When alone on the street, Frederick felt some disgust with himself for
lacking humour. Were those innocent men to blame if he happened to have
rasped nerves? Since it was Frederick's way, as soon as he perceived that
he had done a wrong, to set resolutely to work to undo it to the full
extent of his ability, he decided, after coming to the conclusion that
the fault had been his, to lunch with his shipmates after all. He had
been walking about eight minutes. He now turned back, accelerating his
pace, and within five minutes the sign of the Hoffman House was again in
sight. Broadway as usual was crowded, and the two endless chains of
yellow cable cars with short spaces between were perpetually moving by
each other. It was cold and windy. There was a great din and bustle on
the streets, and into the din and bustle Frederick saw his friends of the
_Roland_ and the _Hamburg_ step from the bar. As he was about to wave to
them, he slipped and stumbled on a piece of fruit on the pavement.
"Don't fall, Doctor von Kammacher!" a woman's voice cried. "How do you
do?" On regaining his equilibrium Frederick found himself face to face
with a beautiful, dignified young lady hidden behind a veil and wearing
a fur hat and coat. He slowly recognised Miss Eva Burns. "I'm in luck,"
she said. "I very rarely come to this part of the city. It just so
happened that I had to buy something near here, and I am on the way now
to my restaurant. I always take my meals in a restaurant, because I
loathe boarding-houses. By chance, too, I am later than usual. A little
lady whom you know, Miss Hahlström, visited the studio with Mr. Franck
and kept me three quarters of an hour longer than I am accustomed to
stay."
"Do you take your meals alone, Miss Burns?"
"Yes," she said, somewhat taken aback at the abrupt question. "Does that
seem strange to you?"
"Oh, no, not at all," Frederick hastened to assure her. "The astonished
expression on my face was merely due to my stumbling and to this
unexpected meeting with you. The reason I inquired whether you eat alone
was because I wanted to ask you if you had any objections to my lunching
with you."
"I should be very glad if you were to, Doctor von Kammacher."
The stately couple attracted much attention from passers-by. Frederick
was tall and rather broad and carried himself well, and his hair and
beard may have gone rather too long without the application of the
shears. Eva Burns was almost as tall. She was a brunette, suggesting in
her face and figure, which bore no resemblance to the wasp-like figures
of the American women, a race and type more in accordance with the
Titian ideal of feminine beauty.
"Would you mind waiting here a minute?" Frederick asked. "You see
those people over there getting into the car? Some of them God in
his inscrutable ways destined to be fellow-passengers of mine on the
_Roland_, the others my rescuers. I should not like to meet them again."
When the little company was safely aboard the car on the way to Brooklyn,
he said: "I am profoundly grateful--" and stopped.
"Because you were rescued from those men in the car?" Miss Burns laughed.
"No. Because I met you, and you rescued me from them. I admit I am
ungrateful. There's that captain--when I saw his ship come steaming
toward us from across the waters and saw him standing on the bridge,
he seemed to me to be an instrument of God, if not an archangel.
Awe-inspiring repose, solemn, awe-inspiring grandeur rested upon him. He
was not _a_ man, he was _the_ man, the saviour man, and beside him there
was none. My soul, all of our souls, clamoured for him, worshipped him.
But here he has dwindled into nothing but a good, commonplace little
workman. On the trip, Stoss's liveliness was a relief. Now, in the
treadmill of his daily occupation, he has turned from the finer thoughts
of his leisure moments. Duty, while deepening Captain Butor and
temporarily converting him into a useful, even an important personage,
acts as a leveller on Stoss. Stoss merely seemed to partake in the life
on the sea, while in actuality concerned with nothing but himself. And
there's my colleague, the ship's surgeon. I was completely upset to find
what an empty vessel he is. I really thought he was more interesting." As
if sluices in his being had been opened wide, Frederick began to speak
freely of the shipwreck, to which he had never before more than merely
alluded.
"What particularly frightened me to-day was the fact that a man can, as
it were, digest an oak-tree twice within less than forty-eight hours. I
keep discovering myself in the act of doubting the wreck of that giant
steamer, every corner of which was familiar to me. I saw something, but
I am so infinitely remote from it that I still cannot grasp it. I am only
just beginning to feel the ship coming to life in my soul. Four or five
times within the past twenty-four hours, I experienced the whole accident
over again. Last night I started up actually bathed in cold sweat, and
did not know where I was. The confusion on board, the tooting of the
distress signals, the bloody, distorted faces, the floating human limbs,
all was so frightfully appalling. If I keep on seeing such visions, I'll
go down with the _Roland_ again.
"It may be morbid to feel as I do. A man in my condition may say to
himself, 'Go down and stay down, if once you have sunk.' But those people
who got into the car do not even say that, Miss Burns. The whole thing
has gone down for them once for all. They have digested the whole of the
_Roland_ and everything that happened to the hundreds of human beings it
was carrying. They have digested the whole affair and almost forgotten
it. That ability of theirs, enviable though it may be, insults my general
humanitarian instincts. It is loathsome to me. And their clumsy phrases
revealing the indifference, the obtuseness of their souls make me
shudder. In their eyes I see that calm selfish sense of their own
security to the damage of another person's security which is at the
bottom of a murderous madness that I myself experienced. Those men are
cold men, they are murderous men. And a brutal state of self-defence but
slightly veiled and suppressed is their permanent state."
"Your friends, it seems to me, must have behaved very badly," Miss Burns
said, laughing.
To this Frederick could not truthfully assent. He merely repeated:
"The way I feel about it is that they have taken the ship between their
teeth, the ship with all its timber and iron and its immense human cargo,
and chewed it to a pulp, and swallowed it down without leaving a trace
behind." He removed his hat and ran his fingers through his hair.
"If you really do wish to lunch with me, Doctor von Kammacher, you must
not have high-flown notions, like Mr. Ritter," said Miss Burns halting in
front of a tidy little restaurant.
They entered a low room with a red brick floor and panelled walls and
ceiling. Owing to the enormous timber resources of their country, the
Americans make a very free, though refined use of wood. The clean little
room was frequented by German barbers, riding-masters, coachmen, and
clerks. An inexpensive lunch and the usual American drinks were dispensed
at the bar. The corner where the proprietor sat was decorated with a
small collection of sporting pictures, well-known jockeys with their
horses, acrobats, and baseball champions. Something in his appearance
suggested that at night he had different customers to deal with than in
the daytime, that his athletic figure--he was neatly dressed, but in his
shirt sleeves--was meant to inspire respect in his clients. Frederick
still suffered from too much breeding, and he was secretly astonished
that Eva Burns ventured into such a place.
"You are late, Miss Burns. Aren't you feeling well?" inquired the host,
with an immobile mask-like seriousness of expression.
"Oh, yes, Mr. Brown. I'm always all right," Miss Burns answered brightly.
"Bring me my regular lunch. But the gentleman, I am afraid, will not be
satisfied with it. Perhaps you have something special for him?"
Frederick, however, insisted upon ordering the very same as Miss Burns.
"I give you fair warning," she said when they were alone, "I really don't
think you will be satisfied with my diet. I never eat meat, I want you to
know, and you surely do."
Frederick laughed. "We physicians," he said, "are also coming more and
more to give up a meat diet."
"I think it is horrible to eat meat," said Miss Burns. "I have a handsome
fowl in my garden. I see it every day, and then I go and cut its throat
and eat it up. When we were children, we had a pony which had to be
killed, and the people in the East End ate it." She drew her long kid
gloves from her hands without removing them from her arms. "People eat
dogs, too. I adore dogs. But the worst thing is the frightful, endless
shedding of blood which human meat-eaters deem necessary for their
preservation. Think of all the butchers in the world, think of those
immense slaughter-houses in Chicago and other places where the
machine-like, wholesale murder of innocent animals is constantly going
on. People can live without meat. It isn't indispensable to their
welfare."
She said all this in a tone of seriousness tinged with humour, speaking
a correct, though somewhat laboured German.
"For various reasons," Frederick said, "I still hesitate to form a
definite opinion in regard to meat-eating. As for myself, I can do very
well without meat, provided I have my steak regularly every day for lunch
and my roast beef for dinner."
Miss Burns looked astonished, then laughed merrily.
"You are a physician," she cried. "You physicians are all animal
torturers."
"You refer to vivisection?"
"Yes, to vivisection. It's a shame, it's a sin. It's a horrible sin to
torture innocent animals to death just for the sake of adding a few days
more to the life of some commonplace person."
Frederick did not reply, being too much a man of science to concur in her
opinion. Miss Burns detected this, and said:
"You German physicians are horrible men. When I am in Berlin, I am in
a constant state of dread that I shall die unexpectedly and before my
relatives can prevent it, I shall be taken to your dreadful laboratories
for dissection."
"Oh, then you have been in Berlin, Miss Burns?"
"Certainly, I have been everywhere."
The conversation now turned on Berlin. Miss Burns spoke of it glowingly,
because it offered the greatest opportunities for hearing good music and
seeing good plays.
"I have a number of friends among the Berlin professors and artists. One
of them is a Polish pianist. He brings back money by the bushel from his
American tours. He owns an estate near Cracow, and has asked me to visit
him there. Unless I accept his invitation sooner than I expect to, I
shall not see Berlin again for a long time."
The host served the lunch, consisting of baked potatoes, cabbage and
fried eggs. Though at any other time this would scarcely have satisfied
Frederick, he ate with a hearty appetite and, like Miss Burns, drank
American ice-water.
Miss Burns's manner in talking was thoroughly unconstrained and
sprightly. She had observed that the foundering of the _Roland_ was still
too vivid in Frederick's thoughts, and bearing Peter Schmidt's warning
in mind, purposely turned the conversation away from it. But Frederick,
for some reason dissatisfied with himself for his criticism of his
fellow-passengers, tried several times to revert to the shipwreck. His
whole demeanour showed that something was gnawing at him and tormenting
him.
"We speak of a justice imminent in the plan of the world. But why was
such a pitiful collection of men saved, while hundreds of others drowned?
Why did that splendid Captain von Kessel drown? I shall never forget him.
Why did all those splendid picked men of the crew of the _Roland_ drown?
Why and for what purpose was I myself saved?"
"Doctor von Kammacher," said Miss Burns, "yesterday you were an entirely
different man. You were full of brightness and life; to-day you are all
gloom. I think you are wholly wrong in not being simply grateful for your
good fortune. In my opinion, you are not responsible either for the
quality of those who were rescued, or for your own rescue, or for the
number of those that sank. The creation was planned and executed without
regard to you, and you have to accept it as it is. After all, to accept
life is the one art the practice of which is really of permanent use."
"You are right," said Frederick, "only I am a man. Besides I inherit a
most unnecessary instinct for ideal rather than practical activity. 'The
time is out of joint,' says your Danish Englishman, Hamlet. 'O cursed
spite that ever I was born to set it right.' I cannot get rid of that
absurd megalomania. To make matters worse, there is the Faust in me that
sticks in every good German who thinks anything of himself. 'I've studied
now Philosophy and Jurisprudence, Medicine,' and so on. As a result, a
man has all the more chances of being disillusioned at every turn, and so
would rather pledge himself to the devil. Strange to say, the first thing
the devil usually prescribes is a blonde Gretchen, or something like
her."
Miss Burns remained silent, and Frederick felt himself under the
necessity of continuing.
"I don't know whether it is of interest to you to learn something of the
remarkable adventures of a German scholar and ideologic bankrupt."
Miss Burns laughed and said:
"A bankrupt? No, I don't think you are a bankrupt. Of course, whatever
concerns you and whatever you wish to tell me is of interest to me."
"Very well," said Frederick, "we'll see whether you are right. Conceive
a man who, until he was thirty years old, was always going the wrong way,
or if not that, then, at least, the trips he took, no matter along what
way, always ended precipitately in a broken shaft or a fractured limb.
That I escaped the real catastrophe, the shipwreck, is really most
peculiar. Nevertheless, I think my ship has been wrecked and I with it,
or I and my ship are in the midst of foundering. For I see no land. I see
nothing solid or firm anywhere near me.
"I was kept in a military school until I was ten years old. The desire
came upon me to commit suicide, and I was punished for insubordination.
There was no fascination for me in being prepared for a great carnage.
So my father, though it meant that he had to give up his pet idea, took
me away from the school, and I went through the much-discussed humanistic
_Gymnasium_. My father is a passionate soldier. I became a physician, but
I had scientific interests outside of my profession, and I devoted myself
to bacteriology. Broken shafts and fractured limbs again. Good-bye to
medicine and bacteriology. It is scarcely likely that I shall ever work
in those fields again. I married. Beforehand, I had reared, as it were,
an artificial structure of the whole matter of marriage--a house, a
little garden, a wife and children, children whom I intended to educate
in a freer, better way than most people do. I practised in a poor country
district, being of the opinion that I could do more real good there than
in Berlin West. 'But, my dear boy,' everybody said, 'with your ancestral
name, your income in Berlin could be thirty or forty times larger.' And
my wife absolutely objected to having children. From the very moment she
knew a child was coming until its birth, there was one desperate scene
after the other. Life became a veritable hell to us. It was no rare thing
for us, instead of sleeping, to argue the whole night through, from ten
o'clock in the evening until five the next morning. I would try mild
persuasion and comfort, I would urge every conceivable argument softly
and loudly, violently and gently, wildly and tenderly. My wife's mother,
too, did not understand me. My wife was disillusioned, her mother was
disillusioned. She saw nothing but craziness in my avoiding a great
career. Then there was this--I don't know whether it occurs in all young
marriages--each time before the child was born, we quarrelled over all
the minutiæ of its education, from infancy to its twentieth year. We
quarrelled over whether the boy should be educated in the house, as I
wished, or in the public schools, as my wife wished. I said, 'The girl
shall receive instruction in gymnastics.' My wife said, 'She shall not
receive instruction in gymnastics.' And the girl was not yet born. We
quarrelled so violently, that we threatened each other with divorce and
suicide. My wife would lock herself into a room and I would beat against
the door, because I was frightened and dreaded the worst. Then there
were reconciliations, the consequences of which were only to increase
the miserable nervous tension in our home. One day I had to put my
mother-in-law out of the house as a way of securing peace. Even my wife
realised that it was necessary to do it. We loved each other, and in
spite of all that happened, we both had the best intentions. We have
three children, Albrecht, Bernhard and Annemarie. They came inside of
three years, one very soon after the other, you see. My wife had a
nervous tendency which these births brought to a crisis. After the very
first child was born, she had an attack of profound melancholia. Her
mother had to admit that Angèle had been subject to similar attacks from
childhood up. After the last child was born, I took her on a two months'
trip in Italy. It was a lovely time, and her spirits actually seemed to
brighten under the happy sky of Italy. But her sickness progressed below
the surface. I am thirty-one years old and have been married eight years.
My oldest boy is seven years old. It is now"--Frederick reflected a few
moments--"it is now the beginning of February. It was about the middle of
October last fall when I found my wife in her room slashing to tiny bits
a piece of not exactly inexpensive silk which we had bought in Zürich and
which had been lying in her drawer more than four years. I can still see
the costly red stuff, that is, as much of it as had not been cut, and a
loose mountain of patches lying on the floor. I said, 'Angèle, what are
you doing?' And then I took in the situation. Nevertheless, I cherished
hopes for a time. But one night I awoke and saw my wife's face close
above me with a ghastly far-away look in it. At the same time I felt
something at my throat. It was the very pair of scissors with which she
had cut the red silk. 'Come, Frederick,' she said, 'get up and dress. We
must both go to sleep in a coffin of linden-wood.' It was high time to
tell her relatives and mine and convoke a family council. I might have
protected myself, but it was dangerous for the children.
"So you see," Frederick concluded, "it was not very far along the road of
marriage that I travelled with my talent for life. I want everything and
nothing. I can do everything and nothing. My mind has been over-loaded,
and yet has remained empty."
"You certainly did go through a hard time," said Miss Burns simply.
"Yes," said Frederick, "you are right, but only if you use the present
tense instead of the past and if you fully gauge the extent to which the
trouble with my wife has been complicated for me. The question is, am I
to blame for the course that my wife's mental suffering took, or may I
acquit myself of all blame? All I can say is, that the suit in this case,
in which I myself am plaintiff, defendant and judge, is still pending,
and no definite decision has yet been rendered.
"Now, Miss Burns, do you see any sense in the Atlantic Ocean's having
refused to take me of all the persons on board the _Roland_? Do you see
any sense in my having fought like a madman for my mere existence? Do you
see any sense in my having struck some unfortunate creatures over the
head with my oars because they nearly capsized our boat? I struck them
so hard that they sank back in the water without a sound and disappeared.
Isn't it vile that I still cling to life and that I would rather do
anything than give up this botched and bungled existence of mine?"
Though he had spoken in a light conversational tone, Frederick was pale
and excited. It was long since the plates had been removed, and Miss
Burns, perhaps to avoid a painful answer, asked:
"Shall we take coffee here, Doctor von Kammacher?"
"Whatever you will, to-day, to-morrow, and forever, provided I do not
annoy you. I am a gloomy companion, I fear. I fancy there is no other
person in the world troubled with such petty egoism as I am. Think of it,
my wife locked up in an asylum is occupied every moment of the day with
proving her own selfishness, weakness, unworthiness and wickedness toward
me. Because she is so unworthy, as she says, and because I am so great,
so noble, so admirable, they have to watch her all the time, I am told,
to keep her from inflicting injury upon herself. A very pleasant fact to
be conscious of, isn't it, Miss Burns, and haven't I good reason to feel
proud?"
"What you need," said Miss Burns, "is rest. I never thought--I beg your
pardon for saying so--that a man who outwardly makes the impression of
such strength can possess such a wee, trembling soul. What you ought to
do now, I should think, is simply cover up your past as much as possible.
All of us have to do some covering up in order to be fit for life."
"But I am altogether unfit," said Frederick. "This minute I am feeling
strong, because I am with someone in whose presence, for some reason or
other, I can wash myself in clean water--excuse me, I am speaking
euphemistically."
"You ought to concentrate on something, you ought to work," said Miss
Burns. "You ought to make yourself physically tired to the point of
exhaustion."
"Oh, my dear Miss Burns," cried Frederick, "how you overestimate me!
Work! I am no better than a tramp. The thing I thought to cure myself
with was laziness, idleness. Here I sit in a land discovered and
conquered as a result of the tremendous will power of the Europeans, with
my oars gone, my rudder gone and my last bit of free will. It is this
that distinguishes most men of to-day from the men of that time."
Coffee was served, and for a while Frederick and Miss Burns stirred the
sugar without speaking. Then Miss Burns asked:
"How did you come to lose your free will, as you say?"
"Theridium triste," said Frederick and suddenly recalled the simile of
the spider that Doctor Wilhelm had used in reference to Ingigerd. Miss
Burns, of course, did not understand him; but Frederick broke off, and
though she questioned him, refused to explain. She promptly withdrew her
question, saying she thought it was quite right and good for him if the
conversation lost its German philosophic cast and descended to the level
of a superficial person like herself.
"I advise you," she added, "no matter how sharply you may criticise
yourself for having travelled so many roads without reaching the end, to
strike out into a new road, and do so quite cheerfully. Confine yourself
to something that makes an equal demand on your hands, your eyes and your
brain. In short, return to your old love and try your hand again on
sculpture. Perhaps in a few months you will be the creator of a
world-famous Madonna in polychrome wood."
"You are mistaken in me," Frederick rejoined. "I do nothing but blow soap
bubbles. Leave me to my illusion, that there is a great artist in me
awaiting the moment of self-expression and development. What I am really
much more fitted for is to be Mr. Ritter's coachman, or valet, or at best
his business manager."