"I don't know," she replied, and looked at him in astonishment.
"Do you feel quite all right now?"
"Absolutely," she answered.
"And is to-day the first time you have had anything like it?" asked
George, somewhat hesitatingly.
She answered: "I had something like it yesterday evening at home. It
was a kind of faintness. It lasted some time longer, while we were
sitting at supper, but nobody noticed it."
"But why did you tell me nothing about it?"
She shrugged her shoulders lightly.
"I say, Anna dear," he said, and smiled guiltily, "I would like to
have a word with you at any rate. Give me a signal when you want to
go away. I will clear out a few minutes before you, and will wait by
the Schwarzenbergplatz till you come along in a fly. I'll get in and we
will go for a little drive. Does that suit you?"
She nodded.
He said: "Good-bye, darling," and went into the smoking-room.
Old Ehrenberg, Nürnberger and Wilt had sat down at a green card-table
to play tarok. Old Eissler and his son were sitting opposite each
other in two enormous green leather arm-chairs and were utilising the
opportunity to have a good chat with one another after all this time.
George took a cigarette out of a box, lighted it and looked at the
pictures on the wall with particular interest. He saw Willy's name
written in pale red letters down below in the corner on the green field
in a water-colour painted in the grotesque style, that represented
a hurdle race ridden by gentlemen in red hunting-coats. He turned
involuntarily to the young man and said: "I never knew that one before."
"It is fairly new," remarked Willy lightly.
"Smart picture, eh?" said old Eissler.
"Oh, something more than that," replied George.
"Yes, I hope to be able to look forward to doing something better than
that," said Willy.
"He is going to Africa, lion hunting," explained old Eissler, "with
Prince Wangenheim. Felician is also supposed to be of the party, but he
has not yet decided."
"Why not?" asked Willy.
"He wants to pass his diplomatic examination in the spring."
"But that could be put off," said Willy; "lions are dying out, but
unfortunately one can't say the same thing of professors."
"Book me for a picture, Willy," called out Ehrenberg from the
card-table.
"You play the Mæcenas later on, father Ehrenberg?" said Willy. "As I've
said, I'll take you two on."[1]
"Raise you," replied Ehrenberg, and continued: "If I can order anything
for myself, Willy, please paint me a desert landscape showing Prince
Wangenheim being gobbled up by the lions ... but as realistic as
possible."
"You are making a mistake about the person, Herr Ehrenberg," said
Willy; "the celebrated Anti-Semite you are referring to is the cousin
of my Wangenheim."
"For all I care," replied Ehrenberg, "the lions, too, may be making a
mistake. Every Anti-Semite, you know, isn't bound to be celebrated."
"You will ruin the party if you don't look out," admonished Nürnberger.
"You should have bought an estate and settled in Palestine," said
Hofrat Wilt.
"God save me from that," replied Ehrenberg.
"Well, since he has done that in everything up to the present," said
Nürnberger, and put down his hand.
"It seems to me, Nürnberger, that you are reproaching me again for not
goin' about peddlin' ole clo'."
"Then you would certainly have the right to complain of Anti-Semitism,"
said Nürnberger, "for who feels anything of it in Austria except the
peddlars ... only they, one might almost say."
"And some people with a sense of self-respect," retorted Ehrenberg.
"Twenty-seven ... thirty-one ... thirty-eight.... Well, who's won the
game?"
Willy had gone back into the drawing-room again. George sat smoking
on the arm of an easy-chair. He suddenly noticed old Eissler's look
directed towards him in a strange benevolent manner and felt himself
reminded of something without knowing what.
"I had a few words the other day," said the old gentleman, "with your
brother Felician at Schönstein's; it is striking how you resemble your
poor father, especially to one like me, who knew your father as a young
man."
It flashed across George at once what old Eissler's look reminded him
of. Old Doctor Stauber's eyes had rested on him at Rosner's with the
same fatherly expression.
"These old Jews!" he thought sarcastically, but in a remote corner
of his soul he felt somewhat moved. It came into his mind that his
father had often gone for morning walks in the Prater with Eissler, for
whose knowledge of art he had had a great respect. Old Eissler went on
speaking.
"You, George, take after your mother more, I think."
"Many say so. It is very hard to judge, oneself."
"They say your mother had such a beautiful voice."
"Yes, in her early youth. I myself never really heard her sing. Of
course she tried now and again. Two or three years before her death a
doctor in Meran even advised her to practise singing. The idea was that
it should be a good exercise for her lungs, but unfortunately it wasn't
much of a success."
Old Eissler nodded and looked in front of him. "I suppose you probably
won't be able to remember that my poor wife was in Meran at the same
time as your late mother?"
George racked his memory. It had escaped him.
"I once travelled in the same compartment as your father," said old
Eissler, "at night time. We were both unable to sleep. He told me a
great deal about you two--you and Felician I mean."
"Really...."
"For instance, that when you were a boy you had played one of your own
compositions to some Italian _virtuoso_, and that he had foretold a
great future for you."
"Great future.... Great heavens, but it wasn't a virtuoso, Herr
Eissler. It was a clergyman, from whom, as a matter of fact, I learned
to play the organ."
Eissler continued: "And in the evening, when your mother had gone to
bed, you would often improvise for hours on end in the room."
George nodded and sighed quietly. It seemed as though he had had much
more talent at that time. "Work!" he thought ardently, "work!..."
He looked up again. "Yes," he said humorously, "that is always the
trouble, infant prodigies so seldom come to anything."
"I hear you want to be a conductor, Baron."
"Yes," replied George resolutely, "I am going to Germany next autumn.
Perhaps as an accompanist first in the municipal theatre of some little
town, just as it comes along."
"But you would not have any objection to a Court theatre?"
"Of course not. What makes you say that, Herr Eissler? if it is not a
rude question."
"I know quite well," said Eissler with a smile, as he dropped his
monocle, "that you have not sought out my help, but I can quite
appreciate on the other hand that you would not mind perhaps being able
to get on without the intermediaryship of agents and others of that
kind.... I don't mean because of the commissions."
George remained cold. "When one has once decided to take up a
theatrical career one knows at the same time all that one's bargaining
for."
"Do you know Count Malnitz by any chance?" inquired Eissler, quite
unconcerned by George's air of worldly wisdom.
"Malnitz! Do you mean Count Eberhard Malnitz, who had a suite performed
a few years ago?"
"Yes, I mean him."
"I don't know him personally, and as for the suite...."
With a wave of the hand Eissler dismissed the composer Malnitz. "He has
been manager at Detmold since the beginning of this season," he then
said. "That is why I asked you if you knew him. He is a great friend
of mine of long standing. He used to live in Vienna. For the last ten
or twelve years we have been meeting every year in Carlsbad or Ischl.
This year we want to make a little Mediterranean trip at Easter. Will
you allow me, my dear Baron, to take an opportunity of mentioning
your name to him, and telling him something about your plans to be a
conductor?"
George hesitated to answer, and smiled politely.
"Oh please don't regard my suggestion as officious, my dear Baron. If
you don't wish it, of course I will sit tight."
"You misunderstand my silence," replied George amiably, but not without
_hauteur_; "but I really don't know...."
"I think a little Court theatre like that," continued Eissler, "is
just the right place for you for the beginning. The fact of your
belonging to the nobility won't hurt you at all, not even with my
friend Malnitz, however much he likes to play the democrat, or even at
times the anarchist ... with the exception of bombs, of course; but he
is a charming man and really awfully musical.... Even though he isn't
exactly a composer."
"Well," replied George, somewhat embarrassed, "if you would have the
kindness to speak to him.... I can't afford to let any chance slip. At
any rate, I thank you very much."
"Not at all, I don't guarantee success, it is just a chance, like any
other."
Frau Oberberger and Sissy came in, escorted by Demeter.
"What interesting conversation are we interrupting?" said Frau
Oberberger. "The experienced platonic lover and the inexperienced rake?
One should really have been there."
"Don't upset yourself, Katerina," said Eissler, and his voice had again
its deep vibrating ring. "One sometimes talks about other things, such
as the future of the human race."
Sissy put a cigarette between her lips, allowed George to give her a
light and sat down in the corner of the green leather sofa. "You are
not bothering about me at all to-day," she began with that English
accent of hers which George liked so well. "As though I positively
didn't exist. Yes, that's what it is. I am really a more constant
nature than you are, am I not?"
"You constant, Sissy?"... He pushed an arm-chair quite near to her.
They spoke of the past summer and the one that was coming.
"Last year," said Sissy, "you gave me your word you would come wherever
I was, and you didn't do it. This year you must keep your word."
"Are you going into the Isle of Wight again?"
"No, I am going into the mountains this time, to the Tyrol or the
Salzkammergut. I will let you know soon. Will you come?"
"But you are bound to have a large following anywhere."
"I won't trouble about any one except you, George."
"Even supposing Willy Eissler happens to stay in your vicinity?"
"Oh," she said, with a wanton smile and put out her cigarette by
pressing it violently upon the glass ash-tray.
They went on talking. It was just like one of those conversations
they had had so often during the last few years. It began lightly and
flippantly, and eventually finished in a blaze of tender lies which
were true for just one moment. George was once again fascinated by
Sissy.
"I would really prefer to go travelling with you," he whispered quite
near her.
She just nodded. Her left arm rested on the broad back of the ottoman.
"If one could only do as one wanted," she said, with a look that dreamt
of a hundred men.
He bent down over her trembling arm, went on speaking and became
intoxicated with his own words. "Somewhere where nobody knows us, where
nobody bothers about any one, that is where I should like to be with
you, Sissy, many days and nights."
Sissy shuddered. The word "nights" made her shudder with fear.
Anna appeared in the doorway, signalled to George with a look and then
disappeared again. He felt an inward sense of reluctance, and yet he
felt that this was just the psychological moment to leave Sissy.
In the doorway of the drawing-room he met Heinrich, who accosted him.
"If you are going you might tell me, I should like to speak to you."
"Delighted! But I must ... promised to see Fräulein Rosner home, you
see. I'll come straight to the café, so till then...."
A few minutes later he was standing on the Schwarzenberg bridge. The
sky was full of stars, the streets stretched out wide and silent.
George turned up his coat collar, although it was no longer cold, and
walked up and down. Will anything come of the Detmold business? he
thought. Oh well, if it is not in Detmold it will be in some town or
other. At any rate I mean real business now, and a great deal, a great
deal will then lie behind me.
He tried to consider the matter quietly. How will it all turn out?
We are now at the end of December. We must go away in March--at the
latest. We shall be taken for a honeymoon couple. I shall go walking
with her arm-in-arm in Rome and Posilippo, in Venice.... There are
women who grow very ugly in that condition ... but not she, no,
not she.... There was always a certain touch of the mother in her
appearance.... She must stay the summer in some quiet neighbourhood
where no one knows her ... in the Thuringian Forest perhaps, or by
the Rhine.... How strangely she said that to-day. The house in which
the child will come into the world is already in existence. Yes....
Somewhere in the distance, or perhaps quite near here, that house is
standing.... And people are living there whom we have never seen. How
strange.... When will it come into the world? At the end of the summer,
about the beginning of September. By that time, too, I am bound to
have gone away. How shall I manage it?... And a year from to-day the
little creature will be already four months old. It will grow up ...
become big. There will be a young man there one fine day, my son, or a
young girl; a beautiful little girl of seven, my daughter.... I shall
be forty-four then.... When I am sixty-four I can be a grandfather ...
perhaps a director of an opera or two and a celebrated composer in
spite of Else's prophecies; but one has got to work for that, that is
quite true. More than I have done so far. Else is right, I let myself
go too much, I must be different ... I shall too. I feel a change
taking place within me. Yes, something new is taking place within me
also.
A fly came out of the Heugasse, some one bent out of the window. George
recognised Anna's face under the white shawl. He was very glad, got
in and kissed her hand. They enjoyed their talk, joked a little about
the party from which she had just come and found it really ridiculous
to spend an evening in so inept a fashion. He held her hands in his
and was affected by her presence. He got out in front of her house and
rung. He then came to the open door of the carriage and they arranged
an appointment for the following day.
"I think we have got a lot to talk about," said Anna.
He simply nodded. The door of the house was open. She got out of the
fly, gave George a long look full of emotion and disappeared into the
hall.
My love! thought George, with a feeling of happiness and pride. Life
lay before him like something serious and mysterious, full of gifts and
full of miracles.
When he went into the café, Heinrich was sitting in a window niche.
Next to him was a pale young beardless man whom George had casually
spoken to several times, in a dinner-jacket with a velvet collar but
with a shirt-front of doubtful cleanliness.
When George came in the young man looked up with ardent eyes from a
paper that he was holding in his restless and not very well-kept hands.
"Am I disturbing you?" said George.
"Oh, not a bit of it," replied the young man, with a crazy laugh, "the
larger the audience the better."
"Herr Winternitz," explained Heinrich, as he shook hands with George,
"was just reading me a series of his poems, but we will break off now."
Slightly touched by the disappointed expression of the young man George
assured him that he would be delighted to hear the poems if he might be
permitted to do so.
"It won't last much longer," explained Winternitz gratefully. "It is
only a pity that you missed the beginning. I could----"
"What! Does it all hang together?" said Heinrich in astonishment.
"What, didn't you notice?" exclaimed Winternitz, and laughed again
crazily.
"I see," said Heinrich. "So it's always the same woman character whom
your poems deal with. I thought it was always a different one."
"Of course it is always the same one, but her special characteristic is
that she always seems to be a fresh person."
Herr Winternitz read softly but insistently, as though inwardly
consumed. It appeared from his series that he had been loved as never
a man had been loved before, but also deceived as never a man had been
deceived before, a circumstance which was to be attributed to certain
metaphysical causes and not at all to any deficiencies in his own
personality. He showed himself, however, in his last poem completely
freed of his passion, and declared that he was now ready to enjoy all
the pleasures, which the world could offer him. This poem had four
stanzas; the last verse of every stanza began with a "hei," and it
concluded with the exclamation: "Hei, so career I through the world."
George could not help recognising that the recitation had to a certain
extent impressed him, and when Winternitz put the book down and looked
around him with dilated pupils, George nodded appreciatively and said:
"Very beautiful!"
Winternitz looked expectantly at Heinrich, who was silent for a few
seconds and finally remarked: "It is fairly interesting on the whole
... but why do you say 'hei,' if it isn't a rude question? Positively,
no one will believe it."
"What do you mean?" exclaimed Winternitz.
"Rather ask your own conscience, if you honestly mean that 'hei.' I
believe all the rest which you read to me, I mean I believe it in
the highest sense of the term, although not a single word is true. I
believe you when you tell me that you have been seducing a girl of
fifteen, that you have been behaving like a hardened Don Juan, that you
have been corrupting the poor creature in the most dreadful way. That
she deceived you with ... what was it now?..."
"A clown, of course," exclaimed Winternitz, with a mad laugh.
"That a clown was the man she deceived you with, that on account of
that creature you had adventures which grew more and more sinister,
that you wanted to kill your mistress and yourself as well, and that
finally you get fed up with the whole business and go travelling about
the world, or even careering as far as Australia for all I care: yes,
I can believe all that, but that you are the kind of man to cry out
'hei,' that, my dear Winternitz, is a rank swindle."
Winternitz defended himself. He swore that this 'hei' had come from
his most inward being, or at any rate from a certain element in his
most inward being. When Heinrich made further objections, he gradually
became more and more reserved, and finally declared that some time or
other he hoped to win his way to that inward freedom where he would be
allowed to cry out "hei."
"That time will never come," replied Heinrich positively. "You may
perhaps get some time to the epic or the dramatic 'hei,' but the
lyrical or subjective 'hei' will remain, my dear Winternitz, a closed
book to people like you and me for all eternity."
Winternitz promised to alter the last poem, to make a point of
continuing his development and to work at his inward purification.
He stood up, a proceeding which caused his starched shirt front to
crack and a stud to break, held out his somewhat clammy hand to
Heinrich and George, and went off to the literary men's table at the
back.
George expressed discreet appreciation of the poems which he had heard.
"I like him the best of the whole set, at any rate personally," said
Heinrich. "He at least has the good sense to maintain with me a certain
mutual reserve in really intimate matters. Yes, you need not look at me
again as though you were catching me in an attack of megalomania, but I
can assure you, George, I have had nearly enough of the sort of people"
(he swept the further table with a cursory glance) "who have always got
an 'ä soi' on their lips."
"What is always on their lips?"
Heinrich smiled. "You must know the story of the Polish Jew who was
sitting in a railway compartment with an unknown man and behaved very
conventionally--until he realised by some remark of the other's that
he was a Jew too, and on the strength of it immediately proceeded to
stretch out his legs on the seat opposite with an 'ä soi' of relief."
"Quite good," said George.
"It is more than that," explained Heinrich sternly, "it is deep; like
so many other Jewish stories it gives a bird's-eye view into the
tragi-comedy of present-day Judaism. It expresses the eternal truth
that no Jew has any real respect for his fellow Jew, never. As little
as prisoners in a hostile country have any real respect for each other,
particularly when they are hopeless. Envy, hate, yes frequently,
admiration, even love; all that there can be between them, but never
respect, for the play of all their emotional life takes place in an
atmosphere of familiarity, so to speak, in which respect cannot help
being stifled."
"Do you know what I think?" remarked George. "That you are a more
bitter Anti-Semite than most of the Christians I know."
"Do you think so?" he laughed; "but not a real one. Only the man who
is really angry at the bottom of his heart at the Jews' good qualities
and does everything he can to bring about the further development of
their bad ones is a real Anti-Semite. But you are right up to a certain
point, but I must finish by confessing that I am also an Anti-Aryan.
Every race as such is naturally repulsive, only the individual manages
at times to reconcile himself to the repulsive elements in his race by
reason of his own personal qualities. But I will not deny that I am
particularly sensitive to the faults of Jews. Probably the only reason
is that I, like all others--we Jews, I mean--have been systematically
educated up to this sensitiveness. We have been egged on from our
youth to look upon Jewish peculiarities as particularly grotesque
or repulsive, though we have not been so with regard to the equally
grotesque and repulsive peculiarities of other people. I will not
disguise it--if a Jew shows bad form in my presence, or behaves in a
ridiculous manner, I have often so painful a sensation that I should
like to sink into the earth. It is like a kind of shame that perhaps is
akin to the shame of a brother who sees his sister undressing. Perhaps
the whole thing is egoism too. One gets embittered at being always made
responsible for other people's faults, and always being made to pay the
penalty for every crime, for every lapse from good taste, for every
indiscretion for which every Jew is responsible throughout the whole
world. That of course easily makes one unjust, but those are touches
of nervousness and sensitiveness, nothing more. Then one pulls oneself
together again. That cannot be called Anti-Semitism. But there are Jews
whom I really hate, hate as Jews. Those are the people who act before
others, and often before themselves, as though they did not belong to
the rest at all. The men who try to offer themselves to their enemies
and despisers in the most cowardly and cringing fashion, and think
that in that way they can escape from the eternal curse whose burden
is upon them, or from what they feel is equivalent to a curse. There
are of course always Jews like that who go about with the consciousness
of their extreme personal meanness, and consequently, consciously or
unconsciously, would like to make their race responsible. Of course
that does not help them the least bit. What has ever helped the Jews?
the good ones and the bad ones. I mean, of course," he hastily added,
"those who need something in the way of material or moral help." And
then he broke off in a deliberately flippant tone: "Yes, my dear
George, the situation is somewhat complicated and it is quite natural
that every one who is not directly concerned with the question should
not be able to understand it properly."
"No, you really should not...."
Heinrich interrupted him quickly. "Yes, I should, my dear George, that
is just how it is. You don't understand us, you see. Many perhaps get
an inkling, but understand? no. At any rate we understand you much
better than you do us. Although you shake your head! Do we not deserve
to? We have found it more necessary, you see, to learn to understand
you than you did to learn to understand us. This gift of understanding
was forced to develop itself in the course of time ... according to
the laws of the struggle for existence if you like. Just consider, if
one is going to find one's way about in a foreign country, or, as I
said before, in an enemy's country, to be ready for all the dangers and
ambushes which lurk there, it is obvious that the primary essential
is to get to know one's enemies as well as possible--both their good
qualities and their bad."
"So you live among enemies? Among foreigners! You would not admit as
much to Leo Golowski. I don't agree with him either, not a bit of it.
But how strangely inconsistent you are when you----"
Heinrich interrupted him, genuinely pained. "I have already told
you the problem is far too complicated to be really solved. To find
a subjective solution is almost impossible. A verbal solution even
more so. Why, at times one might believe that things are not so
bad. Sometimes one really is at home in spite of everything, feels
one is as much at home here--yes, even more at home--than any of
your so-called natives can ever feel. It is quite clear that the
feeling of strangeness is to some extent cured by the consciousness
of understanding. Why, it becomes, as it were, steeped in pride,
condescension, tenderness; becomes dissolved--sometimes, of course, in
sentimentalism, which is again a bad business."
He sat there with deep furrows in his forehead and looked in front of
him.
"Does he really understand me better?" thought George, "than I do him,
or is it simply another piece of megalomania...?"
Heinrich suddenly started as though emerging from a dream. He looked
at his watch. "Half-past two! And my train goes at eight to-morrow."
"What, you are going away?"
"Yes, that is what I wanted to speak to you about so much. I shall have
to say goodbye to you for a goodish time, I'm sorry to say. I am going
to Prague. I am taking my father away, out of the asylum home to our
own house."
"Is he better, then?"
"No, but he is in that stage when he is not dangerous to those near
him.... Yes, that came quite quickly too."
"And about when do you think you will be back?"
Heinrich shook his shoulders. "I can't tell to-day, but however the
thing develops, I certainly cannot leave my mother and sisters alone
now."
George felt a genuine regret at being deprived of Heinrich's society in
the near future. "It's possible that you won't find me in Vienna again
when you come back. I shall probably go away this spring, you see." And
he almost felt a desire to take Heinrich into his confidence.
"I suppose you are travelling south?" asked Heinrich.
"Yes, I think so. To enjoy my freedom once again, just for a few
months. Serious life begins next autumn, you see. I am looking out for
a position in Germany at some theatre or other."
"Really?"
The waiter came to the table. They paid and went.
They met Rapp and Gleissner together in the doorway. They exchanged a
few words of greeting.
"And what have you been doing all this time, Herr Rapp?" asked George
courteously.
Rapp took off his pince-nez. "Oh, my melancholy old job all the time. I
am engaged in demonstrating the vanity of vanities."
"You might make a change, Rapp," said Heinrich. "Try your luck for once
and praise the splendour of splendours."
"What is the point?" said Rapp, and put on his glasses.
"That will prove itself in the course of time. But as a rule rotten
work only keeps alive during its good fortune and its fame, and when
the world at last realises the swindle, it has either been in the grave
for a long time or has taken refuge in its presumable immortality."
They were now in the street and all turned up their coat collars, since
it had begun again to snow violently.
Gleissner, who had had his first great dramatic success a few weeks
ago, quickly told them that the seventh performance of his work, which
had taken place to-day, had also been sold out.
Rapp used that as a peg on which to hang malicious observations on the
stupidity of the public. Gleissner answered with gibes at the impotence
of the critic when confronted with true genius--and so they walked away
through the snow with turned-up collar, quite enveloped in the steaming
hate of their old friendship.
"That Rapp has no luck," said Heinrich to George. "He'll never forgive
Gleissner for not disappointing him."
"Do you consider him so jealous?"
"I wouldn't go as far as that. Matters are rarely sufficiently simple
to be disposed of in a single word. But just think what a fate it is
to go about the world in the belief that you carry with you as deep
a knowledge of it as Shakespeare had, and to feel at the same time
that you aren't able to express as much of it as, for instance, Herr
Gleissner, although perhaps one is quite as much good as he is--or even
more."
They walked on together for a time in silence. The trees in the Ring
were standing motionless with their white branches. It struck three
from the tower of the Rathaus. They walked over the empty streets and
took the way through the silent park. All around them the continuous
fall of snow made everything shine almost brightly.
"By the way, I have not told you the latest news," started Heinrich
suddenly, looking in front of him and speaking in a dry tone.
"What is it?"
"That I have been receiving anonymous letters for some time."
"Anonymous letters? What are the contents?"
"Oh, you can guess."
"I see." It was clear to George that it could only be something about
the actress. Heinrich had returned in greater anguish than ever from
the foreign town, where he had seen his mistress act the part of a
depraved creature in a new play, with a truth and realism which he
found positively intolerable. George knew that he and she had since
then been exchanging letters full of tenderness and scorn, full of
anger and forgiveness, full of broken anguish and laboured confidence.
"The delightful messages," explained Heinrich, "have been coming along
every morning for eight days. Not very pleasant, I can assure you."
"Good gracious, what do they matter to you? You know yourself anonymous
letters never contain the truth."
"On the contrary, my dear George, they always do, but letters like
that always contain a kind of higher truth, the great truth of
possibilities. Men haven't usually got sufficient imagination to create
things out of nothing."
"That is a charming way of looking at things. Where should we all get
to, then? It makes things a bit too easy for libellers of all kinds."
"Why do you say libellers? I regard it as highly improbable that there
are any libels contained in the anonymous letters which I have been
receiving. No doubt exaggerations, embellishments, inaccuracies...."
"Lies."
"No, I am sure they are not lies; some, no doubt, but in a case like
this how is one to separate the truth from the lies?"
"There is a very simple way of dealing with that. You go there."
"Me go there?"
"Yes, of course that is what you ought to do. When you are on the spot
you are bound to get at once to the real truth."
"It would certainly be possible."
They were walking under arcades on the wet stone. Their voices
and steps echoed. George began again. "Instead of going on being
demoralised with all this annoyance, I should try and convince myself
personally as to how matters stood."
"Yes, that would certainly be the soundest thing to do."
"Well, why don't you do it?"
Heinrich remained stationary and jerked out with clenched teeth: "Tell
me, my dear George, have you not really noticed that I am a coward?"
"Nonsense, one doesn't call that being a coward."
"Call it whatever you like. Words never hit things off exactly. The
more precisely they pretend to do so the less they really do. I know
what I am. I would not go there for anything in the world. To make a
fool of myself once more, no, no, no...."
"Well, what will you do?"
Heinrich shook his shoulders as though the matter really did not
concern him.
Somewhat irritated, George went on questioning him. "If you will allow
me to make a remark, what does the ... lady chiefly concerned have to
say?"
"The lady who is chiefly concerned, as you call her, with a wit, which
though unconscious is positively infernal, does not know for the time
being anything about my getting anonymous letters."
"Have you left off corresponding with her?"
"What an idea! We write daily to each other as we did before. She
the most tender and lying letters, I the meanest you can possibly
imagine--disingenuous, reserved letters, that torture me to the quick."
"Look here, Heinrich, you are really not a very noble character."
Heinrich laughed out loud. "No, I am not noble. I clearly was not born
to be that."
"And when one thinks that after all these are sheer libels----"
George for his part had of course no doubt that the anonymous letters
contained the truth. In spite of that he was honestly desirous that
Heinrich should travel to the actual spot, convince himself, do
something definite, box somebody's ears or shoot somebody down. He
imagined Felician in a similar position, or Stanzides or Willy Eissler.
All of them would have taken it better or in a different way, one for
which he certainly could have felt more sympathy. Suddenly the question
ran through his brain as to what he would probably do, if Anna were to
deceive him. Anna deceive him ... was that really possible? He thought
of her look that evening, that dark questioning look which she had
sent over to Demeter Stanzides. No, that did not signify anything, he
was sure of it, and the old episodes with Leo and the singing-master,
they were harmless, almost childish. But he thought of something that
was different and perhaps more significant--a strange question which
she had put to him the other day when she had stayed unduly late in
his company and had had to hurry off home with an excuse. Was he not
afraid, she had asked him, to have it on his conscience that he was
making her into a liar? It had rung half like a reproach and half like
a warning, and if she herself was so little sure of herself could
he trust her implicitly? Did he not love her? He ... and did he not
deceive her in spite of it, or was ready to do so at any moment, which,
after all, came to the same thing?
Only an hour ago, in the fly, when he held her in his arms and kissed
her, she had of course no idea that he had other thoughts than for her.
And yet at a certain moment, with his lips on hers, he had longed for
Sissy. Why should it not happen that Anna should deceive him? After
all, it might have already happened ... without his having an idea of
it.... But all these ideas had as it were no substance, they swept
through his mind, like fantastic almost amusing possibilities. He was
standing with Heinrich in front of the closed door in the Floriani
Gassi and shook hands with him.
"Well, God bless you," he said; "when we see each other again I hope
you will be cured of your doubts."
"And would that be much good?" asked Heinrich. "Can one reassure
oneself with certainties in matters of love? The most one can do is
to reassure oneself with bad news, for that lasts, but being certain
of something good is at the best an intoxication.... Well, goodbye,
old chap. I hope we will see each other again in May. Then, whatever
happens, I shall come here for a time, and we can talk again about our
glorious opera."
"Yes, if I shall be back again in Vienna in May. It may be that I shall
not come back before the autumn."
"And then go off again on your new career?"
"It is quite possible that it will turn out like that," and he looked
Heinrich in the face with a kind of childlike defiant smile that seemed
to say: "I'm not going to tell you."
Heinrich seemed surprised. "Look here, George, perhaps this is the very
last time we are standing together in front of this door. Oh, I am far
from thrusting myself into your confidence. This somewhat one-sided
relationship will no doubt have to go on on its present lines. Well, it
doesn't matter."
George looked straight in front of him.
"I hope things go all right," said Heinrich as the door opened, "and
drop me a line now and then."
"Certainly," answered George, and suddenly saw Heinrich's eyes resting
upon him with an expression of real sympathy which he had never
expected. "Certainly ... and you must write to me, too. At any rate
give me news of how things are at home and what you are working at. At
all events," he added sincerely, "we must continue to keep in touch
with each other."
The porter stood there with dishevelled hair and an angry sleepy
expression, in a greenish-brown dressing-gown, with slippers on his
bare feet.
Heinrich shook hands with George for the last time. "Goodbye, my
dear friend," he said, and then in a gentler voice, as he pointed to
the porter: "I cannot keep him waiting any longer. You will find no
particular difficulty in reading in his noble physiognomy, which is
obviously the genuine native article, the names he is calling me to
himself at this particular moment. Adieu."
George could not help laughing. Heinrich disappeared. The door clanged
and closed.
George did not feel the least bit sleepy and determined to go home on
foot. He was in an excited exalted mood. He was envisaging the days
which were now bound to come with a peculiar sense of tension. He
thought of to-morrow's meeting with Anna, the things they were going to
talk over, the journey, the house that already stood somewhere in the
world, which his imagination had already roughly pictured like a house
out of a box of toys, light-green with a bright red roof and a black
chimney. His own form appeared before him like a picture thrown on a
white screen by a magic lantern: he saw himself sitting on a balcony in
happy solitude, in front of a table strewn with music paper. Branches
rocked in front of the railings. A clear sky hung above him, while
below at his feet lay the sea, with a dreamy blueness that was quite
abnormal.
[1] A reference to the Faro game.
V
George gently opened the door of Anna's room. She still lay asleep in
bed and breathed deeply and peacefully. He went out of the slightly
darkened room, back again into his own and shut the door. Then he
went to the open window and looked out. Clouds bathed in sunshine
were sweeping over the water. The mountains opposite with their
clearly-defined lines were floating in the brilliancy of the heavens,
while the brightest blue was glittering over the gardens and houses of
Lugano.
George was quite delighted to breathe in once more the air of this June
morning, which brought to him the moist freshness of the lake and the
perfume of the plane-trees, magnolias and roses in the hotel park; to
look out upon this view, whose spring-like peace had welcomed him like
a fresh happiness every morning for the last three weeks.
He drank his tea quickly, ran down the stairs as quickly and
expectantly as he had once, when a boy, hurried off to his play, and
took his accustomed way along the bank in the grey fragrance of the
early shade. Here he would think of his own lonely morning walks
at Palermo and Taormina in the previous spring, walks which he had
frequently continued for hours on end, since Grace was very fond of
lying in bed with open eyes until noon.
That period of his life, over which a recent though no doubt
much-desired farewell seemed to squat like a sinister cloud, usually
struck him as more or less bathed in melancholy. But this time all
painful things seemed to lie in the far distance, and at any rate he
had it in his power to put off the end as long as he wanted, if it did
not come from fate itself.
He had left Vienna with Anna at the beginning of March, as it was no
longer possible to conceal her condition. In January, in fact, George
had decided to speak to her mother. He had more or less prepared
himself for it, and was consequently able to make his communication
quietly and in well-turned phraseology. The mother listened in silence
and her eyes grew large and moist. Anna sat on the sofa with an
embarrassed smile and looked at George as he spoke, with a kind of
curiosity. They sketched out the plan for the ensuing months. George
wanted to stay abroad with Anna until the early summer. Then a house
was to be taken in the country in the neighbourhood of Vienna, so
that her mother should not be far away in the time of greatest need,
and the child could without difficulty be given out to nurse in
the neighbourhood of the town. They also thought out an excuse for
officious inquisitive people for Anna's departure and absence.
As her voice had made substantial progress of late--which was perfectly
true--she had gone off to a celebrated singing mistress in Dresden, to
complete her training.
Frau Rosner nodded several times, as though she agreed with everything,
but the features of her face became sadder and sadder. It was not
so much that she was oppressed by what she had just learnt, as
she was by the realisation that she was bound to be so absolutely
defenceless, poor middle-class mother that she was, sitting opposite
the aristocratic seducer.
George, who noticed this with regret, endeavoured to assume a lighter
and more sympathetic tone. He came closer to the good woman, he took
her hand and held it for some seconds in his own. Anna had scarcely
contributed a word to the whole discussion, but when George got ready
to go she got up, and for the first time in front of her mother she
offered him her lips to kiss, as though she were now celebrating her
betrothal to him.
George went downstairs in better spirits, as though the worst were
now really over. Henceforth he spent whole hours at the Rosners' more
frequently than before, practising music with Anna, whose voice had now
grown noticeably in power and volume. The mother's demeanour to George
became more friendly. Why, it often seemed to him as though she had to
be on her guard against a growing sympathy for him, and there was one
evening in the family circle when George stayed for supper, improvised
afterwards to the company from the Meistersingers and Lohengrin with
his cigar in his mouth, could not help enjoying the lively applause,
particularly from Josef, and was almost shocked to notice as he went
home that he had felt quite as comfortable, as though it had been a
home he had recently won for himself.
When he was sitting over his black coffee with Felician a few days
later the servant brought in a card, the receipt of which made a
slight blush mount to his cheek. Felician pretended not to notice his
brother's embarrassment, said good-bye and left the room. He met old
Rosner in the doorway, inclined his head slightly in answer to his
greeting and took no further notice.
George invited Herr Rosner, who came in in his winter coat with his hat
and umbrella, to sit down, and offered him a cigar. Old Rosner said:
"I have just been smoking," a remark which somehow or other reassured
George, and sat down, while George remained leaning on the table.
Then the old man began with his accustomed slowness: "You will probably
be able to imagine, Herr Baron, why I have taken the liberty of
troubling you. I really wanted to speak to you in the earlier part of
the day, but unfortunately I could not get away from the office."
"You would not have found me at home in the morning, Herr Rosner,"
answered George courteously.
"All the better then that I didn't have my journey for nothing. My wife
has told me this morning ... what has happened...." He looked at the
floor.
"Yes," said George, and gnawed at his upper lip. "I myself intended....
But won't you take off your overcoat? It is very warm in the room."
"No thank you, thank you, it is not at all too warm for me. Well, I was
horrified when my wife gave me this information. Indeed I was, Herr
Baron.... I never would have thought it of Anna ... never thought it
possible ... it is ... really dreadful...." He spoke all the time in
his usual monotonous voice, though he shook his head more often than
usual.
George could not help looking all the time at his head with its thin
yellow-grey hair, and felt nothing but a desolate boredom. "Really,
Herr Rosner, the thing is not dreadful," he said at last. "If you knew
how much I ... and how sincere my affection for Anna is, you would
certainly be very far from thinking the thing dreadful. At any rate, I
suppose your wife has told you about our plans for the immediate future
... or am I making a mistake...?"
"Not at all, Herr Baron, I have been informed of everything this
morning. But I must say that I have noticed for some weeks that
something was wrong in the house. It often struck me that my wife was
very nervous and was often on the point of crying."
"On the point of crying! There is really no occasion for that, Herr
Rosner. Anna herself, who is more concerned than any one else, is very
well and is in her usual good spirits...."
"Yes, Anna at any rate takes it very well, and that, to speak frankly,
is more or less my consolation. But I cannot describe to you, Baron,
how hard hit ... how, I could almost say ... like a bolt from the blue
... I could never, no, never have ... have believed it...." He could
not say any more. His voice trembled.
"I am really very concerned," said George, "that you should take the
matter like this, in spite of the fact that your wife is bound to have
explained everything to you, and that the measures we have taken for
the near future presumably meet with your approval. I would prefer not
to talk about a time which is further, though I hope not too far off,
because phrases of all kinds are more or less distasteful to me, but
you may be sure, Herr Rosner, that I certainly shall not forget what I
owe to a person like Anna.... Yes, what I owe to myself." He gulped.
In all his memory there was no moment in his life in which he had felt
less sympathy for himself. And now, as is necessarily the case in all
pointless conversations, they repeated themselves several times, until
Herr Rosner finally apologised for having troubled him, and took his
leave of George, who accompanied him to the stairs.
George felt an unpleasant aftermath in his soul for some days after
this visit. The brother would be the finishing touch, he thought
irritably, and he could not help imagining a scene of explanation
in the course of which the young man would endeavour to play the
avenger of the family honour, while George put him in his place with
extraordinarily trenchant expressions.
George nevertheless felt a sense of relief after the conversation with
Anna's parents had taken place, and the hours which he spent with his
beloved alone in the peaceful room opposite the church were full of a
peculiar feeling of comfort and safety. It sometimes seemed to them
both as though time stood still.
It was all very well for George to bring guide-books, Burckhardt's
_Cicerone_, and even maps to their meetings, and to plan out with Anna
all kinds of routes; he did not as a matter of fact seriously think
that all this would ever be realised.
So far, however, as the house in which the child was to be born was
concerned, they were both impressed with the necessity of its being
found and taken before they left Vienna. Anna once saw an advertisement
in the paper which she was accustomed to read carefully for that very
object, of a lodge near the forest, and not far from a railway station,
which could be reached in one and a half hours from Vienna. One morning
they both took the train to the place in question and they had a
memory of a snow-covered lonely wooden building with antlers over the
door, an old drunken keeper, a young blonde girl, a swift sleigh-ride
over a snowy winter street, an extraordinarily jolly dinner in an
enormous room in the inn, and then home in a badly-lighted over-heated
compartment. This was the only time that George tried to find with Anna
the house that must be standing somewhere in the world and waiting to
be decided upon. Otherwise he usually went alone by train or tramway
to look round the summer resorts which were near Vienna. Once, on a
spring day that had come straight into the middle of the winter, George
was walking through one of the small places situated quite near town,
which he was particularly fond of, where village buildings, unassuming
villas and elegant country houses lay close upon each other. He had
completely forgotten, as often happened, why he had taken the journey,
and was thinking with emotion of the fact that Beethoven and Schubert
had taken the same walk as he, many years ago, when he unexpectedly ran
up against Nürnberger. They greeted each other, praised the fine day,
which had enticed them so far out into the open, and expressed regret
that they so rarely saw each other since Bermann had left Vienna.
"Is it long since you heard anything of him?" asked George.
"I have only had a card from him," replied Nürnberger, "since he left.
It is much more likely he would correspond regularly with you than with
me."
"Why is it more likely?" inquired George, somewhat irritated by
Nürnberger's tone, as indeed be frequently was.
"Well, at any rate you have the advantage over me of being a new
acquaintance, and consequently offering more exciting subject-matter
for his psychological interest than I can."
George detected in the accustomed flippancy of these words a certain
sense of grievance which he more or less understood, for, as a matter
of fact, Heinrich had bothered very little about Nürnberger of late,
though he had previously seen a great deal of him, it being always his
way to draw men to him and then drop them with the greatest lack of
consideration, according as their character did or did not fit in with
his own mood.
"In spite of that I am not much better off than you," said George. "I
haven't had any news of him for some weeks either. His father, too,
appears to be in a bad way according to the last letter."
"So I suppose it will soon be all up with the poor old man now."
"Who knows? According to what Bermann writes me, he can still last for
months."
Nürnberger shook his head seriously.
"Yes," said George lightly. "The doctors ought to be allowed in cases
like that ... to shorten the matter."
"You are perhaps right," answered Nürnberger, "but who knows whether
our friend Heinrich, however much the sight of his father's incurable
malady may put him off his work and perhaps many other things as
well--who knows whether he might not all the same refuse the suggestion
of finishing off this hopeless matter by a morphia injection?"
George felt again repulsed by Nürnberger's bitter, ironic tone,
and yet when he remembered the hour when he had seen Heinrich more
violently upset by a few obscure words in the letter of a mistress than
by his father's madness, he could not drive out the impression that
Nürnberger's opinion of their friend was correct. "Did you know old
Bermann?" he asked.
"Not personally, but I still remember the time when his name was known
in the papers, and I remember, too, many extremely sound and excellent
speeches which he made in Parliament. But I am keeping you, my dear
Baron. Goodbye. We will see each other no doubt one of these days in
the café, or at Ehrenbergs'."
"You are not keeping me at all," replied George with deliberate
courtesy. "I am quite at large, and I am availing myself of the
opportunity of looking at houses for the summer."
"So you are going in the country, near Vienna this year?"
"Yes, for a time probably, and apart from that a family I know has
asked me if I should chance to run across...." He grew a little red,
as he always did when he was not adhering strictly to the truth.
Nürnberger noticed it and said innocently: "I have just passed by some
villas which are to let. Do you see, for instance, that white one with
the white terrace?"
"It looks very nice. We might have a look at it, if you won't find it
too dull coming with me. Then we can go back together to town."
The garden which they entered sloped upwards and was very long and
narrow. It reminded Nürnberger of one in which he had played as a
child. "Perhaps it is the same," he said. "We lived for years and years
you know in the country in Grinzing or Heiligenstadt."
This "we" affected George in quite a strange way. He could scarcely
realise Nürnberger's ever having been quite young, ever having lived as
a son with his father and mother, as a brother with his sisters, and he
felt all of a sudden that this man's whole life had something strange
and hard about it.
At the top of the garden an open arbour gave a wonderfully fine view
of the town, which they enjoyed for some time. They slowly went down,
accompanied by the caretaker's wife, who carried a small child wrapped
in a grey shawl in her arms. They then looked at the house--low musty
rooms with cheap battered carpets on the floor, narrow wooden beds,
dull or broken mirrors.
"Everything will be done up again in the spring," explained the
caretaker, "then it will look very cheerful." The little child suddenly
held out its tiny hand towards George, as if it wanted him to take it
up in his arms. George was somewhat moved and smiled awkwardly.
As he rode with Nürnberger into the town on the platform of the tramway
and chatted to him he felt that he had never got so close to him on
all the many previous occasions when they had been together, as during
this hour of clear winter sunshine in the country. When they said
goodbye it was quite a matter of course that they should arrange a new
excursion on a day in the immediate future. And so it came about that
George was several times accompanied by Nürnberger, when he continued
his househunting in the neighbourhood of Vienna. On these occasions
the fiction was still kept up that George was looking for a house for
a family whom he knew, that Nürnberger believed it and that George
believed that Nürnberger believed it.
On these excursions Nürnberger frequently came to speak of his
youth, to speak about the parents whom he had lost very early, of a
sister who had died young and of his elder brother, the only one of
his relatives who was still alive. But he, an ageing bachelor like
Edmund himself, did not live in Vienna, but in a small town in Lower
Austria, where he was a teacher in a public school, where he had been
transferred fifteen years ago as an assistant. He could easily have
managed afterwards to have got an appointment again in the metropolis,
but after a few years of bitterness, and even defiance, he had become
so completely acclimatised to the quiet petty life of the place where
he was staying that he came to regard a return to Vienna as more a
sacrifice than anything else, and he now lived on, passionately devoted
to his profession and particularly to his studies in philology, far
from the world, lonely, contented, a kind of philosopher in the little
town. When Nürnberger spoke of this distant brother George often felt
as though he were hearing him speak about some one who had died, so
absolutely out of the question seemed every possibility of a permanent
reunion in the future. It was in quite a different tone, almost as
though he were speaking of a being who could return once again, that
he would talk with a perpetual wistfulness of the sister who had been
dead several years. It was on a misty February day, while they were at
the railway station waiting for the train to Vienna, and walking up and
down with each other on the platform, that Nürnberger told George the
story of this sister, who when a child of sixteen had become possessed
as it were by a tremendous passion for the theatre, and had run away
from home without saying goodbye in a fit of childish romanticism. She
had wandered from town to town, from stage to stage, for ten years,
playing smaller and smaller parts, since neither her talent nor her
beauty appeared to be sufficient for the career which she had chosen,
but always with the same enthusiasm, always with the same confidence in
her future, in spite of the disillusions which she experienced and the
sorrow which she saw. In the holidays she would come to the brothers,
who were still living together, sometimes for weeks, sometimes only for
days, and tell them about the provincial halls in which she had acted
as though they were great theatres; about her few successes as though
they were triumphs which she had won, about the wretched comedians at
whose side she worked as though they were great artists, tell them
about the petty intrigues that took place around her as though they
were powerful tragedies of passion. And instead of gradually realising
the miserable world in which she was living a life which was as much
to be pitied as that of any one else, she spun every year the essence
of her soul into more and more golden dreams. This went on for a long
time, until at last she came home, feverish and ill. She lay in bed
for months on end with flushed cheeks, raving in her delirium of a
fame and happiness which she had never experienced, got up once again
in apparent health, and went away once more, only to come back home,
this time after a few weeks, in complete collapse with death written
on her forehead. Her brother now travelled with her to the South; to
Arco, Meran, to the Italian Lakes, and it was only as she lay stretched
out in southern gardens beneath flowering trees, far away from the
whirl that had dazed and intoxicated her throughout the years that
she realised at last that her life had been simply a racketing about
beneath a painted sky and between paper walls--that the whole essence
of her existence had been an illusion. But even the little everyday
incidents, the apartments and inns of the foreign town, seemed to her
memory simply scenes which she had played in as an actress by the
footlights, and not scenes which she had really lived, and as she
approached nearer and nearer to the grave, there awoke within her an
awful yearning for that real life which she had missed, and the more
surely she knew that it was lost to her for ever, the clearer became
the gaze with which she realised the fullness of the world. And the
strangest touch of all was the way in which, in the last weeks of her
life, that talent to which she had sacrificed her whole existence
without ever really possessing it manifested itself with diabolic
uncanniness.
"It seems to me, even to-day," said Nürnberger, "that I have never
heard verses so declaimed, never seen whole scenes so acted, even
by the greatest actress, as I did by my sister in the hotel room at
Cadenabbia, looking out on to the Lake of Como, a few days before she
died. Of course," he added, "it is possible, even probable, that my
memory is deceiving me."
"But why?" asked George, who was so pleased with this _finale_ that
he did not want to have it spoiled. And he endeavoured to convince
Nürnberger, who listened to him with a smile, that he could not have
made a mistake, and that the world had lost a great actress in that
strange girl who lay buried in Cadenabbia.
George did not find on his excursions with Nürnberger the house in the
country for which he was looking. In fact it seemed to become more
difficult to find every time he went out. Nürnberger made occasional
jokes about George's exacting requirements. He seemed to be looking
for a villa which was to be faced in front by a well-kept road, while
it was to have at the back a garden door which led into the natural
forest. Eventually George himself did not seriously believe that he
would now succeed in finding the desired house, and relied on the
pressure of necessity after his return from his travels.
It seemed more essential to get as soon as possible into touch with a
doctor, but George put this off too from one day to another. But one
evening Anna informed him that she had been suddenly panic-stricken by
a new attack of faintness, had visited Doctor Stauber and explained
her condition to him. He had been very nice, had not expressed any
astonishment, had thoroughly reassured her and only expressed the wish
to speak to George before they went away.
A few days afterwards George went to see the doctor in accordance with
his invitation.
The consultation hours were over. Doctor Stauber received him with
the friendliness which he had anticipated, seemed to treat the whole
matter as being as regular and as much a matter of course as it could
possibly be, and spoke of Anna just as though she had been a young
wife, a method of procedure which affected George in a strange but not
unpleasant way.
When the practical discussion was over the doctor inquired about
the destination of their journey. George had not yet mapped out any
programme, only this much was decided, that the spring was to be spent
in the south, probably in Italy. Doctor Stauber took the opportunity
to talk about his last stay in Rome, which was ten years back. He had
been in personal touch on this occasion, as he had been once before,
with the director of the excavations and spoke to George in almost
ecstatic terms of the latest discoveries on the Palatine, about which
he had written monographs as a young man, which he had published in the
antiquarian journals. He then showed George, and not without pride,
his library, which was divided into two sections, medicine and the
history of art, and took out and offered to lend him a few rare books,
one printed in the year 1834 on the Vatican collections and also a
history of Sicily. George felt highly excited as he realised with such
vividness the rich days that lay in front of him. He was overcome by
a kind of homesickness for places which he knew well and had missed
for a long time. Half-forgotten pictures floated up in his memory, the
pyramids of Cestius stood on the horizon in sharp outlines, as they
had appeared to him when he had ridden back as a boy into the town at
evening with the prince of Macedon; the dim church, where he had seen
his first mistress step up to the altar as a bride, opened its doors;
a bark under a dark sky with strange sulphur yellow sails drew near to
the coast.... He began to speak about the several towns and landscapes
of the south which he had seen as a boy and as a youth, explained the
longing for those places which often seized on him like a genuine
homesickness, his joy at being able to take in with mature appreciation
all the differing things which he had longed for, reserved for himself
and then forgotten, and many new things besides, and this time too in
the society of a being who was able to appreciate and enjoy everything
with him, and whom he held dear.
Doctor Stauber, who was in the act of putting a book back on the shelf,
turned round suddenly to George, looked gently at him and said: "I am
very glad of that." As George answered his look with some surprise he
added: "It was the first tender allusion to your relationship to Annerl
that I have noticed in the course of the last hour. I know, I know that
you are not the kind of man to take a comparative stranger into your
confidence, but if only because I had no reason to expect it, it has
really done me good. It came straight from your heart, one could see
it; and I should have been really sorry for Annerl--excuse me, I always
call her that--if I had been driven to think that you are not as fond
of her as she deserves."
"I really don't know," replied George coolly, "what gave you cause to
doubt it, doctor."
"Did I say anything about doubts?" replied Stauber good-humouredly.
"But, after all, it has happened before that a young man who has had
all kinds of experiences does not appreciate a sacrifice of this kind
sufficiently, for it still is a sacrifice, my dear Baron. We can be as
superior to all prejudices as much as we like--but it is not a trifle
even to-day for a young girl of good family to make up her mind to do a
thing like that, and I won't conceal it from you--of course I did not
let Annerl notice anything--it gave even me a slight shock when she
came to me the other day and told me all about it."
"Excuse me, Herr Doctor," replied George, irritated but yet polite,
"if it gave you a shock that is surely some proof against your being
superior to prejudices...."
"You are right," said Stauber with a smile, "but perhaps you will
overlook this lapse when you consider that I am somewhat older than
you and belong to another age. Even a more or less independent man ...
which I flatter myself I am ... cannot quite escape from the influence
of his age. It is a strange thing, but believe me, even among the young
people, who have grown up on Nietzsche and Ibsen, there are quite as
many Philistines as there were thirty years ago. They won't own up to
it, but it does go against the grain with them, for instance, if some
one goes and seduces their sister, or if one of their worthy wives
suddenly takes it into her head that she wants to live her own life....
Many, of course, are consistent and carry their pose through ... but
that is more a matter of self-control than of their real views, and
in the old days, you know, the age to which I belong, when ideas were
so immovably hide-bound, when every one for instance was quite sure
of things like this: one has to honour one's parents or else one is a
knave ... or ... one only loves really once in one's life ... or it's
a pleasure to die for one's fatherland ... in that time, mind you,
when every decent man held up some flag or other, or at any rate had
something written on his banner ... believe me, the so-called modern
ideas had more adherents than you suspect. The only thing was that
those adherents did not quite know it themselves, they did not trust
their own ideas, they thought themselves, as it were, debauchees or
even criminals. Shall I tell you something, Herr Baron? There are
really no new ideas at all. People feel with a new intensity--that's
what it is. But do you seriously think that Nietzsche discovered the
superman, Ibsen the fraud of life and Anzengruber the truth that the
parents who desire love and honour from their children ought to 'come
up to the scratch' themselves? Not a bit of it. All the ethical ideas
have always been there, and one would really be surprised if one knew
what absolute blockheads have thought of the so-called great new
truths, and have even frequently given them expression long before
the geniuses to whom we owe these truths, or rather the courage to
regard these truths as true. If I have gone rather too far forgive
me. I really only wanted to say ... and you will believe me, I am
sure.... I know as well as you, Baron, that there is many a virgin
girl who is a thousand times more corrupt than a so-called fallen
woman; and that there is many a young man who passes for respectable
who has worse things on his conscience than starting a _liaison_ with
an innocent girl. And yet ... it is just the curse of my period ..."
he interpolated with a smile, "I could not help it, the first moment
Annerl told me her story certain unpleasant words which in their day
had their own fixed meaning began to echo through my old head in their
old tones, silly out-of-date words like ... libertine ... seduction
... leaving in the lurch ... and so on, and that is why I must ask
you once more to forgive me, now that I have got to know you somewhat
more intimately ... that is why I felt that shock which a modern man
would certainly not own that he experienced. But to talk seriously
once again, just consider a minute how your poor father, who did not
know Anna, would have taken the matter. He was certainly one of the
shrewdest and most unprejudiced men whom one can imagine ... and all
the same you have not the slightest doubt that the matter would not
have passed off without his feeling something of a shock as well."
George could not help holding out his hand to the doctor. The
unexpectedness of this sudden allusion caused so intense a longing to
spring up within him that the only thing he could do to assuage it was
to begin to talk of him who had passed away. The doctor was able to
tell him of many meetings with the late baron, mostly chance casual
encounters in the street, at the sessions of the scientific academy, at
concerts. There came another of those moments in which George thought
himself strangely guilty in his attitude towards the dead man and
registered a mental vow to become worthy of his memory.
"Remember me kindly to Annerl," said the doctor as he said goodbye,
"but I would rather you did not tell her anything about the shock. She
is a very sensitive creature, that you know well enough, and now it is
particularly important to save her any excitement. Remember, my dear
Baron, there is only one question before us now--to see that a healthy
child comes into the world, everything else.... Well, give her my best
regards. I hope we shall all see each other again in the summer in the
best of health."
George went away with a heightened consciousness of his
responsibilities towards the being who had given herself to him and to
that other who would wake up to existence in a few months. He thought
first of making a will and leaving it behind with a lawyer. But on
further consideration he thought it more proper to confide in his
brother, who after all stood nearer to him in sentiment than any one
else. But with that peculiar embarrassment which was characteristic of
the really intimate relationship between the brothers he let day after
day go by, until at last Felician's departure on the hunting expedition
in Africa was quite imminent.
The night before, on the way home from the club, George informed his
brother that he was thinking of taking a long journey in the near
future.
"Really! For how long shall you be away?" asked Felician.
George caught the note of a certain anxiety in these words and felt
that it was incumbent on him to add: "It will probably be the last
long journey I shall take for some years. I hope to find myself in a
permanent position in the autumn."
"So you have quite made up your mind?"
"Yes, of course."
"I am very glad, George, for different reasons, as you can imagine,
that you want at last to do something serious. And besides, it's a very
sound thing, that it is not a case of one of us going out into the
world while the other remains at home alone. That would really have
been rather sad."
George knew quite well that Felician would get a foreign diplomatic
post in the following autumn, but he had never realised so clearly that
in a few months that brotherly life which had lasted for so many years,
that common life in the old house opposite the park, yes, his whole
youth so to speak, would be irrevocably over and done with. He saw life
lying in front of him, serious, almost menacing. "Have you any idea,"
he asked, "where they will send you?"
"There is some chance of Athens."
"Would you like that?"
"Why not? The society ought to be fairly interesting. Bernburg was
there for three years and was sorry to leave. And they have transferred
him to London, too, and that's certainly not to be sniffed at."
They walked in silence for a while and took their usual way through the
park. An atmosphere suggesting the approaching spring was around them,
although small white flakes of snow still gleamed on the lawns.
"So you are going to Italy?" asked Felician.
"Yes."
"As far down South as last spring?"
"I don't know yet."
Again a short silence. Suddenly Felician's voice came out of the
darkness. "Have you heard anything of Grace since then?"
"Of Grace?" repeated George, somewhat surprised, for it had been a long
time since Felician had mentioned that name. "I have heard nothing more
of Grace. Besides, that is what we arranged. We took farewell of each
other for ever at Genoa. That is already more than a year ago...."
A gentleman was sitting on a seat quite in the darkness in a fur coat
with a top hat and white gloves. "Ah, Labinski," thought George for a
whole minute; the next minute he of course remembered that he had shot
himself. This was not the first time that he had thought he had seen
him. A man had sat in broad daylight in the botanical garden at Palermo
under a Japanese ash-tree whom George had taken for a whole second for
Labinski; and recently George had thought he had recognised the face of
his dead father behind the shut windows of a fiacre.
The houses gleamed behind the leafless branches. One of them was the
house in which the brothers lived. The time has come, thought George,
for me to mention the matter at last. And to bring matters to a head,
he observed lightly: "Besides, I am not going to Italy alone this year."
"Hm! Hm!" said Felician, and looked in front of him.
George felt at the same moment that he had not taken the right tone. He
was apprehensive of Felician's thinking something like this: "Oh yes,
he has got an adventure again with some shady person or other." And he
added seriously: "I say, Felician, I have something serious I should
like to talk to you about."
"What! Serious!"
"Yes."
"Well, George," said Felician gently, and looked at him sideways, "what
is up, then? You are not thinking of marrying by any chance?"
"Oh no," replied George, and then felt irritated that he had repudiated
that possibility with such definiteness. "No, it is not a question of
marriage, but of something much more vital."
Felician remained standing for a moment. "You have a child?" he asked
seriously.
"No, not yet. That's just it, that is why we are leaving."
"Indeed," said Felician.
They had got out of the park. Involuntarily both looked up to the
window of their house, from which only a year ago their father had
so often nodded his welcome to them both. Both felt with sorrow that
somehow since their father's death they had gradually slipped away
from each other--and felt at the same time a slight fear of how much
further from each other life could still take them.
"Come into my room," said George when they got upstairs. "That's the
most comfortable place."
He sat down on his comfortable chair by his secretary. Felician lounged
in the corner on a little green leather ottoman which was near the
writing-table and listened quietly.
George told him the name of his mistress, spoke of her with heartfelt
sympathy, and asked Felician, in case anything should happen to him,
George, in the near future to undertake to look after the mother and
her child. He left so much of his fortune as was still available to the
child, of course. The mother was to have the usufruct until the child
became of age.
When George had finished Felician said with a smile after a short
silence: "Oh well, you've got every reason to hope that you will come
back as whole and sound from your journey as I will from Africa, and so
our conversation has probably only an academic significance."
"I hope so too, of course. But at any rate it reassures me, Felician,
that you know all about my secret, and that I can be free from anxiety
in every way."
"Yes, of course you can." He shook hands with his brother. Then he
got up and walked up and down the room. Finally he said: "You have no
thought of legitimising your relationship?"
"Not for the time being. One can never tell what the future may bring
forth."