains spattered the pavement, and he seemed to cry out to me: Brother, brother! Then the evil one arose in bodily form and I desired to clutch him. Yes, evil has bodily form and only evil—injustice, stupidity, lying, all the things that are repulsive to one to the very core, but which one must embrace and be, if one has not been born with a silver spoon in one’s mouth. To save a ray of light for myself, I learned to play the organ. It helped little. What does music matter, or poems or beautiful pictures, or noble buildings, or books of philosophy, or the whole magnificent world without? I cannot reach myself. Between me and that real self there is something—what is it? A wall of red-hot glass. Some are accursed from the beginning. If I ask: how could the curse be broken? there is but one answer: the monstrous would need to come to pass, the unimaginable! Thus it is with me.”
Christian was shocked. “What do you mean by that?”
“One would have to gain a new experience,” answered Amadeus Voss, “to know a being truly human—in the highest and deepest sense.” In the gathering dusk his face had the hue of stone. It was a well-shaped face—long, narrow, intelligent, full of impassioned suffering. The lenses in front of his eyes sparkled in the last light of day, and on his fair hair was a glimmer as upon jewels.
“Are you going to stay in the village?” Christian inquired, not from a desire to know, but out of the distress which he felt in the heavy silence. “You were employed by Councillor Ribbeck. Will you return to him?”
Voss’s nerves twitched. “Return? There is no return,” he murmured. “Do you know Ribbeck? Well, I hardly knowhim myself. I saw him just twice. The first time was when he came to the seminary to engage a tutor for his sons. When I think of him I have the image of something fat and frozen. I was picked out at once. My superiors approved of me highly and desired to smooth my path. Yes. And I saw him for the second time one night in December, when he appeared at Halbertsroda with a commissary of police to put me out. You needn’t look at me that way. There were no further consequences. It wouldn’t have done to permit any.”
He fell silent. Christian got up. Voss did not urge him to stay longer, but accompanied him to the door. There he said in a changed voice: “What kind of a man are you? One sits before you and pours out one’s soul, and you sit there in silence. How does it happen?”