"In the afternoon about six, I think. And ... and Stanzides is coming
too ... a bit later. They are going to dine with us. You don't mind?"
"Mind? I'm very glad," replied Anna simply.
George was agreeably surprised. If Anna in her present condition had
met Stanzides in Vienna!... he thought. How being away from one's
usual environment frees and purifies!
"What news did they tell you?" asked Anna.
"We stood chatting together at the post-office for scarcely three
minutes. He sends his regards to you, by the way."
Anna made no answer and it seemed to George as though her thoughts were
travelling again on extremely conventional lines.
"Have you been up long?" he asked quickly.
"Yes, I have been sitting here on the balcony for quite a long time. I
even went to sleep a bit, the air is so enervating to-day somehow. And
I dreamed, too."
"What did you dream about?"
"Of the child," she said.
"Again?"
She nodded. "Just the same as the other day. I was sitting here on the
balcony in my dream, and had it in my arms at the breast...."
"But what was it, a boy or a girl?"
"I don't know. Just a child. So tiny and so sweet. And the joy was
so.... No I won't give it up," she said softly with closed eyes.
He stood leaning on the railing and felt the light noon wind stroke his
hair. "If you don't want to give it out to nurse," he said, "well you
mustn't." And the thought ran through his mind, "Wouldn't it be the
most convenient thing to marry her?..." But something or other kept him
back from saying so. They were both silent. He had laid the letters in
front of him on the table. He now took them up and opened one. "Let's
see, first, what your mother writes?" he said.
Frau Rosner's letter contained the news that all was well at home, that
they would all be very glad to see Anna again, and that Josef had got
a post on the staff of the _Volksbote_ with a salary of fifty gulden a
month. Further, an inquiry had come from Frau Bittner as to when Anna
was coming back from Dresden, and if it was really certain that she
would be back again next autumn, because otherwise they would of course
have to look about for a new teacher.... Anna stood motionless and
expressed no opinion.
Then George read out Heinrich's letter. It ran as follows:
"Dear George,
"I am very glad that you will be back so soon, and prefer
to tell you so to-day, because once you are there I shall
never tell you how very glad I shall be to see you. A
few days ago, when I went for a lonely cycle ride along
the Danube, I genuinely missed you. What an overwhelming
atmosphere of loneliness these banks have! I remember
having once felt like that five or six years ago on
a Sunday, when I was in what is technically known as
'jolly company,' and was sitting in the Kloster-neuburger
beer-house in the large garden with its view of the
mountains and the fields. How it ascends from the depths
of the waters, loneliness I mean, which certainly is quite
a different thing to what one usually thinks it is. It is
very far from being the opposite of society. Yet it is
only perhaps when one is with other people that one has a
right to feel lonely. Just take this as an aphoristical
humorously untrue special supplement, or treat it as such
and lay it aside. To come back to my ride along the banks
of the Danube--it was on that same rather sultry evening
that I had all kinds of good ideas, and I hope soon to be
able to tell you a lot of startling news about Ägidius, for
that's the name that the murderous melancholy youth has got
at last, about the deep-thinking impenetrable prince, about
the humorous Duke Heliodorus, the name by which I have the
honour of introducing to you the Princess's betrothed, and
especially about the princess herself, who seems to be a
far more remarkable person than I originally supposed."
"That's to do with the opera plot?" asked Anna, dropping her work.
"Of course," replied George, and went on reading.
"You must also know, my dear friend, that I have finished
during the last week some verses for the first act, which
so far are not particularly immortal, verses which until
some further development, so long I mean, as they are
without your music, will hop about the world like wingless
angels. The subject-matter appeals to me extraordinarily,
and I myself am curious to know what I am really going to
make of it. I've begun all kinds of other things as well
... sketched things out ... thought things over. And to
put it shortly and with a certain amount of cheek I feel
as though a new phase were heralding itself within me.
This sounds of course greater cheek than it really is. For
chimney-sweeps, ice-cream vendors and colour-sergeants have
their phases as well. People of our temperament always
recognise it at once. What I regard as very probable is
that I shall soon leave the fantastic element in which I
now feel so much at home, and will either move up or move
down into something extremely real. What would you say,
for example, if I were to go in for a political comedy?
I feel already that the word 'real' is not quite the
right one. For in my view politics is the most fantastic
element in which persons can possibly move, the only thing
is they don't notice it.... This is the point I ought to
drive home. This occurred to me the other day when I was
present at a political meeting (untrue, I always get these
thoughts). Yes--a meeting of working men and women in the
Brigittenau in which I found myself next to Mademoiselle
Therese Golowski, and at which I was compelled to hear
seven speeches about universal suffrage. Each of the
speakers--Therese was one of them, too--spoke just as
though the solution of that question was the most important
thing in the world to him or her personally, and I don't
think that any of them had an idea that the whole question
was a matter of colossal indifference to them at the real
bottom of their hearts. Therese was very indignant of
course when I enlightened her on the point, and declared
that I had been infected by the poisonous scepticism of
Nürnberger, of whom as a matter of fact I'm seeing far too
much. She always makes a point of running him down, since
he asked her some time ago in the café whether she was
going to have her hair done high or in plaits at her next
trial for high treason. Anyway, I find it very nice seeing
a lot of Nürnberger. When I'm having my bad days, there is
no one who receives me with more kindness. Only there are
many days whose badness he doesn't suspect or doesn't want
to know of. There are various troubles which I feel that he
fails to appreciate and which I've given up talking to him
about."
"What does he mean?" interrupted Anna.
"The affair with the actress, clearly," replied George, and went on
reading.
"On the other hand he is inclined to make up for that
by taking other troubles of mine too seriously. That is
probably my fault and not his. He manifested a sympathy
towards me for the loss I sustained by my father's death,
which I confess made me positively ashamed; for though
it hit me dreadfully hard we had grown so aloof from one
another quite a long time before his madness burst upon
him, that his death simply signified a further and more
ghastly barrier rather than a new experience."
"Well?" asked Anna, as George stopped.
"I've just got an idea."
"What is it?"
"Nürnberger's sister lies buried in the Cadenabbia cemetery. I told you
about her. I'll run over one of these days."
Anna nodded. "Perhaps I'll go too, if I feel all right. From all I
hear of him I find Nürnberger much more sympathetic than that horrible
egoist your friend Heinrich."
"You think so?"
"But really, the way he writes about his father. It is almost
intolerable."
"Hang it all! if people who have grown so estranged as those two----"
"All the same, I haven't really very much in common with my own parents
temperamentally either, and yet.... If I.... No, no, I prefer not to
talk about such things. Won't you go on reading?"
George read:
"There are more serious things than death, things which
are certainly sadder, because these other things lack the
finality which takes away the sadness of death, if viewed
from the higher standpoint. For instance, there are living
ghosts who walk about the streets in the clear daylight
with eyes that have died long ago and yet see, ghosts who
sit down next to one and talk with a human voice that has a
far more distant ring than if it came from a grave. And one
might go so far as to say that the essential awfulness of
death is revealed to a far greater extent in moments when
one has experiences like this, than at those times when one
stands near and watches somebody being lowered into the
earth ... however near that somebody was."
George involuntarily dropped the letter and Anna said with emphasis:
"Well, you can certainly keep him to yourself--your friend Heinrich."
"Yes," replied George slowly. "He is often a bit affected, and yet ...
hallo, there goes the first bell for lunch. Let's read quickly through
to the end."
"But I must now tell you what happened yesterday: the most painful
and yet ridiculous affair which I have come across for a long time,
and I am sorry to say the persons concerned are our good friends the
Ehrenbergs, father and son."
"Oh," cried Anna involuntarily.
George had quickly run through the lines which followed and shook his
head.
"What is it?" inquired Anna.
"It is.... Just listen," and he went on reading.
"You are no doubt aware of the growing acuteness of the
relations between Oskar and the old man in the course of
the last year. You also know the real reasons for it, so
that I can just inform you of what has taken place without
going into the motives for it any further. Well, it's
just like this. Yesterday Oskar passes by the Church of
St. Michael about twelve o'clock midday and takes off his
hat. You know that at the present time piety is about the
smartest craze going, and so perhaps it is unnecessary to
go into any further explanation, as, for example, that
a few young aristocrats happened just to be coming out
of church and that Oskar wanted to behave as a Catholic
for their special benefit. God knows how often he has
previously been guilty of this imposture without being
found out, but as luck would have it, it happens yesterday
that old Ehrenberg comes along the road at the same moment.
He sees Oskar taking off his hat in front of the church
door ... and attacked by a fit of uncontrollable rage he
gives his offspring a box on the ears then and there. A
box on the ears! Oskar the lieutenant in the reserve!
Midday in the centre of the town! So it is not particularly
remarkable that the story was known all over the town the
very same evening. It is already in some of the papers
to-day. The Jewish ones leave it severely alone, except
for a few scandal-mongering rags, the Anti-Semitic ones
of course go for it hot and strong. The _Christliche
Volksbote_ is the best, and insists on both the Ehrenbergs
being brought before a jury for sacrilege or blasphemy.
Oskar is said to have travelled off, no one knows where,
for the time being."
"A nice family!" said Anna with conviction.
George could not help laughing against his will. "My dear girl, Else is
really absolutely innocent of the whole business."
The bell rang for the second time. They went into the dining-room and
took their places at a little table by the window which was always laid
for them alone. Scarcely more than a dozen visitors were sitting at the
long table in the middle of the room, mostly Englishmen and Frenchmen,
and also a man no longer in the first flush of youth, who had been
there for two days and whom George took for an Austrian officer in
_mufti_. Anyway he bothered about him as little as he did about the
others. George had put Heinrich's letter in his pocket. It occurred to
him that he had not yet read it through to the end, and he took it out
again over the coffee and perused the remainder.
"What more does he write?" asked Anna.
"Nothing special," answered George. "About people who probably wouldn't
interest you particularly. He seems to have got in again with his café
set; more in fact than he likes and clearly more than he owns up to."
"He'll fit in all right," said Anna flippantly.