Herr Kogl was in charge of the telephone and telegrams.
He would come up and say to you with oracular pride:
“A--telegram--is--on--the--way--to--you.” He articulated slowly, as if
appreciating the necessity of talking distinctly to foreigners.
“How do you know?” Lord de Jones asked him.
“I know,” said Herr Kogl, turning to go. But he came back at once and
explained:
“They--have--telephoned--from--the--post--office--to--say--so.”
The telegram arrived an hour later. De Jones opened it and read:
“_Lord Ottercove and Mr. Vernon Sprott arriving by chariot this
evening. Reserve first class accommodation._
_Hannibal._”
In the afternoon while everybody was at tea--“_Jause_,” in the
vernacular--Mrs. Hannibal and the telephone operator arrived in an
aeroplane and installed themselves with the efficiency and celerity of a
quartermaster. Mrs. Hannibal occupied the little reception room; the
telephone operator, a graduate of the Royal College of Science,
commandeered the telephone. Then, there being nothing for them to do
till evening, they strolled down the hill into town to inspect the
sights.
And Baby?
She was not at the gate, nor at the bandstand, nor in the by-ways of the
park. Since his demise from the Pension Kogl, Frank lived in town, often
meeting Baby when she came down to Innsbruck. And here she was, as fresh
as May, beckoning to him from across the flower-bespangled field. That
laughing, slanting look in her eyes stirred something in his frame as
though a bird had suddenly flown into him. He was joy, his body the
cage. Soon joy would fly out; and he fretted and flurried trying to lock
the door of the cage, losing his happiness in the anxiety of losing it.
That piquant blend of childish innocence on her face with a suggestion
of ripening womanhood about her form, so irresistible to men, was no
less irresistible to Frank. They took the funicular up the mountain
slope and continued the acclivious ascent by foot, stopping now and then
to look down at the town in the valley, when he would feel her lovely
weight against him. They wound their way up the Schillerweg and stopped
at a Gasthaus in the precincts of the Pension Kogl and had coffee and
cakes amidst the beer and wine drinking peasants with goat beards like
shaving brushes stuck in their coloured hats, and the women in Tyrolese
peasant dress taken in tightly at the waist and showing off their
figures to advantage, and sat still and looked down into the green folds
of the valley and up at the jagged summits of naked rock. She gave him a
look that came straight from the soul. Her eyes were as if they had just
been sad, had understood all, and now chose to see only the heavenly,
sunny side of your being. And looking at her eyes, you, too, felt but
the sunny side of yourself, and wanted to dance and prance in the
sunshine that emanated from those eyes. Fowls, chickens, strutted all
over the place, jumped on the chairs. The little serving maid,
bare-legged, would call them: “Chuck-chuck-chuck!”
They were screened from sight by a tree. He put his hand on her arm. Her
look moistened. The sun, as if making a last effort, shone with a tragic
brightness; then, unable to sustain the effort, diminished its light.
The bare-legged maid had gone in. They kissed. When she came out she
wore a pair of brown stockings: and they stopped kissing.
“Hello, hello!”
They turned round and saw Eva and Christopher de Jones. “Wherever have
you been?” Eva turned on to her cousin. “We’ve been looking for you
everywhere. Chris is anxious to begin.”
“There isn’t any time to waste. It’s coming our way now, spreading
fast,” de Jones confirmed.
“Like creeping paralysis,” said Eva, “and Chris is going to vaccinate
this hill.” Then, turning to Frank: “Let me see! Have you any hair
left?” He quickly removed his hat. “Oh, lots and lots!” she exclaimed.
“It’s about the only thing I have.”
“It’s time I did it,” said de Jones. “Herr Kogl, can you oblige me with
a little gasoline?”
“Yes, yes. We’ll see if we can get any,” said Herr Kogl politely.
“Kindly follow me to the garage, and we shall see if we are lucky.”
Then in another tone: “Hey there! Herbert! Any gasoline! Any gasoline, I
said! Come on and get about it, quick! I’m waiting. I said: _waiting_!”
Christopher de Jones returned with a mysterious air. “I have timed,” he
said, “the explosion for 5:15.”
“What explosion is this?” Frank said with enquiring charm.
“Oh, perfectly harmless in itself. But it will frighten away all the
rest, and leave this mountain top for our little party.”
“Is this discrimination not perhaps a little heartless?”
“Surplus, surplus. One must always get rid of the surplus.”
He took out his watch and held it in his palm. Three minutes elapsed.
There was a mild crash. Then several faces were thrust enquiringly out
of the windows of the Pension Kogl. Next, the word “earthquake” passed
from mouth to mouth, and a thin stream of visitors trickled down the
narrow mountain path into Innsbruck which stretched below them, sunning
itself in the valley. Herr Kogl, Frau Kogl, the policeman and the Frau
Policeman with her quicksilver of a little boy, the apoplectic Baron,
and some others, made light of Lord de Jones’s warning and refused to
budge.
They stood with Frank and Eva and Baby and de Jones in a group on the
terrace and watched the other visitors trot down the hill: the Grand
Duke, the Frau Professor with the dachshund, the Herr Pastor, the Frau
Pastor, Herr and Frau Nikulitsch, the two Scottish old maids, Herr
Spatz, Frau Spatz, and their son Willy, the Frau Doktor Wirt, the Frau
Direktor Bödingen, the Frau Oberst von Kaisar, and Frau von Endte. There
lived among others in the annexe of the Pension Kogl an
effeminate-looking young artist from Vienna who was kept by a poor, pale
consumptive German girl who paid for him and cooked his meals, whereas
he, tired of her love, powdered his face and, adjusting his tie before
the mirror, went to town every day to distract himself with her money.
On the fatal day he, adjusting his tie, went to town and did not come
back. And she, going down the hill to the grocer’s to get him his
supper, did likewise.
Frank remembered this afterwards. Now he stood between Eva and de Jones
and watched his erstwhile enemies from the _pension_ go down, never to
return. It was a warm Sunday afternoon. Far away, a train whistled and
then coiled below, like a serpent, on its long journey to Vienna. It
will not reach Vienna, Frank thought, not in eternity! All the peasants,
save for one old man, had already vanished down the hill. He drank his
big mug to the bottom, smacking his lips. Having paid for the beer and
lighted his pipe, he rose, and at once there came the sounds of his
jolly accordion, as, with twinkling eye, he strode to his own happy tune
out of the courtyard. Fresh and alert, he went down the road making his
own music, till his long curved pipe, and his knapsack, and the plume in
his hat ducked by the hill, and only the jolly tune spoke of his fresh
onward strides.
The sun had long ago set behind the hills. It was very still: the empty
spell which hangs over the world before twilight.
“And what’s that?” Baby exclaimed, pointing to an approaching dot in the
sky. Eva peered at the clouds. An airplane was speeding towards them.
“It’s the chariot,” said Frank.
“It’s Rex! It’s Rex!” she cried. “Hurrah! it’s Rex!”
They could see them now with the naked eye, Lord Ottercove and Mr.
Vernon Sprott, seated side by side, puffing at their cigars.
One moment it seemed as if Lord Ottercove’s winged chariot would land
safely and gracefully in the courtyard of the Pension Kogl. The next, it
looked as though it would do no such thing.
The two occupants of the chariot suddenly looked at each other. They
were both, in their different ways, strong men, and said nothing. They
were, they knew it, subject to immediate dissolution. And there was
method in it. First, Mr. Vernon Sprott began to disintegrate (his
eighty-five volumes of fiction and _belles-lettres_ in the British
Museum having already preceded him). Mr. Sprott realised with his usual
imperturbable objectivity that he, who had always been one for whom the
visible world existed, was on the point of no longer existing for the
visible world. Now Lord Ottercove also began to get diffuse. He was not
aware of any pain or discomfort: he only felt that he was becoming less
and less homogeneous. This master of a million voices yielded inaudibly
to extinction, his last conscious feeling, one of sorrow not of anger,
being a profound regret that Lord de Jones had not remained a Genius of
the Untried. Soon their fabric melted into air, into thin air. Their
insubstantial pageant faded and left no rack behind.
But in the growing twilight the tips of their cigars, fiery particles
immune from dissolution, two beacons of light, two golden stars in the
sky, twin brothers, Castor and Pollux, shone for ever and ever.