The detachment vanished. Streets familiarized themselves.
"_Ich steh auf den Standpunkt_," said the politicians; and the racket of
machine-guns offered an obligato.
The new garrulity that had seemed strange to Dorn lost its strangeness.
It became the victrola phrases of a bewildered diplomacy. But the
diplomacy was not confined to frock-coats. It buzzed, snarled up and
down the factory districts, in and out of the boulevard cafés and the
squat resident sectors.
The German waiting for the knife of Versailles to fall was vomiting a
vocabulary of fear, hope, threat, despair. Under cover of a confused
Social Democracy the German army was slowly reorganizing itself.
It was three months after his arrival in Berlin that Dorn wrote his
curious sketch of the German situation. The three months had witnessed a
change in him. He had become a workman--industrious, inquisitive,
determined. Under the guidance of von Stinnes he had managed to
penetrate the heart of German _politik_. Tours through the provinces,
daily interviews with celebrities, statesmen, leaders of the scores of
political factions; adventures under the surface of the victrola phrases
pouring from the government buildings and the anti-government buildings,
had occupied even his introspections. Seemingly the empire had turned
itself into a debating society. Life had become a class in economics.
Three months of work. Unfocused talents drawn into simultaneous
activity. And Dorn arose one morning to find himself an outstanding
figure in the turmoil of comment and commentators about him. Von Stinnes
had wheedled his history out of him for publication in Berlin. Its
appearance was greeted with a journalistic shout in the capitol.
Radicals and conservatives alike pounced upon it. Haase, leader of the
Independent Socialists, declaimed it almost in full before the National
Assembly in Weimar.
Dorn had put into it a passionate sense of the irony and futility of his
day. Its clarity arrested the obfuscated intellect of a nation groping,
whining, and blustering under the shadow of the knife of Versailles.
The writing of it had rid him for the time of Rachel, of Anna, of the
years of befuddling emptiness that had marked his attitudes toward the
surfaces of thought about him. The emotionless disillusion of his nature
had finally produced an adventure for him--the adventure of mental
fecundity.
He had gone to Weimar to write. Here the new government of Germany had
assembled. Delegates, celebrities, frock-coats, strange hair formations;
messiah and magician had come to extricate the nation from its unhappy
place on the European guillotine. The narrow streets stuttered with
argument.... Von Stinnes and a girl named Mathilde Dohmann accompanied
him to the town. The Baron, bored for the moment with his labors, had
immersed his volatile self in a diligent pursuit of Mathilde. He had
discovered her among communist councils in Berlin and naïvely attached
her as a part of Dorn's secretarial retinue.
"She will be of service," he announced.
Dorn, preoccupied with the scheme of his history, paid little attention
to her. Arrived in Weimar he became entirely active, viewing with
amusement the Baron's sophisticated assault upon the ardent-voiced,
red-haired political spitfire whom he called Matty. Alone in an old
tavern room, he gave himself to the arrangements of words clamoring for
utterance in his thought. Old words. Old ideas. Notions dormant since
years ago. Phrases, ironies remembered out of conversations themselves
forgotten. The book was finished towards the middle of March--a history
of the post-war Germany; with a biography between the lines of Erik
Dorn. Von Stinnes had forthwith produced two German scholars who, under
his direction, accomplished the translation with astonishing speed.
Excerpts from the thin red-and black-covered volume found their way
overnight into the press of the nation. Periodicals seized upon the
extended brochure as a _Dokument_. In pamphlet form the gist of it
started upon the rounds of Europe. The garrulity of the day had been
given for the moment a new direction.
* * * * * *
"We will go to Munich. There will be a revolution in Munich. I have news
from secret sources."
Baron von Stinnes, lounging wearily in front of a chess-board, spoke and
raised a cup of mocha to his lips. Dorn, picking his way through a
German novel, looked up gloomily and nodded.
"Anywhere," he agreed. "Munich, Moscow, Peking."
In a corner of the room Mathilde was curled on the luxurious hotel divan
watching through half-closed eyes the figures of the men. The Baron
turned toward her and frowned. In return her face, almost asleep, became
vivid with a sneer. The Baron's love-making had gone astray.
"Matty is going to try to carry a million marks into Munich for the
Communists," he announced.
The girl stared von Stinnes into silence.
"How do you know that?" she asked slowly.
He lowered his cup and with a show of polite deliberation removed his
monocle and wiped it with a silk handkerchief.
"I know many things," he smiled. "The money comes from Dr. Kasnilov and
will be brought to Dr. Max Levine in Munich, and the good Max will buy a
garrison of Landwehr with it and establish the soviet republic of
Bavaria."
"You know Levine?"
"Very well," smiled the Baron.
Mathilde sat up. Her voice acquired a vicious dullness.
"You will not interfere with me, von Stinnes."
"I, Matty?" The Baron laughed and resumed his mocha. "I am heart and
soul with Levine. If Dorn cannot go I will have to go alone. It is
necessary I be in Munich when the Soviets are called out."
"You will not interfere with me, von Stinnes," the girl repeated, "or I
will kill you."
"You have my permission, Fräulein. The logical time for my death is long
past."
Mathilde's sharp young face had grown alive with excitement. She sat
with her eyes unwaveringly upon the Baron as if her thought were groping
desperately beneath the smiling weariness of the man.
"Mr. Dorn," she spoke, "von Stinnes is a traitor."
Dorn smiled.
"If one million marks will cause a revolution, I'll take them to Munich
myself," he answered. "I'm sick of Berlin. I need a revolution to divert
me."
"I fear I am in the way," von Stinnes interrupted. He arose with
formality. "Mathilde would like to unburden herself to you, Dorn. I am,
she will inform you, a secret agent of Colonel Nickolai, and Colonel
Nickolai is the head of the anti-bolshevist pro-royalist propaganda in
Prussia." He paused and smiled. "I will meet you in the lobby when you
come down."
He walked toward the door, halting before the excited face of the girl.
"Ah, Matty, Matty," he murmured, "you will not in your zeal forget that
I love you?"
He bowed whimsically and passed out. Dorn laid aside his book and
approached the divan. In the week since their return from Weimar he had
become interested in the moody, dynamic young creature. The fact that
she had resisted the expert persuasions of the Baron--a subject on which
the nobleman had discoursed piquantly on their ride to Berlin--had
appealed to him.
"Karl is a good fellow," he said, seating himself next to her. "And if
it happens he is employed by Noske and Nickolai it doesn't alter my
opinion of him."
"He is a scoundrel," she answered quietly.
"That is impossible," Dorn smiled. "He is merely a man without
convictions and therefore free to follow his impulses and his employers.
I thank God for von Stinnes. He has made Europe possible. A revolution
alone could rival him in my affections."
The girl remained silent, and Dorn watched her face. He might embrace
her and make love. It would perhaps flatter, please her. She fancied him
a man of astounding genius. She had practically memorized his book.
Thus, one had only to smile humorlessly, permit one's eyes to grow
enigmatic, and think of a proper epigram. He recalled for an instant the
two women who had succumbed to his technique since he had left America.
They blurred in his memory and became offensive. Yet Matty had been of
service and perhaps her moodiness was caused by a suppressed affection.
As an amorous prospect she was not without interest. As a reality,
however, she would obviously become a bore. In any case there was
nothing to hinder polite investigation, mark time with kisses until von
Stinnes brought on his promised revolution. He thought carefully.
Pessimism was the proper note. Dramatize with an epigram the emptiness
of life. His forte--emptiness. Not love but a hunger to live.
"Matty, I regret sadly that you are not a prostitute."
Startling!
"It would save me the trouble of having to fall in love with you, dear
child."
She smiled, a sudden amusement in her eyes.
"You too, Mr. Dorn. I had thought different of you."
"As a creature beyond the petty agitations, eh?"
"As a man."
"It is possible for a Man, despite a capital M, to love."
"Yes, love. It is possible for him only to love. And you do not."
"Much worse. I am sad."
"Why?"
"Perhaps because it is the only emotion that comes without effort."
"So you would fall in love with me to forget that I bore you."
"A broader ambition than that. To forget that living bores me,
Mathilde."
"There is someone else you love, Mr. Dorn."
"There was." He smiled humorlessly. "Do you mind if I talk of love? I
need a conversational antidote."
"And if you talk of love you may be spared the trouble of having to make
love," she laughed quietly. "But I would rather talk of von Stinnes. I
am worried."
"You are young," Dorn interrupted, "and full of political error. I am
beginning to believe von Stinnes. The most terrible result of the war
has been the political mania it has given to women."
Mathilde settled back on the divan and stared with mocking pensiveness
at her shoes. Dorn, speaking as if he desired to smile, continued:
"Do you know that when one has loved a woman one grows sad after it is
ended, remembering not the woman, but one's self? The memory of her
becomes a mirror that gives you back the image of something that has
died--a shadow of youth and joy that still bears your name. It is the
same with old songs, old perfumes. All mirrors. So I walk through life
now smiling into mirrors that give back not myself, but someone
else--another Dorn."
He arose and looked down at her.
"Does that interest you?"
"I understand you."
"There are many ways of making love. Sorrowful phrases are the most
entertaining, perhaps."
"You make me think you have loved too much."
"Yes, it would be difficult to kiss you. I would become sad with memory
of other kisses. Because you are young--as I was then."
"Was it long ago?"
"Things that end are always long ago."
"Then it was only yesterday."
"Yes, yesterday," he laughed, pleased with the ironic sound of his
voice. "And what is longer ago than yesterday?"
She had risen and stood before him, an almost boyish figure with her
fists clenched.
"I have something else I am in love with," she whispered. "I am in love
with----"
"The wonderful revolution, I know."
"Yes."
"And some day in the future you, too, will look into a mirror and see
not yourself but a glowing-faced girl that was in love with what was
once called the revolution."
"But if things end it is only because we are too weak to hold them
forever. So while we are strong we must hold them twice as eagerly."
"Sad. All most deplorably sad, Mathilde. Hands shuffle us into new
combinations, when we would prefer the old. Thus you, too, will some day
listen to the cry that rises from all endings."
"You are designing. You wish to make me sad, Mr. Dorn. And succeed."
"Only that I may contemplate the futility of your love and smile. As I
cannot quite smile at my own. We do not smile easily at corpses."
His hands covered her fingers gently.
"I will give myself to you, if you wish," she whispered.
"And I prefer you like this," he smiled. "If you will come close to me
and lay your head against me." He looked down at her as she obeyed.
"There is an odor to your hair. And your cheek is soft. These things are
similar things. You are almost like a phantom."
"Of her."
"No. She is forgotten. It's something else. A phantom of something that
once lived in me, and died. It comes back and stares at me sometimes out
of the eyes of strange women, out of the sounds of music. Now, out of
your hair."
"And you do not want me, Erik?"
"I want you. But I prefer to amuse myself by fancying that you are
unattainable."
"I've liked you, Erik. The rest does not matter to me. I grew old
during the war, and careless. My father and two brothers died. And
another man."
"So we both need diversion."
"Yes."
"Diversion," he murmured, "the little drug. But what is there to drugs?
No, come; we are lovers now."
"We will go to Munich together."
"Yes."
"And will you carry the money for Levine? They would never search you
and they might recognize and search me. And besides, von Stinnes would
not dare interfere if it was you, even if he is a spy, because he likes
you too well."
Her voice had become eager and vibrant. Dorn smiled ruefully, the faint
mist of a sigh in his thought. The girl had worked adroitly. Of course,
he was someone to carry the money to the Munich radicals.
"It is just an ordinary-looking package. The station will be under a
guard and all the roads coming in, too. They are expecting the
revolution and ..." She paused and grew red. Dorn's eyes were looking at
her banteringly. "You are thinking I have tricked you," she cried, "and
that it was only to use you as a ... as a carrier that I ... Well,
perhaps it is true. I do not know myself. I told you you could have me.
Yes, I give myself to you now ... now.... Do you hear?"
She laughed with bitterness.
"I have never given myself before. I would rather you smiled and were
kind. But if you wish to laugh ... and call it a bargain ... it does not
matter."
She had stepped away from him and stood with kindled eyes, waiting.
"One can be chivalrous in the absence of all other impulses, Mathilde.
And all other impulses have expired in me. So I will take the package.
We will start to-morrow early. And as for the rest ... I will spare you
the tedium of martyrdom."
He moved toward the door. "Come, we'll go downstairs. Von Stinnes will
be getting impatient."
Mathilde came to him swiftly. He caught a glimpse of her face lighted,
and her arms circled his neck. She was looking at him without words. A
coldness dropped into his heart. There had been three of them
before--he, Mathilde, and a phantom. Now there were only Mathilde and
himself.
"She was not tricking," he thought, and felt pleased. "At least not
consciously."
Her arms fell from him and she stared frightenedly.
"Forgive me, Erik. I thought you loved me. And I would have liked to
make you happy...."
He nodded and opened the door.