"I have set my all on nothing."
To the accompaniment of this refrain beating in his soul Frederick
maintained an outer show of hilarity. He and the ship's doctor were
drinking champagne. He had ordered the first bottle with the soup and
had immediately drunk several glasses.
The more he drank the less he felt the smart of a certain burning wound,
and the more wonderful the world appeared, full of miracles and riddles,
surrounding and penetrating him with the intoxication of an adventurer's
life. He was a brilliant entertainer, with an easy, happy way in
conversation of popularising his rich store of knowledge, and with a
light humour, which stood at his command even when, as now, grim humour
crawled in the depths of his being, like evil reptiles. Thus it was that
the captain's corner that evening fell under his spell, both of his
jocular self and serious self.
Though he had lost his belief that science and modern progress alone
possess the power to convey happiness, he extolled their virtues. As a
matter of fact, in the festive gleam of the countless electric lights,
excited by the wine, the music, and the rhythmic pulse beat of the moving
vessel, it seemed to him at times as if humanity in a festal procession
with music playing were sailing to the Isles of the Blessed. Perhaps, he
said, science may some day teach man the secret of immortality. Ways and
means would be found to keep the cells of the body young. Dead animals
had been brought back to life by pumping a salt solution into them. He
spoke of the wonders of surgery, always the theme of conversation when a
man of the present, over his champagne and pâté de foie gras, triumphs in
the superiority of his age over all other ages. In a short while, he
declared, chemistry would solve the social question, and man would forget
what it is to worry about food. Why, chemistry was on the verge of
discovering how to make bread of stones, a thing that hitherto only
plants could do. Frederick continued in a similar strain, speaking
by rote, and scarcely looking up, yet fascinating his listeners.
But in the midst of the whirl of self-intoxication, he thought with a
shudder of bedtime, knowing he should not close his eyes the whole night.
And what recompense was the brightest height of the clearest day for the
hell of a single sleepless night, such as he had often spent within the
last years.
After dinner, he went with Doctor Wilhelm to the ladies' parlour, from
there to the smoking-room. Soon after, he went on deck, where it was dark
and gloomy and the wind was again whining dismally through the rigging of
the four masts. It was bitter cold, and snowflakes, it seemed to him,
swept his cheeks. Finally, there was nothing for him to do but go to bed.
For two hours, between eleven and one, he lay writhing in his berth,
sometimes for a short while falling into a troubled state between waking
and sleeping. In both states he saw visions, now a wild dance of faces,
now a single stark face, which tormented him and would not budge. Yet an
irresistible impulse gathered in him to keep his mental eye open for the
devilish play of supernatural powers.
He had turned out the electric lights, and in the dark, when the eye
is unoccupied, one is doubly sensitive to the messages of hearing and
feeling. He caught every sound, felt every movement, of the mighty ship,
steadily pursuing its course through the midnight. He heard the churning
of the propeller, like the labouring of a great demon condemned to slave
for mankind. He heard shouts and calls and the walking of men when the
coal-passers threw overboard the cinders from the huge boiler furnaces.
On the trip to New York those furnaces consumed over a thousand tons of
coal, and the casting away of the slag and ashes was left for the
nighttime. Thus, to the relief of the man wrestling with sleep, his
attention was drawn to the present and the things taking place in the
ship's body.
Yet, when there was no sound or movement to distract him, his imagination
succumbed to torturing thoughts of Mara and sometimes of his wife, with
whose sufferings he occasionally used to reproach himself. Now that
Ingigerd Hahlström had dishonoured his love for her, his conscience smote
him all the more. His whole mentality seemed to have entered a state of
reaction against the poison of his passion. A high fever raged in his
veins. The thing that in this condition represented his "I" was engaged
in a wild chase after the "you" of Mara. He picked her up in the streets
of Prague and dragged her back to her mother. He discovered her in houses
of ill repute. He saw her standing before the home of a man who had taken
her with him out of pity and then had turned her away in scorn, and she
stood for hours weeping outside his window. Frederick had by no means
fully sloughed the skin of the conventional German youth. The old
hackneyed ideal of virginity was in his eyes still surrounded by a sacred
aureole; but no matter how often he discovered Mara in evil things, no
matter how often he rejected her in his imagination, or tried with all
the moral strength of his being to destroy her image in his mind, her
face in its golden setting, her frail, white girlish body pierced through
each curtain, each wall, each thought with which he strove to conceal the
evil spirit that would not be exorcised either by prayers or curses.
Shortly after one o'clock, Frederick was tossed out of his berth. This
time it was not one of those dream-like visions that had roused him with
a start from a doze. The next instant he was thrown against the frame of
the berth. It was evident that the weather had grown worse and the
_Roland_ was travelling in heavier waters of the Atlantic.