KAREN ENGELSCHALL

I

On the appointed hour of the appointed day Crammon arrived. He had prepared himself to stay and to be festive; but he was disappointed. Eva and her train were on the point of leaving. Maidanoff had proceeded to Paris, whither Eva was to follow him.

Crammon had been informed of this new friendship of his idol. All other news came to him too, and so he was aware that a quarrel had arisen between Christian and Eva. He was the more astonished to see Christian determined to follow Eva to Hamburg.

They had exchanged but a few words, when the transformation in Christian struck him. He laid his hand on the young man’s shoulder, and asked sympathetically: “Have you nothing to confide?”

He spent the evening with Wiguniewski. “It isn’t possible,” he said; “you’re mistaken. Or else the world is topsy-turvy and I can no longer tell a man from a woman.”

“I had no special liking for Wahnschaffe from the start,” Wiguniewski confessed. “He’s too impenetrable, mysterious, spoiled, cold, and, if you will, too German. Nevertheless I knew from the first that he was the very man for Eva Sorel. You couldn’t see the two together without a sense of delight—the sort of delight that a beautiful composition gives you, or anything that is spiritually fitting and harmonious.”

Crammon nodded. “He has a strange power over women,” he said. “I’ve just had another instance which is the more remarkable as it developed from a mere sight of his picture. At the Ashburnhams’ in Yorkshire, where I’ve been staying, I made the acquaintance of a Viennese girl, a banker’s daughter, rather ugly, to be frank, but with a peculiar little sting and charm and wit of her own. Not a bad figure, though rather—shall we say scanty? Yes. Her name is Johanna Schöntag, though that matters little. I called her nothing but Rumpelstilzkin. That fitted her like a glove. God knows how she got there. Her sister, a russet-haired person who looks as though she’d jumped out of a Rubens, is married to an attaché of some minor legation, Roumanian or Bulgarian or something like that. The big capitalists fit their daughters into society that way. Well, anyhow, this Rumpelstilzkin and I agreed to amuse each other in the murky boredom of Lord and Lady Ashburnham’s house. So one day I showed the girl a miniature of Christian which Gaston Villiers painted for me in Paris. She looked at the picture and her merry face grew grave, absorbed, and she handed it back to me silently. A couple of days later she asked to see it again, and it had the same effect on her. She asked me about the man, and I, of course, became very eloquent, and happened to remark, too, that I expected to meet Christian here. She insisted at once that she must meet him, and that I must plan to have her do so. Remember she’s rather unapproachable as a rule, fastidious, turning up her nose—her worst feature by the way—at things that please most people. The request was unexpected and rather a nuisance. One mustn’t, as you know, bring the wrong people together and land one’s self in difficulties. So I said at once: ‘The Almighty forbid!’ I admonished her gently to change her mind, and painted the danger in its darkest hues. She laughed at me, and asked me whether I’d grown strait-laced; then she at once developed a most cunning plan. She had time enough. She wasn’t expected home till the first of November, which gave her seven weeks. So she would announce her intention of studying the Dutch galleries, the pursuit of culture being always respectable. She had a companion and chaperone, as it was, and her sister, who was broad-minded in such matters, could be taken into her confidence. Her energy and astuteness made me feel weak, and forced me into the conspiracy. Well, she arrived yesterday. She’s at the Hotel de la Plage, a little scared, like a bird that’s dropped out of its nest, a little dissatisfied with herself, vexed by little attacks of morality; and I, for my part, don’t know what to do with her. I bethought me too late that Christian isn’t to be caught by such tricks, and now I’ve got to make it clear to the girl. All this is by the way, prince—a sort of footnote to your discourse, which I did not intend to interrupt.”

Wiguniewski had listened with very slight sympathy. He began again: “These past months, as I’ve said, have given us all an unforgettable experience. We have seen two free personalities achieving a higher form of union than any of the legitimized ones. But suddenly this noble spectacle turns into a shabby farce; and it is his fault. For such a union has its organic and natural close. A man of subtle sensitiveness knows that, and adjusts himself accordingly. Instead of that, he actually lets it get to the point of painful scenes. He seeks meetings that humiliate him and make him absurd. When she is out he waits in her rooms for her return, and endures her passing him by with a careless nod. Once he sat waiting all night and stared into a book. He lets the Rappard woman treat him insolently, and doesn’t seem to mind that the fruits and flowers he sends daily are regularly refused. What is it? What does it mean?”

“It points to some sorrow, and assuredly to a great sorrow for me,” Crammon sighed. “It’s incomprehensible.”

“She entertained at dinner day before yesterday,” Wiguniewski continued. “As though to mock him he was placed at the lower end of the table. I didn’t even know the people who sat by him. It seems to arouse a strange cruelty in her that he doesn’t refuse to bear these humiliations; he, on the other hand, seems to find some inexplicable lure in his suffering. He sat down that evening in silence. Afterwards a curious thing happened. Groups had been formed after dinner. He stood a few feet from Eva and gazed at her steadily. His face had a brooding look as he observed her. She wore Ignifer, which is his gift, and looked like Diana with a burning star above her forehead.”

“That’s excellently well put, prince,” Crammon exclaimed.

“The conversation touched upon many subjects without getting too shallow. You know her admirable way of checking and disciplining talk. Finally there arose a discussion of Flemish literature, and some one spoke of Verhaeren. She quoted some verses of a poem of his called ‘Joy.’ The sense was somewhat as follows: My being is in everything that lives about me; meadows and roads and trees, springs and shadows, you become me, since I have felt you wholly. There was a murmur of appreciation. She went to a shelf and took down a volume of Verhaeren’s poems. She turned the pages, found the poem she sought, and suddenly turned to Wahnschaffe. She gave him the book with a gesture of command; he was to read the poem. He hesitated for a moment, then he obeyed. The effect of the reading was both absurd and painful. He read like a schoolboy, low, stammering, and as though the content were beyond his comprehension. He felt the absurdity and painfulness of the incident himself, for his colour changed as the ecstatic stanzas came from his lips like an indifferent paragraph in a newspaper; and when he had finished the reading, he laid the book aside, and left without a glance at any one. But Eva turned to us, and said as though nothing had happened: ‘The verses are wonderful, aren’t they?’ Yet her lips trembled with fury. But what was her purpose? Did she want to prove to us his inability to feel things that are beautiful and delicate? Did she want to put him to shame, to punish him and publicly expose the poverty of his nature? Or was it only an impatient whim, the annoyance at his dumb watchfulness and his searching glances? Mlle. Vanleer said later: ‘If he had read the verses like a divine poet, she would have forgiven him.’ ‘Forgiven him what?’ I asked. She smiled, and answered: ‘Her own faithlessness.’ There may be something in that. At all events, you should get him out of this situation, Herr von Crammon.”

“I shall do all in my power,” said Crammon, and the lines of care about his mouth grew deeper. He wiped his forehead. “Of course I don’t know how far my influence goes. It would be empty boastfulness to guarantee anything. I’ve been told too that he frequents all sorts of impossible dives with impossible people. I could weep when I think of it. He was the flower of modern manhood, the pride of my lengthening years, the salt of the earth! Unfortunately he had, even when I left him, certain attacks of mental confusion, but I put those down to the account of that suspicious fellow, Ivan Becker.”

“Don’t speak of him! Don’t speak of Becker!” Wiguniewski interrupted sharply. “Not at least in that manner, I must beg and insist.”

Crammon opened his eyes very wide, and the tip of his tongue became visible, like a red snail peering out of its shell. He choked down his discomfort and shrugged his shoulders.

Wiguniewski said: “At all events you’ve given me an indication. I never considered such a possibility. It throws a new light on many things. It’s true, by the way, that Wahnschaffe associates with questionable people. The queerest of them all is Amadeus Voss, a hypocrite and a gambler. One must not couple such persons with Ivan Becker. Becker may have set him upon a certain road. If we assume that, a number of incidents become clear. But anything really baneful comes from Voss. Save your friend from him!”

“I haven’t seen the fellow yet,” Crammon murmured. “What you tell me, Prince, doesn’t take me quite unawares. Nevertheless, I’m grateful. But let that scoundrel beware! May I never drink another drop of honest wine, if he escape me! Let me never again glance at a tempting bosom, if I don’t grind this infamous cur to pulp. So help me!”

Wiguniewski arose, and left Crammon to plan his revenge.

II

The morning sun of late September was gilding sea and land, when Crammon entered Christian’s room. Christian was sitting at his curved writing table. The bright blue tapestries on the walls gleamed; chairs and tables were covered by a hundred confused objects. Everything pointed to the occupant’s departure.

“Don’t let me disturb you, dear boy; I have time enough,” said Crammon. He swept some things from a chair, sat down, and lit his pipe.

But Christian put down his pen. “I don’t know what’s the matter with me,” he said angrily, without looking at Crammon, “I can’t get two coherent sentences down on paper. However carefully I think it out, by the time it’s written it sounds stiff and silly. Have you the same experience?”

Crammon answered: “There are those who have the trick. It takes, primarily, a certain impudence. You must never stop to ask: Is that correct? Is it true? Is it well-founded? Scribble ahead, that’s all. Be effective, no matter at what cost. The cleverest writers are often the most stupid fellows. But to whom are you writing? Is the haste so great? Letters can usually be put off.”

“Not this time. It is a question of haste,” Christian answered. “I have a letter from Stettner and I can’t make out his drift. He tells me that he’s quitting the service and leaving for America. Before he goes he wants to see me once more. He takes ship at Hamburg on October 15. Now it fortunately happens that I’ll be in Hamburg on that date, and I want to let him know.”

“I don’t see any difficulty there,” Crammon said seriously. “All you need say is: I’ll be at such a place on such a day, and expect or hope, et cetera. Yours faithfully or sincerely or cordially, et cetera. So he’s going to quit? Why? And run off to America? Something rotten in the state of Denmark?”

“He was challenged to a duel, it appears, and refused the challenge. That’s the only reason he gives. He adds that matters shaped themselves so that he is forced to seek a new life in the New World. It touches me closely; I was always fond of him. I must see him.”

“I’d be curious too to know what really happened,” said Crammon. “Stettner didn’t strike me as a chap who’d lightly run away and risk his honour. He was an exemplary officer. I’m afraid it’s a dreary business. But I observe that it gives you a pretext for going to Hamburg.”

Christian started. “Why a pretext?” He was a little embarrassed. “I need no pretext.”

Crammon bent his head far forward, and laid his chin on the ivory handle of his stick. His pipe remained artfully poised in one corner of his mouth, and did not move as he spoke. “You don’t mean to assert, my dearest boy, that your conscience doesn’t require some additional motive for the trip,” he began, like a father confessor who is about to use subtle arguments to force a confession from a stubborn malefactor, “and you’re not going to try to make a fool of an old boon-companion and brother of your soul. One owes something to a friend. You should not forget under whose auspices and promises you entered the great world, nor what securities he offered—securities of the heart and mind—who was the author and master of your radiant entry. Even Socrates, that rogue and revolutionary, recalled such obligations on his death bed. There was a story about a cock—some sort of a cock, I believe. Maybe the story doesn’t fit the case at all. No matter. I always thought the ancients rather odious. What does matter is that I don’t like your condition, and that others who love you don’t like it. It rends my very heart to see you pilloried, while people who can’t tell a stud-horse from a donkey shrug their shoulders at you. It’s not to be endured. I’d rather we’d quarrel and exchange shots at a distance of five paces. What has happened to you? What has come over you? Have you stopped gathering scalps to offer your own head? The hares and the hounds, I tell you, are diverse creatures. I understand all things human, but the divine order must be kept intact. It’s flying in the face of providence that you should stand at the gate like a beggar. You used to be the one who showed others the door; they whined and moaned after you—and that was proper. I had an uncle who was something of a philosopher, and he used to say: when a woman, a lawyer, and a stove are at their hottest—turn your back to them. I’ve always done that, and kept my peace of mind and my reputation. There are extenuating circumstances in your case, I admit. There is but one such woman in a century, and whoever possesses her may well lose his reason. But even that should not apply to you, Christian. Splendour is your natural portion: it is for you to grant favours; at your board the honey should be fresh each day. And now tell me what you intend to do.”

Christian had listened to this lengthy though wise and pregnant discourse with great patience. At times there was a glint of mockery or anger in his eyes. Then again he would lower them and seem embarrassed. Sometimes he grasped the sense of Crammon’s words, sometimes he thought of other things. It cost him an effort to recall clearly by what right this apparently complete stranger interfered in his life and sought to influence his decisions. And then again he felt within himself a certain tenderness for Crammon in the memory of common experiences and intimate talks; but all that seemed so far away and so estranged from the present.

He looked out of the window, from which the view was free to the horizon where sea and sky touched. Far in the distance a little white cloud floated like a white, round pillow. The same tenderness that he felt for Crammon, he now felt for that little cloud.

And as Crammon sat before him and waited for an answer, there suddenly came into his mind the story of the ring which Amadeus had told him. He began: “A young candidate for Holy Orders, who was tutor to the children of a banker, fell under the suspicion of having stolen a costly ring. He told me the story himself, and from his words I knew that the ring, when he saw it on the hand of his employer’s wife, aroused his desire. In addition he loved this woman, and would have been happy to have had something by which to remember her. But he was utterly innocent of the disappearance of the ring, and some time after he had left that house, his innocence received the most striking confirmation. For the lady sent him the ring as a gift. He was wretchedly poor, and the ring would have meant much to him; but he went and threw it into a well, a deep old-fashioned well. The costliest thing he had ever possessed in life, he threw without hesitation or reflection into a well—that’s what this man did.”

“Oh, well, very well. Although ... no, I don’t quite see your meaning,” said Crammon, discontentedly, and shifted his pipe from the right to the left corner of his mouth. “What good did the ring do the poor fool? How absurd to take something that reaches you in a manner so delicate and discreet, and throw it into a well? Would not a box have served, or a drawer? There at least it could have been found. It was a loutish trick.”

Crammon’s way of sitting there with his legs crossed, showing his grey silk socks, had something about it so secure and satiated, that it reminded one of an animal that basks in the sun and digests its food. Christian’s disgust at his words quieted, and was replaced by a gentle, almost compassionate tenderness. He said: “It is so hard to renounce. You can talk about it and imagine it; you can will it and even believe yourself capable of it. But when the moment of renunciation comes, it is hard, it is almost impossible to give up even the humblest of things.”

“Yes, but why do you want to renounce?” Crammon murmured in his vexation. “What do you mean exactly by renunciation? What is it to lead to?”

Christian said almost to himself: “I believe that one must cast one’s ring into a well.”

“If you mean by that that you intend to forget our wonderful Queen Mab, all I have to say is—the Lord help you in your purpose,” Crammon answered.

“One holds fast and clings because one fears the step into the unknown,” Christian said.

Crammon was silent for a few minutes and wrinkled his forehead. Then he cleared his throat and asked: “Did you ever hear about homœopathy? I’ll explain to you what is meant by it. It means curing like with like. If for instance some food has disagreed with you violently, and I give you a drug that would, in a state of health, have sickened you even more violently than your food—that would be a homœopathic treatment.”

“So you want to cure me?” Christian asked, and smiled. “From what and with what?”

Crammon moved his chair nearer to Christian’s, laid a hand on his knees, and whispered astutely: “I’ve got something for you, dear boy. I’ve made an exquisite find. There’s a woman in your horoscope, as the sooth-sayers put it. Some one is yearning for you, is immensely taken with you, and dying of impatience to know you. And it’s something quite different, a new type, something prickling and comical, indeterminate, sensitive, a little graceless and small and not beautiful, but enormously charming. She comes from the bourgeoisie at its most obese, but she struggles with both hands and feet against the fate of being a pearl in a trough. There’s your chance for employment, distraction, and refreshment. It won’t be a long affair,—an interlude of her holidays, but instructive, and, in the homœopathic sense, sure to work a cure. For look you: Ariel, she is a miracle, a star, the food of the gods. You can’t live on such nourishment; you need bread. Descend, my son, from the high tower where you still grasp after the miraculum cœli that once flamed on your bosom. Put it out of your mind; descend, and be contented with mortality. To-night at seven in the dining-room of the Hotel de la Plage. Is it a bargain?”

Christian laughed, and got up. On the table stood a vase filled with white pinks. He took out one of the flowers, and fastened it into Crammon’s button-hole.

“Is it a bargain or not?” Crammon asked severely.

“No, dear friend, there’s nothing in that for me,” Christian answered, laughing more heartily. “Keep your find to yourself.”

The veins on Crammon’s forehead swelled. “But I’ve promised to bring you, and you mustn’t leave me in the lurch.” He was in a rage. “I don’t deserve such treatment, after all the slights which you have put on me for months. You give rights to an obscure vagabond that astonish the whole world, and you cast aside heartlessly an old and proved friend. That does hurt and embitter and enrage one. I’m through.”

“Calm yourself, Bernard,” said Christian, and stooped to pick up some blossoms that had fallen on the floor. And as he put back the flowers into the vase, there came to him the vision of Amadeus Voss’ white face, showing his bleeding soul and paralyzed by desire and renunciation, even as it was turned toward the fat, morose Walloon woman. “I don’t comprehend your stubbornness,” he continued. “Why won’t you let me be? Don’t you know that I bring misfortune to all who love me?”

Crammon was startled. Despite Christian’s equivocal smile, he felt a sudden twinge of superstitious fear. “Idiotic!” he growled. He arose and took his hat, and still tried to wring from Christian a promise for the evening. At that moment a knock sounded at the door, and Amadeus Voss entered.

“I beg your pardon,” he stammered, and looked shyly at Crammon, who had at once assumed an attitude of hostility. “I merely wanted to ask you, Christian, whether we are going to leave. Shall the packing be done? We must know what to do.”

Crammon was furious. “Fancy the scoundrel taking such a tone,” he thought. He could hardly force himself to assume the grimace of courtesy that became inevitable when Christian, quite hesitatingly, introduced them to each other.

Amadeus bowed like an applicant for some humble office. His eyes behind their lenses clung to Crammon, like the valves of an exhaust pump. He found Crammon repulsive at once; but he thought it advisable not only to hide this feeling but to play the part of obsequiousness. His hatred was so immediate and so violent, that he was afraid of showing it too soon, and stripping himself of some chance of translating it into action.

Crammon sought points of attack. He treated Voss with contempt, looked at him as though he were a wad of clothes against the wall, neither answered him nor listened to what he said, deliberately prolonged his stay, and paid no attention to Christian’s nervousness. Voss continued to play the part he had selected. He agreed and bowed, rubbed the toe of one of his boots against the sole of the other, picked up Crammon’s stick when the latter dropped it; but as he seemed determined not to be the first to yield, Crammon at last took pity on the silent wonder and torment in Christian’s face. He waved his well-gloved left hand and withdrew. He seemed to swell up in his rage like a frog. “Softly, Bernard,” he said to himself; “guard your dignity, and do not step into the ordure at your feet. Trust in the Lord who said: Vengeance is mine.” He met a little dog on his path, and administered a kick to it, so that the beast howled and scurried into an open cellar.

Across the table Christian and Voss faced each other in silence. Voss pulled a flower from the vase, and shredded its calyx with his thin fingers. “So that was Herr von Crammon,” he murmured. “I don’t know why I feel like laughing. But I can’t help it. I do.” And he giggled softly to himself.

“We leave to-morrow,” said Christian, held a handkerchief to his mouth, and breathed the delicate perfume that aroused in him so many tender and slowly fading images.

Voss took a blossom, tore it in two, gazed tensely at the parts, and said: “Fibre by fibre, cell by cell. I am done with this life of sloth and parasitism. I want to cut up the bodies of men and anatomize corpses. Perhaps one can get at the seat of weakness and vulgarity. One must seek life at its source and death at its root. The talent of an anatomist stirs within me. Once I wanted to be a great preacher like Savonarola; but it’s a reckless thing to try in these days. One had better stick to men’s bodies; their souls would bring one to despair.”

“I believe one must work,” Christian answered softly. “It does not matter at what. But one must work.” He turned toward the window. The round, white cloud had vanished; the silver sea had sucked it up.

“Have you come to that conclusion?” Voss jeered. “I’ve known it long. The way to hell is paved with work; and only hell can burn us clean. It is well that you have learned that much.”

III

Crammon and Johanna Schöntag were sitting in a drawing-room of the hotel. They had had dinner together. Johanna’s companion, Fräulein Grabmeier, had already retired.

“You must be patient, Rumpelstilzkin,” said Crammon. “I’m sorry to say that he hasn’t bitten yet. The bait is still in the water.”

“I’ll be patient, my lord,” said Johanna, in her slightly rough, boyish voice, and a gleam of merriment, in which charm and ugliness were strangely blended, passed over her face. “I don’t find it very hard either. Everything is sure to go wrong with me in the end. If ever unexpectedly a wish of mine is fulfilled, and something I looked forward to does happen, I’m as wretched as I can be, because it’s never as nice as I thought it would be. The best thing for me, therefore, is to be disappointed.”

“You’re a problematic soul,” said Crammon musingly.

Johanna gave a comical sigh. “I advise you, dear friend and protector, to get rid of me by return post.” She stretched her thin little neck with an intentionally bizarre movement. “I simply interfere with the traffic. I’m a personified evil omen. At my birth a lady by the name of Cassandra appeared, and I needn’t tell you the disagreeable things that have been said of her. You remember how when we were at target practice at Ashburnhill I hit the bull’s-eye. Everybody was amazed, yourself included; but I more so than any one, because it was pure, unadulterated chance. The rifle had actually gone off before I had taken aim. Fate gives me such small and worthless gifts, in order to seem friendly and lull me into security. But I’m not to be deceived. Ugh! A nun, a nun!” she interrupted herself. Her eyes became very large, as she looked into the garden where an Ursuline nun was passing by. Then she crossed her arms over her bosom, and counted with extraordinary readiness: “Seven, six, five, four, three, two, one.” Then she laughed, and showed two rows of marvellous teeth.

“Is it your custom to do that whenever a nun appears?” Crammon asked. His interest in superstitions was aroused.

“It’s the proper ritual to follow. But she was gone before I came to one, and that augurs no good. By the way, dear baron, your sporting terminology sounds suspicious. What does that mean: ‘he hasn’t bitten yet; the bait is still in the water’? I beg you to restrain yourself. I’m an unprotected girl, and wholly dependent on your delicate chivalry. If you shake my tottering self-confidence by any more reminiscences of the sporting world, I’ll have to telegraph for two berths on the Vienna train. For myself and Fräulein Grabmeier, of course.”

She loved these daring little implications, from which she could withdraw quite naïvely. Crammon burst into belated laughter, and that fact stirred her merriment too.

She was very watchful, and nothing escaped her attentive eyes. She took a burning interest in the characters and actions of people. She leaned toward Crammon and they whispered together, for he could tell a story about each form and face that emerged from the crowd. The chronicle of international biography and scandal of which he was master was inexhaustible. If ever his memory failed him, he invented or poetized a little. He had everything at his tongue’s end—disputes concerning inheritances, family quarrels, illegitimate descent, adulteries, relationships of all sorts. Johanna listened to him with a smile. She peered at all the tables and carefully observed every uncommon detail. She picked up and pinned down, as an entomologist does his beetles, any chance remark or roguish expression, any silliness or peculiarity of any of these unconscious actors of the great world or the half world.

Suddenly the pupils of her greyish blue eyes grew very large, and her lips curved in a bow of childlike delight. “Who is that?” she whispered, and thrust her chin out a little in the direction of a door at Crammon’s back. But she at once knew instinctively who it was. She would have known it without the general raising of heads and softening of voices, of which she became aware.

Crammon turned around and saw Eva amid a group of ladies and gentlemen. He arose, waited until Eva glanced in his direction, and then bowed very low. Eva drew back a little. She had not seen him since the days of Denis Lay. She thought a little, and nodded distantly. Then she recognized him, kicked back her train with an incomparable grace, and, speaking in every line before her lips moved, went up to him.

Johanna had arisen too. Eva remarked the little figure. She gave Crammon to understand that he had a duty toward his companion, and that she would not refuse an introduction to the unknown girl, on whose face enthusiasm and homage were so touchingly to be seen. Crammon introduced Johanna in his most ceremonious manner. Johanna grew pale and red and curtsied. She seemed to herself suddenly so negligible that she was overcome with shame. Then she tore off the three yellow roses at her corsage, and held them out to Eva with a sudden and yet timid gesture. Eva liked this impulse. She felt its uniqueness and veracity, and therefore knew its value.

IV

Christian and Amadeus wandered across the Quai Kokerill in Antwerp.

A great transatlantic liner lay, silent and empty, at the pier. The steerage passengers waited at its side for the hour of their admission. They were Polish peasants, Russian Jews, men and women, young ones and aged ones, children and sucklings. They crouched on the cold stones or on their dirty bundles. They were themselves dirty, neglected, weary, dully brooding—a melancholy and confused mass of rags and human bodies.

The mighty globe of the sun rolled blood-red and quivering over the waters.

Christian and Amadeus stopped. After a while they went on, but Christian desired to turn back, and they did so. At a crossing near the emigrants’ camp, a line of ten or twenty donkey-carts cut off the road. The carts looked liked bisected kegs on wheels, and were filled with smoked mackerels.

“Buy mackerels!” the cart-drivers cried. “Buy mackerels!” And they cracked their whips.

A few of the emigrants approached and stared hungrily; they consulted with others, who were already looking for coins in their pockets, until finally a few determined ones proceeded to make a purchase.

Then Christian said to Voss: “Let us buy the fish and distribute them. What do you think?”

Amadeus was ill pleased. He answered. “Do as you wish. Great lords must have their little pleasures.” He felt uncomfortable amid the gathering crowd.

Christian turned to one of the hucksters. It was difficult to make the man understand normal French, but gradually he succeeded. The huckster summoned the others, and there followed excited chatter and gesticulations. Various sums were named and considered and rejected. This process bored Christian; it threatened to be endless. He offered a sum that represented a considerable increase over the highest price named, and handed his wallet to Amadeus that the men might be paid. Then he said to the increasing throng of emigrants in German: “The fish are yours.”

A few understood his words, and conveyed their meaning to the others. Timidly they ventured forward. A woman, whose skin was yellow as a lemon from jaundice, was the first to touch a fish. Soon hundreds came. From all sides they brought baskets, pots, nets, sacks. A few old men kept the crowd in order. One of these, who wore a flowing white beard and a long Jewish coat, bowed down thrice before Christian. His forehead almost touched the earth.

A sudden impulse compelled Christian to see in person to the just distribution of the fish. He turned up his sleeves, and with his delicate hands threw the greasy, malodourous fish into the vessels held out for them. He laughed as he soiled his fingers. The hucksters and some idle onlookers laughed too. They thought him a crazy, young Englishman out for a lark. Suddenly his gorge rose at the odour of the fish, and even more at the odour of these people. He smelled their clothes and their breath, and gagged at the thought of their teeth and fingers, their hair and shoes. A morbid compulsion forced him to think of their naked bodies, and he shuddered at the idea of their flesh. So he stopped, and slipped away into the twilight.

His hands still reeked of the smoked fish. He walked through the streets that had had nothing to do with his adventure and the night seemed empty.

Amadeus Voss had escaped. He waited in front of the hotel. There the line of motor cars had gathered that was to accompany Eva on her journey to Germany. Among the travellers were Crammon and Johanna Schöntag.

V

In October the weather turned hot on the Rio de la Plata. All day one had to stay in the house. If one opened a window, living fire seemed to stream in. Once Letitia fainted, when she wanted to air her stuffy room, and opened one of the wooden shutters.

The only spot that offered some shade and coolness toward evening was an avenue of palms beside the river. Sometimes, during the brief twilight, Letitia and her young sister-in-law Esmeralda would steal away to that place. Their road passed the ranchos, the wretched cave-like huts in which the native workmen lived.

Once Letitia saw the people of the ranchos merrily feasting and in their best garments. She asked for the reason, and was told that a child had died. “They always celebrate when some one dies,” Esmeralda told her. “How sad must their lives be to make them so in love with death.”

The avenue of palms was forbidden ground. When darkness came, the bushes rustled, and furtive men slipped back and forth. Not long before the mounted police had caught a sailor here who was wanted for a murder in Galveston. Somehow Letitia dreamed of him. She was sure he had killed his man through jealousy and bore the marks of a beautiful tragedy.

One evening she had met in this spot a young naval officer, who was a guest on a neighbouring estate. Letitia exchanged glances with him, and from that time on he sought some way of approaching her. But she was like a prisoner, or like a Turkish woman in a harem. So she determined to outwit her guards; she really fell in love with the young officer. Her imagination made an heroic figure of him, and she began to long for him.

The heat increased. Letitia could not sleep at night. The mosquitoes hummed sweetishly, and she cried like a little child. By day she locked herself in her room, stripped off her clothes, and lay down on the cold tiles.

Once she was lying thus with arms outstretched. “I’m like an enchanted princess,” she thought, “in an enchanted castle.”

Some one knocked at the door, and she heard Stephen’s voice calling her. Idly she raised her head, and from under her heavy lids gazed down at her naked body. “What a bore it is,” she thought, “what a terrible bore always to be with the same man. I want others too.” She did not answer, and let her head droop, and rubbed her glowing cheek against the warm skin of her upper arm. It pleased the master of the harem out there to beg for admission; but Letitia did not open the door.

After a while she heard a tumult in the yard—laughter, the cracking of whips, the report of rifles, and the cries of beasts in torment. She jumped up, slipped into a silk dressing gown, opened the window that gave on the verandah, and peered out.

Stephen had tied together the tails of two cats by means of a long fuse. Along the fuse were fastened explosive bits of firework. The hissing little rockets singed the cats’ fur, and the glowing cord burned into their flesh. The cats tumbled about in their agony and howled. Stephen goaded them and followed them. His brothers, bent over the balustrade, roared with delight. Two Indians, grave and silent, watched from the gate.

Stephen had, of course, counted on Letitia’s opening the door in her curiosity. A few great leaps, and he was beside her. Esmeralda, who was in the plot, had at once faced Letitia and prevented her from locking the door. White with rage, and with raised fist, he stormed across the threshold. She fell to her knees, and hid her face in her hands.

“Why do you beat me?” she moaned, in horror and surprise. But he did not touch her.

His teeth gnashed. “To teach you to obey.”

She sobbed. “Be careful! It’s not only me you’re hurting now!”

“Damnation, what are you saying?” He stared at her crouching figure.

“You’re hurting two now.” Letitia enjoyed fooling him. Her tears were now tears of pity for herself.

“Woman, is that true?” he asked. Letitia peered furtively between her fingers, and thought mockingly: “It’s like the last act of a cheap opera.” She nodded with a gesture of pain, and determined to deceive him with the naval officer.

Stephen gave a howl of triumph, danced about, threw himself down beside her, and kissed her arms, her shoulders, and her neck. At the windows and doors appeared Doña Barbara, Esmeralda, Stephen’s brothers, and the servants. He lifted Letitia on his strong shoulders, and carried her about on the verandah. He roared his orders: a feast was to be prepared, an ox slaughtered, champagne to be put on ice.

Letitia had no qualms of conscience. She was glad to have made a fool of him.

When old Gunderam learned the cause of the rejoicing in his house, he chuckled to himself. “Fooled all the same, my sly lawyer man. In spite of the written agreement, you won’t get the Escurial, not for a good while, even if she has a whole litter.” With an unappetizing, broken little comb he smoothed his iron grey beard, and poured eau de Cologne on his head, until his hair, which was still thick, dripped.

But, strangely enough, the lie that Letitia had told in her terror turned out to be the truth. In a few days she was sure. Secretly she was amazed. Every morning she stood before the mirror, and looked at herself with a strange respect and a subtle horror. But she was unchanged. Her mood became gently melancholy, and she threw a kiss to her image in the glass.

Since they were now afraid of crossing her wishes, she was permitted to attend a ball given by Señor and Señora Küchelbäcker, and it was there that she made the formal acquaintance of the naval lieutenant, Friedrich Pestel.

VI

Felix Imhof and the painter Weikhardt met at the exhibition of the “secessionists” in Munich. For a while they strolled through the rooms, and looked at the paintings; then they went out on the terrace, and sat down at a table that commanded a view of the park.

It was in the early afternoon, and the odours of oil and turpentine from within blended with the fragrance of the sun-warmed plants.

Imhof crossed his long legs, and yawned affectedly. “I’m going to leave this admirable home of art and letters for some months,” he declared. “I’m going to accompany the minister of colonial affairs to South West Africa. I’m anxious to see how things are going there. Those people need looking after. Then, too, it’s a new experience, and there will be hunting.”

Weikhardt was utterly self-absorbed. He was full of his own annoyances, his inner and outer conflicts, and therefore spoke only of himself. “I am to copy a cycle by Luini for the old Countess Matuschka,” he said. “She has several blank walls in her castle in Galicia, and she wants tapestries for them. But the old creature is close as the bark on the tree, and her bargaining is repulsive.”

Imhof also pursued his own thoughts. “I’ve read a lot about Stanhope recently,” he said. “A tremendous fellow, modern through and through, reporter and conquistador at the same time. The blacks called him the ‘cliff-breaker.’ It makes one’s mouth water. Simply tremendous!”

Weikhardt continued: “But I dare say I’ll have to accept the commission. I’ve come to the end of my tether. It’ll be good to see the old Italians again, too. In Milan there’s a Tintoretto that’s adorable. I’m on the track of a secret. I’m doing things that will count. The other day I finished a picture, a simple landscape, and took it to an acquaintance of mine. He has a rather exquisite room, and there we hung it. The walls had grey hangings, and the furnishings were in black and gold. He’s a rich man and wanted to buy the picture. But when I saw how much he liked it, and saw, too, the delicate, melancholy harmony of its colours with the tints of the room, I felt a sudden flash of encouragement. I couldn’t bear to talk money, and I simply gave him the thing. He accepted it quietly enough, but he continued saying: ‘How damned good it is!’”

“It’ll take my thoughts off myself, this little trip to the Southern Hemisphere,” said Imhof. “I’m not exactly favoured of fortune just now. To be frank—everything’s in the deuce of a mess. My best horse went to smash, my favourite dog died, my wife took French leave of me, and my friends avoid me—I don’t know why. My business is progressing backward, and all my speculations end in losses. But, after all, what does it matter? I say to myself: Never say die, old boy! Here’s the great, beautiful world, and all the splendour and variety of life. If you complain, you deserve no better. My sandwich has dropped into the mud. All right; I must get a fresh one. Whoever goes to war must expect wounds. The main thing is to stick to your flag. The main thing is faith—quite simple faith.”

It was still a question which of the two would first turn his attention from himself, and hear his companion’s voice. Weikhardt, whose eyes had grown sombre, spoke again: “O this dumb loneliness in a studio, with one’s hundred failures, and the ghosts of one’s thousand hours of despair! I have a chance to marry, and I’m going to take it, too. The girl has no money, to be sure, but she has a heart. She’s not afraid of my poverty, and comprehends the necessary quixotism of an artist’s life. She comes of a Protestant family of very liberal traditions, but two years ago she became a Catholic. When I first met her I was full of suspicion, and assumed all sorts of reasons for her step except the simple and human ones. It’s very difficult to see the simple and the human things, and still more difficult to do them. Gradually I understood what it means—to believe! and I understood what is to be reverenced in such faith. It is faith itself that is sacred, not that in which the faith is placed. It doesn’t matter what one has faith in—a book, a beast, a man, a star, a god. But it must be pure faith—immovable and unconquerable. Yes, I quite agree with you—we need simple faith.”

So they had found each other through a word. “When do I get my picture, your Descent from the Cross?” Imhof inquired.

Weikhardt did not answer the question. As he talked on, his smooth, handsome, boyish face assumed the aspect of a quarrelsome old man’s. Yet his voice remained gentle and slow, and his bearing phlegmatic. “Humanity to-day has lost its faith,” he continued. “Faith has leaked out like water from a cracked glass. Our age is tyrannised by machinery: it is a mob rule without parallel. Who will save us from machinery and from business? The golden calf has gone mad. The spirit of man kowtows to a warehouse. Our watchword is to be up and doing. We manufacture Christianity, a renaissance, culture, et cetera. If it’s not quite the real thing, yet it will serve. Everything tends toward the external—toward expression, line, arabesque, gesture, mask. Everything is stuck on a hoarding and lit by electric lamps. Everything is the very latest, until something still later begins to function. Thus the soul flees, goodness ceases, the form breaks, and reverence dies. Do you feel no horror at the generation that is growing up? The air is like that before the flood.”

“Create, O artist, and don’t philosophize,” Imhof said gently.

Weikhardt was shamed a little. “It’s true,” he said, “we have no means of knowing the goal of it all. But there are symptoms, typical cases that leave little room for hope. Did you hear the story of the suicide of the German-American Scharnitzer? He was pretty well known among artists. He used to go to the studios himself, and buy whatever took his fancy. He never bargained. Sometimes he would be accompanied by a daughter of eighteen, a girl of angelic beauty. Her name was Sybil, and he used to buy pictures for her. She was especially fond of still-life and flower pieces. The man had been in California and made millions in lumber. Then he returned to the fatherland to give the girl an atmosphere of calm and culture. Sybil was his one thought, his hope, his idol and his world. He had been married but a short time. His wife, it is said, ran away from him. All that a life of feverish activity had left him of deep feeling and of hope for the future was centred in this child. He saw in her one girl in a thousand, a little saint. And so indeed she seemed—extraordinarily dainty, proud and ethereal. One would not have dared to touch her with one’s finger. When the two were together, a delightful sense of harmony radiated from them. The father, especially, seemed happy. His voluntary death caused all the more consternation. No one suspected the motive; it was assumed that he had suffered a moment of madness. But he left behind him a letter to an American friend which explained everything. He had been indisposed one day, and had had to stay in bed. Sybil had invited several girl friends to tea, and the little company was in a room at the other end of their suite. But all the doors between were open, even the last was slightly ajar, so that the murmur of the girls’ voices came to him inarticulately. A sudden curiosity seized him to know what they were saying. He got up, slipped into a dressing gown, went softly through the intervening rooms, and listened at the door. The conversation was about the future of these girls—the possibilities of love, happiness, and marriage. Each gave her ideas. Finally it was Sybil’s turn to speak her thoughts. At first she refused; but they urged her again and again. She said she took no interest in emotions of any sort; she didn’t yearn for love; she wasn’t able to feel even gratitude to any one. What she expected of marriage was simply liberation from a galling yoke. She wanted a man who could give her all that life held—boundless luxury and high social position—and who, moreover, would be abjectly at her feet. That, she said, was her program, and she intended to carry it out too. The other girls fell silent. None answered. But that hour poisoned the father’s soul. This cynicism, uttered by the pure and spiritual voice of the child he adored and thought a miracle of depth and sweetness, the child on whom he had wasted all he was and had, plunged him into an incurable melancholy, and caused him finally to end his life.”

“My dear fellow,” cried Imhof, and waved his arm, “that man wasn’t a lumber merchant, he was a minor poet.”

“It’s possible that he was,” Weikhardt replied, and smiled; “quite possible. What does it alter? I admire a man who cannot survive the destruction of all his ideals. It’s better than to be a cliff-breaker, I assure you. Most people haven’t any ideals to be destroyed. They adapt themselves endlessly, and become vulgar and sterile.” Again his eyes grew sombre, and he added, half to himself: “Sometimes I dream of one who neither rises nor falls, of one who walks on earth whole and unchangeable, unswerving and unadaptable. Perfectly unadaptable. It is of such an one that I dream.”

Imhof jumped up, and smoothed his coat. “Talk, talk!” he rattled, in the disagreeable military tone that he assumed in his moments of pseudo-virility. “Talk won’t improve things.” He passed his arm through Weikhardt’s, and as they left the terrace, which had been gradually filling with other guests, he recited, boldly, unashamed, and in the same tone, the alcaic stanza of Hölderlin:

VII

On their first evening in Hamburg, Crammon rented a box in the playhouse, and invited Christian, Johanna Schöntag, and Herr Livholm, one of the directors of the Lloyd, to be his guests. He had made the latter’s acquaintance in the hotel where he had gone to pay Eva a visit of welcome. He had liked the man, who cut a good figure, and so he had added him to the party in order, as he put it, to keep the atmosphere normal by the presence of an entirely neutral person.

“Social skill,” he was accustomed to say, “is not unlike skill in cookery and serving. Between two heavy, rich dishes there must be one like foam that stimulates the palate quite superficially. Otherwise the meal has no style.”

The play was a mediocre comedy, and Christian was frankly bored. Crammon thought it his duty to show a condescending and muffled amusement, and now and then he gave Christian a gentle poke, to persuade him also to show some appreciation of the performance. Johanna was the only one who was genuinely amused. The source of her amusement was an actor to whom a serious rôle had been assigned, but who talked with such silly affectation and false importance that every time he appeared she had to hold her lacy handkerchief to her lips to smother her laughter.

Occasionally Christian gave the girl a far and estranged glance. She wasn’t either agreeable or the reverse; he did not know what to make of her. This feeling of his had not changed since he had first seen her during the journey in Eva’s company.

She felt the coldness of his glance. Her merriment did not vanish; but on the lower part of her face appeared a scarcely perceptible shadow of disappointment.

As though seeking for help, she turned to Christian. “The man is terribly funny, don’t you think so?” It was characteristic of her to end a question with a negative interrogation.

“He’s certainly worth seeing,” Christian agreed politely.

The door of the box opened, and Voss entered. He was faultlessly dressed for the occasion; but no one had expected or invited him. They looked at him in astonishment. He bowed calmly and without embarrassment, stood quite still, and gave his attention to the stage.

Crammon looked at Christian. The latter shrugged his shoulders. After a while Crammon arose, and with sarcastic courtesy pointed to his seat. Voss shook his head in friendly refusal, but immediately thereafter assumed once more his air of humility and abjectness. He stammered: “I was in the stalls and looked up. I thought there was no harm in paying a visit.” Suddenly Crammon went out, and was heard quarrelling with the usher. Johanna had become serious, and looked down at the audience. Christian, as though to ward off disagreeable things, ducked his shoulders a little. The people in the near-by seats became indignant at the noise Crammon was making. Herr Livholm felt that the proper atmosphere had hardly been preserved. Amadeus Voss alone showed himself insensitive to the situation.

He stood behind Johanna, and thought: “The hair of this woman has a fragrance that turns one dizzy.” At the end of the act he withdrew, and did not return.

Late at night, when he had him alone, Crammon vented his rage on Christian. “I’ll shoot him down like a mad dog, if he tries that sort of thing again! What does the fellow think? I’m not accustomed to such manners. Damned gallow’s bird—where’d he grow up? Oh, my prophetic soul! I always distrusted people with spectacles. Why don’t you tell him to go to hell? In the course of my sinful life, I’ve come in contact with all kinds of people; I know the best and I know the dregs; but this fellow is a new type. Quite new, by God! I’ll have to take a bromide, or I won’t be able to sleep.”

“I believe you are unjust, Bernard,” answered Christian, with lowered eyes. But his face was stern, reserved, and cold.

VIII

Amadeus Voss submitted the following plan to Christian: to go to Berlin, first as an unmatriculated student, and later to prepare himself for the state examination in medicine.

Christian nodded approvingly, and added that he intended to go to Berlin shortly too. Voss walked up and down in the room. Then he asked brusquely: “What am I to live on? Am I to address envelopes? Or apply for stipends? If you intend to withdraw your friendship and assistance, say so frankly. I’ve learned to wade through the mud. The new kind won’t offer more resistance than the old.”

Christian was thoroughly surprised. A week ago, in Holland, he had given Amadeus ten thousand francs. “How much will you need?” he asked.

“Board, lodging, clothes, books....” Voss went over the items, and his expression was that of one who formulates demands and uses the tone of request only as a matter of courtesy. “I’ll be frugal.”

“I shall order two thousand marks a month to be sent you,” Christian said, with an air of aversion. The impudent demand for money pained him. Possession weighed upon him like a mountain. He could not get his arms free nor lift his chest, and the weight grew heavier and heavier.

In a bowl of chrysolite on the table lay a scarf-pin with one large, black pearl. Voss, whose hands always groped for some occupation, had taken it up, and held it between his thumb and index finger against the light. “Do you want the pin?” Christian asked. “Take it,” he persuaded Amadeus, who was hesitating. “I really don’t care about it.”

Voss approached the mirror, and with a curious smile stuck the pin into his cravat.

When Christian was left alone, he stood for a while quite lost in thought. Then he sat down, and wrote to his manager at Christian’s Rest. He wrote in his lanky script and his no less awkward style. “My dear Herr Borkowski:—I have determined to sell Christian’s Rest, together with all furnishings and objects of art, as well as the park, woods, and farms. I herewith commission you to find a capable and honest real estate dealer, who might telegraph me any favourable offers. You know people of that sort, and need merely drive over to Frankfort. Have the kindness to settle the matter as quietly as possible. No advertisements are to appear in the press.”

Then he wrote a second letter to the manager of his racing stable at Waldleiningen. To write this he had to do more violence to his heart than the first had cost him, for he saw constantly fixed upon him the gentle or spirited eyes of the noble animals. He wrote: “My dear Herr Schaller:—I have determined to discontinue my racing stable. The horses are to be sold at auction or quietly to fanciers. I should prefer the latter method, and I suppose you share that feeling. Baron Deidinger of Deidingshausen was at one time much interested in Columbus and the mare Lovely. Inquire of him whether he wants them. Admirable and Bride o’ the Wind could be offered either to Prince Pless or Herr von Strathmann. Have my friend Denis Lay’s Excelsior sent to Baden-Baden, and boarded temporarily in the stables of Count Treuberg. I don’t wish him to remain at Waldleiningen alone.”

When he had sealed the letters, he sighed with relief. He rang, and gave the letters to his valet. The latter had turned to go, when Christian called him back. “I’m very sorry to have to give you notice, Wilhelm,” he said. “I’m going to attend to myself hereafter.”

The man could not trust his ears. He had been with Christian for three years, and was genuinely devoted to him.

“I’m sorry, but it’s necessary,” said Christian, looked past the man, and had almost the same strange smile with which he had watched Amadeus Voss at the mirror putting the black pearl pin into his cravat.

IX

Crammon asserted that Amadeus Voss was paying his attentions to Johanna Schöntag. Johanna was annoyed, and tapped him with her long gloves. “I congratulate you on your conquest, Rumpelstilzkin,” Crammon teased her. “To have a monster like that in leash is no small achievement. I should advise muzzling the monster, however. What do you think, Christian, wouldn’t you advise a muzzle, too?”

“A muzzle?” answered Christian. “Yes, if it would keep people from talking. So many talk too much.”

Crammon bit his lips. The reproof struck him as harsh. Somewhere beneath the downs of life on which he lay and enjoyed himself, there was, evidently, a stone. The stone hurt. He sought for it, but the softness of the down calmed him again, and he forgot his pain.

“I was sitting in the breakfast room, and waiting for Madame Sorel,” Johanna began in a voice whose every shading and inflection sought to woo Christian’s ear, “when Herr Voss came in and marched straight up to me. ‘What does that bad man want of me?’ I asked myself. He asked me, as though we’d been bosom friends for years, whether I didn’t want to go with him to St. Paul’s to hear the famous itinerant preacher Jacobsen. I couldn’t help laughing, and he stalked away insulted. But this afternoon, as I was leaving the hotel, he seemed suddenly to spring from the earth, and invited me to a trip around the harbour. He had rented a motor launch, and was looking for a companion. He had the same gruff familiarity, and when he left he was quite as insulted as before. And you call that paying attentions? I felt much more as though he were going to drag me off and murder me. But perhaps that’s only his manner.” She laughed.

“You’re the only person, at all events, whom he distinguishes by observing at all,” Crammon said, with the same mockery.

“Or the only one whom he considers his equal,” Johanna said, with a childlike frown.

Christian was wondering: “Why does she laugh so often? Why are her hands so pudgy and so very pink?” Johanna felt his disapproval, and was as though paralysed. And yet Christian felt himself drawn toward her by some hidden power.

Why should he resist? Why be so ceremonious? Such was his thought, as Johanna arose, and he, with unobtrusive glances, observed her graceful form that still possessed the flexibility of immaturity. He saw the nape of her slender neck, in which were expressed both the weakness of her will and the fineness of her temper. He knew these signs; he had often been guided by them and used them.

Crammon, massive and magnificent in a great easy chair, spoke with some emphasis of Eva’s appearance on the morrow. The whole city was in a state of expectancy. But Christian and Johanna had suddenly become truly aware of one another.

“Are you coming along?” Christian turned carelessly, and with a sense of boredom, to Crammon.

“Yes, my boy, let us eat!” Crammon cried. He called Hamburg the Paradise of Saint Bernard, concerning whom, as his patron saint and namesake, he had instituted especial investigations, and who, according to him, had been a mighty trencherman during his lifetime at Tours.

A frightened, subtle, and very feminine smile hovered about Johanna’s lips. As she preceded the two men, the motions of her dainty body expressed a vague oppression of the spirit, and at the same time a humorous rebellion against her own unfreedom.

X

Amadeus Voss knew that he had no one’s sympathy, no one’s except Christian’s. And him he suspected, watching him, weighing and analysing his words and actions. In his terror of hypocrisy and treachery, he practised both himself. Nothing healed or convinced or reconciled him. Least of all did he pardon Christian the fact that the latter’s glance and presence had the effect of subduing him. His bitterness moaned from his very dreams.

He read in the Scriptures: “There was a certain house-holder, which planted a vineyard, and hedged it round about, and digged a winepress in it, and built a tower, and let it out to husbandmen, and went into a far country: and when the time of the fruit drew near, he sent his servants to the husbandmen that they might receive the fruits of it. And the husbandmen took his servants, and beat one, and killed another, and stoned another. Again he sent other servants, more than the first, and they did unto them likewise. But last of all, he sent unto them his son, saying, They will reverence my son. But when the husbandmen saw the son, they said among themselves, This is the heir; come, let us kill him, and let us seize on his inheritance. And they caught him, and cast him out of the vineyard, and slew him.”

Sometimes he would not leave Christian’s side for hours. He would study his gestures and the expressions of his countenance, and all these perceptions fed the corrosive fire in his brain. For this was the heir! Then he would flee and bruise and stamp upon his very soul, until his consciousness of guilt cast him down into the very dust. He would return, and his demeanour would be a silent confession: “I can thrive only in your presence.” It seemed to him that this silence of his was like a cry; but it was not heard, and so his brother seemed again to become his foe. Thus he kept passing from darkness, through fires and fumes, back into the darkness.

He suffered from his own embarrassment and importunateness. In the midst of luxury and plenty, into which he had been transferred by a fabulous turn of fortune, he suffered from the memories of his former poverty, still felt how it had bound and throttled him, and still rebelled against what was gone. He could not freely take what was given him, but closed his eyes, and shuddered with both desire and a pang of conscience. He would not look upon the pattern of his web of life. He turned its texture around, and brooded over the significance of the intricately knotted threads. And there was no human relationship which did not rouse his suspicion, no harmless conversation in which he did not seek a sting directed toward himself, no face that did not feed his hatred, no beauty whose counter part of ugliness he did not see. To him everything turned to poison and decay, all blossoms became noxious weeds, all velvet a Nessus shirt, all light an evil smouldering, every stimulus a wound: on every wall he saw the flaming letters, mene tekel upharsim.

He could not yield himself or conquer the stubbornness of his heart. With the object of his desire in his very hands, his envy burned on. Whatever had once humiliated him spurred his vengefulness through retrospection. Chastisements which his father had inflicted distorted the old man’s image beyond the grave; his fellow pupils in the seminary had once strewn pepper into his coffee, and he could not forget it; he could not forget the expression on the face of Adeline Ribbeck with which she had given him his first month’s salary in a closed envelope; he remembered the contempt and contumely of hundreds, who had inflicted upon him their revenge for the oppression or degradation which they themselves had endured. He could not conquer these things nor forgive fate. The marks that had been burned into his flesh throbbed like new wounds.

But at other times he would cast himself into the dust in prayer and in great need of forgiveness. Religious scruples plagued him into remorse; he panted for an hour’s release from consciousness, judged himself with cruel severity, and condemned himself to ascetic practices.

And these hurled him into the other extreme of a wild, undiscriminating, and senseless dissipation and a mad waste of money. He could no longer resist the excitement of gambling, and fell into the hands of sharpers, drifted into loathsome dives, where he acted the part of a wealthy man and an aristocrat in incognito, for he desired to test this human mask and prove its worthlessness to himself. Since his companions took him seriously in this rôle, which filled his own mind with shame and despair, he took his high losses with apparent calm, and overlooked the open cheating. One evening the den in which he happened to be was raided by the police, and he escaped by a hair’s breadth. One creature clung to him, frightened him with possible dangers ahead, threatened exposure, and wrung from him a considerable sum of hush money.

He became the prey of cocottes. He bought them jewels and frocks and instituted nightly revels. In his eyes they were outcasts that he used as a famishing man might slake his thirst at a mud puddle with no clean water within reach. And he was brutally frank with them. He paid them to endure his contempt. They were surprised, resisted only his most infamous abuses, and laughed at his unconquerable traits of the churchly hypocrite. Once he remained alone with a girl who was young and pretty. He had blindfolded himself. But suddenly he fled as though the furies were at his heels.

Thrice he had set the date for his departure and as many times had put it off. The image of Johanna had joined that of Eva in his soul, and both raged in his brain. Both belonged to an unattainable world. Yet Johanna seemed less alien; she might conceivably hear his plea. Eva and her beauty were like a strident jeer at all he was. He had heard so much and read so much of her art that he determined to await her appearance, in order (as he told Christian) to form a judgment of his own, and be no longer at the mercy of those who fed her on mere adulation and brazen flattery.

The audience was in full evening dress. Amadeus sat next to Christian in the magnificent and radiant hall, in which had gathered royal and princely persons, the senators of the free city, the heads of the official and financial world, and representatives of every valley and city of Germany. Christian had bought seats near the stage. Crammon, who was an expert in matters of artistic perspective, had preferred the first row in the balcony. With him were Johanna and Botho von Thüngen, to whom he had emphatically explained that the play of the dancer’s feet and legs was interfered with by the dark line of the stage below, while from their present position its full harmony would be visible.

Amadeus Voss had almost determined to remain rigid in mind. He hardly resisted actively, for he did not expect anything powerful enough to make resistance worth while. He was cold, dull, unseeing. Suddenly there floated upon the stage a bird-like vision, a being miraculously eased of human heaviness, one who was all rhythm, and turned the rhythm of motion into music. She broke the chains of the soul, and made every emotion an image, every action a myth, every step a conquest over space and matter. But the face of Amadeus seemed to say: How can that serve me? How does that serve you? Filled by the fury of sex, he saw only a scabrous exhibition, and when the thunder of applause burst out, he showed his teeth.

Eva’s last number was a little dramatic episode, a charming jeu d’esprit, which she had invented and worked out, to be accompanied by a composition of Delibes. It was very simple. She was Pierrot playing with a top. She regulated and guided the whimsical course of the toy. In ever new positions, turns, and rhythms, she finally drove the top toward a hole into which it disappeared. But this trivial action was so filled with life by the wealth and variety of her rhythmic gestures, so radiant with spirit and swiftest grace, so fresh in inspiration, so heightened in the perfection of its art, that the audience watched breathlessly, and released its own tensity in a fury of applause.

In the foyer Crammon rushed up to Christian, and drew him through the crowd along the dim passage way that led back of the stage. Amadeus Voss, unnoticed by Crammon, followed them unthinkingly and morosely. The sight of the wings, of cliffs and trees, of discarded drops, electrical apparatus and pulleys and of the hurrying stage-hands, stirred in him a dull and hostile curiosity.

An excited crowd thronged toward Eva’s dressing-room. She sat in the silken Pierrot costume of black and white, the dainty silver whip still in her hand, amid a forest of flowers. Before her kneeled Johanna Schöntag with an adoring moisture in her eyes. Susan gave her mistress a glass of cool champagne. Then in a mixture of five or six languages she tried to make it clear to the unbidden guests that they were in the way. But each wanted a look, a word, a smile of Eva for himself.

Next to the room in which Eva sat, and separated from it by a thin partition with an open door, was a second dressing-room, which contained only her costumes and a tall mirror. Accidentally pushed in that direction, and not through any will of his own, Amadeus Voss suddenly found himself alone in this little chamber. Having entered it, his courage grew, and he ventured a little farther in.

He looked around and stared at the garments that lay and hung here—the shimmering silks, the red, green, blue, white, and yellow shawls and veils, the fragrant webs of gauze, batiste, and tulle. There were wholly transparent textures and the heaviest brocades. One frock glowed like pure gold, another gleamed like silver; one seemed made of rose-leaves, another knitted of spun glass, one of white foam and one of amethyst. And there stood dainty shoes—a long row of them, shoes of Morocco leather and of kid and silk; and there were hose of all colours, and laces and ribands and antique beads and brooches. The air was drenched with a fragrance that stung his senses—a fragrance of precious creams and unguents, of a woman’s skin and hair. His pulses throbbed and his face turned grey. Involuntarily he stretched out his hand, and grasped a painted Spanish shawl. Angrily, greedily, beside himself, he crushed it in his hands, and buried his mouth and nose in it and trembled in every limb.

At that moment Susan Rappard saw him, and pointed to him with a gesture of astonishment. Eva saw him too, gently thrust Johanna aside, arose, and approached the threshold. When she saw the man in his strange and absorbed ecstasy, she felt as though she had been spattered with filth, and uttered a soft, brief cry. Amadeus Voss twitched and dropped the shawl. His eyes were wild and guilty. With a light laugh and an expression of transcendent contempt, which summed up a long dislike, Eva raised the little silver whip and struck him full in the face. His features grew very white, in a contortion of voluptuousness and terror.

In the tense silence Christian went up to Eva, took the silver whip from her hand, and said in a tone scarcely distinguishable from his habitual one: “Oh, no, Eva, I shall not let you do that.” He held the handle of the whip firmly at both ends, and bent it until the fragile metal snapped. Then he threw the two pieces on the floor.

They gazed at each other. Disgust at Amadeus still flamed in Eva’s face. It yielded to her astonishment at Christian’s temerity. But Christian thought: “How beautiful she is!” And he loved her. He loved her in her black and white Pierrot’s costume with the black velvet buttons, he loved her with that little cap and its impudent little tassel on her head; he loved her, and she seemed incomparable to him, and his blood cried out after her as in those nights from which she had driven him forth. But he also asked himself: “Why has she grown evil?” And a strange compassion for her stole over him, and a stranger sense of liberation. And he smiled. But to all who were watching, this smile of his seemed a little empty.

Again Amadeus Voss read in the Scripture: “What mean ye that ye beat my people to pieces, and grind the faces of the poor? Because the daughters of Zion are haughty, and walk with stretched forth necks and wanton eyes, walking and mincing as they go, and making a tinkling with their feet: Therefore the Lord will strike with a scab the crown of the head of the daughters of Zion, and the Lord will discover their secret parts. In that day will the Lord take away the bravery of their tinkling ornaments about their feet, and their cauls, and their round tires like the moon, the chains, and the bracelets, and the mufflers, the bonnets, and the ornaments of the legs, and the headbands, and the tablets, and the earrings, the rings, and nose jewels, the changeable suits of apparel, and the mantles, and the wimples, and the crisping pins, the glasses, and the fine linen, and the hoods and the veils. And it shall come to pass, that instead of sweet smell there shall be stink; and instead of a girdle a rent; and instead of well set hair baldness; and instead of a stomacher a girding of sack-cloth; and burning instead of beauty. Thy men shall fall by the sword, and thy mighty in the war. And her gates shall lament and mourn; and she being desolate shall sit upon the ground.”

On the same evening he left for Berlin.

XI

Lorm and Judith had a magnificent apartment near the Tiergarten in Berlin.

Edgar Lorm flourished. Order and regularity ruled his life. With childlike boastfulness he spoke of his home. His manager and friend, Dr. Emanuel Herbst, congratulated him on his visible rejuvenation.

He introduced to Judith the people whom he had long valued; but she judged most of them sharply and without sympathy. Her characteristic arrogance drove away many who meant well. But under the sway of his new comforts Lorm submitted to her opinions.

But he would not give up Emanuel Herbst. When Judith mocked at his waddling gait, his homeliness, his piping voice, his tactless jokes, Lorm grew serious. “I’ve known him for over twenty years. The things that annoy you endear him to me quite as much as those precious qualities in him which I know well, and which you’ve had no chance to discover.”

“No doubt he’s a monster of virtue,” Judith replied, “but he bores me to extinction.”

Lorm said: “One should get used to the idea that other people don’t exist exclusively for our pleasure. Your point of view is too narrowly that of use and luxury. There are human qualities that I value more highly than a handsome face or polished manners. One of these is trustworthiness. People with whom one has professional dealings often refuse to honour the demands of common decency—especially in regard to the keeping of their given word—with a calm frivolity that makes one’s gorge rise. So I’m intensely grateful to Herbst, since it means so infinitely much to me, for this—that our relations have never been shadowed by distrust, and that our simplest verbal agreements are as firm and as valid as a written contract.”

Judith recognized that in this case she would have to change her tactics. She was amiable, as though she were convinced of his virtues, and sought to gain his favour. Dr. Herbst saw through her, but showed no consciousness of his insight. He treated her with an elaborate courtesy that seemed a trifle old-fashioned, and effectually concealed his reservations.

Sometimes in the evening she would sit with the two men, and join in their shop talk of playwrights and plays, actors and actresses, successes and failures. And while she seemed attentive, and even asked an occasional question, she thought of her dressmaker, of her cook, of her weekly account, or of her old life, that was so different and had perished so utterly. And her eyes would grow hard.

It would happen that she would pass through the rooms with a bitter expression on her face and a hostile glance for the things about her. She hated the many mirrors which Lorm required, the rugs that had been recently bought, the pretentious furniture and paintings, the countless bibelots, photographs, ornaments, books, and piously guarded souvenirs.

She had never before lived in a house where other tenants above and below reminded her of their repulsive and unfamiliar lives. She listened to the slightest noises, and felt that she had fallen into a slum.

It was hardly in harmony with her nature to wait each morning until her husband happened to rise, to see that the breakfast was complete, to stand aside while the barber, the masseur, the chauffeur, the messenger of the theatre, and the secretary had completed their tasks or received their instructions; to wait again until he returned from rehearsal, tired, annoyed, and hungry, and then to watch him at luncheon—a meal that he required to be both rich and exquisite—gobble his food; to guard him from noise and interruption when he memorized his lines; to answer strange voices on the telephone, to give information, refuse invitations, to send the troublesome away and to soothe the impatient. She was wholly out of her natural element, but she forced herself to endure even as she had endured bodily pain when the long needle had been thrust through her arm.

Emanuel Herbst, who was a keen observer and a learned student of human nature, quietly analysed the relations of this husband and this wife. He said to himself: “Lorm is not fulfilling her expectations; so much is clear. She fancied she could peel him the way one peels an onion, and that the removal of each layer would reveal something so new and surprising as to make up to her for all she has renounced. She will soon discover her miscalculation, for Lorm is always the same. He can’t be stripped. He wears his costumes and puts on make-up. She will soon reproach him for this very ability to fill empty forms with a beautiful content, and to remain, in his own person, but a humble servitor of his art. And the more guilty he becomes in her eyes, the more power over him will she gain. For he is tired—tired to death of the affected, the flatterers and sentimentalists, of the sweets and easements of his daily life. Terribly spoiled as he is, he yearns unconsciously for chains and a keeper.”

The result of his reflection filled Emanuel Herbst with anxious apprehension.

But Judith remembered her dream—how she had lain beside a fish because it pleased her, and then beaten it in sudden rage over its cool, moist, slippery, opalescent scales. And she lay beside the fish and struck it, and the fish became more and more subservient and her own.

Her constant terror was this thought: “I am poor, impoverished, dependent, without security.” The thought tormented her to such a degree that she once expressed it to the housekeeper. The latter was astonished and replied: “But in addition to your pin money, the master gives you two thousand marks a month for the house. Why should you yield to morbid fancies?”

Judith looked at the woman suspiciously. She distrusted all whom she paid. The moment they mentioned money she fancied herself robbed.

One day the cook gave notice. She was the fourth since the establishment of the household. A quantity of sugar was missing. There was a quarrel, an ugly one, and Judith was told things that no one had ever dared to tell her before.

The secretary mislaid a key. When at last it was found Judith rushed to the drawer which it fitted to see whether the stationery, the pencils, and the pen-points were intact.

The housekeeper had bought twenty yards of linen. Judith thought the price paid too high. She drove to the shop herself. The taxi-fare amounted to more than she could possibly have saved on the purchase. Then she chaffered with the clerk for a reduction, until it was granted her through sheer weariness. She told Lorm the story with a triumphant air. He neglected to praise her. She jumped up from the table, locked herself in her room, and went to bed. Whenever she thought that she had some reason for anger, she went to bed.

Lorm came to her door, knocked softly, and asked her to open it. She let him stand long enough to regret his conduct, and then opened the door. She told her story all over, and he listened with a charming curiosity on his face. “You’re a jewel,” he said, and stroked her cheek and hand.

But it would also happen, if she really wanted something, that she would spend sums out of all proportion to her wretched little economies. She would see a hat, a frock, an ornament in a show window, and not be able to tear herself away. Then she would go into the shop, and pay the price asked at once.

One day she visited an auction sale, and happened to come in just as an old Viennese bon-bon dish was offered for sale. It was one of those objects that make little show, but which delight the collector’s heart. At first the dish didn’t tempt her at all. Then the high bidding for it excited her, and she herself began to bid for it. It kindled something in her, and she made bid after bid, and drove all competitors from the field.

Hot and excited, she came home and rushed into Lorm’s study. Emanuel Herbst was with him. The two men sat by the fire in familiar talk. Judith disregarded Herbst. She stood before her husband, unwrapped the dish, and said: “Look at this exquisite thing I bought, Edgar.”

It was toward evening, but no lights had been lit. Lorm loved the twilight and the flicker of the fire in his chimney, which was, alas, only a metropolitan imitation of a log fire. In the rich, red, wavering reflection of the glow, Judith looked charming in her delight and mobility.

Lorm took the dish, regarded it with polite interest, drew up his lips a little, and said: “It’s pretty.” Herbst’s face puckered into innumerable ironical little wrinkles.

Judith grew angry. “Pretty? Don’t you see that it’s magical, a perfect little dream, the sweetest and rarest thing imaginable? The connoisseurs were wild after it! Do you know what it cost? Eighteen hundred marks. And I had six or seven rabid competitors bidding against me. Pretty!” She gave a hard little laugh. “Give it to me. You handle it too clumsily.”

“Calm yourself, sweetheart,” said Lorm gently. “I suppose its virtues are subtle.”

But Judith was hurt, more by Herbst’s silent mockery than by Lorm’s lack of appreciation. She threw back her head, rustled through the room, and slammed the door behind her. When she was angry, her own manners had, at times, a touch of commonness.

For a while the two men were silent. Then Lorm, embarrassed and with a deprecating smile, said: “A little dream ... for eighteen hundred marks.... Oh, well! There’s something childlike about her.”

Emanuel Herbst rubbed his tongue up and down between his teeth and his upper lip. It made him look like an ancient baby. Then he ventured: “You ought to make it clear to her that eighteen hundred marks are one thousand eight hundred times one mark.”

“She won’t get that far,” answered Lorm. “Somebody who has always lived on the open sea, and is suddenly transported to a little inland lake, finds it hard to get the new measurements and perspectives. But women are queer creatures.” He sighed and smiled. “Have a nip of whiskey, old man?”

Sorrowfully Herbst rocked his Cæsarean head. “Why queer? They are as they are, and one must treat them accordingly. Only one mustn’t be under any mistaken impression as to what one has. For instance: A horseshoe is not birch wood. It looks like a bow, but you can’t bend it—not with all your might. If you string it, the string droops slackly and will never propel your arrow. All right, let’s have your whiskey.”

“But occasionally,” Lorm replied cheerfully, and filled the tiny glasses, “you can turn a horseshoe into the finest Damascene steel.”

“Bravo! A good retort! You’re as ready as Cardinal Richelieu. Your health!”

“If you’ll let me be Richelieu, I’ll appoint you to be my Father Joseph. A great rôle, by the way. Your health, old man!”

XII

Crammon and Johanna Schöntag planned to drive to Stellingen to see Hagenbeck’s famous zoological gardens, and Crammon begged Christian to lend them his car. They were just about to start when Christian issued from the hotel. “Why don’t you come along?” Crammon asked. “Have you anything better to do? The three of us can have a very amusing time.”

Christian was about to refuse, when he caught Johanna’s urgent and beseeching look. She had the art of putting her wishes into her eyes in such a way that one was drawn by them and lost the power to resist. So he said: “Very well, I’ll come along,” and took the seat next to Johanna’s. But he was silent on the whole drive.

It was a sunny day of October.

They wandered through the park, and Johanna made droll comments on the animals. She stopped in front of a seal, and exclaimed: “He looks quite like Herr Livholm, don’t you think so?” She talked to a bear as though he were a simple sort of man, and fed him bits of sugar. She said that the camels were incredible, and only pretended to look that way to live up to the descriptions in the books of natural history. “They’re almost as ugly as I am,” she added; and then, with a crooked smile: “Only more useful. At least I was told at school that their stomachs are reservoirs of water. Isn’t the world a queer place?”

Christian wondered why she spoke so contemptuously of herself. She bent over a stone balustrade, and the sight of her neck somehow touched him. She seemed to him a vessel of poor and hurt things.

Crammon discoursed. “It is very curious about animals. Scientists declare they have a great deal of instinct. But what is instinct? I’ve usually found them to be of an unlimited stupidity. On the estate where I passed my childhood, we had a horse, a fat, timid, gentle horse. It had but one vice: it was very ticklish. I and my playmates were strictly enjoined from tickling it. Naturally we were constantly tempted to tickle it. There were five of us little fellows—no higher than table legs. Each procured a little felt hat with a cock’s feather in it. And as the horse stood dull-eyed in front of the stable, we marched in single file under the belly of the stupid beast, tickling it with our feathers as we passed. The feathers tickled so frightfully that he kicked with all fours like a mule. It’s a riddle to me to this day how one of us, at least, failed to be killed. But it was amusing and grotesque, and there was no sign of instinct anywhere.”

They went to the monkey house. A crowd stood about a little platform, on which a dainty little monkey was showing off its tricks under the guidance of a trainer. “I have a horror of monkeys,” said Crammon. “They annoy me through memory. Science bids me feel a relationship with them; but after all one has one’s pride. No, I don’t acknowledge this devilish atavism.” He turned around, and left the building in order to wait outside.

Alone with Christian, a wave of courage conquered Johanna’s timidity. She took Christian’s arm and drew him nearer to the platform. She was utterly charmed, and her delight was childlike. “How dear, how sweet, how humble!” she cried. A spiritual warmth came from her to Christian. He yielded himself to it, for he needed it. Her boyish voice, however, stirred his senses and aroused his fear. She stood very close by him; he felt her quiver, the response to the hidden erotic power that was in him, and the other voices of his soul were silenced.

He took her hand into his. She did not struggle, but a painful tension showed in her face.

Suddenly the little monkey stopped in its droll performance and turned its lightless little eyes in terror toward the spectators. Some shy perception had frightened it; it seemed, somehow, to think and to recollect itself. As it became aware of the many faces, the indistinctness of its vision seemed to take on outline and form. Perhaps for a second it had a sight of the world and of men, and that sight was to it a source of boundless horror. It trembled as in a fever; it uttered a piercing cry of lamentation; it fled, and when the trainer tried to grasp it, it leaped from the platform and frantically sought a hiding-place. Tears glittered in its eyes and its teeth chattered, and in spite of the animal characteristics of these gestures and expressions, there was in them something so human and soulful that only a few very coarse people ventured to laugh.

To Christian there came from the little beast a breath from an alien region of earth and forests and loneliness. His heart seemed to expand and then to contract. “Let us go,” he said, and his own voice sounded unpleasantly in his ears.

Johanna listened to his words. She was all willingness to listen, all tension and all sweet humility.

XIII

Randolph von Stettner had arrived. There were still several days before the date of his sailing, and he was on his way to Lübeck, where he wished to say good-bye to a married sister. Christian hesitated to promise to be in Hamburg on his friend’s return. Only after much urging did he consent to stay.

They dined in Christian’s room, discussed conditions in their native province, and exchanged reminiscences. Christian, laconic as usual, was silently amazed at the distance of all these things from his present self.

When the waiter had removed the dishes, Stettner gave an account of all that had driven him to the determination to expatriate himself. While he talked he stared with an unchanging look and expression at the table cover.

“You know that for some years I’ve not been comfortable in my uniform. I saw no aim ahead except the slow and distant moments of advancement. Some of my comrades hoped for war. Well, the life makes that hope natural. In war one can prove one’s self in the only way that has any meaning to a professional soldier in any army. But personally I couldn’t share that hope. Others marry money, still others go in for sports and gambling. None of these things attracted me. The service itself left me utterly dissatisfied. I seemed to myself in reality an idler who lives pretentiously on others.

“Imagine this: you stand in the barracks yard; it’s raining, the water makes the sand gleam; the few wretched trees drip and drip; the men await some command with the watchfulness of well-trained dogs; the water pours from their packs, the sergeant roars, the corporals grit their teeth in zeal and rage; but you? With a monotony like that of the drops that trickle from your cap, you think: ‘What will to-night be like? And to-morrow morning? And to-morrow night?’ And the whole year lies ahead of you like a soaked and muddy road. You think of your desolate room with its three dozen books, the meaningless pictures, and the carpet worn thin by many feet; you think of the report you’ve got to hand in, and the canteen accounts you’ve got to audit, and the stable inspection, and the next regimental ball, where the arrogant wives of your superior officers will bore you to the point of illness with their shallow talk; you think your way through the whole circle of your life, and find nothing but what is trivial and cheerless as a rainy day. Is that endurable?