He began to pace the deck again without noticing that he drew near
Ingigerd Hahlström.
"You are wanted," a voice behind him suddenly announced. Seeing how he
started, Doctor Wilhelm excused himself.
"You were dreaming; you are a dreamer," Mara called. "Come over here.
I don't like these stupid men."
The six or eight gentlemen in attendance, with the exception of
Achleitner, laughed and withdrew with a humorous show of great obedience.
"Why do you stay here, Achleitner?" Thus the faithful canine received his
dismissal.
Frederick saw how the men withdrew together in groups at a little
distance, whispering as they usually do when having sport with a pretty
woman who is not exactly a prude; and it was with some shame, at any
rate, with expressed repugnance that he took the stool still warm from
Achleitner's body. Mara began to rhapsodise about nature.
"Isn't everything prettiest when the sun goes down? I think it's fun--at
least I like it," she quickly substituted, when Frederick made a wry face
at the remark. She spoke in sentences that all began with "I don't like,"
or "I despise," or "I do detest." In the face of that vast cosmic drama
unfolding itself before her senses, she sat wholly unmoved and
unsympathetic, displaying the overweening arrogance of a spoiled child.
Frederick wanted to jump up, but remained where he was, pulling nervously
at the end of his moustache, while his face assumed a stiff, mocking
expression. Mara noticed it, and was visibly upset by this unusual form
of homage.
Frederick had one of those idealistic heads set on broad shoulders
characteristic of certain circles in the "nation of poets and
philosophers." His ancestors had been scholars, statesmen, and soldiers.
The general, his father, was in externals wholly the soldier; but beneath
his uniform, his heritage from his own father, a renowned botanist,
director of the botanical gardens at Genoa, actively manifested itself in
a strong interest in science. Frederick's mother was a well-read woman,
passionately fond of the theatre and an enthusiastic lover of Goethe and
the poets of the romantic school. Her father, who had been prime minister
of Wittenberg, as a student and even later in his career, composed
poetry, which her adoring love for him had caused her to publish and
several times revise and reprint.
Though Frederick had never been ill, there were times when he showed
symptoms of a peculiar passionateness. His friends knew that when all
went well, he was a dormant volcano; that when things did not go so well,
he was a volcano spitting fire and smoke. To all appearances equally
removed from effeminateness and brutality, he was subject, nevertheless,
to accesses of both. Now and then a dithyrambic rapture came over him,
especially when there was wine in his blood. He would pace about, and if
it was daytime, might address a pathetic, sonorous invocation to the sun,
or at night, to the constellations, particularly to the chaste
Cassiopeia.
Since she had known him, Mara felt that his proximity was by no means
lacking in danger; but being what she was, it piqued her to play with
fire.
"I don't like people that think themselves better than others," she said.
"Being a Pharisee, I do," Frederick drily rejoined, and went on cruelly:
"I think for your years you are extremely forward and cock-sure. Your
dance pleases me better than your conversation." He felt much like a man
berating his sister.
Mara silently studied him for a moment, a suggestive smile on her lips.
"According to your notions," she finally said, "a girl mustn't speak
unless she's spoken to, and she mustn't have any opinions of her own. You
look as if the only sort of girl you could love would be one that was
always saying, 'I am a poor, ignorant thing. I don't understand what he
sees in me.' I hate such nincompoops!"
Conversation came to a halt. Frederick half rose to leave, but she
restrained him with a self-willed, pouting, "No." There was something
childlike and honest in that pouting "no" which touched his soul and drew
him down on the stool again.
"In Berlin, while I danced, I always had to look at you," she continued,
holding her doll against her lips so that her little nose was a bit
flattened. "The very first time I saw you, I felt something like a bond
between us; I knew we should meet again."
Frederick started, though not for an instant deceived, knowing this must
be an oft-used formula for establishing a relationship, and in essence a
lie.
"Are you married?" he heard before he had fully recovered his balance. He
turned pale. His answer was hard and repellent.
"It would be well, Miss Hahlström, if you were to examine me more closely
before you treat me as one among many. So far, I don't believe in the
bond that unites us. During your dance you looked not only at me, but at
everybody else." He spoke with increasing coldness. "At any rate, it
doesn't in the least concern you whether I am, or am not, married--just
as little as it concerns me what repulsive personages, whom nothing but a
depraved instinct can enjoy, you keep company with." He meant Achleitner.