Leo held George's hand in a firm grip. "I take you for a very shrewd
man and also for a very good sort. Do you believe me?"
George was silent.
"I should like to know," continued Leo, "whether you believe me,
George. I am keen on knowing." His voice assumed a tone of genuine
sincerity.
"Why, of course I believe you," replied George, still, however, with a
certain amount of impatience.
"I am glad," said Leo, "for I really feel a sympathy between us,
George." He looked straight into his eyes, then shook hands once more
with him and Heinrich and turned to go.
But George suddenly had the feeling that this young man who with his
fluttering cloak and his head slightly bent forward was striding
down-hill in the middle of the broad street was not waiting to any
"home," but to some foreign sphere somewhere, where no one could
follow him. He found this feeling all the more incomprehensible since
he had not only spent many hours recently with Leo in conversation at
the café, but had also received all possible information from Anna
about him, his family and his position in life. He knew that that
summer at the seaside, which now lay six years back, as did Anna's
youthful infatuation, had marked the last summer which the Golowski
family had enjoyed free from trouble, and that the business of the old
man had been completely ruined in the subsequent winter. It had been
extraordinary, according to Anna's account, how all the members of the
family had adapted themselves to the altered conditions, as though they
had been long prepared for this revolution. The family removed from
their comfortable house in the Rathaus quarter to a dismal street in
the neighbourhood of the Augarten. Herr Golowski undertook all kinds of
commission business while Frau Golowski did needlework for sale.
Therese gave lessons in French and English and at first continued to
attend the dramatic school. It was a young violin player belonging
to an impoverished noble Russian family who awakened her interest
in political questions. She soon abandoned her art, for which, as
a matter of fact, she had always shown more inclination than real
talent, and in a short time she was in the full swing of the Social
Democratic movement as a speaker and agitator. Leo, without agreeing
with her views, enjoyed her fresh and audacious character. He often
attended meetings with her, but as he was not keen on being impressed
by magniloquence, whether it took the form of promises which were never
fulfilled or of threats which disappeared into thin air, he found it
good fun to point out to her, on the way home, with an irresistible
acuteness, the inconsistencies in her own speeches and those of the
members of her party. But he always made a particular point of trying
to convince her that she would never have been able to forget so
completely her great mission for days and weeks on end, if her pity
for the poor and the suffering were really as deep an emotion as she
imagined.
Leo's own life, moreover, had no definite object. He attended technical
science lectures, gave piano lessons, sometimes went so far as to plan
out a musical career, and practised five or six hours a day for weeks
on end. But it was still impossible to forecast what he would finally
decide on. Inasmuch it was his way to wait almost unconsciously for a
miracle to save him from anything disagreeable, he had put off his year
of service till he was face to face with the final time-limit, and now
in his twenty-fifth year he was serving for the first time.
Their parents allowed Leo and Therese to go their own way, and in spite
of their manifold differences of opinion there seemed to be no serious
discord in the Golowski family. The mother usually sat at home, sewed,
knitted and crocheted, while the father went about his business with
increasing apathy, and liked best of all to watch the chess-players in
the café, a pleasure which enabled him to forget the ruin of his life.
Since the collapse of his business he seemed unable to shake off a
certain feeling of embarrassment towards his children, so that he was
almost proud when Therese would give him now and again an article which
she had written to read, or when Leo was good enough to play a game on
Sundays with him on the board he loved so well.
It always seemed to George as though his own sympathy for Leo were
fundamentally connected with Anna's long-past fancy for him. He felt,
and not for the first time, curiously attracted to a man to whom a soul
which now belonged to him, had flown in years gone by.
George and Heinrich had mounted their cycles, and were riding along a
narrow road through the thick forest that loomed darker and darker. A
little later, as the forest retreated behind them again on both sides,
they had the setting sun at their back, while the long shadows of their
bodies kept running along in front of their cycles. The slope of the
road became more and more pronounced and soon led them between low
houses which were overhung with reddish foliage. A very old man sat in
a seat in front of the door, a pale child looked out of an open window.
Otherwise not a single human being was to be seen.
"Like an enchanted village," said George.
Heinrich nodded. He knew the place. He had been here with his love on
a wonderful summer day this year. He thought of it and burning longing
throbbed through his heart. And he remembered the last hours that he
had spent with her in Vienna in his cool room with the drawn-down
blinds, through whose interstices the hot August morning had glittered
in: he remembered their last walk through the Sunday quiet of the cool
stone streets and through the old empty courtyards--and the complete
absence of any idea that all this was for the last time. For it was
only the next day that the letter had come, the ghastly letter in which
she had written that she had wished to spare him the pain of farewell,
and that when he read these words, she would already be quite a long
way over the frontier on her journey to the new foreign town.
The road became more animated. Charming villas appeared encircled with
cosy little gardens, wooded hills sloped gently upwards behind the
houses. They saw once again the expanse of the valley as the waning day
rested over meadows and fields. The lamps had been lit in a great empty
restaurant garden. A hasty darkness seemed to be stealing down from
every quarter simultaneously. They were now at the cross-roads. George
and Heinrich got off and lit cigarettes.
"Right or left?" asked Heinrich.
George looked at his watch. "Six,... and I've got to be in town by
eight."
"So I suppose we can't dine together?" said Heinrich.
"I am afraid not."
"It's a pity. Well, we'll take the short cut then through Sievering."
They lit their lamps and pushed their cycles through the forest in a
long serpentine. One tree after another in succession sprang out of the
darkness into the radiance of the globes of light and retreated again
into the night. The wind soughed through the foliage with increased
force and the leaves rustled underneath. Heinrich felt a quite gentle
fear, such as frequently came over him when it was dark in the open
country. He felt, as it were, disillusioned at the thought of having to
spend the evening alone. He was in a bad temper with George, and was
irritated into the bargain at the latter's reserve towards himself.
He resolved also, and not for the first time, not to discuss his own
personal affairs with George any more. It was better so. He did not
need to confide in anybody or obtain anybody's sympathy. He had always
felt at his best when he had gone his own way alone. He had found
that out often enough. Why then reveal his soul to another? He needed
acquaintances to go walks and excursions with, and to discuss all the
manifold problems of life and art in cold shrewd fashion--he needed
women for a fleeting embrace; but he needed no friend and no mistress.
In that way his life would pass with greater dignity and serenity. He
revelled in these resolutions, and felt a growing consciousness of
toughness and superiority. The darkness of the forest lost its terror,
and he walked through the gently rustling night as though through a
kindred element.
The height was soon reached. The dark sky lay starless over the grey
road and the haze-breathing fields that stretched on both sides towards
the deceptive distance of the wooded hills. A light was shining from a
toll-house quite near them. They mounted their cycles again and rode
back as quickly as the darkness permitted. George wished to be soon
at the journey's end. It struck him as strangely unreal that he was
to see again in an hour and a half that quiet room which no one else
knew of besides Anna and himself; that dark room with the oil-prints on
the wall, the blue velvet sofa, the cottage piano, on which stood the
photographs of unknown people and a bust of Schiller in white plaster;
with its high narrow windows, opposite which the old dark grey church
towered aloft.
Lamps were burning all the way along. The roads again became more open
and they were given a last view of the heights. Then they went at top
speed, first between well-kept villas, finally through a populous noisy
main road until they got deeper into the town. They got off at the
Votive Church.
"Good-bye," said George, "and I hope to see you again in the café
to-morrow."
"I don't know ..." replied Heinrich, and as George looked at him
questioningly he added: "It is possible that I shall go away."
"I say, that is a sudden decision."
"Yes, one gets caught sometimes by...."
"Lovesickness," filled in George with a smile.
"Or fear," said Heinrich with a short laugh.
"You certainly have no cause for that," said George.
"Do you know for certain?" asked Heinrich.
"You told us so yourself."
"What!"
"That you have news every day."
"Yes, that is quite true, every day. I get tender ardent letters.
Every day by the same post. But what does that prove? Why, I write
letters which are yet more ardent and even more tender and yet...."
"Yes," said George, who understood him. And he hazarded the question:
"Why don't you stay with her?"
Heinrich shrugged his shoulders. "Tell me yourself, George, wouldn't it
strike you as slightly humorous for a man to burn his boats on account
of a love affair like that and trot about the world with a little
actress...."
"Personally, I should regret it very much ... but humorous ... where
does the humour come in?"
"No, I have no desire to do it," said Heinrich in a hard voice.
"But if you ... but if you were to take it very seriously ... if you
asked her point blank ... mightn't the young lady perhaps give up her
career?"
"Possibly, but I am not going to ask her, I don't want to ask her. No,
better pain than responsibility."
"Would it be such a great responsibility?" asked George. "What I mean
is ... is the girl's talent so pronounced, is she really so keen on her
art, that it would be really a sacrifice for her to give the thing up."
"Has she got talent?" said Heinrich. "Why, I don't know myself. Why, I
even think she is the one creature in the world about whose talent I
would not trust myself to give an opinion. Every time I have seen her
on the stage her voice has rung in my ears like the voice of an unknown
person, and as though, too, it came from a greater distance than all
the other voices. It is really quite remarkable.... But you are bound
to have seen her act, George. What's your impression? Tell me quite
frankly."
"Well, quite frankly ... I don't remember her properly. You'll excuse
me, I didn't know then, you see.... When you talk of her I always see
in my mind's eye a head of reddish-blonde hair that falls a little over
the forehead--and very big black roving eyes with a small pale face."
"Yes, roving eyes," repeated Heinrich, bit his lips and was silent for
a while. "Good-bye," he said suddenly.
"You'll be sure to write to me?" asked George.
"Yes, of course. Any way I am bound to be coming back again," he added,
and smiled stiffly.
"_Bon voyage_," said George, and shook hands with him with unusual
affection. This did Heinrich good. This warm pressure of the hand
not only made him suddenly certain that George did not think him
ridiculous, but also, strangely enough, that his distant mistress was
faithful to him and that he himself was a man who could take more
liberties with life than many others.
George looked after him as he hurried off on his cycle. He felt again
as he had felt a few hours before, on Leo's departure, that some one
was vanishing into an unknown land; and he realised at this moment that
in spite of all the sympathy he felt for both of them he would never
attain with either that unrestrained sense of intimacy which had united
him last year with Guido Schönstein and previously with poor Labinski.
He reflected whether perhaps the fundamental reason for this was not
perhaps the difference of race between him and them, and he asked
himself whether leaving out of account the conversation between the
two of them, he would of his own initiative have realised so clearly
this feeling of aloofness. He doubted it. Did he not as a matter of
fact feel himself nearer, yes even more akin, to these two and to many
others of their race than to many men who came from the same stock as
his own? Why, did he not feel quite distinctly that deep down somewhere
there were many stronger threads of sympathy running between him and
those two men, than between him and Guido or perhaps even his own
brother? But if that was so, would he not have been bound to have taken
some opportunity this afternoon to have said as much to those two men?
to have appealed to them? "Just trust me, don't shut me out. Just try
to treat me as a friend...." And as he asked himself why he had not
done it, and why he had scarcely taken any part in their conversation,
he realised with astonishment that during the whole time he had not
been able to shake off a kind of guilty consciousness of having not
been free during his whole life from a certain hostility towards the
foreigners, as Leo called them himself, a kind of wanton hostility
which was certainly not justified by his own personal experience, and
had thus contributed his own share to that distrust and defiance with
which so many persons, whom he himself might have been glad to take an
opportunity to approach, had shut themselves off from him. This thought
roused an increasing _malaise_ within him which he could not properly
analyse, and which was simply the dull realisation that clean relations
could not flourish even between clean men in an atmosphere of folly,
injustice and disingenuousness.
He rode homewards faster and faster, as though that would make him
escape this feeling of depression. Arrived home, he changed quickly, so
as not to keep Anna waiting too long. He longed for her as he had never
done before. He felt as though he had come home from a far journey to
the one being who wholly belonged to him.