Baby, who had been sent out by her cousin to ascertain the local
conditions in the Austrian Alps, having only reported, after a lapse of
two weeks, that dogs were not allowed in the public parks of Innsbruck
and that persons doing damage to the flower beds would be prosecuted,
Frank, the next candidate scheduled by Eva for salvation, was despatched
in Baby’s wake.
He found her at the top of a mountain towering above the Inn valley,
playing chess with a handsome young bank clerk from Vienna, on his
annual holiday in the Tyrol. Neither knew a word of the other’s
language, and made love with the aid of a dictionary. He found the words
and passed her the dictionary. Love. Bliss. Desire. She read the English
equivalent and purred. It was exquisite.
Frank deemed the _pension_ and the hill in every way an adequate _pied à
terre_, worthy of preservation and, so far as he could judge, eminently
suitable for isolation from the atomic disintegration about to overtake
the world; and he gave Eva all the available information as to victuals,
trains, etc, warning her, among other things, not to pull the
communication cord while the train was in motion unless there was
genuine need for it; and even gave the Italian of it: “_Tirare
lamaniglia solo in caso di pericolo. Ogni abuso verrà punito!_”
The Pension Kogl stood alone on the mountain-top, and gazing down from
his balcony in the morning Frank saw an old Habsburg Schloss stretched
out beneath him, which looked like the Regent Palace Hotel, London.
Breakfast, perhaps, was a little on the short side, and on the
bedside-table on which it was laid there was a little tablecloth with
the words: “_Wenig aber von Herzen_” embroidered in red Gothic letters.
Below, under Frank’s windows, the proprietress’ husband, the Wirt,
looking very like Gogol’s Taras Boulba, paced the yard in a skull cap as
early as five-thirty. He was a bad sleeper, and thus was essentially
fitted to see to it that the sleepy servant girls did not oversleep
themselves. He was up and on the look-out for defaulters, like a
sergeant-major waiting in the barrack yard. In a bungalow annex across
lived an old apoplectic little baron who, early each morning, about the
time of mine host’s appearance, popped out his head through the window,
whereon the ensuing conversation could be overheard:
“Good morning, Herr Baron! Have you slept well? The weather--well, I
think--or at least, it seems to me--that the sky might clear up, in
which case it is possible--I say, it is _possible_--possible that we may
have good weather to-day. Yes, yes, I am hopeful, Herr Baron.”
Herr Kogl stood close to the Baron’s window and spat on the ground. The
Herr Baron, out of a feeling of fellowship, spat out of the window:
“Kh-kh-kh--Kh-hhrrr--Khhh!” they spat.
“Hey! Where you off to!” the host would suddenly yell to the young farm
hand, who was setting out for town in the milk cart.
“To town.”
“Off you go at once!” he would shout after him angrily. “Hurry up!
You’ve overslept yourself again, you lazy bounder! Off you go, young
scoundrel, you!---- Youth,” he would add tenderly, turning back to the
Baron.
Thus till nine o’clock in the morning he would stroll up and down the
yard, his hands behind his back, and then serve himself his first
Schnaps.
Herr Kogl’s distinction was that he was supposed to have a particularly
strong will. Frau Kogl’s mother, who had bought the present _pension_ on
her Alsacian savings, had had just such a man in view for her daughter,
whom she did not consult in the matter, though once, in an unusually
tender and communicative mood, she did ask her: “What sort of a man
would you like for a husband, Anny?” Anny had lowered her lashes and
said: “With a strong will.” Herr Kogl was chosen without hesitation as
the sort of man with a strong will who would take care of his wife’s
property; and now, living up to his reputation, he would bawl at her
from time to time: “Hey, there! Anna!--I have called: ‘_Anna_!’”--and
she obeyed.
Their son, who had a smooth voice, quiet manners, and a cast in one of
his eyes, knew on which side his bread was buttered, and though a little
fearful of his father, clung to his moneyed mother, and disdained his
Pa’s assumed authority, who, to bear out his own reputation, bawled at
him occasionally: “Hey, there! Herbert! I said: ‘_Herbert_!’” when his
son half turned a reluctant ear to him. Frau Kogl herself had moods when
she liked to assert her authority; but they were intermittent and
brief. She could never decide anything. Her mother was right in choosing
for her a husband who bawled at her. Frau Kogl had no illusions about
his utility, and secretly thought him a vagabond. But she needed someone
to bawl at her. When he bawled, his authority in her eyes was restored;
and she loved him.
The briskness in the air of an early mountain spring morning! Old
forgotten feelings flooded his heart. As Frank went down the stairs, he
passed the bare-legged scullery maid who was washing the steps. He
looked round, and she smiled. And when later in the morning she helped
carry up his large trunk, he could not take away his gaze from those
healthy white legs.
“Good morning, Herr Dickin,” the host greeted him. “I am hoping that if
the clouds disperse--I am hoping, I say, that if they disperse, we may
be having--we may be having, I say--having fine weather to--day. But I
regret to say it is Saint Peter”--he pointed to the skies--“who is in
charge of the winds, and our petition--our petition, I say, must be
addressed to him up there in the heavens, oh yes.”
Dickin laughed amiably, and on passing the bar he heard Frau Kogl
upbraiding her husband:
“You shouldn’t tell such silly jokes to the foreign guests; they will
think you’re quite silly.”
“It may be a silly joke,” Herr Kogl agreed, “or it may not be a silly
joke, but he laughs; so anything seems good enough for him.”
“Why, no, he is a clever man, a poet,” retorted Frau Kogl.
“I am a poet myself,” answered Herr Kogl.
“You’re a fat dotty old man, that’s what you are,” said Frau Kogl. “What
have you done with the glasses? Don’t stand there like that....”
“Shut up, will you!” he bawled, and banged his fist on the counter.
She quailed before the man with the strong will.
From his balcony, Frank could see the scullery girl swish with her bare
legs through the wet grass, and come back with a basket full of fruit.
He cut across to meet her. He had a terrible longing to speak to her,
but he could not find words to say to her. Because she was desirable,
though her face was objectionable, she seemed to him (as women do seem
when they are desirable) to be endowed with a critical and sensitive
intelligence which might resent a clumsy overture, or an approach that
was not plausible. And so he walked towards her with a casual and
indifferent air. But when she smiled at him his shyness left him
suddenly and he asked her what the joke was.
“Ach, to-day,” she said, “I must laugh, because I look so funny in these
boots.” How ugly her face was! And yet how desirable that body!
Herr Kogl, at the door, found words to say to him. Herr Kogl always
found words to say to everybody. It was his only occupation. When he
wasn’t either eating or drinking, he stood in the yard and exchanged
remarks with visitors and casual passers-by. No one had ever seen him
take a drop of wine in public, and he affected to disdain it, though he
had blood-shot, oily eyes which betrayed him. “Wine? Why, there’s
nothing in it,” he would say. “I--never--have--any.” But every time he
went down into the cellar to fill the decanter, he first filled himself
and then the decanter.
Now he stood in the doorway, red and obese, and addressed a small,
fluffy old dog of a nondescript breed and an incredible filthiness.
“Rags has been and had a puppy--a little ragamuffin like herself, what!
Rags, you bad thing! Rags, you dirty tyke! Rags, you immoral old bitch!
For shame! I shouldn’t have thought it of you, at your age!” And he dug
his crooked forefinger into Dickin’s chest, as he was wont to do when
emphasising a point; especially in moments of hilarious recollection, as
when, for instance, he might say: “Oh _that_ thing! Well, of course!” At
such moments he would dig even a little lower than the ribs, because the
joke addressed itself to a more central part of you--the abdominal part,
wherein all jokes are seated; or so at least we must suppose, because
when men laugh too heartily they protect and support these, their
boilers, from bursting.
Again, as he stood there, Frank caught a glimpse of the scullery maid’s
bare legs, as she went out to hang out some linen. “What are you
smiling for?” he asked, overtaking her, Herr Kogl now having turned in.
“Ach! Herr Dickin,” she said, “when you speak to me I must always laugh.
I don’t know why.”
He looked round. There was no one about. “When do you finish your work?”
“I go to bed at half-past ten.”
“Won’t you come and see me before going to bed?”
“Where?” she asked.
“In my room.”
“What shall I do in your room?”
His blood coursed feverishly through his veins; his brain was on fire at
the thought of what they could not do in his room. “Keep me company,” he
said.
She nodded assent and went in with the dry linen. Returning, he ran into
Herr Kogl, who came out of the cellar with the decanter, licking and
smacking his thick ruby lips. “Herr Kogl, will you have a glass of wine
with me?”
Herr Kogl shook his head slowly, closing his eyes.
“I--never--have--wine. I--consider--that--there--is--nothing--in--it.
Oh, yes.” His diction was distinct, correct, precise, deliberate, and
slow.
“Well, you are certainly setting an edifying example to your boy, aren’t
you, Herr Kogl?”
“My boy,” said Herr Kogl, “is all right.”
With a mystic, an unearthly, look Herr Kogl retired to the safe behind
the counter, and came back with a large sheet of parchment in his big
shaking red hands. “His college certificate,” he said, turning away to
hide his emotion and to give the visitor the opportunity of ascertaining
for himself the high standard of Herbert’s scholastic achievements:
Calligraphy--proficient;
Arithmetic--good;
Cooking--very satisfactory;
Slaughtering--praiseworthy;
Waiting at table--very good;
Deportment--excellent;
General conduct--excellent.
“Eminently satisfactory,” said Dickin, returning the document.
“He is at the Hotel and Restaurant Institute in Vienna,” the father said
proudly, “and I afford him practical opportunities for perfecting his
studies when he is here for his summer vacation by allowing him to wait
at table. Of course, under my supervision,” he added.
“You ought to be very proud of him.”
“Proud? Why?”
“Of course you ought to be! You _are_ proud!”
“Well, of course--proud--why not? You wouldn’t think, would you, eh? A
Tyrolese poodle like he, now would you?... attain such distinction in
Vienna itself!...” And two large beads stood in Herr Kogl’s jaundiced
blood-shot eyes.
At lunch, in the large panelled room looking out on the old archducal
Schloss beneath, steeped in the foliage of its enormous and forsaken
park, Frank found himself seated facing a Lutheran pastor from Germany,
who had large sad eyes, a quiet, melancholy voice, and helped himself
without cease to the _Kalter Aufschnitt_. He thought the world was all
right, the Church all right, and nothing wanted changing. Among the
guests was a Russian Grand Duke who turned out to be the cousin of
Frank’s one-time opponent who had hit him on the ear with an umbrella at
the Kiss-Lick Club. The Grand Duke’s cousin was killed in a motor smash
in Poland. His own brother was assassinated elsewhere. An uncle died in
mysterious circumstances. It seemed, of the old guard, there remained
only Frank and he, and over a decanter of Tyrolese wine consumed
together, they relinquished their claim to the throne of Russia in each
other’s favour.
“Ah! you are a writer!” the Grand Duke exclaimed happily. “You write in
English? Ah, well! I’ve my own theories about English literature. I am
obstinate in the belief that in the portrayal of Dorian Gray, Oscar
Wilde did not mean to depict his own personality, so to speak.”
Frank sounded the Grand Duke as to his further opinions. Wordsworth? No,
he hadn’t heard of Wordsworth. Keats?--No: who was he? No, he preferred
the moderns. There was one modern writer--German, he believed--who
amused him. Bernhard Schau.... Oh, he was British? How interesting! He
had bought quite a number of his works in Berlin, and enjoyed dipping
into them--he liked him for the wit salted with cynicism. Did his
Highness read any other English authors? The Grand Duke considered for a
moment, wrinkling his brow.--Of course--Byron! Who did not love that
stupendous genius, the greatest the world has yet produced? _Childe
Harold_.... Ah! The Grand Duke thought he himself was a little like
that--like Byron and Lermontov--romantic, rebellious, seeking something
(he made a gesture to the heavens)--dissatisfied with his
surroundings--that’s it, and seeking a meaning in life. Yes, he was a
lover of literature--though he preferred sport--riding and hunting,
drinking, too, he was not averse to. He considered, as if struck by a
sudden idea. “Have a drink,” he said.
They passed into the lounge, into which Herr Kogl burst periodically, to
explain the working of the electric stove, which could be switched on at
will but must not be, he cautioned, switched off without a preliminary
intimation to Herbert, in charge of the electric supply station, because
a sudden superfluity of electricity sent the dynamo into commotion. Here
Frank perceived a dark-haired, dark-eyed woman looking like a gipsy.
“Frau König!” he exclaimed. “By heaven! this is unexpected!”
Frau König, on the other hand, did not appear to regard this meeting as
unexpected, but at once proceeded to recount her life at the point at
which his knowledge of it had been interrupted. “My fiancé, alas, has
failed again in his examinations at the University, and that has put us
back for another couple of years and deferred our hope of establishing
the knitting factory. He says the Paris professors have been prejudiced
against him on account of his Russian nationality and vented on him
their bitterness over the Russian State Bonds they had acquired and lost
in the Revolution, and agreed to plough him.” And she introduced him to
Frau Professor Koch who occupied the room next to his own and owned a
dachshund, on whose account she felt concerned and diffident, for, “He
has inflammation of the lungs,” she said, “and his cough is terrible.”
It rained. By the electric stove, Baby played chess with the bank clerk,
whose holiday was up and who that night was going back to Vienna. During
lunch, when Baby had anxiously eyed him, he had talked to the table at
large, explaining how the new divorce law was operating in Vienna--he
talked of divorce, while she wanted to be united to him for the rest of
existence! She had better, now that time was getting short, try and talk
to him--difficult though it was--in French. What had she better say to
him? How draw him? How tell him? She thought hard.
“Do you ski in Austria with a horse?” she asked at last.
He did not understand.
The rain poured down straightly and beautifully, shooting through those
myriad trees on the mountain sides. The bank clerk saw in Frank his
natural successor, and hated him. The company constrained him.
But a quarter of an hour before he was driven down to the station in the
little red car, they ran away hand in hand into the Schloss park, and
came back dripping with wet. She stood at the window and waved to him
shyly: “Good-bye,” as the little red motor buzzed off.
Good-bye! Good-bye!
How grey, how monotonous mountain scenery looked in the rain! “Well,
Baby, how do you like this place?” Frank asked.
She loved it, she said, but complained that there were fleas in her bed.
Frau Kogl, to whom the complaint was made, said that it was
“ausgeschlossen”--quite out of the question. “Das gibt es nicht”--it
isn’t done. But the “boots” with the green apron was philosophical.
Fleas--well, what about it? They existed. There were fleas in the
carpet--fleas everywhere--between bedclothes--in a word, in nature.
Fleas, he implied, were in the scheme of things. God had so ordained it.
The “boots’” attitude, like that of the modern philosophers’, was one of
acceptance; he accepted all evil and all good in life with equal grace.
Herr Kogl ordered him to go to the chemist and buy a preparation
notoriously fatal to fleas, and the “boots” came back carefully carrying
a small bottle, in whose efficacy he did not believe.
At dinner, Frank found himself seated among a group of German tourists.
Herr Nikulitsch, despite his Czech name, was a German--corpulent,
spectacled, with a large, square, short-cropped blond head; in fact so
typical a German that had he had the luck to be in England between the
years 1914 to 1918, he would have been arrested without provocation. His
wife had eyes which were so queerly adjusted that when she talked to you
she seemed to be looking at someone else. Frank was faced by this cow of
a woman who could only understand the German point of view about the
war; and two Scottish old maids who could only understand the British
point of view about the war; neither of whom could understand each
other. The Scottish old maids complained derisively about the _Kalter
Aufschnitt_: “The idea of giving you cheese without biscuits! Ha!” They
shook their heads and smiled malignantly. They marvelled at these
foreigners! The more they saw of them, the more they marvelled!
“The Germans,” said Frau Nikulitsch, “are good people. We are good
people at heart. Any one of good will will admit that we are good
people. But the French are a nation of sadists.”
“Yes,” said the Frau Pastor, “we are a thoroughly good people, devoid of
all guile. We haven’t an ungracious thought.”
Baby listened politely. It was not what she had read in _The Daily
Mail_. “Tricking Huns. Once a German, always a German. Blond beasts,”
were phrases that occurred to her. Frank was talking to the Frau Pastor
now, and because he wanted to be sympathetic, and to show off his own
broadmindedness and the tolerant, liberal spirit of his countrymen, he
told her, with a smile (as if making light of it) that our own royalty
was mostly German; and he felt that it was strange that she thought
nothing of it, a little churlish of her even--it was as though she made
light of his kindness and that of his countrymen who bore this alien
taint with good grace. The Frau Pastor seemed to think England was
rather lucky.
And why, she asked, was England supporting the Russian claim to Eastern
Prussia, and simultaneously supporting the Finnish claim to Northern
Russia?
It was, said Frank, in pursuance of an ideal to keep alive the feeble
flame of patriotism in the face of a growing international revolution.
Men were losing interest in their countries, so you had to tread on
their toes to keep up their national pride.
“And the English,” said the Frau Pastor (living up to the ideal),
“behaved worst of all in the last war.”
Frank thought of showing her a 1920 copy of _The Daily Mail_
(Continental edition), in which was set forth what Poincaré thought of
the German evasion of the Allied (just) demand for reparations. The
extremity of the shock brought him back to sanity. When he listened to
one German after another who told him that if Germany had been arming it
was because the Entente Cordiale was stifling them by a tightening ring
of alliances (to whom he had said that if the Entente Cordiale _was_
stifling them by a tightening ring of alliances it was because Germany
had been arming), who were convinced that we had started the war as we
were convinced that they had provoked it, the thought struck him: “Of
course they must be convinced. When A is roused to a pitch where he will
do B in, and face the risk of being done in by B in the doing, he is
sincere in believing B to be in the wrong. This is the shady side of
faith. Frank looked to the Pastor to display some soothing impartiality,
and gave him a lead. “All nations are very much alike and equally unjust
to foreigners,” Frank said. But to all such overtures the pastor, who
thought the world was all right, the Church all right, and nothing
wanted changing, replied: “We Germans are well known to be
over-indulgent to foreigners. Germany is too idealistic a people.”
“Patriotism,” said Frank, “is like wine--a good thing when you haven’t
had too much of it.”
“You don’t understand,” said the Frau Pastor. “Only a German can
understand what we feel about these things, only a German who has gone
through what we have gone through and who knows what we know.”
There is a limit to an intelligent man’s enjoyment of the irony of being
regarded as an imbecile by fools. And it is soon reached. A new war was
starting before the discords of the old have had time to resolve
themselves, and, identifying a nation of sixty million people with the
two who had displeased him, Frank felt that they deserved it and hoped
that they would be beaten!
“And what ridiculous names these foreigners have!” remarked one of the
Scottish old maids, when the Germans had left the table. “That Viennese
lady opposite--Frau von Endte! I don’t know much German, but I know that
much: that Ente means duck! It’s as if she called herself: ‘Mrs. de
Ducke’!”
Frank strolled away into the hills. The night was calm and benignant;
the stars whispered; and all this rocky waste listened, moonlit and
silent, to God. At every corner, a crucifix. Green lights and blue
lights and red lights illumining the twisted naked body of Christ, with
red blood flowing from the wounds. Yet curiously enough, Christ’s
message had not been understood, he thought, and looking back at the
bloody centuries which followed on the crucifixion and at Christ’s
tortured body, so shamelessly paraded, it occurred to Frank that
Christians generally may have got hold of the wrong end of the stick
from the beginning, inferring that it was blood-letting that He meant
and advocated to us. On consideration, Frank thought the world was well
ripe for destruction.
Above and beyond, what peace! All desire abated, in the soft ablution of
the moon. O Lust, where is thy sting, and Satiety thy victory?
A figure in the dark. “Hello, is that you? Oh, Frau König! All my
homages.”
Frau König, with a preoccupied air, took him down the mountain track
into the thicket, the while saying: “I don’t deny. I don’t deny how hard
it is for a woman who had contracted certain habits in marriage suddenly
to find herself without a man. Well, here I am. Here I am, I say! Here I
am; you may have what you wish. But my condition”--she touched his
wrist--“is that you are to take me out into society.”
“I do not wish it. I mean I do not wish what you wish me to wish. You
make me feel good, Frau König, and that’s the truth.”
“I do not understand you. I have gone as far as I can.”
“That’s the truth. Do not go further.”
“But--”
How could he explain? How could he tell her that where unattractive
women were concerned he was a prude and a puritan? For all sexual
morality, if we examine it more closely, is founded on aversion. It
pleased him to recall to her an ideal of womanhood which she was in no
mood to follow; of reticence and chastity, which he counselled her to
practise. “Not in abandon, but in restraint and self-discipline, Frau
König,” he said, leading her out of the thicket into the open road,
“lies the hope of a sane and healthy mankind.”
“If,” she said, “my fiancé does not come soon, I shall go mad.”
As they turned into the _pension_ courtyard, they passed the apoplectic
Baron’s bungalow, who peeped through the window and, though it was
evening, wished them: “Good morning.” The Baron’s knowledge of English
must have been very slight, because every time Frank passed him in the
morning, the Baron touched his cap and said: “Good evening.” In the big
barn, an automatic barrel organ played excruciating music, and Herr Kogl
explained that it had been a first-class barrel organ till the
Italians--a nation, as all knew, of organ grinders--spoilt it during
their occupation of the town in the war by over-taxing its musical
capacity.
“How very inconsiderate!”
Several couples were dancing. Herbert, removing his waistcoat, danced in
his braces and shirt sleeves with Lina, the bare-legged scullery maid,
at a considerably accelerated pace, as if to show them all what he could
do. “Our Herbert,” Herr Kogl, pointed with his chin towards him, “once
he starts dancing, outstrips them all.” Frank stood and watched till it
would be time for Lina to go up to bed. Heavens of ecstasy, oceans of
rapture awaited him. The Kogls sat there as always: Herr Kogl; Herr
Spatz, a fat, rough man of the same proportions as the host himself; the
policeman; the policeman’s wife, who was a waitress; and drank wine. The
policeman’s little boy slipped in and out between their legs and ran
about all day long, and they christened him “Quicksilver.” Herr Kogl
alone did not drink. The cook, a bewildered-looking old woman, who was
never seen about during the week, drank, after good takings, on a Sunday
night with Frau Kogl. Herr Kogl watched them drink, but refused to
participate. His maudlin eyes were fixed on the dog to whom he would
talk for hours at a stretch: “Rags, you wretch! Rags, you immoral little
bitch!”
“Nice old doggie, what?” Frau Kogl would remark.
Herr Kogl would shake his head. “It’s not a dog--kein Hund, sondern ein
Skandal!”
The dog was very old, toothless, and refused all food but chocolate. The
Frau Wachmann, the policeman’s wife, a young shrew, shouted and cursed
at her husband, a shy middle-aged upright man, because he would not go
to bed immediately, but preferred to play cards with the others of a
Sunday evening. Herr Spatz thundered forth as he played: “Two aces!
Bang! Ha-a-a!--Queen of Clubs! Bang! Bang!” with his fist, so that all
the glasses on the table jingled nervously. He had once spent nine
months in Turkey, and he looked, with his clean-shaven head and his
mouthful of glittering white teeth himself like a Turk, and behaved like
one, or at least, as you would imagine “The Turk” to behave in his more
lustful moments. Frau Kogl, drunk, attempted to sing, but it came out
very badly and dismally and she stopped, ashamed of herself.
“To hell with Czecho-Slovakia!” Herr Spatz was saying to a relative who,
thanks to the Treaty of Versailles, has become Czecho-Slovakian and now
said he was proud of the great country. “Great country!” roared Herr
Spatz. “I’ve lived nine months in Turkey: who can talk Czecho-Slovakian
there? Answer me that!”
“Who will drive the van to town to-morrow morning, that is what I wish
to know?” Herr Kogl interjected.
“Willy.”
“Hm!--Hm!” distrustfully from Herr Kogl.
“Why?” from Herr Spatz, whose son Willy happened to be.
Herr Kogl looked on the ground. “Willy! Willy is not Herbert, that’s
why!”
At long last the clock on the Schloss tower struck half-past ten, and
Herr Kogl was locking up. Frank paced his room up and down; every moment
the door might open and Lina come in, and then--.
From time to time, unable to stand the suspense, he would go out and
wait for her in the corridor. Simultaneously, the door opposite would
open, and the Pastor and Frau Pastor peep out, again and again, as if to
put out their boots: but surely, Frank thought, they could not have so
many boots to put out. Then, as he stood in the corridor, the adjacent
door opened, and the Frau Professor peeped out to ask if her dachshund’s
coughing had not, perchance, disturbed his sleep. “He has acute
inflammation of the lungs,” she said, “and I am very anxious to know
what the specialist will say to-morrow morning.”
“I am very sorry,” Frank said, “for you both.” And while he stood there
assuring Frau Professor Koch of his complete sympathy, and the Frau
Pastor peeped out of her room to put out another pair of boots, the
bare-legged Lina slipped into his room.
He forgot everything, looked at her intently, grasped her eagerly,
savagely, asked: “Yes?”
“Why?” she parried.
“Because.”
“Because what?”
“Because--because we’re young, and because life isn’t for ever.”
She bent down her look and was silent.
“Yes?”
“Yes.”
She had said it so quietly and convincingly that his soul was devastated
by certitude. He was as certain of his reward as one is certain of money
placed to the credit of one’s current account, once receipt of it has
been acknowledged by the bank. It would take place all right. It was
indeed as though it had already taken place; and she seemed to him like
some tedious acquaintance; he asked her tedious questions, and asking
them, had not the patience to concentrate upon her tedious replies. “Are
both your parents alive?”
“Yes, both my parents are alive.”
“Have you any brothers or sisters?”
“Yes, two sisters and one brother.”
From outside came the sound of tears and choking. “I suppose,” said
Frank, “that is the policeman’s wife, by the sound of it.”
“No, it’s he--the policeman.”
“What! Sobbing like that? Why?”
“She curses him dreadfully: that’s why. It’s the same every Sunday night
because she wants him to go to bed at once, whereas he, poor chap, wants
to sit out with the others and play cards. He’s an upright, decent,
quiet man; it’s a shame the life she leads him!”
It did not interest him. The wind that bellied out his sails had
suddenly ceased, and his soul flopped down like a flag on a flagstaff.
He, she, and the world, seemed as flat as a pancake--as flat and as
unprofitable.
“You--you--you!” she gasped. In this “you” was all her being, her
illusory love, her reunion with him, the dissolution, the loss of her
“I” in his “you.” But he thought he had squeezed her leg and said: “I
beg your pardon? Did you say anything?”
She shook her head.
“That’s all right, then.”
She had begun to look forward, and he went to sleep at once. She waited
awhile, scanning his face with hatred. Then shook him by the shoulder.
“You _ninny_!” Then dressed herself and went out.
She was gone. Presently he sat up on the edge of the bed, his naked feet
dangling down like a pendulum. He was drunk. It was significant that he
was both spiritually and physically drunk at the same time, and he had
just sufficient reason left him to comprehend and thoroughly appreciate
the humour of this interesting coincidence.
Next morning he was woken by the conversation in the yard below his
window. “You were born in eighteen sixty-four, Herr Baron; I was born in
eighteen sixty-six. I take it that I am two years younger than
you--yes!”
“Kh-kh-khrr-rrr-khrrr!”
“Kh-kh-kh-khr-khrrr!”
“The Herr Baron complains to me that he is damned and done for,
mattering as he is all over. But I say, _aber wo_! Herr Baron: what does
it matter if you matter in a world of matter: it is all matter--spirit,
flesh, and all! Oh, yes!”
The Baron now was telling Herr Kogl of a brother who lived in Vienna and
was professor of modern languages at Vienna University; and Herr Kogl at
once retorted: “My son lives in Bizirk IX and has to go to his studies
in Bizirk V.”
“What does he do?”
“Studies at the Institute.”
“What institute?”
“The Hotel and Restaurant Institute. Why, Herbert can do
anything!--Drive a car--stick a pig--wait at table. Wonderful boy!
This--all this--is to be his. Ah! he will go a long way, our Herbert
will, he will, when he finishes his studies at the Institute. And I
intend to send him abroad for a year or two to pick up foreign
languages, so that he secures all the benefit that we old folks can
afford to give him.”
“Of course. Why not?” said the Baron, “if you have the money to give
him.”
“Ah, no!” exclaimed Herr Kogl. “He must earn the money himself. I don’t
believe in extravagance, Herr Baron. ‘No,’ I tell Herbert: ‘you go
abroad to France and England and serve your time there in the big hotels
and earn every penny yourself as a waiter.’ That’s the way to bring them
up--youth,” he added tenderly.
He looked at Frau Kogl, who was coming down the steps towards him. Here
was this woman with all her money and property; he came along and made
it his, and gave her a son and made it his son’s: more than ever his
own. “I was telling the Herr Baron,” he said, “how when Herbert finishes
his studies at the Institute and has been abroad in France and England
he will on coming back devote himself to the development of the
_pension_ and alpine tourism generally by making use of the ties and
influence he has established in France and England. Oh, yes!”
“That’s all right,” said the old woman, “but what are we to do about
Herr Dickin? All the ladies are leaving. I don’t know what to do. He
will have to go, that’s all.”
“He--is a--good--man,” Herr Kogl replied.
“What are we to do?”
Herr Kogl did not reply.
“Come on!” she cried. “Don’t stand there like a--”
“Shut up, will you!” he shouted formidably, and banged his fist on the
table.
She quailed before the man with the strong will.
“I never bother; it is none of my business,” Frau Kogl began as Frank
came downstairs. “I attend to my own job, and what with the prices of
everything going up, I’ve got my work cut out. Meat, as you know, has
gone up 20 per cent., vegetables too. Fish is not to be had. To me it is
all the same, you understand; I never bother about what other people
do.” Her hands shot out awkwardly. In that gesture was all her weary
dissatisfaction with people who make bother. “I don’t mind what you do
upstairs. But I can’t lose all my clients, you understand. The season is
a slack one, and where will I get other guests? Meat, as I say, has gone
up; vegetables gone up. Fish is not to be had in the neighbourhood, and
they are all complaining now about you. But what can I do?” She shot
out her hands. She must have acquired these gestures in the French
convent in Alsace where she had been put by her mother.
And indeed there was trouble ahead. Lina’s entry had been observed. The
Frau Pastor had communicated it to the Frau Doktor Wirt, and the Frau
Doktor Wirt, with the confirmation of the Frau Professor Koch, to the
Frau Direktor Bödingen and Frau Nikulitsch, and the Frau Direktor
Bödingen to the Frau Oberst von Kaisar, who complained to Frau von
Endte. A commotion had been caused. Frank was suspect. Two elderly
German women locked their doors at his approach and accused him of
having tried to force his way into their bedrooms. When all complained
and armed themselves against her, Frau Kogl could not decide. She
scratched her head pensively. “Yes,” she said, “Yes, I don’t know what
to do.” She looked old and ill with worry; even her housemaid’s knee had
taken a turn for the worse. “I am afraid we must ask you to go.”
“With regret,” added Herr Kogl.
As for Lina, Herr Kogl made short shift of her. He merely bawled at her:
“Out you go, you slut!”
“If,” Frank reflected, “I can’t be anything better, let me at least be a
hero.”
The little red car was prepared for him, and he got Lina to make a
bundle of her things and get inside with him. It was a desultory morning
and rain fell perfunctorily. “You ugly young thing!” he thought,
surveying her from his seat in the corner, as the car turned out of the
courtyard past the Baron’s bungalow (who peeped out of his window and,
touching his cap, said: “Good evening!”), “What the deuce am I to do
with you now?”
“What sort of wage did you get?” he asked aloud.
She told him; and, on taking thought, he decided to run her down to his
old friend Frau von Kestner; who afterwards wrote to him:
“I have ordered her to put on a longer skirt and wear stockings. She was
embarrassing the postman each time he called with letters, as well as
the policeman in the square. Now, I need hardly say, nobody takes any
notice of her, because she really is not one little bit pretty.”