Up to this point a wholesome-looking waitress, in white cap and apron,
had been serving. Now the Italian cook himself, Simone Brambilla, came
in to bring on the dessert and cheese and inquire whether the dinner had
been to the gentlemen's taste. The familiarity between masters and cook,
who spoke Italian together, testified to the best relations between them.
This little fragment of the artists' Italy in America enlivened them all,
bringing back memories of the days they had spent in Italy, the days that
signify the heyday of their youth to all German scholars and artists.
"Now then, strike up a tune, my boy!" Willy suddenly ordered the cook,
"Signor Simone Brambilla, you will please perform for us now! And
_cantare_. Understand? _Ma forte_ not too _mezza voce_!" He took a
mandolin from the sideboard and pressed it into the chef's arms.
"_Signor Guglielmo è sempre buffo_," said the cook.
"That's it--_buffo, buffo_," cried Franck, striking the table with his
fist. His smile had already turned somewhat idiotic, and he seemed to
think "_buffo_" meant "to sing."
"_Cosa vuole sentire?_" asked Brambilla.
"'_Addio mia bella Napoli_,'" suggested Willy, "or anything you like, Mr.
Brambilla."
"What does 'like' mean?" asked Franck. "I have heard the word so often."
"Would you believe," Willy said to Frederick, "that that ox has been here
over a year and doesn't know a word of English?"
"'_Deutschland, Deutschland über alles!_'" Franck began to sing.
"Goodness gracious!" said Willy. "His toothache has begun to bother him
again."
"'_Ich weiss nicht, was soll es bedeuten_,'" sang Franck.
"But I do!" cried Willy. "_Silentium!_ When Franck begins to sing and
Lobkowitz to yawn and Ritter empties his first glass on the table-cloth,
we'll soon be lying stretched out under the table."
The cook had seated himself decorously and was holding the mandolin in
position. With his cap of white linen and his white linen jacket and
apron, he cut a droll figure among those correctly dressed young men.
Willy Snyders poured some _vino nero_ for him into a tumbler, and he
struck a few notes by way of prelude, though hesitating to interrupt
Franck and begin. He kept his face, glowing from the kitchen fire, turned
toward Franck with an expression of courteous waiting and politely
besought him in Italian to keep on singing. Finally, since Franck,
instead of answering, arose, gave him a comically commanding look, and
waved his fork like a baton, he began, striking up an accompaniment
with a catching rhythm, which titillated his auditors' nerves. He was an
excellent singer and a master-hand at playing the mandolin. He gave those
well-known street-ballads which one hears everywhere in Italy, especially
in Naples: "_Addio mia bella Napoli_," "_Funiculi Funicula_," "_L'altro
ieri a Piedigrotta_," "_Margherita di Parete era sarta delle signore_,"
and also more serious songs, such as the languishing "_Ogni sera di
sotto all' mio balcone sento cantar una canzon d' amore_."
The cook's melodies undoubtedly charmed back his home to him, though
in colours less glorious and alluring to himself, perhaps, than to the
artists, whether they had been in Italy or not. Frederick leaned his head
back and closed his eyes. The dining-room was filled with the fumes of
cigars and cigarettes, and the electric bulbs shone as in a mist.
Frederick's thoughts carried him far, far away. His arm hung at his side
limply, while a Simon Arzt cigarette burned to a stump between his
fingers--throughout his adventures, his silver cigarette case had
remained safe in his pocket.
Before his inner vision rose the coasts and blue gulfs of Italy, the
brown Doric temples of Pæstum and the cliffs of Amalfi, Sorrento, and
Capri. He was standing on the Posilipo. He was with Doctor Dorn in the
loggia of the zoologic station for deep-sea researches, which Hans von
Marées had decorated. In Rome, Frederick had sat over many a bottle of
wine with Hans von Marées and Otto, who died while working on the Luther
Memorial in Berlin. He saw himself in the famous Est Est Café in Rome,
or visiting the malaria patients in the hospital on the Capitol, or
promenading in the sunshine on Monte Pincio with a deaf and dumb
sculptor, with whom he then went to an afternoon concert. He had laughed
because the artist explained that he did not hear the music with his
ears, but felt it, or rather felt the drum alone, in his belly.
In that period of his life, Frederick had been undergoing a crisis. But
a little more and his preoccupation with Goethe's "Italian Journey," his
intercourse with the artists, and the vast number of his impressions of
sublime art would have turned him aside from science. But one day he
chanced to meet Mrs. Von Thorn and her daughter Angèle. He became
engaged, and there was no question now of a change of profession. Angèle
was beautiful, and those days, when he read aloud to her chapters from
Goethe, or inspired and inspiring passages from Winckelmann, or recited
Hölderlin, or held forth to her on the masterworks in the Vatican, were
full of never-to-be-repeated romantic asininity. They bought engagement
rings of a jeweller on the Corso. Where was his ring? He had removed it
from his finger, and, like all his other possessions, it had gone down
forever in the cabin of the _Roland_.
Frederick again felt that sensation of hot waves rising from his breast
to his eyes. This time the emotion was a soft one, a feeling of
reconciliation, of mourning over lost illusions. The second epoch of his
life, if a second epoch were really to develop from this beginning, was
not like the first, full of innocence and based upon illusions. Frederick
was sorry for himself. He was moved almost to tears. For it is an all-too
strong faith, an all-too certain hope in happiness that finally bring
disillusionment.
It was in one of the intervals of clapping and applause punctuating the
end of each of Brambilla's songs, that Petronilla came in and whispered
something to Willy Snyders, which caused Willy in turn to whisper to
Frederick, who immediately jumped up and left the room. Willy went with
him.
Despite Petronilla's protestations, a gentleman and a stately, rather
gorgeously dressed lady had forced their way into Ingigerd's room.
Frederick and Willy arrived just as the lady was trying to wake Ingigerd
and raise her up in bed.
"For Heaven's sake, child," she kept saying, "wake up for a second."
Frederick and Willy recognised Webster and Forster's agent and
immediately expelled him to the hall, talking to him in whispers, but
none the less energetically. They told him a few forceful things, which
he received with a shrug of his shoulders. When they asked the lady by
what right she had forced her way in, she said she was the proprietor of
one of the largest New York theatrical agencies and had negotiated the
contract between Webster and Forster and Ingigerd Hahlström's father, who
had received a thousand dollars in advance.
"Time is money, especially here in New York," she declared. "Even if Miss
Hahlström cannot dance to-night, she must begin to think of to-morrow. I
should be willing to accommodate her, but this is only one of a hundred
cases that I have to look after. And if Miss Hahlström is to appear
to-morrow, she must go with me this very minute to"--she mentioned the
Gerson of New York--"so that they can work on her costume over night. The
establishment is on Broadway, and a cab is waiting in front of the door."
The lady said all this in Ingigerd's room, intentionally refraining from
lowering her voice. Several times Frederick and Willy interrupted to ask
her to moderate her tones.
"Miss Hahlström will not dance at all," said Frederick, finally.
"Indeed?" said the agent. "Then she'll be involved in a very unpleasant
law suit."
"Miss Hahlström is a minor," said Frederick, "and her father, with whom
you concluded the contract, probably lost his life in the sinking of the
_Roland_."
"And I," said the agent, "don't want to lose a thousand dollars for
nothing."
"Miss Hahlström is sick."
"Very well, then I'll send my physician."
"I myself am a physician."
"A German physician, I suppose," she said. "The only physicians that
count for us are Americans."
Perhaps this American woman, equipped with a masculine intellect,
masculine energy, and a masculine voice would have put through her will,
had not Ingigerd's heavy sleep defied all the noise about her, even the
shaking to which she had been subjected. At length Frederick displayed a
degree of determination so unambiguous that the agent had to recede from
her position and temporarily withdraw from the field. Besides, Willy hit
upon an idea, the far-reaching significance of which Frederick did not
realise until later. He declared that if the agent did not desist, he
would notify the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, since
Miss Hahlström was not yet seventeen years old.
"Gentlemen," said the lady, evidently taken aback and coming round a bit,
"remember that both Webster and Forster and myself have been spending
enormous sums on advertising for four weeks. I reckoned on a tour as
far as San Francisco. Now that Miss Hahlström happens to be one of the
survivors of the _Roland_ and has lost her father besides, she has become
the sensation of the season. If she were to appear now, she could return
to Europe in three months with fifty thousand dollars over and above the
sum contracted for. Would you be responsible to Miss Hahlström for such
an enormous loss?"
After the agent and her escort had left, Willy Snyders confirmed what she
had said about the amount of advertising that had been done. For weeks
all the bill-boards, all the building scaffoldings, every empty barrel
where building was going on were covered with posters announcing "Mara,
or the Spider's Victim." Sometimes they displayed a life-size figure of
a dancer, represented as almost a child still, a sort of albino with red
rabbit's eyes and streaming saffron-yellow hair. A spider, with a body
the size of a small balloon, was crouching behind its web. The poster was
by Brown, the most talented poster-painter in New York.
"You can see those posters everywhere on the streets still," said Willy
Snyders. "That's why it seems so funny to think I always stared at them
quite unsuspecting; and now Miss Ingigerd and you are in this house. Life
concocts crazy plots. I assure you, when I looked at those posters, I
thought of everything else in the world but you, Doctor von Kammacher.
And little did I divine that they would ever be of more significance to
me than the advertisements of any ordinary vaudeville."
When Frederick and Willy returned to the dining-room, the chef was gone,
and Lobkowitz and Franck were engaged in the time-worn dispute, whether
Raphael or Michael Angelo is the greater. Willy gave a humorous, though
indignant account of the battle of the Amazons that had just taken place
and how Webster and Forster wanted to insist on Miss Hahlström's
appearing that very night. The artists' chivalry was aroused. They
declared unanimously that they would refuse to give up their lovely ward,
even if all New York were to come and besiege them.
Frederick looked at his watch. It was a few minutes past ten. The last
thing Arthur Stoss had said on parting occurred to him, "At half past ten
to the dot, I shall be on the boards behind the footlights." Frederick
told the artists about Arthur Stoss; and Willy Snyders, the man of
initiative, proposed that they go together to Webster and Forster to see
the armless actor's performance.