"Please do."
"I should very much like to know, Herr Professor, whether this is
simply imagination. It seems to me, you know"--and he again lifted up
the cloth from the tiny corpse--"as though this child did not look like
a new-born one, more beautiful, so to speak. I feel as though the faces
of new-born children were bound to be more wrinkled, more like old men.
I can't tell you whether I have ever seen one or whether I've only read
about it."
"You are quite right," replied the Professor. "It is just in cases of
this kind, and also of course when things turn out more fortunately,
that the features of the children are not distorted, are frequently,
in fact, quite beautiful." He contemplated the little face with
professional sympathy, nodded a few times: "Pity, pity" ... let the
cloth fall down again, and George knew that he had seen his child's
face for the last time. What name would it have had? Felician....
Good-bye, little Felician!
Doctor Stauber came out of the next room and gently closed the door.
"Anna is expecting you," he said to George. The latter gave him his
hand, shook hands with the Professor again, nodded to Frau Golowski and
went into the next room.
The nurse got up from Anna's side and disappeared out of the room.
Opposite the door hung a mirror in which George saw an elegant young
gentleman who was pale and was smiling. Anna lay in her bed, which
stood clear in the middle of the room, with big clear eyes, which
looked straight at George.
"What kind of a figure do I cut?" he thought. He pushed the chair close
to her bed with some ceremoniousness, sat down, grasped her hand, put
it to his forehead and then kissed her fingers long and almost ardently.
Anna was the first to speak. "You were in the garden?" she asked.
"Yes, I was in the garden."
"I saw you come down from the top some time ago."
"You had better not talk, Anna. Don't you feel it a strain?"
"These few words! Oh no. But you can tell me something...."
He was holding her hand in his all the time and looking at her fingers.
Then he said: "Do you know that there is a little summer-house at the
top end of the garden? Yes, of course you know.... I only mean, we'd
never properly realised it."
"I was in there a few times during the first week," said Anna. "I don't
like it."
"No, indeed!"
"Have you done any work this morning?" she then asked.
"What an idea, Anna!"
She shook her head quite gently. "And recently you have been getting on
so well with it."
He smiled.
She remained serious. "You were in town yesterday?" she asked.
"You know I was."
"Did you find any letters? I mean important ones."
"You should really not talk so much, Anna. I'll tell you everything
right enough. Well then, I found no letters of any importance. There
was nothing from Detmold either. Anyway, I'll go and see Professor
Viebiger one of these days. But we can talk about these things another
time, don't you think? And so far as work goes ... I've been having
another look at _Tristan_ this morning. I even know it down to the
smallest detail. I could trust myself to conduct it to-day, if it came
to the point."
She was silent and looked at him.
He remembered the evening when he had sat by her side at the Munich
opera, as though enveloped in a transparent veil of the notes he loved
so well. But he said nothing about it.
It grew dark. Anna's features began to grow dim. "Are you going to town
to-day?" she asked.
He had not thought of doing so. But he now felt as though a kind of
relief were beckoning to him. Yes, he would go in. What, after all,
could he do out here? But he did not answer at once.
Anna began again: "I think you would perhaps like to speak to your
brother."
"Yes, I should like to very much. I suppose you are going to sleep
soon?"
"I hope so."
"How tired you must be," he said as he stroked her arm.
"No, it is rather different. I feel so awake ... I can't tell you how
awake I feel.... It seems as though I had never been so awake in my
whole life. And I know at the same time that I'm going to sleep more
deeply than I ever have ... as soon as I've once closed my eyes."
"Yes, of course you will. But may I stay a bit longer with you? I'd
really like to go on sitting here till you've fallen asleep."
"No, George, if you are here I can't go to sleep. But just stay a bit
longer. It's so nice."
He held her hand all the time and looked out on to the garden, which
was now lying in the twilight.
"You weren't very much up at Auhof this year?" said Anna indifferently,
as though simply making conversation.
"Oh yes, nearly every day. Didn't I tell you?--I think Else will marry
James Wyner and go with him to England."
He knew that she was not thinking of Else but of some one quite
different. And he asked himself: Does she perhaps mean ... that that is
the reason?
A warm puff blew in from outside. Children's voices rang in. George
looked out. He saw the white seat gleaming under the pear-tree and
thought of how Anna had waited for him there in her flowing dress,
beneath the fruit-laden branches, girdled by the gentle miracle of
her motherhood. And he asked himself: "Was it fated then that it must
end like this? Or was it after all so fated at the moment when we
embraced each other for the first time?" The Professor's remark that
one to two per cent. of all births ended like that came into his mind.
So it was a fact that since people had started being born one or two
in every hundred must perish in this senseless fashion at the very
moment when they were brought into the light! And so many must die in
their first years, and so many in the flower of their youth, and so
many as men. And again a fated number put an end to their own lives,
like Labinski. And so many were doomed to fail in their attempt, as in
Oskar Ehrenberg's case. Why search for reasons? Some law is at work,
incomprehensible and inexorable, which we men cannot struggle against.
Who is entitled to complain? why should I be the victim? If it doesn't
happen to one, it will happen to another ... whether innocent or guilty
like he was. One to two per cent. get hit, that is heavenly justice.
The children who were laughing in the garden opposite, they were
allowed to live. Allowed? No, they _must_ live, even as his own child
had had to die, after the first breath it drew, doomed to travel from
one darkness into another, through a senseless nothingness.
It was twilight outside and it was almost night in the room. Anna lay
still and motionless. Her hand did not move in George's, but when
George got up he saw that her eyes were open. He bent down, hesitated
a moment, then put his arm round her neck and kissed her on her lips,
which were hot and dry and did not answer his touch. Then he went.
In the next room the hanging lamp was alight over the table on which
the dead child had lain some while back. The green tablecloth was now
spread out as though nothing had happened. The door of Frau Golowski's
room was open. The light of a candle shone in, and George knew that his
child was sleeping in there, its first and last sleep.
Frau Golowski and Frau Rosner sat next to each other on the sofa by the
wall, dumb, and as though huddled together. George went up to them.
"Has Herr Rosner gone already?" He turned to Frau Rosner.
"Yes, he rode into the town with the doctors," she answered, and looked
at him questioningly.
"She is quiet." George answered her look. "I think she will sleep
soundly."
"Won't you take something?" asked Frau Golowski. "You haven't since one
o'clock had...."
"No thanks, I'm going into town now. I want to speak to my brother.
I am also expecting important letters. I'll be here again early
to-morrow." He took his leave, went up to his attic, fetched the
_Tristan_ score from the balcony into the room, took his stick and
overcoat, lit a cigarette and left the house. As soon as he was in the
street he felt freer. An awful upheaval lay behind him. It had ended
unhappily, but at any rate it had ended. And Anna was bound to be all
right. Of course with mothers as well there was the fated percentage.
But it was clear that the possibility of an unfortunate issue was
according to the law of probabilities necessarily much less than if the
child had remained alive.
He walked through the straggling village with swift strides, tried not
to think of anything and looked with forced attention at every single
house by which he passed. They were all mean, most of them positively
dreary and squalid. Behind them little gardens sloped up to vineyards,
cultivated fields and meadows in the evening mist. In an almost empty
inn garden a few musicians were sitting by a long table, playing a
melancholy waltz on violins, guitars and a concertina. Later on he
passed more presentable houses, and he looked in through open windows
into decently lighted rooms in which there were tables laid for dinner.
He eventually took his seat in a cheerful inn garden, as far away as
possible from the other not very numerous customers. He took his meal
and soon felt a salutary fatigue come over him. On the tram he almost
dozed off in his corner. It was only when the conveyance was driving
through more lively streets that he thoroughly woke up and remembered
what had happened, with an agonising but arid precision. He got out and
walked home through the moist sultriness of the Stadtpark. Felician was
not at home. He found a telegram lying on his secretary. It was from
Detmold and ran as follows: "We request you kindly to inform us if you
can possibly come to us within the next three days. This offer is to be
considered for the time being as binding on neither party; travelling
expenses paid in any event.--Faithfully, Manager of the Hoftheater."
Next to it lay the red form for the answer.
George was in a state of nervous tension. What should he answer now?
The telegram clearly indicated that there was a vacancy for the post
of conductor. Should he ask for a postponement? After eight days it
would be quite easy to go there for an interview and then come back
at once. He found thinking about it a strain. At any rate the matter
could wait till to-morrow, and if that was too late then there would
be no essential change in the position after all. He would always be
welcomed as a special visitor, he knew that already. It was perhaps
better not to bind himself ... to go on working at his training
somewhere, without yet taking obligations or responsibilities upon
himself, and then to be ready and equipped for the following year. But
what paltry considerations these were, when compared with the terrible
event of his life which had occurred to-day! He took up the malachite
paper-weight and put it on the telegram. What now...? he asked himself.
Go to the club and rout out Felician? Yet that was not quite the place
to tell him about the matter. It would really be best to stay at home
and wait for him. It was in fact a little tempting to undress at once
and lie down. But he certainly would not be able to sleep. So he came
to think of tidying up his papers a little once again. He opened the
drawer in his secretary, sorted bills and letters and made notes in his
note-book. The noise of the street came in through the open windows
as though from a distance. He thought of how he had read the letters
of his dead parents in the same place in the previous summer after
his father's death, and how the same noise of the town and the same
perfume from the park had streamed in to him just like to-day. The
year that had elapsed since then seemed in his tired mind to extend
into eternities, then contracted again into a short span of time, and
something kept whispering in his soul: What for ... what for? His child
was dead. It would be buried in the churchyard by the Sommerhaidenweg.
It would rest there in consecrated ground, from the toilsome journey
which it was fated to take from one darkness into another through a
senseless nothingness. It would lie under a little cross, as though it
had lived and suffered a whole human life.... As though it had lived!
It had really lived from the moment when its heart had already begun
to beat in its mother's body. No, even earlier.... It had belonged to
the realm of the living from the very moment when its mother's body had
received it. And George thought of how many children of men and women
were fated to perish even earlier than his own child, how many, wished
and unwished, were fated to die in the first days of their life without
their own mothers even having an idea. And while he dozed with shut
eyes, half asleep and half awake, in front of his secretary, he saw
nothing but shining crosses standing up on tiny mounds, as though it
were a toy cemetery and a reddish yellow toy sun were shining over it.
But suddenly the image represented the Cadenabbia cemetery. George was
sitting like a little boy on the stone wall which surrounded it, and
suddenly turned his gaze down towards the lake. And then there rode in
a very long narrow boat, beneath dull yellow sails, with a green shawl
on her shoulders, a woman, sitting motionless on the rowing bench, a
woman whose face he tried to recognise with vague and almost painful
efforts.
The bell rang. George got up. What was it? Oh, of course, there was no
one there to open. The servant had been discharged since the first day
of the month, and the porter's wife, who now looked after the brothers,
was not in the apartment at this hour. George went into the hall and
opened the door. Heinrich Bermann was standing in the hall.
"I saw a light in your room from down below," he said. "It was a good
idea my first going past your house. I was going, as a matter of fact,
to drive out to your place in the country."
Is his manner really so excited? thought George, or do I only think it
is? He asked him to come in and sit down.
"Thanks, thanks, I prefer to walk up and down. No, don't light the high
lamp. The table lamp's quite enough.... Anyway--how are you getting on
out there?"
"A child was born this morning," replied George quietly. "But
unfortunately it was dead."
"Still-born?"
"I don't know if one can say that," replied George with a bitter smile;
"for it is supposed to have drawn one breath according to the doctor.
The pains lasted for three days on end. It was ghastly. Now it's all
over."
"Dead! I'm very sorry--I really am." He held out his hand to George.
"It was a boy," said George, "and strangely enough, very beautiful.
Quite different from what new-born children usually look like." He
then told him, too, how he had stayed quite a time in an inhospitable
summer-house which he had never gone into before, and the strange way
in which the lighting of the country had suddenly altered. "It was
a light," said George, "that places in one's dreams sometimes have.
Quite indefinite ... like twilight ... but rather mournful." While he
said this, he knew that he would have described the whole matter quite
differently to Felician.
Heinrich sat in the corner of the ottoman and let the other speak. He
then began: "It is strange. All this affects me very much, of course,
and yet ... it calms me at the same time."
"Calms you?"
"Yes. As though certain things which I unhappily had to fear had
suddenly grown less probable."
"What kind of things?"
Without listening to him Heinrich went on speaking with set teeth. "Or
is it only because I am in the presence of another man's grief? Or is
it because I am somewhere else, in a strange flat? That would be quite
possible. Haven't you noticed that even one's own death strikes one
as something highly improbable, when one is travelling for instance;
frequently in fact when one is out for a walk. Man is subject to
incomprehensible illusions like that."
Heinrich turned round after a few seconds, as though he had regained
his self-control, but remained standing by the window with both hands
resting on the sill behind him, and said laconically in a hard voice:
"There's the possibility, you see, of the girl whose acquaintance you
casually made the other day at my place having committed suicide.
Please don't look so startled. As you know, many of her letters hinted
that she would do it."
"Well?" said George.
Heinrich lifted his hand deprecatingly. "I never took it seriously at
all. But I got a letter this morning which, I don't quite know how to
express it, had an uncanny ring of truth about it. As a matter of fact
there is nothing in it which she hasn't already written to me ten or
twenty times over; but the tone ... the tone.... To come to the point,
I am as good as convinced that it has happened this time. Perhaps at
this very minute!" He stopped and stared in front of him.
"No, Heinrich." George stepped up to him and put his hand on his
shoulder. "No!" he added, more firmly, "I don't believe it at all.
I spoke to her a few weeks ago. You know about that. And then she
certainly did not give me the impression ... I also saw her playing
comedy.... If you had seen her acting in that impudent farce, you
wouldn't believe it either, Heinrich. She only wants to revenge herself
on you for your cruelty. Unconsciously, perhaps. Probably she has
convinced herself on many occasions that she cannot go on living, but
the fact that she has stuck it out till to-day.... Of course, if she
had done it at once...."
Heinrich shook his head impatiently. "Just listen, George. I
telegraphed to the Summer Theatre. I inquired if she were still there,
suggesting that it was a question of a new part for her, rehearsal of a
new piece of mine, or something like that. I have been waiting at home
... till now ... but there is no answer. If I don't get one, or not a
satisfactory one, I'll certainly go there."
"Yes, but why didn't you simply ask if she...."
"If she has killed herself? One doesn't want to make oneself
ridiculous, George. I might have asked for news on that point every
other day or so, of course.... It would certainly have had a kind of
grotesque humour right enough."
"Look here now--you don't believe it yourself?"
"I'll go home now to see if there's a telegram there. Good-bye, George.
Forgive me. I couldn't stand it any more at home, you see.... I am
really sorry to have bothered you with my own affairs at a time like
this. Once more, I ask you to forgive me."
"You had no idea.... And even if you had known.... In my case,
it's quite--a finished chapter, so to speak. In my case, there is
unfortunately nothing more to do."
He looked excitedly out of the window, over the tops of the trees,
towards the red spires and roofs which towered up out of the faint
red light of the evening town. Then he said: "I'll come with you,
Heinrich. I can't start anything at home. I mean.... If you don't mind
my society."
"Mind!... My dear George!..." He pressed his hand.
They went. At first they walked along the park in silence. George
remembered his walk with Heinrich through the Prater Allee last autumn,
and immediately after that he remembered the May evening when Anna
Rosner had appeared in the Waldsteingarten later than the others, and
Frau Ehrenberg had whispered to him, "I have asked her specially for
you." Yes, for him. If it had not been for that evening Anna would
never have become his mistress, and none of all the events which lay
heavy on him to-day would ever have happened. Was there some law at
work in this? Of course! So many children had to come into the world
every year, and a certain number of those out of wedlock, and good Frau
Ehrenberg had imagined that inviting Fräulein Anna Rosner for Baron von
Wergenthin had been a matter of her own personal fancy.
"Is Anna quite out of danger?" asked Heinrich.
"I hope so," replied George. Then he spoke about the pain which she
had suffered, her patience, and her goodness. He felt the need of
describing her as a perfect angel, as though he could thereby atone a
little for the wrong he had done her.
Heinrich nodded. "She really seems to be one of the few women who are
made to be mothers. It isn't true, you know, that there are many of
that kind. Having children--that's what they're all there for; but
being mothers! And to think of her, of all people, having to suffer
like that! I really never had an idea that anything like that could
happen."
George shrugged his shoulders. Then he said: "I had been expecting to
see you out there again. I think you even made some promise to that
effect when you dined with us and Therese a week ago."
"Oh yes. Didn't we squabble dreadfully, Therese and I? It got even
more violent on the way home. Really quite funny. We walked, you know,
right into the town. The people who met us are absolutely bound to have
taken us for a couple of lovers, we quarrelled so dreadfully."
"And who won in the end?"
"Won? Does it ever happen that any one wins? One only argues to
convince oneself, never to convince the other person. Just imagine
Therese eventually realising that a rational person can never become
a member of any party! Or if I had been driven to confess that my
independence of party betokened a lack of philosophy of life, as she
contended! Why, we could both have shut up shop straight away. But what
do you think of all this talk about a philosophy of life? As though a
philosophy of life were anything else than the will and the capacity
to see life as it really is. I mean, to envisage it without being led
astray by any preconceived idea, without having the impulse to deduce
a new law straight away from our particular experience, or to fit our
experience into some existing law. But people mean nothing more by the
expression 'philosophy of life' than a higher kind of devotion to a pet
theory, devotion to a pet theory within the sphere of the infinite, so
to speak. Or they go on talking about a gloomy or cheerful philosophy
according to the colours in which their individual temperament and the
accidents of their personal life happen to paint the world for them.
People in the full possession of their senses have a philosophy of
life and narrow-minded people haven't. That's how the matter stands.
As a matter of fact, one doesn't need to be a metaphysician to have a
philosophy of life.... Perhaps in fact one shouldn't be one at all. At
any rate, metaphysics have nothing at all to do with the philosophy
of life. Each of the philosophers really knew in his heart of hearts
that he simply represented a kind of poet. Kant believed in the Thing
In Itself, and Schopenhauer in the World as Will and Representation,
just like Shakespeare believed in Hamlet, and Beethoven in the Ninth
Symphony. They knew that another work of art had come into the world,
but they never imagined for a single minute that they had discovered
a final 'truth.' Every philosophical system, if it has any rhythm or
depth, represents another possession for the world. But why should it
alter a man's relationship to the world if he himself has all his wits
and senses about him?" He went on speaking with increasing excitement
and fell, as it seemed to George, into a feverish maze. George then
remembered that Heinrich had once invented a merry-go-round that turned
in spirals higher and higher above the earth, to end finally in the top
of a tower.
They chose a way through suburban streets, with few people and only
moderate lighting. George felt as though he were walking about in a
strange town. Suddenly a house appeared that was strangely familiar
to him, and he now noticed for the first time that they were passing
the house of the Rosner family. There were lights in the dining-room.
Probably the old man was sitting there alone, or in the company of his
son. Is it possible, thought George, that in a few weeks Anna will be
sitting there again at the same table as her mother and father and
brother as though nothing had happened? That she will sleep again night
after night behind that window with its closed blinds and leave that
house day after day to give her wretched lessons.... That she will take
up that miserable life again as though nothing at all had changed? No.
She should not go back to her family. It would be quite senseless. She
must come to him, live with him, the man she belonged to. The Detmold
telegram! He had almost forgotten it, but he must talk it over with
her. It showed hope and prospects. Living was cheap in a little town
like that. Besides, George's own fortune was a long way from being
eaten up. One would be justified in chancing it. Besides, this post
simply represented the beginning. Perhaps he would get another one soon
in a larger town. In a single night one might be a success without
expecting it--that was always the way--and one would have a name, not
only as a conductor, but also as a composer, and it need only be two or
three years before they could have the child with them.... The child
... how the thought raged through his brain!... To think of one being
able to forget a thing like that even for a minute.
Heinrich went on speaking all the time. It was quite obvious that he
wanted to stupefy himself. He continued to annihilate philosophers.
He had just degraded them from poets to jugglers. Every system, yes,
every philosophic system and every moral system was nothing but a
juggle of words, a flight from the animated fulness of phenomena into
the marionette fixity of categories. But that was the very thing which
mankind desired. Hence all the philosophies, all the religions, all the
moral laws. They were all taking part in that identical flight.
A few, a very few, were given the awful inner faculty of being ready to
feel every experience as new and individual--were given the strength
to endure standing in a new world as it were, every single minute. And
the truth was this: only the man who conquered the cowardly impulse
of imprisoning all experiences in words was shown life--that manifold
unity, that wondrous thing, in its own true shape.
George had the feeling that Heinrich, with all his talk, was simply
trying to succeed in shaking off any sense of responsibility towards
a higher law by refusing to recognise any. And with a kind of growing
antagonism to Heinrich's silly and extraordinary behaviour he felt that
the scheme of the world that had threatened some hours ago to fall to
pieces was gradually beginning to put itself together again within his
own soul. He had only recently rebelled against the senselessness of
the fate which had struck him, and yet he already began to feel vaguely
that even what had appeared to him as a grievous misfortune had not
been precipitated upon his head out of the void, but that it had come
to him along a way which, though darker, was quite as preordained as
that which approached him along a far more visible road and which he
was accustomed to call necessity.
They were in front of the house in which Heinrich lived. The concierge
stood at the door and informed them that he had put a telegram in
Heinrich's room a short time ago.
"Oh," said Heinrich indifferently, and slowly went up the stairs.
George followed. Heinrich lit a candle in the hall. The telegram lay on
the little table. Heinrich opened it, held it near to the flickering
light, read it himself and then turned to George. "She's expected for
the rehearsal to-morrow, and has not yet turned up." He took the light
in his hand and followed by George went into the next room, put the
light on the secretary, and walked up and down. George heard through
the open window the strumming of a piano resounding over the dark
courtyard.
"Is there nothing else in the telegram?" he asked.
"No. But it's obvious that not only has she been absent from the
rehearsal, but that she wasn't to be found in her lodgings either.
Otherwise, they would certainly have telegraphed that she was ill, or
given some explanation or other. Yes, my dear George," he breathed
deeply, "it has happened this time."
"Why? There is no proof of it. Scarcely anything to go on."
Heinrich cut short the other's remarks with a curt gesture. He then
looked at his watch and said: "There are no more trains to-day....
Yes.... What should one do first?" He stopped, remained standing, and
suddenly said: "I'll go to her mother's. Yes. That's the best....
Perhaps--perhaps...."
They left the apartment. They took a conveyance at the next corner.
"Did the mother know anything?" asked George.
"Damn it all," said Heinrich, "about as much as mothers usually know.
It is incredible the small amount of thought people give to what is
taking place under their very noses, if they are not compelled to do
so by some actual occasion. And most people have no idea how much they
really know at the bottom of their hearts without owning up to it. The
good woman is bound of course to be somewhat surprised at my springing
up so suddenly.... I haven't seen her for a long time."
"What will you say to her?"
"Yes, what will I say to her?" repeated Heinrich, and bit at his cigar.
"I say, I've got a splendid idea. You'll come with me, George. I'll
introduce you as a manager, eh? You are travelling through, have got to
catch a special train for St. Petersburg at eleven o'clock this very
day. You've heard somewhere or other that the young lady is staying in
Vienna, and I as an old friend of the family have been kind enough to
introduce you."
"Do you feel in the mood for comedies like that?" asked George.
"Please forgive me, George, it's really not at all necessary. I'll
just ask the old woman if she has any news.... What do you say?... How
sultry it is to-night!"
They drove over the Ring, through the echoing Burghof, through the
streets of the town. George felt in a strange state of tension.
Supposing the actress were now really sitting quietly at home with her
mother? He felt that it would mean a kind of disillusionment for him.
And then he felt ashamed of that emotion. Do I look upon the whole
thing as simply a distraction? he thought. What happens to other people
... is rarely more than that, Nürnberger would say.... A strange way
of distracting oneself in order to forget the death of one's child....
But what is one to do?... I can't alter things. I shall be going away
in a few days, thank heaven.
The vehicle stopped in front of a house in the neighbourhood of the
Praterstern. A train was growling over the viaduct opposite; underneath
the avenues of the Prater ran into the darkness. Heinrich dismissed the
conveyance. "Thank you very much," he said to George. "Good-bye."
"I'll wait for you here."
"Will you really? Well, I should be awfully grateful if you would."
He disappeared through the door. George walked up and down.
In spite of the lateness of the hour it was still fairly lively in the
street. The strains of a military band in the Prater carried to the
place where he was. A man and a woman went past him; the man carried
in his arms a sleeping child, which had slung its hands round its
father's neck. George thought of the garden in Grinzinger, of the
unwashed little thing which had stretched out its tiny hands to him
from its mother's arms. Had he been really touched then, as Nürnberger
had asserted? No, it was certainly not emotion. Something else perhaps.
The vague consciousness of standing with both hands linked in that
riveted chain which stretches from ancestors to descendants, of
participating in the universal human destiny. Now, he stood suddenly
released again, alone ... as though spurned by a miracle whose call he
had heard without sufficient veneration. It struck ten o'clock from a
neighbouring church tower. Only five hours, thought George, and how far
away it all seemed! Now he was at liberty to knock about the world as
he had done before.... Was he really at liberty?
Heinrich came out of the doorway. The door closed behind him.
"Nothing," he said. "The mother has no idea. I asked her for the
address, as though I had something important to communicate to her.
I had just come from the Prater, and it had occurred to me ... and
so on. A nice old woman. The brother sits at a table and copies on
a drawing-board out of an illustrated paper a mediæval castle with
innumerable turrets."
"Be candid, for once in a way," said George. "If you could save her by
doing so, wouldn't you forgive her now?"
"My dear George, don't you see yet that it is not a question of whether
I want to forgive her or not? Just remember this, I could just have
stopped loving her, which can frequently happen without one's being
deceived at all. Imagine this--a woman who loves you pursuing you, a
woman whose contact for some reason or other makes you shudder swearing
to you that she'll kill herself if you reject her. Would it be your
duty to give in? Could you reproach yourself the slightest bit if she
really went to her death, through the so-called pangs of despised love?
Would you regard yourself as her murderer? It is sheer nonsense, isn't
it? But if you think that it's what other people call conscience which
is now torturing me, you are making a mistake. It is simply anxiety
about what has happened to a person who was once very dear to me, and
is I suppose still very dear to me. The uncertainty...." He suddenly
stared fixedly in one direction.
"What is the matter with you?" asked George.
"Don't you see? A telegraph messenger is coming towards the door of the
house." Before the man had time to ring Heinrich was at his side, and
said a few words which George could not understand.
The messenger seemed to be making objections. Heinrich was answering
and George, who had come nearer, could hear him.
"I have been waiting for you here in front of the door because the
doctor gave me stringent orders to do so. This telegram contains ...
perhaps ... bad news ... and it might be the death of my mother. If you
don't believe me, you just ring and I'll go into the house with you."
But he already had the telegram in his hands, opened it hurriedly and
started to read it by the light of the street lamp. His face remained
absolutely immobile. Then he folded the telegram together again, handed
it to the messenger, pressed a few silver coins into his hand. "You
must now take it in yourself."
The messenger was surprised, but the tip put him in a better temper.
Heinrich rang and turned away. "Come!" he said to George. They went
silently down the street. After a few minutes Heinrich said: "It has
happened."
George felt more violently shocked than he had anticipated. "Is it
possible...?" he exclaimed.
"Yes," said Heinrich. "She drowned herself in the lake--where you spent
a few days this summer," he added in a tone which seemed to imply that
George too was somehow partly responsible for what had happened.
"What's in the telegram?" inquired George.
"It's from the manager. It contains the news that she has had a fatal
accident while out boating. Requests her mother to give further
directions."
He spoke in a cool hard voice, as though he were reading an
announcement out of a paper.
"That poor woman! I say, Heinrich, oughtn't you to...."
"What!... Go to her? What should I be doing there?"
"Who is there, except you, who can at a time like this stand by her ...
ought to, in fact?"
"Who except me?" He remained standing. "You think that because it
happened more or less on my account? I tell you positively that I feel
absolutely innocent. The boat out of which she let herself drop, and
the waves which received her could not feel more innocent than I do. I
just want to settle that point.... But that I should go in and see the
mother.... Yes, you are quite right about it." And he turned again in
the direction of the house.
"I will remain with you if you like," said George.
"What an idea, George! Just go quietly home. What more am I to ask you
to do? And remember me to Anna, and tell her how sorry I am.... Well,
you know that.... Ah, here we are. You don't mind my keeping you a
few seconds more before I...." He stood silently there. He then began
again, and his features became distorted. "I'll tell you something,
George. It's like this. It's a great happiness that at certain times
one doesn't know what has really happened to one. If one immediately
realised the awfulness of moments like this, you know, to the extent
one realises them afterwards in one's memory, or realises them before
in anticipation--one would go mad. Even you, George--yes, even you.
And many do really go mad. Those are probably the people who are
granted the gift of realising straight away.... My mistress has drowned
herself, do you see? That's all one can say. Has the same kind of thing
really happened to any one else before? Oh no. Of course you think
that you have read or heard of something similar. It is not true.
To-day is the first time--the first time since the world's been in
existence--that anything like this has ever happened."
The door opened and closed again. George was alone in the street. His
head was dazed, his heart oppressed. He went a few steps, then took
a fly and drove home. He saw the dead woman in front of him, just as
she had stood in front of the stage door on that bright summer day in
her red blouse and short white skirt, with the roving eyes beneath the
reddish hair. He would have sworn at the time that she had a _liaison_
with the comedy actor who looked like Guido. Perhaps that really was
the case. That might be _one_ kind of love and what she felt for
Heinrich another. Really there were far too few words. You go to your
death for one man, you go to bed with another--perhaps the very night
before you drown yourself for the first. And what, after all, does a
suicide really mean? Only perhaps that at some moment or other one has
failed to appreciate death. How many tried again if they had failed
once? The conversation with Grace came into his mind, that hot-and-cold
conversation by Labinski's grave on the sunny February day in the
thawing snow.
She had confessed to him then that she had not felt any fear or horror
when she had found Labinski shot in front of the door of her flat.
And when her little sister had died many years ago she had watched
the whole night by the death-bed without feeling even a trace of what
other people called horror. But, so she told George, she had learned
to feel in men's embraces something that might be rather like that
feeling. At first the thing had puzzled her acutely, subsequently she
thought she could understand it, but according to what the doctors said
she was doomed to barrenness, and that must be the reason why it came
about that the moment of supreme delight, which was rendered as it
were pointless by this fate, plunged her in terror and apprehension.
This had struck George at the time as a piece of affectation. To-day
he felt a breath of truth in it for the first time. She had been a
strange creature. Would he ever meet again a person of a similar type?
Why not? Quite soon, as a matter of fact. A new epoch in his life
was now beginning and the next adventure was perhaps waiting for him
somewhere or other. Adventure...? Had he a right still to think about
such things?... Were not, from to-day onwards, his responsibilities
more serious than they had ever been? Did he not love Anna more than
he had ever done before? The child was dead, but the next one would
live.... Heinrich had spoken the truth: Anna was simply cut out to be
a mother. A mother.... But he thought with a shiver: Was she cut out
at the same time to be the mother of _my_ children? The fly stopped.
George got out and went up the two storeys to his apartment. Felician
was not yet home. Who knows when he will come? thought George. I can't
wait for him, I'm too tired. He undressed quickly, sank into bed, and a
deep sleep enveloped him.
When he woke up his eyes tried to find through the window a white
line between field and forest, the Sommerhaidenweg which he had been
accustomed to look at for some days. But he only saw the bluish empty
sky which a tower was piercing, and suddenly realised that he was at
home, and all that he had lived through yesterday came into his mind.
Yet he felt fresh and alert in mind and body, and it seemed to him
as though apart from the calamity which had befallen him there was a
piece of good fortune which he had to remember. Oh yes, the Detmold
telegram.... Was it really so lucky? He had not thought so yesterday
evening.
There was a knock at his door. Felician came into the room with his
hat and stick in his hand. "I didn't know that you slept at home last
night," he said. "Glad to see you. Well, what's the news out there?"
George rested his arm on the pillow and looked up towards his brother.
"It's over," he said; "a boy, but dead," and he looked straight in
front of him.
"Not really," said Felician with emotion, came up to him and
instinctively put his hand upon his brother's head. He then put hat
and stick on one side and sat down on the bed by him, and George could
not help thinking of the morning hours of the years of his childhood,
when he had often seen his father sitting like that on the edge of the
bed when he woke up. He explained to Felician how it had all happened,
laying especial stress on Anna's patience and gentleness; but he felt
with a certain sense of misgiving that he had to force himself a bit
to keep the tone of seriousness and depression which was appropriate
to his news. Felician listened sympathetically, then got up and walked
up and down the room. Then George got up, began to dress and told his
brother of the remarkable developments of the rest of the evening.
He spoke about his walks and drives with Heinrich Bermann and of the
strange way in which they had learned at last of the actress's suicide.
"Oh, that's the one," said Felician. "It's already in the papers, you
know."
"Well, what happened?" asked George curiously.
"She rowed out into the lake and slipped into the water out of the
boat.... Well, you can read it.... I suppose you're now going straight
out into the country again?" he added.
"Of course," replied George, "but I have still got something to tell
you, Felician, something which may interest you." And he told his
brother about the Detmold telegram.
Felician seemed surprised. "This is getting serious," he exclaimed.
"Yes, it's getting serious," replied George.
"You have not yet answered?"
"No, how could I?"
"And what do you mean to do?"
"Frankly, I don't know. You understand I can't go straight away,
particularly under circumstances like this."
Felician looked reflective. "A little delay probably wouldn't hurt," he
said then.
"I agree. I must first find out how they're getting on out there. Of
course I should also like to talk it over with Anna."
"Where have you put the telegram? Can I read it?"
"It's lying on the secretary," said George, who was at the moment
engaged in tying up his shoes.
Felician went into the next room, took the telegram in his hand and
read it. "It is much more urgent," he observed, "than I thought."
"It seems to me, Felician, that it still strikes you as strange that I
am shortly going to have a real profession."
Felician stood at his brother's side again and stroked his hair. "It
is perhaps rather providential that the telegram should have come
yesterday."
"Providential! How so?"
"I mean that after such a sad business the prospect of practical
occupation ought to do you twice as much good.... But I am afraid I
must leave you now. I've still got quite a lot to do. Farewell visits
among other things."
"When are you going then, Felician?"
"A week to-day. I say, George, I suppose you are probably coming back
from the country to-day?"
"Certainly, if everything is all right out there."
"Perhaps we might see each other again in the evening."
"I should like to very much, Felician."
"Well then, if it suits you I'll be at home at seven. We might go and
have supper together--but alone, not at the club."
"Yes, with pleasure."
"And you might do me a favour," began Felician again after a short
silence. "Remember me out there very very kindly ... tell her that I
sympathise most sincerely."
"Thank you, Felician. I will tell her."
"Really, George, I can't tell you how much it touched me," continued
Felician with warmth. "I only hope that she'll soon get over it.... And
you, too."
George nodded. "Do you know," he said gently, "what it was going to be
called?"
Felician looked at his brother's eyes very seriously, then he pressed
his hand. "Next time," he said with a kindly smile. He shook hands
with his brother again and went.
George looked after him, torn by varying emotions. Yet he's not
altogether sorry, he thought, that it should have turned out like that.
He got ready quickly and decided to cycle into the country again
to-day. It was only when he had got past most of the traffic that he
really became conscious of himself. The sky had grown a little dull
and a cool wind blew from the hills towards George, like an autumn
greeting. He did not want to meet any one in the little village where
yesterday's events were bound to be already known, and took the upper
road between the meadows and the garden to the approach from the
back. The nearer the moment came when he was to see Anna again, the
heavier his heart grew. At the railing he dismounted from his cycle and
hesitated a little. The garden was empty. At the bottom lay the house
sunk in silence. George breathed deeply and painfully. How different it
might have been! he thought, walked down and heard the gravel crunch
beneath his feet. He went on to the verandah, leaned his cycle against
the railing and looked into the room through the open window. Anna lay
there with open eyes. "Good morning," he cried, as cheerfully as he
could.
Frau Golowski, who was sitting by Anna's bed, got up and said at once:
"We've had a good sleep, a good sound sleep."
"That's right," said George, and vaulted over the railing into the room.
"You're very enterprising to-day," said Anna with her arch smile, which
reminded George of long-past times. Frau Golowski informed him that
the Professor had been early in the morning, had expressed himself
completely satisfied and taken Frau Rosner with him in his carriage
into the town. She then went away with a kindly glance.
George bent down over Anna, kissed her with real feeling on the
eyes and mouth, pushed the chair nearer, sat down and said: "My
brother--sends you his sincere wishes."
Her lips quivered imperceptibly. "Thank you," she replied gently, and
then remarked: "So you came out on your cycle?"
"Yes," he replied. "One has to keep a look-out you know on the way, and
there are times when it's rather a sound thing one has to do so." He
then told her how last evening had finished up. He related the whole
thing as an exciting story, and it was only in the orthodox way at the
end that Anna was allowed to find out how Heinrich's mistress had ended
her life. He expected to see her moved, but she kept a strangely hard
expression about her mouth. "It's really dreadful," said George. "Don't
you think so?"
"Yes," replied Anna shortly, and George felt that her kindness
completely failed her here. He saw the loathing flowing out of her
soul, not tepidly, as though from one person to another, but strong and
deep like a stream of hate from world to world.
He dropped the subject and began again. "Now for something important,
my child." He was smiling but his heart beat a little.
"Well?" she asked tensely.
He took the Detmold telegram out of his breast pocket and read it to
her. "What do you think of that?" he asked with affected pride.
"And what did you answer?"
"Nothing so far," he replied casually, as though he had never thought
of taking the matter seriously. "Of course I wanted first to talk it
over with you."
"Well, what do you think?" she asked imperturbably.
"I ... shall refuse of course. I'll wire that I ... at any rate, can't
come yet awhile." And he seriously explained to her that nothing would
be lost by a postponement, that he would at any rate be welcomed as
a special visitor, and that this pressing request was only due to an
accident that one had no right to expect.
She let him go on speaking for a while, then she said: "There you go
being casual again. I think you should have made a special point of
answering at once and...."
"Well, and...."
"Perhaps have even taken the train there straight away this morning."
"Instead of coming out to see you--eh?" he jested.
She remained serious. "Why not?" she said, and noticing him jerk his
head up in surprise, "I'm getting on very well, thank heaven, George.
And even if I were a bit worse you couldn't do any good, so...."
"Yes, my child," he interrupted, "it seems to me you don't appreciate
what it really means! Going there, of course, is a fairly simple
matter--but--staying there! Staying there at least till Easter! The
season lasts till then."
"Well, George, I think it quite right that you haven't gone away
without first saying goodbye to me. But look here, you've got to go
anyway, haven't you? Even though we didn't actually speak about it
during the last weeks we were both quite well aware of it. For whether
you go away in a month's time or the day after to-morrow--or to-day...."
George now began to argue seriously. It was not at all the same thing
whether he went away in a month's time or to-day. One could manage to
get used to certain thoughts in the course of a month, and besides,
talk over everything properly--with regard to the future.
"What is there so much to talk over?" she replied in a tired voice.
"Why, in a month's time you'll be.... You'll have as little chance of
taking me with you as you have to-day. I even think that there won't
be any point in our talking seriously about anything until after your
return. A great deal will be bound to be cleared up by then.... At any
rate, with regard to your prospects...." She looked out of the window
into the garden.
George showed mild indignation at her matter-of-fact coolness, which
never deserted her, even at a moment like that. "Yes, indeed," he said,
"when one considers--what it means for you to stay here, and me...."
She looked at him. "I know what it means," she said.
Instinctively he avoided her look, took her hands and kissed them.
He felt inwardly harrowed. When he looked up again he saw her eyes
resting on him quite maternally, and she spoke to him like a mother.
She explained to him that it was _just_ because of the future--and
there swept around that word a gentle suggestion of actual hope--that
he should not miss an opportunity like that. In two or three weeks he
could come back from Detmold to Vienna for a few days, for the people
there would certainly appreciate that he must put his affairs over here
in order. But above all it was necessary to give them a proof of his
seriousness. And if he set any store by her advice there was only one
thing to do: take the train that very evening. He need have no anxiety
about her. She felt that she was quite out of danger. She felt that
quite unmistakably. Of course he would hear from her every day, twice a
day if he liked, morning and evening.
He did not yield at once, coming back again to the point that the
unexpectedness of this separation would occasion a relapse. She
answered that she would much prefer a quick separation like this to
the prospect of another four weeks spent in anxiety, emotion and the
fear of losing him. And the essential point remained that it was not
a question of more than half the year, so they had half the year for
themselves, and if everything went all right there would not be many
periods of separation for the--the future.
He now began again: "And what will you do in this half-year, while I'm
away? It is really...."
She interrupted him. "For the time being it will go on just as it has
been going on for years; but I have been thinking this morning about a
lot of things."
"The school for singing?"
"That, too. Although of course that is neither so easy nor so simple.
And besides," she added, with her arch expression, "it would be a pity
if one had to shut it up again too soon. But we'll talk about all that
later on. You go now and telegraph."
"Yes, but what!" he exclaimed in such desperation that she could not
help laughing.
Then she said: "Quite simple, 'Shall have the honour to present myself
at your office to-morrow noon. Yours very obediently or faithfully ...
or very proudly....'"
He looked at her. Then he kissed her hand and said: "You're certainly
the cleverer of us two."
His tone seemed to hint "the cooler too." But a gentle, tender and
somewhat mocking look from her turned away the _innuendo_.
"Well, I'll be back again in ten minutes." He left her with a cheerful
face, went into the next room and shut the door. Opposite, in that
other room, it now occurred to him again forcibly--his dead child lay
in its coffin.... For the necessary steps, to use Doctor Stauber's
expression of yesterday, were bound to have been already taken. He felt
a paroxysm of grievous yearning.
Frau Golowski came out of the hall. She came up to him and spoke with
admiration of Anna's resignation and calmness.
George listened somewhat absent-mindedly. His looks kept always
glancing through the doorway and at last he said gently: "I should like
to see it once more."
She looked at him, at first slightly shocked and then sympathetically.
"Nailed down already?" he asked anxiously.
"Sent away already," replied Frau Golowski slowly.
"Sent away!" His face became convulsed with such agony that the old
woman laid her hands on his arm as though to calm him.
"I went to notify it quite early," she said, "and then the other matter
took place very quickly. They took it away an hour ago to the mortuary."
"To the mortuary ..." George shuddered. He was silent for a long time
as though unnerved from having just learned a terrible and completely
unexpected piece of news. When he recovered himself again he still
felt Frau Golowski's friendly hand upon his arm and saw her kind eyes
with their tired lines resting on his face. "So it's all finished," he
said, with an indignant look upwards, as though his last hope had been
maliciously stolen from him. He then shook hands with Frau Golowski.
"And you've undertaken all this, dear lady.... I really don't know ...
how I can ever...."
A gesture from the old woman deprecated any further thanks.
George left the house, threw a contemptuous glance at the little blue
angel, which seemed to look anxiously down at the faded flower-beds,
and went into the street. On his way to the post-office he worried over
the wording of the telegram that was to announce his arrival at the
place of his new profession and his new prospects.