IV

Ritter lent Frederick one of his evening suits, which fitted him to

perfection, and within less than half an hour the company was sitting in

a box at Webster and Forster's. The enormous hall, in which smoking and

drinking were allowed, was full. Willy estimated that there were about

four or five thousand people present. A number of immense arc-lights

shone in the tobacco smoke like frosty, white moons.

When Frederick and his friends entered, a woman and a slim toreador were

dancing. The music was of an exciting nature, and the character of the

performance and the performer immediately took the artists captive. The

dance was an eccentric mixture of drollness, innocence, and wildness.

When watching the toreador, Frederick felt as if he were in an arena at

Seville; when watching the girl, as if he were near the Gulf of Corinth,

or on one of the islands of the Cyclades. He promptly decided to leave

Spain and follow the lovely dancer to her home in Greece, where she was

his Chloë and he, her Daphnis. Old shepherds sat tippling in a pine grove

dedicated to Pan. From the highland meadows he looked down upon the far

off Ægean Sea beating noiselessly against the rocky coast-line.

The music of the orchestra turned into the piping of Pan, while Webster

and Forster, the heavy fumes, the air vitiated by the exhalations of five

thousand people no longer existed. The pure breath of spring was rustling

in the pines. The shepherdess was dancing as she had learned to dance

from the droll caperings of the goats or, by natural inheritance, from

great Pan himself. It was a dance of young, wild, bubbling joy in life.

"The origin of all music," thought Frederick, "is dance and song in one

and the same person. The feet compel the rhythm that the throat voices;

and if the dancer herself does not sing, she hears music different from

the music to which she is dancing, and if she dances without an

accompaniment, we who behold her hear her music nevertheless. The

melodies I hear in this girl's dancing are comparable in their bucolic

innocence to the things of the same sort that Mozart, Beethoven and

Schubert wrote. They have exorcised the vulgar muse from this vulgar

place, banishing her to a remote distance."

The dancer was a Spaniard. She made little leaps in the air and tossed

her head archly, as if for her own joy, unconscious both of the audience

and the toreador, who sometimes picked her up and held her aloft. Her

dancing was innocent, entirely free from sensuality. At the conclusion of

her performance, Frederick and his friends clapped madly, while the vast

audience gave very scanty signs of applause.

"Caviar to the general," said Frederick.

When she disappeared in the wings, a lackey in red livery stepped on the

stage and set a number of small seats at regular distances from one

another. It was not until he had left and returned again with a pea-rifle

and a violin that Frederick recognised the brave private, Bulke. The next

moment Stoss appeared. A frantic outburst of delight, threatening never

to end, greeted him. He wore a jacket and knee-breeches of black velvet,

a lace jabot, lace cuffs, black silk stockings, and buckled pumps of

patent leather. His yellowish hair was brushed straight up all around his

large head. His pale face, with its broad cheek bones and broad flat

nose, was turned to the audience with a professional smile. The applause

refused to end, and the armless trunk made a moderately profound bow.

Frederick saw the same man helpless, drenched with water, crouching

under the seats of the life-boat; and he recalled with what murderous

determination the sailors, Bulke, Doctor Wilhelm, and he himself, as well

as the women, Rosa, Mrs. Liebling, and Ingigerd, had prevented the boat

from capsizing. What an unreal contrast between the past and the present!

And why was Stoss receiving such homage?

The psychology of certain mass demonstrations has yet to be written. What

could the applause have been intended to signify? "We are grateful to God

that he rescued you. This you have accomplished, you poor armless man,

that hundreds, though they had two arms, perished, while you are

privileged to appear on the stage this evening as if nothing had

occurred. We must enjoy ourselves; and it is better that you who

entertain and amuse us with your thousands of tricks should have been

saved than any Tom, Dick, or Harry. Besides we want to reimburse you for

all the troubles you have been through. What is more, because of your

skill and because of your rescue, you are a lion whose worth has

increased twofold."

The turbulence continued. The man the audience so honoured was fairly

drowned in a sea of applause. At last a man in evening dress stepped from

the wings and made signs that he wanted to speak. Silence fell, and he

announced that Arthur Stoss, the world's champion, would say a few words.

The next instant Stoss's sharp, clear boyish voice rang through the

theatre reaching even the hindmost seats.

Frederick caught expressions here and there, "My dear New Yorkers,"

"hospitable Americans," "the hospitable shores of America," "Columbus,"

and "1492." He heard Stoss say that on the bill-boards one read "1492,"

the year in which modern America was born. He distinguished phrases such

as "_navigare necesse est, vivere non necesse_," "through darkness to

light," and so on. Stoss's speech utterly lacked inspiration.

"Noah's ark," he said, "has not yet become superfluous. Two-thirds of the

earth's surface is still covered with water. But if a vessel here and

there is swallowed up in the flood, the ark of humanity cannot sink,

since God has set his rainbow in the heavens. The ocean is the cradle of

heroism, it is the unifying, not the dividing element."

The name of Captain von Kessel resounded in the hall. Frederick saw the

dead hero tossing about in the great black waters under a starless

heaven. Above the performer's shrill voice, he heard the captain's voice

saying:

"My brother has a wife and children. He is an enviable man, Doctor von

Kammacher."

Frederick was roused from his recollections by the frantic applause that

greeted the conclusion of the brilliant speech.

Arthur Stoss now seated himself on one of the seats, and Bulke, the hero

and life saver in red livery, laid a violin on another and proceeded to

draw off his master's shoes. Stoss's feet were clad in black stockings

leaving his toes bare. With the toes of his right foot, he took the bow

and with his left foot, deftly rosined it; a spectacle that sent a

whisper of astonishment rippling through the audience. The orchestra

struck up Bach's "Prelude," to which Stoss played Gounod's "Ave Maria."

The tones he produced were beautiful, and the vast crowd was enraptured.

Remembering the awful disaster, they were transported into a sentimental,

religious mood. Frederick shuddered with disgust. The sinking of the

_Roland_ was being exploited.

It was a relief when Stoss finally took up the pea-rifle. Bulke in the

part he now played aroused as much admiration in Frederick and the

artists as Stoss, if not more. While his master shot off the rifle, he

stood at a distance of fifteen feet, with total unconcern holding up

cards for Stoss to aim at. Stoss put a hole through the middle of the

card every time.

V

When he awoke rather late the next morning, Frederick was astonished to

find everything about him standing still. The bed was not pitching, the

glasses and water basin were not rattling, the floor was not sloping

downward, nor were the walls tumbling on his head. The grey light of

a cloudy winter day coming through the window by no means made an

unpleasant or cheerless impression.

He rang, and Petronilla appeared. The young lady, she said, had awakened,

looking well and rosy, and had already breakfasted. She handed him a note

from Willy Snyders, saying exactly where he could be found at different

times during the forenoon and that he would be back for lunch at quarter

past twelve.

Frederick took the second bath he had had within twelve or fourteen

hours. They had laid out fresh underwear and several perfectly new suits

of Bonifacius Ritter's for him to choose from; and he sat down to

breakfast a "newborn" man. Petronilla herself brought in breakfast. While

serving, she told him everybody, even all the servants, had gone out. She

left the room, and returned a few moments later to ask if there was

anything else he wished.

"Nothing, thank you."

She then requested permission to go out for about an hour and a half to

purchase various trifles for the signorina. Soon after, Frederick saw the

excellent housekeeper, all muffled up, step from the front door into the

wet, almost deserted street.

After he had made this observation, he became uneasy, lit a cigarette,

screwed his right eye meditatively, and bit his lips. The house was

empty. For that reason his heart was audibly knocking against his ribs.

Again the fantastic incalculableness of life struck him as so remarkable.

An occasion, a condition such as this he had scarcely hoped to reach in

weeks, or even months, certainly not in the wild welter of New York. From

the noise of the steamer and the city, from the rushing and roaring of

the Atlantic Ocean, he was suddenly plunged into the silence of the

grave. It affected him with a sense of desertion and oblivion. In that

city of four million inhabitants, each man was strenuously pursuing his

own affairs, or was harnessed into an iron yoke of duties, which deafened

and blinded him to everything beside the path he had to tread.

Frederick looked at his watch. It was twelve minutes past ten. His

uneasiness increased. He was unable to sit still. Each nerve, each cell

of his body was touched and excited by invisible forces storming upon

him from all sides. A force of this nature, penetrating walls, floors and

ceilings, has been called by various names. We speak of magnetism, of od,

of electricity. As for electricity, Frederick just then had a peculiar

experience of it. He was trying to find composure in front of the open

fireplace; and whenever he touched metal with the tongs, crackling little

sparks shot out. Everything in the room seemed to be charged. If he

merely ran his finger tips lightly over the rug before the hearth, there

were little flashes and reports, like the crack of a tiny whip.

"There they are," he thought, smiling, "the Toilers of the Light." And

while he racked his brain to recall in what book of fairy tales he had

read of those diminutive elves, the dream he had had on the _Roland_

occurred to him. "Toilers of the Light, what are you doing?" he asked

several times, and snatched after the sparks, as one snatches after flies

in a fit of impatience and boredom. It seemed to him that countless

numbers of those little children of Lucifer were pricking his blood like

so many dancing stars. Even the air was filled with stars. They clogged

his breathing. He arose and walked out into the hall.

As he paced up and down there for a while, undecided what to do, making

as little sound on the bricks as possible, he looked into the kitchen,

which, like the dining-room, was in the basement, and convinced himself

that it was empty. Then he softly ascended the marble steps to the

next floor, where he tried with all his might to check the rise of a

passion almost robbing him of his senses. In that endeavour he entered

the library, a room comfortably furnished and well equipped with

appurtenances for reading and writing. The walls were covered with views

of ancient Rome and engravings by Piranesi. But neither the city of the

Tiber nor the grave of Cecilia Metella, nor the Colosseum, nor the Temple

of Vesta in Tivoli had the power to engage his real attention.

He was out in the hall again, though hesitating still whether to mount to

the first story. For a while he stood uncertain, clinging with both hands

to the wooden post of the balustrade, his head sunk on his hands, and his

whole body shivering as in a chill. Then he raised his head. His eyes

were fixed. He seemed a different person.

In that moment Frederick comprehended the passionate speech of his body,

and sanctioned its demands. The thing that now came to the fore, despite

all the grief that had been gathering in him, despite all his spiritual

conflicts, his bitter mental convictions and self-condemnations, despite

his repugnance, his horror, his compassion and his hesitating and

delaying, the thing that came to the fore was the suppressed, unsatisfied

demand of his body. In the silence of the morning in that strange house,

it suddenly assumed an elemental, indomitable force. It would have

overridden the firmest will opposing it. But Frederick's will did not

oppose it. His clear, firm intention approved it, strengthened it, and

made its power invincible. He entered Ingigerd's room. She was sitting at

the open fireplace in a dressing-gown of Petronilla's purchasing, and was

drying the masses of her long, light hair.

"Oh, Doctor von Kammacher!" she cried in slight alarm, and fixed her

shimmering sea-green eyes upon the man standing there with eyes almost

closed, breathing heavily, incapable of uttering a word. As by hypnotic

influence, a helpless look of self-abandonment, of complete melting away

spread over her face.

The sight of her expression robbed Frederick all the more of

self-control. At last the time had come to extinguish the fires

tormenting him in one wild, greedy draught. With the hoarse cry of a

beast and the fury of a man dying of thirst, he plunged deep into the

slowly, slowly cooling waves of love.