During the last days of April Christian received a telegram from Eva Sorel. The message read: “From the third to the twentieth of May, Eva Sorel will be at the Hotel Adlon, Berlin, and feels quite sure that Christian Wahnschaffe will meet her there.”
Christian read the message over and over. In his inner and in his outer life all circumstances pointed to an approaching crisis. He knew that this summons would be decisive in its influence upon his fate. Its exact character and the extent of its power he could not predict.
For weeks there had been a restlessness in him that robbed him of sleep during many long hours of the night. Oncertain days he had called for his motor in order to drive to some near-by city. When the car had covered half the distance, he ordered his chauffeur to turn back.
He had gone to Waldleiningen, and had patted his horses and played with his dogs. But he had suddenly felt like a schoolboy who lies and plays truant, and his pleasure in the animals had gone. At parting he had put his arms about his favourite dog, a magnificent Great Dane, and as he looked into the animal’s eyes it had seemed to Christian, still in his character of a truant, that he wanted to say: “I must first go and pass my examination.” And the dog seemed to answer: “I understand that. You must go.”
Also the slender horse of Denis Lay had said, with a turn of its excessively graceful neck: “I understand that. You must go.”
It was settled that the horse was to run in the races at Baden-Baden, and the Irish jockey was full of confidence. But on the day of his departure Christian was told that the animal had sickened again. He thought: “I have loved it too insistently. Now it wants the caressing hand, and is lonely without it.”
With the coming of spring guests from the cities had appeared almost daily at Christian’s Rest. But he had rarely received any one. A single guest he could not bear at all. If there were two they could address each other and make his silence easier.
One day came Conrad von Westernach and Count Prosper Madruzzi, bringing messages from Crammon. They were on their way to Holland. Christian asked them to dine with him, but he was very laconic. Conrad von Westernach remarked later, in his forthright fashion, to Madruzzi: “That fellow has a damned queer smile. You never know whether he’s a born fool or whether he’s laughing at you.”
“It’s true,” the count agreed; “you never know where you are with him.”
Christian had given his valet orders to prepare for his journey. Then he had gone to the green-houses to interview the gardeners. In the meantime twilight had set in. It had rained all day, and the trees were still dripping. But now the fresh greenery gleamed against the afterglow, and the windows of the beautiful house were dipped in gold.
“Herr Voss is in the library,” an old footman announced.
Christian had begged Amadeus Voss to use the library quite freely, whether he himself was at home or not. The servants had been instructed. Voss had offered to catalogue the library, but as yet he had made no beginning. He merely passed from book to book, and if one interested him he read it and forgot the passage of time.
The afterglow fell into the library too. Voss had taken fifty or sixty volumes from the shelves, and he was now arranging them in stacks on a large oak table.
“Why do you do that, Amadeus?” Christian asked carelessly.
“If you give me your permission, I’d like to burn these,” Amadeus Voss answered.
Christian was surprised. “Why?” he asked.
“Because I lust after anauto-da-fé. It is worthless and corrupt stuff, the product of idle and slothful minds. Don’t you scent the poison of it in the atmosphere?”
“No, I scent nothing,” said Christian, more absent-mindedly than ever. “But burn them if it amuses you,” he answered.
Amadeus had been in the library since three o’clock that afternoon, and he had had a remarkable experience there. In looking about among the shelves he had come upon a bundle of letters. By some accident it had probably fallen behind the books and been lost sight of. He had read a few lines of the topmost letter, and from the first words there breathed upon him the glow of an impassioned soul. Then he hadyielded to the temptation of untying the package. He had taken the letters into a corner, and read them swiftly and with fevered eyes.
A few bore dates. The whole series had been written about two years before. They were signed merely by the initial F. But in every word, in every image, in every turn of speech there was such a fullness of love and devotion and adoration and self-abnegation, and so wild and at the same time so spiritual a stream of tenderness and pain, of happiness and yearning, that Amadeus Voss seemed to glide from a world of shadows and appearances into a far more real one. Yet in that, too, all was but feigned and represented to lure and madden him.
And F.—this unknown, eloquent, radiant, profoundly moved and nameless woman—where was she now? What had she done with her love? Pressed flowers lay between certain pages. Was the hand that plucked them withered as they? And what had he done with her love, he whom she had wooed so humbly and who was so riotous a spendthrift of great gifts? He had been only twenty. He had probably taken as a pastime all that was the fate of this full heart, and had used it and trampled it in a consciousness of wealth that neither counts nor reckons.
Deeper and deeper, as he read, a spear penetrated into the breast of Amadeus. The Telchines gained power over him. He turned pale and crimson. His fingers trembled, and his mouth shrivelled in dryness, and his head seemed to be full of needles. Had Christian entered then, he would have flung himself upon him in foaming hatred, to throttle or to stab him. Here was the unattainable, the eternally closed door. And a demon had hurled him down before it.
He sat long in dull brooding. Then he looked about furtively, and dropped the letters into his pocket. And then there arose in him the desire to destroy, to annihilate something. He chose books as sacrifices, and awaited Christian’s coming with repressed excitement.
“It’s practically all contemporary trash,” he said drily, and pointed to the books. “Stories like tangled thread, utterly confused, without beginning or end. If you’ve read one page, you know a thousand. There are descriptions of manners with a delight in what is common and mean. The emotions riot like weeds, and the style is so noisy that you lose all perception. Love, love, love! That’s one theme. And the other is wretchedness! There are histories and memoirs, too. Sheer gossip! The poems are empty rhymings by people with inflated egos. There’s popular philosophy—self-righteous twaddle. A sincere parson’s talk were more palatable. What is it for? Reading is a good thing, if a real spirit absorbs me, and I forget and lose myself in it. But the unspiritual has neither honesty nor imagination; he is a thief and a swindler.”
“Burn it, burn it!” Christian repeated, and sat down at the other side of the room.
Amadeus went to the marble fire-place, which was so large that a man could easily have lain down in it, and opened the gates of brass. Then he carried the books there—one pile after another, and heaped them on the flat stones. When he had thrown them all in, he set fire to the pages of one book, and lowered his head and watched the flames spread.
“You know that I am going to leave Christian’s Rest,” Christian said, turning to him. It had grown quite dark now.
Voss nodded.
“I don’t know for how long,” Christian continued. “It may be very long before I return.”
Amadeus Voss said nothing.
“What are you going to do, Amadeus?” Christian asked him.
Voss shrugged his shoulders. Involuntarily he pressed his hand against the inner pocket in which lay the letters of the unknown woman.
“It is dark and oppressive in the forester’s house,” saidChristian. “Won’t you come and live here? I’ll give the necessary orders at once.”
“Don’t make me a beggar with your alms, Christian Wahnschaffe,” Voss answered. “If you were to give me the house, with all its forests and gardens, you would but rob me, and leave me poorer by so much.”
“I don’t understand that,” said Christian.
Voss walked up and down. The carpet muffled his sturdy tread.
“You are far too passionate, Amadeus,” Christian said.
Amadeus stopped in front of a lectern that had been placed in a niche. Upon it lay the great Bible that Christian had bought. It was open. The flames of the burning books flared so brightly that he could read the words. For a space he read in silence. Then he took the book, and going nearer to the fire, sat down opposite Christian, and read aloud:
“Rejoice, O young man, in thy youth, and let thy heart cheer thee in the days of thy youth, and walk in the ways of thine heart and in the sight of thine eyes: but know thou that for all these things God will bring thee into judgment.”
At the word, God, the almost unemphatic voice sounded like a bell.
“Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth, while the evil days come not, nor the years draw nigh, when thou shalt say, I have no pleasure in them; while the sun, or the light, or the moon, or the stars be not darkened, nor the clouds return after the rain: In the day when the keepers of the house shall tremble, and the strong men shall bow themselves, and the grinders cease because they are few, and those that look out of the windows be darkened, and the doors shall be shut in the streets; when the sound of the grinding is low, and he shall rise up at the voice of the bird, and all the daughters of music shall be brought low; also when they shall be afraid of that which is high, and fears shall be in the way, and the almond tree shall flourish, and the grasshopper shall be aburden and desire shall fail: because man goeth to his long home, and the mourners go about the street: or ever the silver cord be loosed, or the golden bowl be broken, or the pitcher be broken at the fountain, or the wheel broken at the cistern.”...
He stopped. Christian, who had seemed scarcely to listen, had arisen and come nearer to the fire. Now he sat down on the floor, with his legs crossed under him, and gazed with a serene wonder into the flames.
“How beautiful is fire!” he said softly.
Speechlessly Amadeus Voss regarded him. Then he spoke quite suddenly. “Let me go with you, Christian Wahnschaffe.”
Christian did not take his eyes from the fire.
“Let me go with you,” Voss said more insistently. “It is possible that you may need me: it is certain that without you I am lost. Darkness is in me and a demon. You alone break the spell. I do not know why it is thus, but it is. Let me go with you.”
Christian replied: “Very well, Amadeus, you shall stay with me. I want some one to stay with me.”
Amadeus grew pale, and his lips quivered.
Christian said: “How beautiful is fire!”
And Amadeus murmured: “It devours uncleanness and remains clean.”
THE NAKED FEETI
Withher companion, Fräulein Stöhr, the Countess Brainitz travelled about the world.
She had been the guest of an incredibly aged Princess Neukirch at Berchtesgaden. But she grew to be immensely bored, and fled to Venice, Ravenna, and Florence. Armed with a Baedeker, and accompanied by a guide, she “did” the galleries, churches, basilicas, palaces, sarcophagi, and monuments, and her tirelessness reduced Fräulein Stöhr to despair.
She quarrelled with the gondoliers over their fare, with waiters over a tip, with shopkeepers over the price of their wares. She thought every coin a counterfeit, and in her terror of dirt and infection she touched no door-knob or chair, no newspaper and no one’s hand. She washed herself repeatedly, screeched uninterruptedly, and by her appetite struck her companions at the table d’hôte with awe.
With rancour in her heart she left the land of miracles and of petty fraud. She visited her nephews, the brothers Stojenthin, in Berlin. They were charmed at her coming, and borrowed a thousand marks of her over the oysters and champagne. Then she proceeded to Stargard, to be with her sisters Hilde Stojenthin and Else von Febronius.
She was vastly amused at the middle-class ladies in Stargard, who curtsied to her as to a queen. At their teas she lorded it over them from the heights of a sofa covered with dotted calico. She entertained her devoutly attentive audience with stories of the great world. At times these anecdotes were of such a character that the judge’s widow had to administer a warning pinch to the arm of her noble sister.
Frau von Febronius had been ailing since the beginning of winter. Careless exposure on a sleigh drive had brought on an attack of pneumonia. The consequences threatened to be grave. The countess, who not only feared illness for herself but hated it in others, grew restive and talked of leaving.
“When my dear husband saw his end approaching, he sent me to Mentone,” she told Fräulein Stöhr. “Stupid and devoid of understanding as he was—though not more so than most men—in this respect he showed a praiseworthy delicacy of feeling. I was simply not made to bear the sight of suffering. Charity is not among my gifts.”
Fräulein Stöhr assumed a pastoral expression and cast her eyes to heaven. She knew her mistress sufficiently to realize that the anecdote of the dying count and the expedition to Mentone was a product of the imagination. She said: “Man should prepare himself in time for his latter end, Madame.”
The countess was indignant. “My dear Stöhr, spare me your spiritual wisdom! It suits only times of trouble. Pastoral consolations are not to my taste. It is not your proper task to preach truths to me, but to offer me agreeable illusions.”
One evening Frau von Febronius asked to see the countess. The latter went. But terror made her pale. She put on a hat, swathed her face in a veil and her hands in gloves. Sighing she sat down beside her sister’s bed, and carefully measured the distance, so as to be out of reach of the patient’s breath.
Frau von Febronius smiled indulgently. Her illness had smoothed the lines of petty care and sorrow from her face, and, among her white pillows, she looked strikingly like her daughter Letitia. “I’m sorry to trouble you, Marion,” she began, “but I must talk to you. There’s something that weighs on my mind, and I must confide in some one. The fact in question should be told to one who knows me, and should not be buried with me.”
“I beseech you, Elsie, my poor darling, don’t talk of gravesand such things,” the countess exclaimed in a whining voice. “My appetite will be gone for a week. If you’ll only fling the medicine bottles out of the window, and tell all quacks to go to the devil, you’ll be well by day after to-morrow. And, for heaven’s sake, don’t make a confession. It reminds one of quite dreadful things.”
But Frau von Febronius went on: “It’s no use, Marion. I must tell you this. The reason I turn to you is because you’ve really been so very good and kind to Letitia, and because Hilde, sensible and faithful as she is, wouldn’t quite understand. Her notions are too conventional.”
In whispers she now related the story of Letitia’s birth. An illness of his earlier years had deprived her husband of the hope of posterity; but he had yearned for a son, a child. This yearning had finally silenced all scruples and all contradictory emotions to such an extent that he had chosen a congenial stranger to continue his race. He had persuaded her, his wife, whom he loved above all things, after a long struggle. Finally she had yielded to his unheard-of demand. But when the child was born, a progressive melancholy had seized upon her husband. It had become incurable, and under its control he had ruined his estate and in the end himself. He had felt nothing of the happiness he had expected. He had, on the contrary, always shown a contemptuous dislike of Letitia, and had avoided her as far as possible.
“It doesn’t surprise me a bit,” the countess remarked. “You were uncommonly naïve to be astonished. A strange child is a strange child, no matter how it got into the nest. But it’s really like a fairy tale. I confess I underestimated you. Such delightful sophistication! And who is the child’s father? Who is responsible for the life of that darling angel? He deserves great credit for his achievement.”
Frau von Febronius mentioned the name. The countess screamed, and leaped up as though she had been stung. “Crammon? Bernard von Crammon?” She clasped herhands in agony. “Is that true? Aren’t you dreaming? Consider, my dear! It must be the fever. Oh, certainly, it’s sheer delirium. Take a little water, I beg of you, and then think carefully, and stop talking nonsense.”
Frau von Febronius gazed at her sister in utter amazement. “Do you know him?” she asked.
The countess’ voice was bitter. “Do I know him? I do. And tell me one more thing: Does this—this—creature know? Has he always known?”
“He knows. Two years ago he saw Letitia at our old home. Since that time he has known. But you act as if he were the fiend incarnate, Marion. Did you have a quarrel with him or what? You always exaggerate so!”
Excitedly the countess walked up and down. “He knows it, the wretch! He has always known it, the rogue! And such dissembling as he has practised! Such hypocrisy! The wretched rogue, I’ll bring it home to him! I’ll seek him out!” She turned to her sister. “Forgive me, Elsie, for letting my temperament run away with me. You are right. His name awakened an anger of some years’ standing. My blood boils, I confess. He may have been a man of honour and a gentleman in his youth. He must have been, or you would never have consented to such an adventure. But I hesitate to say what he is to-day. He is still perfectly discreet; you need have no anxiety on that score. But I assert that even discretion has its limits. Where these are passed, decent people shake their heads, and virtue looks like mere baseness.Voilà.”
“All that you say is quite dark to me,” Frau von Febronius replied wearily, “and I really haven’t any desire to fathom it. I wanted to tell you this oppressive secret. Keep it to yourself. Never reveal it, except to prevent some misfortune, or to render Letitia a service. I don’t quite see how either purpose will ever be served by a revelation. But it consoles me that one other human being, beside myself and that man, knows the truth.”
The countess gazed thoughtfully at her sister. “Your life wasn’t exactly a gay one, was it, Elsie?”
The sick woman answered: “No, hardly gay.”
During the following days she rallied a little. Then came a relapse that left no room for hope. In the middle of March she died.
By this time the countess was already far away. Her goings and comings were as purposeless as ever. But she nursed a favourite vision now. Some day she would meet Crammon, confront him with her knowledge, avenge herself upon him, challenge him and annihilate him, in a word, enjoy a rich triumph. At times when she was alone, or even in the presence of Miss Stöhr, whom it astonished, she would suddenly wrinkle her childlike forehead, clench her little fists, and her shiny face would turn red as a lobster, and her violet-blue eyes blaze as for battle.
It was three o’clock in the morning when Felix Imhof left a party in the Leopoldstrasse, where there had been gaming for high stakes. He had won several thousand marks, and the gold coins clinked in the overcoat pocket into which he had carelessly stuffed them.
He had had a good deal to drink, too. His head was a bit heavy. At his first steps into the fresh air he reeled a little.
Nevertheless he was in no mood to go home. So he wandered into a coffee-house that was frequented by artists. He thought he might still find a few people with whom he could chat and argue. The day he had passed was not yet full enough of life for him. He wanted it brimming.
In the room, which was blue with smoke, there were only two men, the painter Weikhardt, who had recently returned from Paris, and another painter, who looked rather ragged and stared dejectedly at the table.
Felix Imhof joined the two. He ordered cognac and servedthem, but, to his annoyance, the conversation would not get started. He got up and invited Weikhardt to walk with him. With contemptuous joviality he turned to the other: “Well, you old paint-slinger, your lamp seems about burned out!”
The man didn’t stir. Weikhardt shrugged his shoulders, and said softly: “He has no money for bread and no place to sleep.”
Felix Imhof plunged his hand into his pocket, and threw several gold coins on the table. The painter looked up. Then he gathered the gold. “Hundred and sixty marks,” he said calmly. “Pay you back on the first.”
Imhof laughed resoundingly.
When they were in the street, Weikhardt said good-naturedly: “He believes every word of it. If he didn’t absolutely believe it, he wouldn’t have taken the money. There are still eleven days before the first—time for a world of illusions.”
“It may be that he believes it,” Imhof replied, with an unsteady laugh, “it may be. He even believes that he exists, and yet he’s nothing but a melancholy corpse. O you painters, you painters!” he cried out into the silent night. “You have no feeling for life. Paint life! You’re still sitting by a spinning-wheel, instead of at some mighty wheel of steel, propelled by a force of sixteen thousand horse-power. Paint my age for me, my huge delight in being! Smell, taste, see, and grasp that colossus! Make me feel that great rhythm, create my grandiose dreams. Give me life—my life and its great affirmation!”
Weikhardt said drily: “I have heard that talk before—between midnight and dawn. When the cock crows we all calm down again, and every man pulls the cart to which fate has hitched him.”
Imhof stopped, and somewhat theatrically laid his hand on Weikhardt’s shoulder. He gazed at him with his intensely black, bloodshot eyes. “I give you a commission herewith, Weikhardt,” he said. “You have talent. You’re the onlyone with a mind above your palette. Paint my portrait. I don’t care what it costs—twenty, fifty thousand. Doesn’t matter. Take your own time—two months, or two years. But show me—me—the innermost me. Take this vulture’s nose, this Hapsburg lip, these gorilla arms and spindle shanks, this coat and this chapeau claque, and drag from it all the animating Idea. To hell with the accidents of my phiz, which looks as though an unskilful potter had bungled it in the making. Render my ambition, my restlessness, my inner tempo and colourfulness, my great hunger and the time-spirit that is in me. But you must hurry; for I am self-consumed. In a few years I shall have burned out. My soul is tinder. Render this process with the divine objectivity of art, and I’ll reward you like a Medici. But I must be able to see the flame, the flaring up, the dying down, the quiver of it! I want to see it, even if to make me see it you have to lash the whole tradition since Raphael and Rubens into rags!”
“You are an audacious person,” Weikhardt said, in his dry way. “But have patience with us, and restrain your admiration for your particular century. I do not let the age overwhelm me to the point of folly. I do not share the reverential awe of speed and machinery that has seized upon many young men like a new form of epilepsy. I haven’t any attitude of adoration toward seven-league boots, express trains, dreadnoughts, and inflated impressionism. I seek my gods elsewhere. I don’t believe I’m the painter you’re looking for. Where were you? You’ve been travelling again?”
“I’m always on some road,” Felix Imhof replied. “It’s a crazy sort of life. Let me tell you how I spent the last five days. Monday night I went to Leipzig. Tuesday morning at nine I had a conference with some literary people in regard to the founding of a new review. Splendid fellows—keen critics and intellectual Jacobins, every one of them. Then I went to an exhibition of majolicas. Bought some charming things. At noon I left for Hamburg. On the train I read two manuscripts and a drama, all by a young genius who’ll startle the world. That evening attended a meeting of the directorate of the East African Development Corporation. Festivities till late that night. Slept two hours, then proceeded to Oldenburg to a reunion of the retired officers of my old regiment. Talked, drank, and even danced, though the party was stag. Six o’clock in the morning rushed to Quackenbruck, a shabby little country town on the moors, where the officers had arranged for a little horse race. My beast was beaten by a head. Drove to the station and took a train for Berlin. Attended to business next morning in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, interviewed agents, witnessed a curious operation in the clinic, made a flying-trip to Johannisthal, where a new aeroplane was tried out; went to the Deutsches Theater that evening, and saw a marvellous performance of ‘Peer Gynt.’ Drank the night away with the actors. Next morning Dresden. Conference with two American friends. Home to-day. Next week won’t be very different, nor the one after that. I ought to sleep more; that’s the only thing.” He waved his thick bamboo cane in air.
“It is enough to frighten any one,” said Weikhardt, who took more comfort in the contrast between his own phlegm and his companion’s excitement. “How about your wife? What does she say to your life? She was pointed out to me recently. She doesn’t look as if she would let herself be pushed aside.”
Imhof stopped again. He stood there, with his legs far apart and his trunk bent forward, and rested on his cane. “My wife!” he said. “What a sound that has! I have a wife. Ah, yes. I give you my word, my dear man, I should have clean forgotten it to-night, if you hadn’t reminded me. It’s not her fault, to be sure. She’s a born Wahnschaffe; that means something! But somehow.... God knows what it is—the damned rush and hurry, I suppose. You’re quite right. She’s not the sort to be neglected or pushed to the wall. Shecreates her own spaces, and within these”—he described great circles in the air with his cane—“she dwells, cool to her fingertips, tense as a wire of steel. A magnificent character—energetic, but with a strong sense for decorative effects. She’s to be respected, my dear man.”
Weikhardt had no answer ready for this outburst. Its mixture of boasting and irony, cynicism and ecstatic excitement disarmed and wearied him at once. They had reached a side street, which led to the Englischer Garten, and in which stood the painter’s little house. He wanted to say good-night. But Imhof, who seemed still unwilling to be alone, asked: “Are you working at anything?”
Weikhardt hesitated before answering. That was enough to make Imhof accompany him. The sky grew grey with dawn.
Felix Imhof recited softly to himself:
“Where the knights repose, and streamingBanners fold at last their gleaming,Towers rise to the way-farers,And the wanderers seek a spring;And the lovely water-bearersLift a goblet to the dreamingShadow of the fleeing king.”
“Where the knights repose, and streamingBanners fold at last their gleaming,Towers rise to the way-farers,And the wanderers seek a spring;And the lovely water-bearersLift a goblet to the dreamingShadow of the fleeing king.”
“Where the knights repose, and streamingBanners fold at last their gleaming,Towers rise to the way-farers,And the wanderers seek a spring;And the lovely water-bearersLift a goblet to the dreamingShadow of the fleeing king.”
“Where the knights repose, and streaming
Banners fold at last their gleaming,
Towers rise to the way-farers,
And the wanderers seek a spring;
And the lovely water-bearers
Lift a goblet to the dreaming
Shadow of the fleeing king.”
Weikhardt, who would not yield to Imhof in a knowledge or love of the poet Stefan George, continued the quotation in a caressing voice:
“With a smile serene he watches,Yet flits on with shyer seeming,For beneath him fades the height,And he fears all mortal touches,And he almost dreads the light.”
“With a smile serene he watches,Yet flits on with shyer seeming,For beneath him fades the height,And he fears all mortal touches,And he almost dreads the light.”
“With a smile serene he watches,Yet flits on with shyer seeming,For beneath him fades the height,And he fears all mortal touches,And he almost dreads the light.”
“With a smile serene he watches,
Yet flits on with shyer seeming,
For beneath him fades the height,
And he fears all mortal touches,
And he almost dreads the light.”
They entered the studio. Weikhardt lit the lamp, and let its glow fall upon a picture that was not quite completed. It was a Descent from the Cross.
“Rather old-fashioned, isn’t it?” Weikhardt asked, with a sly smile. He had grown pale.
Imhof looked. He was a connoisseur through and through. No other had his eye. The painters knew it.
The picture, which reminded one of the visionary power as well as of the brushwork of El Greco, was bizarre in composition, intense in movement, and filled with an ecstatic passion. The forms of an old master, through which the painter had expressed himself, were but an appearance. The vision had been flung upon the canvas with a burning splendour. The figures had nothing old-fashioned about them; there was nocliché; they were like clouds, and the clouds like architecture. There were no concrete things. There was a chaos, which drew meaning and order only from the concentrated perceptions of the beholder.
Felix Imhof folded his hands. “To have such power,” he murmured. “Great God, to have the power to project such things!”
Weikhardt lowered his head. He attributed little significance to these words. A few days before he had stood in front of his canvas, and he had imagined that a peasant was standing beside him—an old peasant or any other simple man of the people. And it had seemed to him that this peasant, this humble man, who knew nothing of art, had kneeled down to pray. Not from piety, but because what he saw had in its own character overwhelmed him.
Almost rudely Imhof turned to the painter and said: “The picture is mine. Under all circumstances. Mine. I must have it. Good-night.” With his top hat set at a crazy angle, and his sleepless, dissipated face, he was a vision to frighten one.
At last he went home.
Next day Crammon informed him of his arrival in Munich. He had come because Edgar Lorm was about to give a series of performances there.
Christian considered how he could convey money to Amadeus Voss without humiliating him. Since it was agreed that they travel together, it was necessary for Voss to have the proper outfit; and he possessed nothing but what he had on.
Amadeus Voss understood the situation. The social abyss yawned between them. Both men gazed helplessly into it, one on each shore.
In his own heart Voss mocked at the other’s weakness, and at the same time loved him for his noble shame—loved him with that emotional self that had been humiliated, estranged from the world, stamped on and affronted from his youth on. He shuddered at the prospect of sitting in the forester’s house again with perished hopes and empty hands, and letting his soul bleed to death from the wounds of unattainable lures. He brooded, regarding Christian almost with hatred. What will he do? How will he conquer the difficulty?
Time passed. The matter was urgent.
On the last afternoon Christian said: “The hours crawl. Let us play cards.” He took a pack of French cards from a drawer.
“I haven’t touched a card in my life,” Voss said.
“That doesn’t matter,” Christian replied. “All you need do is to tell red from black. I’ll keep the bank. Bet on a colour. If you’ve bet on red and I turn up red, you’ve won. How much will you risk? Let us start with one taler.”
“Very well, here it is,” said Voss, and put the silver coin on the table. Christian shuffled the cards and drew one. It was red.
“Risk your two talers now,” Christian advised. “Novices have luck.”
Voss won the two talers. The betting continued. Once or twice he lost. But finally he had won thirty talers.
“Now you take the bank,” Christian proposed. He was secretly pleased that his ruse was working so well.
He bet ten talers and lost. Then fifteen, then twenty, then thirty, and lost again. He risked a hundred marks, two hundred, five hundred, more and more, and still lost. Voss’s cheeks turned hectic red, then white as chalk: his hands trembled, his teeth rattled. He was seized by a terror that his luck would change, but he was incapable of speech or of asking for an end of the game. The bank notes were piled up in front of him. In half an hour he had won over four thousand marks.
Christian had previously marked the cards in a manner that no inexperienced eye could detect. He knew exactly which colour Voss would find. But the curious thing was that, though he forgot occasionally to watch the markings, Voss still won.
Christian got up. “We’re in a hurry,” he said. “You must get ready for our journey, Amadeus.”
Voss was overwhelmed by the change which had come over his life within a few minutes. If a spark of suspicion glowed in his soul, he turned away from it, and plunged into rich dreams.
The motor took them to Wiesbaden, and there, with Christian’s help, Amadeus bought garments and linen, boots, hats, gloves, cravats, a razor, a manicure set, and a trunk.
At ten o’clock that evening they sat in the sleeper. “Who am I now?” asked Amadeus Voss. He looked about him with a curious and violent glance, and pushed the blond hair from his forehead. “What do I represent now? Give me an office and a title, Christian Wahnschaffe, in order that I may know who I am.”
Christian watched the other’s excitement with quiet eyes. “Why should you think yourself another to-night or changed from yesterday?” he asked in surprise.
Eva Sorel passed through the countries of Europe—a comet leaving radiance in its wake.
Her day was thickly peopled. It needed the flexibility of an experienced practitioner to test and grant the many-sided demands upon her. Monsieur Chinard, her impresario, served admirably in this capacity. Only Susan Rappard treated the man morosely. She called him a Figaropris à la retraite.
In addition, the dancer employed a courier and a secretary.
Several of her adorers had been following her from city to city for months. They were Prince Wiguniewski, a middle-aged American, named Bradshaw, the Marquis Vicente Tavera, of the Spanish legation at Petrograd, Herr Distelberg, a Jewish manufacturer of Vienna, and Botho von Thüngen, a very young Hanoverian, a student in his second year.
These, as well as others who drifted with the group from time to time, neglected their callings, friends, and families. They needed the air that Eva breathed in order to breathe themselves. They had the patience of petitioners and the optimism of children. They were envious of one another’s advantage, knowledge, and witticisms. Each noted with malicious delight if another blundered. They vied zealously for the friendship of Susan, and made her costly presents, in order that she might tell them what her mistress had said and done, how she had slept, in what mood she had awakened, and when she would receive.
Since Count Maidanoff had joined Eva’s circle they had all been profoundly depressed. They knew, everybody knew, who was concealed behind this pseudonym. Against him—mighty and greatly feared—no one hoped to prevail.
Eva consoled them with a smile. They counted for nothing in her eyes. “How are my chamberlains?” she asked Susan, “how do my time-killers kill their time?”
But she was not quite as light and serene of soul as she had once been.
She had made the acquaintance of Count Maidanoff in Trouville. She had been presented to him on the promenade, and a far-flung circle of fashionables had looked on. Careful murmurs had blended with the thunder of the sea.
She came home and grasped Susan by the shoulders. “Don’t let me go out again,” she said, pale and breathing heavily. “I don’t want to look into those eyes again. I must not meet that man any more.”
Susan exhausted herself promising this. She did not know who had awakened such horror in her mistress. “Elle est un peu folle,” she said to M. Labourdemont, the secretary, “mais ce grain de folie est le meilleur de l’art.”
The next day Count Maidanoff announced his formal call, and had to be received.
The conventional act of homage, to which he was entitled by his birth, he repaid with a personal and sincere one.
His speech was heavy and slow. He seemed to despise the words, the use of which caused him such exertion. Sometimes he stopped in the middle of a sentence and frowned in annoyance. Between his eyebrows there were two straight, deep lines that made his face permanently sombre. His smile began with an upward curl of the lips, and quivered down into his thin, colourless beard, like the effect of a muscular paralysis.
He went straight and without circumlocution toward his purpose. It was commonly the office of his creatures to clear the road toward his amatory adventures. By doing the wooing himself in this instance he desired to single out its object by an act of especial graciousness.
The cool timidity of the dancer had pleased him at first. Fear was to him the most appealing quality in men. But Eva’s repressed chill in the face of his courteous proposals confusedhim. His eyes became empty, he looked bored, and asked for permission to light a cigarette.
He talked of Paris, of a singer at the Grand Opera there. Then he became silent, and sat there like some one who has all eternity ahead of him. When he arose and took his leave, he looked as though he were really asleep.
With arms crossed Eva walked about the room till evening. During the night she picked up books which she did not read, thought of things that were indifferent to her, called Susan only to torment her, wrote a letter to Ivan Becker and tore it up again. Finally, in spite of the driving rain, she wrapped herself in a cloak and went out on the terrace.
Maidanoff repeated his visit. At the inevitable point Eva conveyed to him with great delicacy that his expectations were doomed to disappointment. He looked at her with slothful, oblique glances, and condescended to smile. What nonsense, his morose frown seemed thereupon to say.
Suddenly he opened his eyes very wide. The effect was uncanny. Eva bent her head forward in expectation, and spread out her fingers.
He said: “You have the most beautiful hands I have ever seen. To have seen them is to desire to know their touch.”
Three hours later she left Trouville, accompanied by Susan and by M. Labourdemont, and travelled to Brussels, where Ivan Becker was staying.
Becker lived in the suburbs, in a lonely house that stood in a neglected garden. He received her in a tumbled room that was as big as a public hall. Two candles burned on the table.
He looked emaciated, and moved about restlessly, even after he had bidden Eva welcome.
She told him with some haste of her engagement in Russia, which she was about to fulfil, and asked whether he had any commissions to give her. He said that he had not.
“The Grand Duke was attentive to me,” she said, and looked at him expectantly.
He nodded. After a little he sat down and said: “I must tell you a dream I had; or, rather, a hallucination, for I lay with my eyes wide open. Listen!
“About a richly laid board there sat five or six young women. They were in evening dress, with very deep décolletage, and laughed wildly and drank champagne. With frivolous plays on words and seductive gestures, they turned to one who sat at the head of the table. But that one had no form: he was like a lump of dough or clay. The footmen trembled when they approached him, and the women grew pale under their rouge when he addressed them. In the middle of the gleaming cloth there lay, unnoticed by any one, a corpse. It was covered with fruits, and from its breast, between the peaches and the grapes, projected the handle of a dagger. Blood trickled through the joints of the table and tapped in dull drops on the carpet.
“The meal came to an end. All were in a wildly exuberant mood. Then that formless one arose, grasped one of the women, drew her close to him, and demanded music. And while the thunderous music resounded, that lump expanded and grew, and a skull appeared on it, and eyes within that skull, and these eyes blazed in a measureless avidity. The woman that he held became paler and paler, and sought to free herself from his embrace. But long, thin arms grew out of his trunk. And with these he pressed her so silently and so cruelly that she began to moan and turn blue. And her body snapped in two in the middle. Lifeless she lay in his arms, and nothing seemed left of her but her dress. Then the corpse, that lay with pierced breast amid the fruit and sweets, raised its head, and said with closed eyes: ‘Give her back to me.’
“Suddenly many people streamed into that room—peasants and factory workers, soldiers and ragged women, Jews and Jewesses. An old man with a white beard said to the formlessone: ‘Give me back my daughter.’ Others who stood behind screamed frantically: ‘Give us our daughters, our brides, our sisters.’ Then peasants pressed forward, and bent to the earth their melancholy faces, and said: ‘Give us our lands and our forests.’ Over all rose the piercing voices of mothers: ‘Give us our sons, our sons.’ The formless one receded step by step into empty space. But even as he receded he assumed a more clearly defined shape. The face, the hands, and the garments were brown as though encrusted with rust or dried slime. The features of the face gave not the least notion of that being’s character, and precisely this circumstance heightened the despair of all beyond endurance. They cried without ceasing: ‘Our brothers! Our sons! Our sisters! Our lands! Our forests, O thou accursed unto all eternity!’”
Eva said no word.
Ivan Becker rested his head upon his hand. “One thing is certain. He has caused so many tears to be shed, that were they gathered into one lake, that lake were deeper than the Kremlin is tall; the blood that he has caused to flow would be a sea in which all Moscow could be drowned.”
He walked to and fro a few times. Then he sat down again and continued: “He is the creator and instigator of an incomparable reign of terror. Our living souls are his victims. Wherever there is a living soul among us, it becomes his prey. Six thousand intellectuals were deported during the past year. Where he sets his foot, there is death. Ruins and fields full of murdered men mark his path. These expressions are not to be taken metaphorically but quite, quite literally. It was he who created the organization of the united nobility, which holds the country in subjection, and is a modern instrument of torture on the hugest scale. The pogroms, the murderous Finnish expedition, the torturing of the imprisoned, the atrocities of the Black Hundreds—all these are his work. He wastes untold millions from the public treasury; he pardons the guilty and condemns the innocent. He throttles the spirit of man andextinguishes all light. He is all-powerful. He is God’s living adversary. I bow before him.”
Eva looked up in astonishment. But Becker did not observe her.
“There is no one who knows him. No one is able to see through him. I believe he is satiated. Nothing affects him any longer except some stimulus of the epidermis. The story is told that sometimes he has two beautiful naked women fight in his presence. They have daggers and must lacerate each other. One must bow down before that.”
“I do not understand,” Eva whispered wide-eyed. “Why bow?”
Becker shook his head warningly, and his monotonous voice filled the room once more. “He has found everything between heaven and earth to be for sale—friendship, love, the patience of a people, justice, the Church, peace and war. First he commands or uses force; that goes without saying. What these cannot conquer he buys. It seems, to be sure, that pressure and force can accomplish things that would defy and wreck ordinary mortals. While hunting bears in the Caucasus his greatest favourite, Prince Szilaghin, fell ill. His fever was high and he was carried into the hut of some Circassians. Szilaghin, by the way, is a creature of incredible corruption—only twenty years old and of astonishing though effeminate beauty. To win a bet he once disguised himself as a cocotte, and spent a night in the streets and amusement resorts of Petrograd. In the morning he brought back a handful of jewels, including a magnificent bracelet of emeralds, that had been given him as tributes to his mere beauty. It was he who fell ill in the mountains. A mounted messenger was sent to the nearest village, and dragged back with him an old, ignorant country doctor. The Grand Duke pointed to his favourite writhing in delirium, and said to the old man: ‘If he dies, you die too.’ Every hour the physician administered a draught to the sick man. In the intervals he kneeled trembling by the bed and prayed. Asfate would have it, Szilaghin recovered consciousness toward morning, and gradually became well. The Grand Duke was convinced that the inexorable alternative which he had offered the old physician had released mysterious forces in him and worked something like a miracle. Thus he does not feel nature as a barrier to his power.”
A swift vividness came into Eva’s features. She got up and walked to the window and opened it. A storm was shaking the trees. The ragged clouds in the sky, feebly illuminated by moonlight and arching the darkness, were like a picture of Ruysdael. Without turning she said: “You say no one can penetrate him. There is nothing to penetrate. There is an abyss, dark and open.”
“It may be that you are right and that he is like an abyss,” Ivan Becker answered softly, “but who will have the courage to descend into it?”
Another silence fell upon them. “Speak, Ivan, speak out at last the thought in your mind!” Eva cried out into the night. And every fibre of her, from the tips of her hair to the hem of her gown, was tense with listening.
But Becker did not answer. Only a terrible pallor came over his face.
Eva turned around. “Shall I throw myself into his arms in order to create a new condition in the world?” she asked proudly and calmly. “Shall I increase his opinion of the things that can be bought among men by the measure of my worth? Or do you think that I could persuade him to exchange the scaffold for the confessional and the hangman’s axe for a flute?”
“I have not spoken of such a thing; I shall not speak of it,” said Ivan Michailovitch with solemnly raised hand.
“A woman can do many things,” Eva continued. “She can give herself away, she can throw herself away, she can sell herself, she can conceal indifference and deny her hatred. But against horror she is powerless; that tears the heart in two.Show me a way; make me insensitive to the horror of it; and I shall chain your tiger.”
“I know of no way,” answered Ivan Michailovitch. “I know none, for horror is upon me too. May God, the Eternal, enlighten you.”
The loneliness of the room, of the house, of the storm-ploughed garden, became as the thunder of falling boulders.
Her friends awaited developments in suspense. None expected her to offer Maidanoff any serious resistance. When she seemed to hold out, her subtlety was admired. Paris predicted a radiant future for her. Much public curiosity centred upon her, and many newspaper columns were devoted to her.
When she arrived in Russia it was clear that the authorities and officials had received special instructions. No queen could have been treated with more subtle courtesy. Palatial rooms in a hotel were in readiness and adorned. A slavish humility surrounded her.
When the Grand Duke called, she begged him to rescind the orders that made her his debtor. He devoured her words with a frosty and lurking expression, but remained inactive. She was indignant at this slothfulness of a rigid will, this deaf ear that listened so greedily.
His contempt of mankind had something devastating in it. His slow eyes seemed to say: Man, thou slimy worm, grovel and die!
In his presence Eva felt her thoughts to be so loud at times that she feared he would perceive them.
She ventured to oppose and judge him. A young girl, Vera Cheskov, had shot the governor of Petrograd. Eva had the courage to praise that deed. The Grand Duke’s answer was smooth, and he left quite unruffled. She challenged him more vigorously. Her infinitely expressive body vibrated in rhythmsof bitterness and outrage. She melted in grief, rage, and sympathy.
He watched her as one would watch a noble beast at its graceful antics and said: “You are extraordinary, Madame. I cannot tell what wish of yours I would leave ungranted for the reward of winning your love.” He said that in a deep voice, which was hoarse. He had also a higher voice, which had a grinding sound like that of rusty hinges.
Eva’s shoulders quivered. His iron self-sufficiency reflected no image of her or her influence. Against it all forces were shattered.
Twice she saw him change countenance and give a start. The first time was when she told him of her German descent. An inbred hatred against all Germans and everything German filled him. An evil mockery glared in his face. He determined not to believe her and dropped the subject.
And the second time was when she spoke of Ivan Michailovitch Becker. She could not help it; she had to bring that name to the light. It was her symbol and talisman.
A glance like a whip’s lash leaped out of those slothful eyes. The two deep grooves between the eyebrows stretched like the antennæ of an insect. A diagonal groove appeared and formed with the others a menacing cross. The face became ashen.
Susan was impatient. She urged her on and lured her on. “Why do you hesitate?” she said to her mistress one evening. “So near the peak one cannot go back. Remember our dreams in Toledo! We thought they were insolent then. Reality puts us to shame. Take what is given you. Never will your sweet, little dancing feet win a greater prize.”
Eva walked in a circle about the rug. “Be quiet,” she said thoughtfully and threateningly, “You don’t know what you are advising me to do.”
Crouching near the fire-place, Susan’s lightless, plum-like eyes followed her mistress. “Are you afraid?” she asked with a frown.
“I believe I am afraid,” Eva replied.
“Do you remember the sculptor whom we visited in Meudon last winter? He showed us his work, and you two talked art. He said: ‘I mustn’t be afraid of the marble; the marble must be afraid of me.’ You almost kissed him in gratitude for those words. Don’t be afraid now. You are the stronger.”
Eva stood still, and sighed: “Cette maladie, qu’on appelle la sagesse!”
Then Susan went to the piano-forte, and with her fluttering angularity of movement began to play a Polonaise of Chopin. Eva listened for a while. Then she went up to Susan from behind, tapped her shoulder, and said, as the playing ceased, with a dark, strange cooing in her voice:
“If it must be, I shall first live one summer of love, the like of which has not been seen on earth. Do not speak, Susan. Play on, and do not speak.”
Susan looked up, and shook her puzzled head.
On the day of Eva’s last appearance in Petrograd, a well laid high explosive mine blew up the central building of the Agricultural Exposition.
The plot had been aimed at the person of the Grand Duke. His visit had been expected, the order in which he would inspect the buildings had been carefully mapped out. A slight maladjustment in the machinery of his car delayed him and his train a few minutes beyond the precisely fixed hour.
At the very moment when he put his foot on the first step of the building, a terrific crash resounded. The sky disappeared behind fume and fragments. Several manufacturers and bureaucrats, who had officiously hurried ahead, as well as ten or twelve workingmen, were killed. The air pressure smashed the window panes in all the houses within a mile of the spot.
For a while the Grand Duke stood quite still. Withoutcuriosity or fear, but with an indescribably sombre look, he surveyed the devastation. When he turned to go, the great crowds who had streamed thither melted back silently at his approach. They left him a broad path through which his abnormally long legs, accompanied by the clinking of his sword, strode with the steps of a sower.
For her final performance Eva had selected the rôle of the fettered and then liberated Echo, in the pantomime called The Awakening of Pan. It had always created enthusiasm; but this time she celebrated an unparalleled triumph.
She danced a dance of freedom and redemption, that affected with complete immediacy the nerves of the thronging audiences, and released the tensions of the day of their lives. There was a present and significant eloquence in the barbaric defiance, the fiery terror of the pursued. Then came her sudden rallying, her heroic determination, her grief over a first defeat, her toying with the torch of vengeance, her jubilant welcome of a rising dawn.
The curtain dropped, and the twenty-five hundred people sat as though turned to stone. Innumerable glances sought the box of the Grand Duke and found those slothful, unseeing eyes of his. They saw the slightness and disproportionate length of his body, the sinewy, bird-like neck above the round collar of his uniform, the thin beard, the bumpy forehead, and felt the atmosphere that rolled silently out from him and dwelled in his track—the atmosphere of a million-atomed death. And in the midst of these were those slothful eyes.
Then the applause broke out. Distinguished ladies contorted their bodies, toothless old men yelled like boys, sophisticated experts of the theatre climbed on their seats and waved. When Eva appeared the noise died down. For ten seconds nothing was heard but the sound of breathing and the rustle of garments.
She looked into that gleaming sea of faces. The folds of her white Greek garment were still as marble. Then the storm ofapplause burst out anew. Over the balustrade of the gallery a girl bent and stretched out her arms, and cried with a sob in her voice, that rose above all the plaudits: “You have understood us, little soul!”
Eva did not understand the Russian words. But it was not necessary. She looked up, and their sense was clear to her.
At midnight she appeared, as she had consented to do, in the palace of Prince Fyodor Szilaghin.
So soon as she was seen, a respectful murmur and then a silence surrounded her. Bearers of the most ancient names were assembled, the most beautiful women of society and of the court, and the representatives of foreign powers. Several gentlemen had already formed a group about her, when Fyodor Szilaghin approached, kissed her hand reverently, and drew her skilfully from the group.
She passed through several rooms at his side. He did his best to fascinate her and succeeded in holding her attention.
There was not a touch of banality about him. His gestures and words were calculated to produce a desired effect with the utmost coolness and subtlety. When he spoke he lowered his eyes a little. The ease and fullness of speech that is characteristic of all Russians had something iridescent in his case. An arrogant and almost cynical consciousness of the fact that he was handsome, witty, aloof, mysterious, and much desired never left him. His eyebrows had been touched with kohl, his lips with rouge. The dull blackness of his hair threw into striking relief the transparent pallor of his beardless face.
“I find it most remarkable, Madame,” he said in a voice of unfathomable falseness, “that your art has not to us Slavs the oversophistication that is characteristic of most Western artists. It is identical with nature. It would be instructive to know the paths by which, from so different a direction, you reached the very laws and forms on which our national dances as wellas our modern orchestral innovations are based. Undoubtedly you are acquainted with both.”
“I am,” Eva answered, “and what I have seen is most uncommon. It has power and character and enthusiasm.”
“Enthusiasm and perhaps something more—wild ecstasy,” said the prince, with a significant smile. “Without that there is no great creation in the world. Do you not believe that Christ shared such ecstasy? As for me, I cannot be satisfied with the commonly accepted figure of a gentle and gently harmonious Christ.”
“It is a new point of view. It is worth thinking about,” Eva said with kindly tolerance.
“However that may be,” Szilaghin went on, “among us all things are still in the process of becoming—the dance as well as religion. I do not hesitate to name these two in one breath. They are related as a red rose is to a white. When I say that we are still becoming, I mean that we have yet discovered no limits either of good or evil. A Russian is capable of committing the most cruel murder, and of shedding tears, within the next hour, at the sound of a melancholy song. He is capable of all wildness, excess, and horror, but also of magnanimity and self-abnegation. No transformation is swifter or more terrible than his, from hate to love, love to hate, happiness to despair, faithfulness to treachery, fear to temerity. If you trust him and yield yourself to him, you will find him pliant, high-souled, and infinitely tender. Disappoint and maltreat him—he will plunge into darkness and be lost in the darkness. He can give, give, give, without end or reflection, to the point of fanatical selflessness. Not until he is hurled to the uttermost depths of hopelessness, does the beast in him awaken and crash into destruction all that is about him.” The prince suddenly stood still. “Is it indiscreet to ask, Madame, where you will pass the month of May? I am told you intend to go to the sea-shore.” He had said these words in a changed tone, and regarded Eva expectantly.
The question came to her like an attack from ambush.
Insensibly they had left the rooms destined for the guests and passed into the extensive conservatories. Labyrinthine paths, threading innumerable flowers and shrubs, led in all directions. A dim light reigned, and where they stood in a somewhat theatrical isolation, thousands of ghostly orchids exhaled a breathless fragrance.
Skilfully and equivocally chosen as they were, the sense and purport of Szilaghin’s words were very clear to Eva. Yet she was tempted to oppose her own flexibility to his eel-like smoothness of mind, despite the hidden threat of the situation. She assumed a smile, as impenetrable as Szilaghin’s forehead and large pupils, and answered: “Yes; I am going to Heyst. I must rest. Life in this land of hidden madmen has wearied me. It is too bad that I must be deprived, dear Prince, of a mentor and sage like yourself.”
Suddenly Szilaghin dropped on one knee, and said softly: “My master and friend beseeches you through me for the favour of being near you wherever you may elect to go. He insists on no exact time, but awaits your summons. I know neither the degree nor the cause of your hesitation, dear lady, but what pledge do you demand, what surety, for the sincerity of a feeling that avoids no test and stops at no sacrifice?”
“Please rise, prince,” Eva commanded him. She stepped back a pace and stretched out her arms in a delicate gesture of unwilling intimacy. “You are a spendthrift of yourself at this moment. Please rise.”
“Not until you assure me that I shall be the bearer of good news. Your decision is a grave one. Clouds are gathering and awaiting a wind that may disperse them. Processions are on the roads praying to avert an evil fate. I am but a single, but a chance messenger. May I rise now?”
Eva folded her arms across her bosom, and retreated to the very wall of hanging flowers. She became aware of the mightyand naked seriousness of fate. “Rise,” she said, with lowered head, and twice did fire and pallor alternate on her cheeks.
Szilaghin arose and smiled, swiftly breathing. Again, in silent reverence, he carried her hand to his lips. Then he led her, subtly chatting as before, back among the other guests.
It was twelve hours after this that Christian received the telegram which called him to Berlin.
Edgar Lorm played to crowded houses in Munich. His popularity was such that he had to prolong his stay.
It pleased Crammon enormously and puffed him up. He walked about as though he were the sole nurse of all this glory.
One day he was at a tea given by a literary lady. In a corner arose laughter that was obviously directed at him. He was amused when he discovered that the whispering group gathered there believed firmly that he was copying Lorm’s impersonation of the Misanthrope.
Felix Imhof writhed in laughter when he heard the story. “There’s something very attractive in the notion to people who don’t really know you,” he said to Crammon. “It’s far more likely that it’s the other way around, and that Lorm created his impersonation by copying you.”
This interpretation was very flattering. Crammon smiled in appreciation of it. Unconsciously he deepened the lines of misanthropy in his chubby ecclesiastical face. When Lorm had his picture taken as Alceste, Crammon took up his stand behind the camera, and gazed steadily at the ripe statuesqueness of the actor’s appearance.
It was his intention to learn. The rôle which had been assigned him in the play of the actor’s life—the play that lasted from nine o’clock every morning until eleven at night—began to arouse his dissatisfaction. He desired it to be less episodic. It seemed to him that Lorm, the director of thisparticular play, should be persuaded to change the cast. He told Lorm so quite frankly. For the actor was no longer to him, as in the days of his youth, the crown and glory of human existence and the vessel of noblest emotions, but a means to an end. Nowadays one was forced to learn of Lorm, to conceal one’s true feelings impenetrably, to gather all one’s energy for the moment of one’s cue, to be thrifty of one’s self, bravely to wear a credible mask, and thus to assure each situation of a happy ending.
So Crammon said: “I’ve always had rather pleasant relations with my partners. I can truly say that I’m an obliging colleague and have always stolen away into the background when it was their turn to have their monologues or great scenes in the centre of the stage. But two of them, the young lover and the heroine, have undoubtedly abused my good nature. They’ve gradually shoved me out of the play entirely. To their own hurt, too. The action promised to be splendid. Since I’ve been shoved into the wings, it threatens to be lost in the sand. It annoys me.”
Edgar Lorm smiled. “It seems to me rather that the playwright is at fault than those two,” he answered. “And no doubt it’s a mistake in construction. No experienced man of the theatre would dispense with a character like yourself.”
“Prosit,” said Crammon, and lifted his glass. They were sitting late in the Ratskeller.
“One must await developments,” Lorm continued. The whole charade amused him immensely. “In the works of good authors you sometimes find unexpected turns of the action. You mustn’t scold till the final curtain.”
Crammon murmured morosely. “It’s taking a long time. Some day soon I’m going to mount the stage and find out in which act we are. I may make an extempore insertion.”
“For what particular line have you been engaged anyhow?”Lorm inquired. “Man of the world, character parts, or heavy father?”
Crammon shrugged his shoulders. The two men looked seriously at each other. A pleasant mood gleamed about the actor’s narrow lips. “How long is it since we’ve seen each other, old boy?” he said, and threw his arm affectionately over Crammon’s shoulder. “It must be years. Until recently I had a secretary who, whenever a letter came from you, would lay it on my pillow at night. He meant that action to express something like this: Look, Lorm, people aren’t the filthy scamps you always call them. Well, he was an idealist who had been brought up on chicory, potatoes, and herring. You find that sort once in a while. As for you, my dear Crammon, you’ve put on flesh. You’re comfortable and compact in that nice tight skin of yours. I’m still lean and feed on my own blood.”
“My fat is only a stage property,” said Crammon sadly. “The inner me is untouched.”