"What a pity!" said Anna, and suggested that Heinrich should tell them
the plot consecutively and in detail. She had been wanting to know
about it for a long time. She was unable to get any clear idea of it
from George's account.
They looked at each other. There came up in their minds that sweet
dark hour when they had lain in peace with breast close to breast in
a dark room in front of whose windows, behind its floating curtain of
snow, a grey church had loomed, and into which the notes of an organ
had boomed heavily. Yes, they now knew where the house stood in which
the child was to come into the world. Perhaps another house, too,
thought George, stands somewhere or other in which the child that has
not yet been born will end its life. Death! As a man--or as an old man,
or.... Oh, what an idea, away with it ... away with it!
Heinrich declared his readiness to fulfil Anna's wish, and stood up. "I
shall perhaps find it useful myself," he said apologetically.
"But mind you don't suddenly switch off into your political
tragi-comedy," remarked George. And then, turning to Anna: "He's
writing a piece, you know, with a National German corps student for its
hero who poisons himself with mushrooms through despair of emancipation
of the Jews."
Heinrich nodded dissent. "One glass of beer less and you'd never have
made that epigram."
"Jealousy!" replied George. He felt extraordinarily pleased with life,
particularly now that he had firmly made up his mind to leave the day
after to-morrow. He sat quite close to Anna, held her hand in his
and seemed to hear the melody of future days singing in the deepest
recesses of his soul.
Heinrich had suddenly gone into the garden outside the verandah,
reached over the railing, took his cloak from the chair and threw it
romantically around him. "I'm going to begin," he said. "Act I."
"First, an overture in D. minor," interrupted George. He whistled an
impressive melody, then a few notes and finished with an "and so on."
"The curtain rises," said Heinrich. "Feast in the King's garden.
Night. The princess is to be married to the Duke Heliodorus next day. I
call him Heliodorus for the time being, he will probably have another
name though. The king adores his daughter and can't stand Heliodorus,
who is a kind of popinjay with the tastes of a mad Cæsar. The king
has really given the feast to annoy Heliodorus, and not only are all
the nobles in the land invited but the youth of all classes, in so
far as they have won a right to be invited by their beauty. And on
this evening the princess is to dance with any one who pleases her.
And there is some one in particular, his name is Ägidius, with whom
she seems quite infatuated. And no one is more pleased about it than
the king. Jealousy on the part of Heliodorus. Increased pleasure on
the part of the king. Scene between Heliodorus and the king. Scorn.
Enmity. Then something highly unexpected takes place. Ägidius draws his
dagger against the king. He wants to murder him. The motives for this
attempted murder of course would have to be very carefully worked in
if you had not been kind enough, my dear George, to set the thing to
music! So it will be enough to hint that the youth hates tyrants, is
a member of a secret society, is perhaps a fool or a hero off his own
bat. I don't know yet, you see. The attempted murder fails. Ägidius is
arrested. The king wishes to be left alone with him. Duet. The youth is
proud, self-possessed, great. The king superior, cruel, inscrutable.
That's about my idea of him. He had already sent many men to their
death and already seen many die, but his own inner consciousness is
so awfully vivid and intense that all other men seem to him to be
living in a state of mere semi-consciousness, so that their death has
practically no other significance except the step from twilight into
gloom. A death like that strikes him as too gentle or too banal for a
case like this. He wishes to plunge this youth from a daylight such as
no mortal has yet enjoyed into the most dreadful darkness. Yes, that's
how his mind works. How much he says or sings about this I don't yet
know of course. Ägidius is taken away just like a prisoner condemned,
so everybody thinks, to immediate death, and on the very same ship,
too, as that on which Heliodorus was to have started on his journey
with the princess in the evening. The curtain falls. The second act
takes place on the deck. The ship under weigh. Chorus. Isolated figures
come up. Their significance is only revealed later. Dawn. Ägidius is
led up from the hold below. To his death, as he is bound, of course,
to think. But it turns out otherwise. His fetters are loosed. All bow
down to him. He is hailed as a prince. The sun rises. Ägidius has an
opportunity of noticing that he is in the very best society--beautiful
women, nobles. A sage, a singer, a fool, are intended for important
parts. But who should come out of the chorus of women but the princess
herself; she belongs absolutely to Ägidius, like everything else on the
ship."
"What a splendid father and king!" said George.
"No price is too dear for him to pay!" explained Heinrich, "for a
really ingenious idea. That's his line. There follows a splendid duet
between Ägidius and the princess. Then they sit down to the meal. After
the meal dancing. High spirits. Ägidius naturally thinks he has been
saved. He is not inordinately surprised, because his hatred for the
king was always to a great extent inspired by admiration. The twilight
begins to loom. Suddenly a stranger is at Ägidius' side. Perhaps he has
been there for a long time, one among the many, unnoticed, mute. He has
a word to say to Ägidius. The feasting and dancing proceed meanwhile.
Ägidius and the stranger. 'All this is yours,' says the stranger. 'You
can rule according to your humour. You can take possession and kill
just as you wish. But to-morrow ... or in two or seven years or in one
year or in ten, or still later, this ship will approach an island on
whose shore a marble hall towers aloft upon a cliff. And there death
waits for you--death. Your murderer is with you on the ship. But only
the one whose mission it is to be your murderer knows it. Nobody else
knows who he is. Nay, nobody else on this ship has any inkling that
you are consecrated to death. Remember that. For when you let any one
notice that you yourself know your fate you are doomed to death that
very hour.'"
Heinrich spoke these words with exaggerated pathos, as though to
conceal his embarrassment. He went on more simply. "The stranger
vanishes. Perhaps I shall have him disembarked on the mainland by two
silent attendants who have accompanied him. Ägidius remains among the
hundreds of men and women of which one or the other is his murderer.
Which one? The sage or the fool? The star-gazer yonder? One of those
yonder, ruminating in the darkness? Those men stealing up the steps
yonder? One of the dancers? The princess herself? She comes up to him
again, is very tender, nay, passionate. Hypocrite? Murderess? His love?
Does she know? At any rate she is his. All this is to be his to-day.
Night on the sea. Terror. Delight. The ship goes slowly on towards that
shore that lies hours or years away in the distance of the far-off
mist. The princess is nestling at his feet. Ägidius stares into the
night and watches." Heinrich stopped as though personally affected.
Melodies rang in George's ear. He heard the music for the scene when
the stranger disappears escorted by the mutes, and then gradually the
noise of the feast comes to the front of the stage. He did not feel
it within him as a mere melody, but he already felt it with all its
fulness of instruments. Were there not flutes sounding and oboes and
clarionets? Was not the 'cello singing and the violin? Was not a faint
beat of a drum droning out of a corner of the orchestra? Involuntarily
he held up his right arm, as though he had his conductor's bâton in
his hand.
"And the third act?" asked Anna, as Heinrich remained silent.
"The third act," repeated Heinrich, and there was a touch of depression
in his voice. "The scene of the third act, of course, will be laid in
that hall on the cliff--don't you think so? It must, I think, begin
with a dialogue between the king and the stranger. Or with a chorus?
There are no choruses on uninhabited islands. Anyway, the king is there
and the ship is in sight. But look here, why should the island be
uninhabited?" He stopped.
"Well?" asked George impatiently.
Heinrich laid both his arms on the railing of the verandah. "I'll tell
you something. This isn't an opera at all...."
"What do you mean?"
"There are very good reasons for my not getting as far as this part of
it. It is a tragedy clearly. I just haven't got the courage to write
it. Do you know what would have to be described? The inner change in
Ägidius would have to be described. That is clearly both the difficulty
and the beauty of the subject-matter. In other words it is a thing
which I daren't do. The opera idea is simply a way of getting out of
it, and I don't know if I ought to take on anything like that." He was
silent.
"But at any rate," said Anna, "you must tell us the end of the opera
as you have got it in your mind. I must really admit that I'm quite
excited."
Heinrich shrugged his shoulders and answered in a tired voice: "Well,
the ship hoves to. Ägidius lands. He is to be hurled into the sea."
"By whom?" asked Anna.
"I've no idea at all," replied Heinrich unhappily. "From this point my
mind is an absolute blank."
"I thought it would be the princess," said Anna, and waving her hand
through the air executed a death signal.
Heinrich smiled gently. "I thought of that, of course, also, but...."
He broke off and suddenly looked up to the night sky in a state of
nervous tension.
"It was to finish with a kind of pardon, so far as your original draft
went," remarked George irritably. "But that, of course, is only good
enough for an opera. But now, as your Ägidius is the hero of a tragedy,
of course he will have to be really hurled into the sea."
Heinrich raised his forefinger mysteriously and his features became
animated again. "I think something is just dawning upon me. But don't
let's talk about it for the time being, if you don't mind. It's perhaps
really been a sound thing that I told you the beginning."
"But if you think that I am going to do _entr'acte_ music for you,"
said George, without particular emphasis, "you are under a delusion."
Heinrich smiled, guiltily, indifferently and yet quite good-humouredly.
Anna felt with concern that the whole business had fizzled out. George
was uncertain whether he ought to be irritated at his hopes being
disappointed or be glad at being relieved of a kind of obligation. But
Heinrich felt as though the creations of his own mind were deserting
him in shadowy confusion, mockingly, without farewell and without
promising to come again.
He found himself alone and deserted in a melancholy garden, in the
society of quite a nice man whom he knew very well, and a young lady
who meant nothing at all to him. He could not help thinking all
of a sudden of a person who was travelling at this very hour in a
badly-lighted compartment in despair and with eyes red with crying,
towards dark mountains, worrying whether she would get there in time
to-morrow for her rehearsal. He now felt again that since that had come
to an end he was going downhill, for he had nothing left, he had no
one left. The suffering of that wretched person, the victim of his own
agonizing hatred, was the only thing in the world. And who knew? She
might be smiling at another the very next day, with those tearful eyes
of hers, with her grief and longing still in her soul and a new _joie
de vivre_ already in her blood.
Frau Golowski appeared on the verandah. She was flurried and somewhat
late, and still carried her umbrella and had her hat on. Therese sent
her remembrances from town and wanted to arrange to come and see Anna
again the next day or so.
George, who was leaning up against a wooden pillar of the verandah,
turned to Frau Golowski with that studious politeness which he always
ostentatiously assumed when talking to her. "Won't you ask Fräulein
Therese in both our names if she wouldn't care to stay out here for
a day or two? The top room is quite at her service. I'm on the point
of going into the mountains for a short time, you know," he added, as
though he regularly slept in the little room at all other times.
Frau Golowski expressed her thanks. She would tell Therese. George
looked at his watch and saw that it was time to start for home. He and
Heinrich then said good-bye. Anna accompanied both of them as far as
the garden door, remained standing a little while and watched them till
they got on to the height where the Sommerhaidenweg began.
The little village at the bottom of the valley flowed past them in
the moonlight. The hills loomed pale like thin walls. The forest
breathed darkness. In the distance thousands of lights glittered out
of the night mist of the summer town. Heinrich and George walked by
each other in silence and a sense of estrangement arose between them.
George remembered that walk in the Prater in the previous autumn, when
their first almost confidential talk had brought them near to each
other. How many talks had they not had since? But had they not all, as
it were, gone into thin air? And to-day, too, George was unable to
walk through the night with Heinrich without exchanging a word, as he
used to do many a time with Guido or with Labinski without feeling any
loss of real sympathy. The silence became a strain. He began to talk
of old Stauber, as that was the first subject to occur to him, and
praised his reliability and versatility. Heinrich was not very taken
with him and thought him somewhat intoxicated with the sense of his own
kindness, wisdom and excellence. That was another kind of Jew which
he could not stand--the self-complacent kind. The conversation then
turned on young Stauber, whose vacillation between politics and science
had something extremely attractive about it for Heinrich. From that
they turned into a conversation about the composition of parliament,
about the squabbles between the Germans and the Tschechs and the
attacks of the Clericals on the Minister of Education. They talked
with that strained assiduousness with which one is accustomed to talk
about things which are absolutely indifferent to one in one's heart of
hearts. Finally they discussed the question whether the Minister ought
to remain in office or not after the dubious figure he had cut over
the civil marriage question, and had the vaguest ideas after they had
finished as to which of them had been in favour of his resignation and
which of them against it. They walked along the churchyard. Crosses
and gravestones towered over the walls and floated in the moonlight.
The path inclined downwards to the main road. They both hurried so as
to catch the last tram, and standing on the platform in the sultry
scented night air drove towards the town. George explained that he
thought of doing the first part of his tour on his cycle. Obeying a
sudden impulse, he asked Heinrich if he wouldn't like to join him.
Heinrich agreed and after a few minutes manifested great keenness. They
got out at the Schottentor, found out a neighbouring café and after an
exhaustive consultation managed, with the help of special maps which
they found in encyclopædias, to decide on every possible route. When
they left each other their plan was not indeed quite definite, but they
already knew that they would leave Vienna early, the day after the
next, and would mount their cycles at Lambach.
George stood quite a long time by the open window of his bedroom. He
felt intensely awake. He thought of Anna, from whom he was to part
to-morrow for a few days, and visualised her as sleeping at this hour
out there in the country in the pale twilight between the moonlight and
the morning. But he felt dully as though this image had nothing at all
to do with his own fate, but with the fate of some unknown man, who
himself knew nothing about it. And he was absolutely unable to realise
that within that slumbering being there slept another being in still
deeper mystery, and that this other being was to be his own child. Now
that the sober mood of the early dawn stole almost painfully through
his senses the whole episode seemed more remote and improbable than
it had ever been before. A clearer and clearer light showed above the
roofs of the town, but it would be a long time before the town woke up.
The air was perfectly motionless. No breeze came from the trees in the
park opposite, no perfume from the withered flower-beds. And George
stood by the window; unhappy and without comprehension.