"Oh no, Fräulein Else is far too clever to be taken in by him."
George then remembered that Willy had fought a duel with Ladisc a few
years back. Willy felt George's look, twirled somewhat nervously his
blonde moustache which drooped in the Polish fashion and began to speak
quickly and offhandedly.
"The fact that Rittmeister Ladisc and myself once had a difference
cannot prevent me from loyally recognising the fact that he is, and
always has been, a drunken swine. I have an invincible repulsion, which
even blood cannot wash out, against those people who gorge themselves
sick at Jewish houses and then start slanging the Jews as soon as they
get on the door-steps. They ought to be able to wait till they got
to the café. But don't exert yourself any more by guessing. Heinrich
Bermann is the lucky man."
"Impossible," said George.
"Why?" asked Eissler. "It had to be some one sooner or later. Bermann
is no Adonis, I agree, but he's a coming man, and Else's official
ideal of a mixture of gentleman-rider and athlete will never turn up.
Meanwhile she has reached twenty-four, and she must have had enough by
now of Salomon's tactless remarks and Salomon's jokes."
"Salomon?--oh, yes--Ehrenberg."
"You only know him by the initial S? S of course stands for Salomon
... and as for only S standing on the door, that is simply a concession
he made to his family. If he could follow his own fancy he would prefer
to turn up at the parties Madame Ehrenberg gives in a caftan and
side-curls."
"Do you think so? He's not so very strict?"
"Strict?... Really now! It's nothing at all to do with strictness. It
is only cussedness, particularly against his son Oskar with his feudal
ideals."
"Really," said George with a smile, "wasn't Oskar baptised long ago?
Why, he's a reserve officer in the dragoons."
"That's why ... well, I've not been baptised and nevertheless ... yes
... there are always exceptions ... with good will...." He laughed and
went on. "As for Oskar, he would personally prefer to be a Catholic.
But he thought for the time being he would have to pay too dearly for
the pleasure of being able to go to confession. There's sure to be a
provision in the will to take care that Oskar doesn't 'vert over."
They had arrived in front of the Café Imperial. Willy remained
standing. "I've got an appointment here with Demeter Stanzides."
"Please remember me to him."
"Thanks very much. Won't you come in and have an ice?"
"Thanks, I'll prowl about a little more."
"You like solitude?"
"It's hard to give an answer to so general a question," replied George.
"Of course," said Willy, suddenly grew serious and lifted his hat.
"Good afternoon, Baron."
George held out his hand. He felt that Willy was a man who was
continually defending a position though there was no pressing necessity
for him to do so.
"Au revoir," he said with real sincerity. He felt now as he had often
done before, that it was almost extraordinary that Willy should be a
Jew. Why, old Eissler, Willy's father, who composed charming Viennese
waltzes and songs, was a connoisseur and collector, and sometimes a
seller of antiquities, and objets d'art, and had passed in his day
for the most celebrated boxer in Vienna, was, what with his long grey
beard and his monocle, far more like a Hungarian magnate than a Jewish
patriarch. Besides, Willy's own temperament, his deliberate cultivation
of it and his iron will had made him into the deceptive counterpart
of a feudal gentleman bred and born. What, however, distinguished him
from other young people of similar race and ambition was the fact
that he was accustomed to admit his origin, to demand explanation or
satisfaction for every ambiguous smile, and to make merry himself over
all the prejudices and vanities of which he was so often the victim.
George strode along, and Willy's last question echoed in his ears. Did
he love solitude?... He remembered how he had walked about in Palermo
for whole mornings while Grace, following her usual habit, lay in bed
till noon.... Where was she now...? Since she had said goodbye to him
in Naples he had in accordance with their arrangement heard nothing
from her. He thought of the deep blue night which had swept over the
waters when he had travelled alone to Genoa after that farewell, and of
the soft strange fairy-like song of two children who, nestling closely
up against each other and wrapped, the pair of them, in one rug, had
sat on the deck by the side of their sleeping mother.
With a growing sense of well-being he walked on among the people who
passed by him with all the casual nonchalance of a Sunday. Many a glad
glance from a woman's eye met his own, and seemed as though it would
have liked to console him for strolling about alone and with all the
external appearances of mourning on this beautiful holiday afternoon.
And another picture floated up in his mind.--He saw himself on a hilly
sward, after a hot June day, late in the evening. Darkness all around.
Deep below him a clatter of men, laughter and noise, and glittering
fairy-lamps. Quite near, girls' voices came out of the darkness.... He
lit the small pipe which he usually only smoked in the country; the
flare of the vesta showed him two pretty young peasant wenches, still
almost children. He chatted to them. They were frightened because it
was so dark; they nestled up to him. Suddenly a whizz, rockets in the
air, a loud "Ah!" from down below. Bengal lights flaring violet and red
over the invisible lake beneath. The girls rushed down the hill and
vanished. Then it became dark again and he lay alone and looked up into
the darkness which swam down on him in all its sultriness. The night
before the day on which his father died had been one such as this. And
he thought of him for the first time to-day.
He had left the Ringstrasse and taken the direction of the Wieden.
Would the Rosners be at home on such a beautiful day? At all events
the distance was so short that it was worth trying, and at any rate he
fancied going there rather than to Ehrenbergs'. He was not the least
in love with Else, and it was almost a matter of indifference to him
whether or no she were really engaged to Heinrich Bermann. He had
already known her for a long time. She had been eleven, he had been
fourteen when they had played tennis with each other on the Riviera.
In those days she looked like a gipsy girl. Black-blue tresses tossed
round her cheeks and forehead, and she was as boisterous as a boy. Her
brother had already begun to play the lord, and even to-day George
could not help smiling at the recollection of the fifteen-year old boy
appearing on the promenade one day in a light grey coat with white
black-braided gloves and a monocle in his eye. Frau Ehrenberg was then
thirty-four, and had a dignified appearance though her figure was too
large; she was still beautiful, had dim eyes, and was usually very
tired.
George never forgot the day on which her husband, the millionaire
cartridge-manufacturer, had descended on his family and had by the
very fact of his appearance made a speedy end of the Ehrenbergian
aristocracy. George still remembered in his mind's eye how he had
sprung up during the breakfast on the hotel terrace; a small spare
gentleman with a trimmed beard and moustache and Japanese eyes, in
badly-creased white flannels, a dark straw hat with a red-and-white
striped ribbon on his round head and with dusty black shoes. He always
spoke very slowly and in an as it were sarcastic manner even about the
most unimportant matters, and whenever he opened his mouth a secret
anxiety would always lurk beneath the apparent calm of his wife's
face. She tried to revenge herself by making fun of him; but she
could never do anything with his inconsiderate manners. Oskar behaved
whenever he had a chance as though he didn't belong to the family at
all. A somewhat hesitating contempt would play over his features for
that progenitor who was not quite worthy of him, and he would smile
meaningly for sympathy at the young baron. Only Else in those days was
really nice to her father. She was quite glad to hang on his arm on
the promenade and she would often throw her arms round his neck before
every one.
George had seen Else again in Florence a year before his mother's
death. She was then taking drawing lessons from an old grizzled German,
about whom the legend was circulated that he had once been celebrated.
He spread the rumour about himself that when he felt his genius on the
wane he had discarded his former well-known name and had given up his
calling, though what that was he never disclosed. If his own version
was to be believed, his downfall was due to a diabolical female who had
destroyed his most important picture in a fit of jealousy; and then
ended her life by jumping out of the window. This man who had struck
the seventeen-year-old George as a kind of fool and impostor was the
object of Else's first infatuation. She was then fourteen years old,
and had all the wildness and naïveté of childhood. When she stood in
front of the Titian Venus in the Uffizi Gallery her cheeks would flush
with curiosity, yearning and admiration, and vague dreams of future
experiences would play in her eyes. She often came with her mother
to the house which the Wergenthins had hired at Lungarno, and while
Frau Ehrenberg tried in her languid blasé way to amuse the ailing
baroness, Else would stand at the window with George, start precocious
conversations about the art of the Pre-Raphaelites, and smile at her
old childish games. Felician too would come in sometimes, slim and
handsome, cast his cold grey eyes over the objects and people in the
room, murmur a few polite words, sit down by his mother's bedside, and
tenderly stroke and kiss her hand. He would usually soon go away again,
though not without leaving behind, so far as Else was concerned, a very
palpable atmosphere of old-time aristocracy, cold-blooded fascination
and elegant contempt of death. She always had the impression that he
was going to a gaming-table where hundreds of thousands were at stake,
to a duel to the death or to a princess with red hair and a dagger on
her dressing-table. George remembered that he had been somewhat jealous
both of the erratic drawing-master and of his brother. The master was
suddenly dismissed for reasons which were never specified, and soon
afterwards Felician left for Vienna with Baron von Wergenthin. George
now played to the ladies on the piano more frequently than before, both
his own compositions and those of others, and Else would sing from
the score easy songs from Schubert and Schumann in her small, rather
shrill voice. She visited the galleries and churches with her mother
and George; when spring came there were excursion parties up the Hill
Road or to Fiesole, and George and Else exchanged smiling glances
which were eloquent of a deeper understanding than actually existed.
Their relations went on progressing in this somewhat disingenuous
manner, when their acquaintance was renewed and continued in Vienna.
Else seemed pleasurably thrilled all over again by the equable friendly
manner with which George approached her, notwithstanding the fact that
they had not seen each other for some months. She herself, on the other
hand, grew outwardly more self-possessed and mentally more unsettled
with each succeeding year. She had abandoned her artistic aspirations
fairly early, and in the course of time she came to regard herself as
destined to the most varied careers.
She often saw herself in the future as a society woman, an organiser
of battles of flowers, a patroness of great balls, taking part in
aristocratic charity performances; more frequently she would believe
herself called to sit enthroned as a great appreciator in an artistic
salon of painters, musicians and poets. She would then dream again
of a more adventurous life: a sensational marriage with an American
millionaire, the elopement with a violin virtuoso or a Spanish officer,
a diabolical ruination of all the men who came near her. Sometimes
she would think a quiet life in the country by the side of a worthy
landowner the most desirable consummation; and then she would imagine
herself sitting with prematurely grey hair at a simply-laid table in a
circle of numerous children while she stroked the wrinkles out of the
forehead of her grave husband. But George always felt that her love
of comfort, which was deeper than she guessed herself, would save her
from any rash step. She would often confide in George without ever
being quite honest with him; for the wish which she cherished most
frequently and seriously of all was to become his wife. George was well
aware of this, but that was not the only reason why the latest piece
of intelligence about her engagement with Heinrich Bermann struck him
as somewhat incredible--this Bermann was a gaunt clean-shaven man with
gloomy eyes and straight and rather too long hair, who had recently won
a reputation as a writer and whose demeanour and appearance reminded
George, though he could not tell why, of some fanatical Jewish teacher
from the provinces; there was nothing in him which could fascinate Else
particularly or even make a pleasurable appeal.
This impression was no doubt dispelled by subsequent conversation.
George had left the Ehrenbergs' in company with him one evening last
spring, and they had fallen into so thrilling a conversation about
musical matters that they had gone on chatting till three o'clock in
the morning on a seat in the Ringstrasse.
It is strange, thought George, what a lot of things are running through
my mind to-day which I had scarcely thought of at all since they
happened. And he felt as though he had on this autumn evening emerged
out of the grievous dreary obscurity of so many weeks into the light of
day at last.
He was now standing in front of the house in the Paulanergasse where
the Rosners lived. He looked up to the second story. A window was open,
white tulle curtains pinned together in the centre fluttered in the
light breeze.
The Rosners were at home. The housemaid showed George in. Anna was
sitting opposite the door, she held a coffee-cup in her hand and her
eyes were turned towards the newcomer. On her right her father was
reading a paper and smoking a pipe. He was clean-shaven except for a
pair of narrow grizzled whiskers on his cheeks. His thin hair of a
strange greenish-grey hue was parted at the temples in front and looked
like a badly-made wig. His eyes were watery and red-lidded.
The stoutish mother, around whose forehead the memory of fairer years
seemed as it were to hover, looked straight in front of her; her hands
were contemplatively intertwined and rested on the table.
Anna slowly put down her cup, nodded and smiled in silence. The two old
people began to get up when George came in.
"Please, don't trouble, please don't," said George.
Then there was a noise from the wall at the side of the room. Josef,
the son of the house, got up from the sofa on which he had been lying.
"Charmed to see you, Herr Baron," he said in a very deep voice, and
adjusted the turned-up collar of his yellow-check rather shabby lounge
jacket.
"And how have you been all this time, Herr Baron?" inquired the old
man. He remained standing a gaunt and somewhat bowed figure, and
refused to resume his seat until George had sat down. Josef pushed a
chair between his father and sister, Anna held out her hand to the
visitor.
"We haven't seen one another for a long time," she said, and drank some
of her coffee.
"You've been going through a sad time," remarked Frau Rosner
sympathetically.
"Yes," added Herr Rosner. "We were extremely sorry to read of your
great loss--and so far as we knew your father always enjoyed the best
of health."
He spoke very slowly all the time, as if he had still something more
to say, stroking his head several times with his left hand, and nodded
while he listened to the answer.
"Yes, it came very unexpectedly," said George gently, and looked at the
faded dark-red carpet at his feet.
"A sudden death then, so to speak," remarked Herr Rosner and there was
a general silence.
George took a cigarette out of his case and offered one to Josef.
"Much obliged," said Josef as he took the cigarette and bowed while he
clicked his heels together without any apparent reason; while he was
giving the Baron a light he thought the latter was looking at him,
and said apologetically, with an even deeper voice than usual, "Office
jacket."
"Office jacket straight from the office," said Anna simply without
looking at her brother.
"The lady fancies she has the ironic gift," answered Josef merrily, but
his manifest restraint indicated that under other conditions he would
have expressed himself less agreeably.
"Sympathy was universally felt," old Rosner began again. "I read an
obituary in the _Neuen Freie Presse_ on your good father by Herr
Hoffrat Kerner, if I remember rightly; it was highly laudatory. Science
too has suffered a sad loss."
George nodded in embarrassment, and looked at his hands.
Anna began to speak about her past summer-outing. "It was awfully
pretty in Weissenfeld," she said. "The forest was just behind our house
with good level roads, wasn't it, papa? One could walk there for hours
and hours without meeting a soul."
"And did you have a piano out there?" asked George.
"Oh yes."
"An awful affair," observed Herr Rosner, "a thing fit to wake up the
stones and drive men mad."
"It wasn't so bad," said Anna.
"Good enough for the little Graubinger girl," added Frau Rosner.
"The little Graubinger girl, you see, is the daughter of the local
shopkeeper," explained Anna: "and I taught her the elements of
pianoforte, a pretty little girl with long blonde pig-tails."
"Just a favour to the shopkeeper," said Frau Rosner.
"Quite so, but I should like to remind you," supplemented Anna, "that
apart from that I gave real lessons, I mean paid-for ones."
"What, also in Weissenfeld?" asked George.
"Children on a holiday. Anyway, it's a pity, Herr Baron, that you never
paid us a visit in the country. I am sure you would have liked it."
George then remembered for the first time that he had promised Anna
that he would try to pay her a visit some time in the summer on a
cycling tour.
"I am sure the Baron would not have found a place like that really to
his liking," began Herr Rosner.
"Why not?" asked George.
"They don't cater there for the requirements of a spoilt Viennese."
"Oh, I'm not spoilt," said George.
"Weren't you at Auhof either?" Anna turned to George.
"Oh no," he answered quickly. "No, I wasn't there," he added less
sharply. "I was invited though.... Frau Ehrenberg was so kind as to ...
I had various invitations for the summer. But I preferred to stay in
Vienna by myself."
"I am really sorry," said Anna, "not to see anything more of Else. You
know of course that we went to the same boarding-school. Of course it's
a long time ago. I really liked her. A pity that one gets so out of
touch as time goes on."
"How is that?" asked George.
"Well, I suppose the reason is that I'm not particularly keen on the
whole set."
"Nor am I," said Josef, who was blowing rings into the air.... "I
haven't been there for years. Putting it quite frankly ... I've no
idea, Baron, of your views on this question ... I'm not very gone on
Israelites."
Herr Rosner looked up at his son. "My dear Josef, the Baron visits the
house and it will strike him as rather strange...."
"I?" said George courteously. "I'm not at all on intimate terms with
the Ehrenberg family, however much I enjoy talking to the two ladies."
And then he added interrogatively, "But didn't you give singing lessons
to Else last year, Fräulein Anna?"
"Yes. Or rather ... I just accompanied her...."
"I suppose you'll do so again this year?"
"I don't know. She hasn't shown any signs of life, so far."
"Perhaps she's giving it all up."
"You think so? It would be almost better if she did," replied Anna
softly, "for as a matter of fact, it was more like squeaking than
singing. But anyway," and she threw George a look which, as it were,
welcomed him afresh, "the songs you sent me are very nice. Shall I sing
them to you?"
"You've had a look at the things already? That is nice of you."
Anna had got up. She put both her hands on her temples and stroked her
wavy hair gently, as though making it tidy. It was done fairly high,
so that her figure seemed even taller than it actually was. A narrow
golden watch-chain was twined twice round her bare neck, fell down
over her bosom, and vanished in her grey leather belt. With an almost
imperceptible nod of her head she asked George to accompany her.