The hanging lamp over the table in the green room had been lit.
Anne’s hand fell slowly from the child’s cap she was crocheting.
She had been aware for a long time of the irregular sounds of
Christopher’s steps. Her brother walked restlessly up and down the
rooms. Occasionally he bumped into the open wings of doors, then again
he would make aimless, unnecessary circuits round the furniture.
Anne noticed that Thomas dropped the newspaper he was reading upon his
knees. He too was listening to the disordered steps.
Again Christopher came in collision with a door, then he stopped
nervously near the table.
“Land fetches a big price nowadays.” While he spoke he lit a cigar and
the smoke came in puffs from his lips. “It will never again fetch as
much. We ought to sell some of the building sites; we have too many; at
any rate I know of a better investment.”
Anne did not like the idea. She would have liked to keep everything as
it had been left to them by their grandfather.
“Our grandfather would be the first to exploit this exorbitant boom,”
said Christopher with unnecessary temper. “You don’t understand these
things, my dear.”
Anne sighed.
“You are right. Speak to Thomas about it.”
“To me?” Illey laughed frigidly. Looking at Christopher his expression
became haughty. “I understand that you gamble on the Stock Exchange and
that you win. Take care. It is always like that at the start and then
fortune turns. People only stop it when they have broken their necks.”
“You have to remain cool, nothing else,” growled Christopher, “one must
not lose one’s nerve. Anyhow, that has nothing to do with it. What is
your opinion about selling building sites?”
Thomas shrugged his shoulders.
“I have no opinion. I am unacquainted with the circumstances.” He was
aware that his obstinate reticence was nothing but the expression of
his disappointed hopes. Yet he could not alter it.
Christopher was delighted that everything went so smoothly. As a matter
of fact he had already sold some of the sites. Now that the deed was
done, he was given the required consent. He breathed more freely. He
would sell the old timber yard too. Otto Füger was a clever go-between.
Anne took up her work again. Thomas’s aloof indifference revolted her.
She had lost her confidence in Christopher. She suspected Otto Füger,
but she did not understand business. She had never been taught anything
but to sing, to embroider, to play the piano and to dance.
She decided that when her little girl was born, she would make her
learn everything that her mother did not know. And while still young,
she should be taught that people can never be entirely happy. She
would tell it to her simply, so that she could understand and not be
obliged later on to hug to herself something that nobody wants and
that is always unconsciously trampled on by those to whom it is vainly
proffered.
But the little girl, for whom Anne was waiting in the old house, never
came. In spring the second boy was born and he was christened Ladislaus
Thomas John Christopher in the old church, now rebuilt, at Leopold’s
town.
After that Anne was ill for a long time. The cold gleam, which had
formerly made her glance so hard, disappeared from her eye. The lines
of her fine eyebrows softened down. Her boyish bony little hands became
softer, more womanly.
Then she was about again, but the shadow of her sufferings remained on
her face.
Thomas was courteous and attentive. He brought her books. For hours he
read to her aloud, without stopping, as if driven; he seemed to fear
Anne’s gaze which his eye had to face when he put the book down. What
did this gaze want? Did it say anything, or ask, or beg, or command?
No, Anne wanted nothing more from him. The time was past when.... He
buried his face sadly in his hands.
* * * * *
Year by year Thomas became more taciturn and if Anne asked him
whether anything hurt him or if he had any worries, he shook his head
impatiently. No, there was nothing the matter with him; that was just
his Hungarian nature.
But when he took his son on his knee he told him tales of big forests,
an ancestral country house, an old garden. Fields, horses, harvests in
the glaring sun ... and his face became rejuvenated and he held his
head as of old, in the little glen, when he turned towards the sun.
Anne had become accustomed not to be told these things by her husband.
Nor did she mention Ille when letters in a female hand came thence and
one handwriting, with its shapeless, rustic characters, repeated itself
frequently. When once it happened that Otto Füger brought the mail up,
Anne found one of these letters on the piano. She took it into her hand
and the contact made her tremble. She had to struggle against herself;
was it pride, honesty, or cowardice? She put the envelope untouched on
Thomas’s table. She did not question him, she did not complain, but she
never spoke of Ille again.
From that time the name of this strange land became a ghost in the
house. They never pronounced it, but it was ever there between them.
It seemed to Anne that even now it was stealing, hostile, through the
silence, drawing Thomas away from her. Desperate fear possessed her;
she felt that she was going to be left alone in icy darkness with no
way out of it.
“Thomas,” she said imploringly, as if calling for help, “why can’t we
talk to each other?”
Illey raised his head from between his hands.
“Are you reproaching me with my nature again?”
Anne perceived impatient irritation in her husband’s voice.
“I did not mean it like that”; the woman stopped short as if a hand had
been put rudely before her mouth.
Night was pouring slowly into the sunshine room. They could not see
each other’s faces when Thomas began suddenly to listen; he seemed to
hear suppressed sobs.... No, it was imagination; his wife never cried.
They had been silent for such a long time that Anne had merely fallen
asleep in the corner of the couch. Illey rose and closed the door
noiselessly behind him.
During Anne’s illness Thomas had moved from the common bedroom into
the back room which had once belonged to Ulwing the builder. When she
improved, he did not himself know why, he remained there. His wife did
not oppose it and he was fond of the room. From the window he could
touch the leaves of the chestnut tree and after rain the smell of the
damp earth in the garden reached him.
He sat on the window sill. Outside, the trees whispered.
Thomas’s mind was gone from among the closed walls. Desire carried
his soul beyond the town. He strolled alone and was met by a breeze
smelling of rain. How he loved that! How he loved everything out of
doors: the smells, the colours, the sounds, the steaming bogs of
boiling summer, the frozen roads of winter, where one’s footsteps
ring and the branches crack as they fall. Then the wind rises from
the soughing reeds and life trembles over the world. In the furrows,
the water soaks into the ground. The wood resounds with the amorous
complaint of birds. Call ... answer. Do they always find their mate?
In his heart Thomas nearly felt the silence of the woods. The seed of
reproduction falls in this trembling, solemn peace. Birds float slowly
in the sunshine. When the hour of the crops comes, summer is there.
Harvest is in full swing everywhere and his blood is haunted with
inherited memories. How often, how often, he has stopped at the edge of
somebody else’s wheat-field and clenched his fist. Nowhere in the world
is anything growing for him.
This memory brought sad autumn weather to his mind. A deep sad fall
... and he comes in a mist towards the town. He comes like an escaped
convict brought back to his prison. Again the paved streets and narrow
strips of smoky sky. Office, blotches of ink, paper and the old house,
which is strange to him, and the lovely cold woman who does not
understand him.
Dim recollections stole upon him. Again he seemed to feel Anne’s two
little protesting hands on his breast and that unsympathetic look which
had more than once repelled his desire.
He stretched his hand out of the window towards the chestnut tree. He
picked a young shoot. The bough yielded itself easily, moist, fresh....
He thought of someone who had yielded herself as easily as the young
shoot. She had been bred there on his old land, the daughter of the
keeper in the swampy wood. Humble, as the former serf-girls had been
with his ancestors, pretty too, with laughing eyes. She never asked
what her master was brooding about, and yet she knew. The woods, the
meadows, she too thought of them and she sang of them with the very
voice of the earth. One did not need to listen, one could whistle, she
expected no praise. No more do the birds....
Thomas could not remember how it was at first that he desired the girl.
He simply wanted her, like the perfume of the woods, the soft meadows
under his feet. His inherited man-conscience did not reprove him. He
did not think there was any sin, any unfaithfulness in it, for he did
not love this girl. He really believed that he did not wrong Anne or
deprive her of anything to which she attached any importance.
He leaned again out of the window. He looked up to the sky. He would
see it to-morrow above the woods.... Then he reached for his hat. A
rare event with him, he longed to hear some gipsy music. He wanted to
be solitary, somewhere where the fiddle played for him alone.
He hesitated before Anne’s door. Should he go in? Perhaps she was still
asleep....
His steps sounded in the sunshine room. Anne jumped up. If Thomas were
to open the door she would throw herself into his arms ... but the
steps passed by.
She started to run after him, then stopped wearily before the
threshold. She would abase herself uselessly. And as she stood there
she remembered something. A dream. A desolated strange street. One
solitary person at the furthest end. Thomas ... and she runs after
him, but the distance does not become less. The street becomes longer.
Thomas seems always further and further away and she cannot reach
him....
She thought of her girlhood, the time full of promises. Was this to be
their realization? Would everything remain forever like this? Would
she and Thomas never come together again? Live with each other and look
at each other and remain strangers?
She shuddered as though she were cold.
Then she noticed that for a long time someone had been ringing the
front door bell. Who could it be? The old friends came no more to her.
Thomas was taciturn with them too. They may have thought it conceit
and all stayed away. The relations of the Illey family were avoided
by Anne. The voice of Bertha Bajmoczy stood between her and the
descendants of the old landlords.
A knock at the door. A lamp was burning in the corridor and the shape
of a man appeared in the opening.
It was Adam Walter.
“After all this time....” And Anne thought how wonderful it was that
the old friend should come back just this day when she felt her life so
poor and lonely. Joy came to her heart for a moment. It seemed to her
that her youth, her girlhood, had returned to her, with everything that
distance embellished.
Adam Walter was grave and serious like a man who has painful memories
to bury in himself. Yet his eyes followed Anne’s movements eagerly
while she reached to light the lamp. He longed and feared to see her
face again.
“She has suffered since I have seen her,” thought Adam Walter, “and it
has beautified her.” Anne’s veiled voice and her look broke open in
him a wound which he thought had long ago healed. He too remembered his
youth, when he went away from her all unsuspecting, when he worked,
when he dreamed. Then he heard that Anne had married and in the same
instant he realized that he loved her. He had loved her always.
She seemed strangely tall and slender to him. The flame flared up.
“To be here again with you ... it’s too good to be true.”
“You ought not to speak like that.” Anne smiled her old, young smile,
“or do you still say everything that passes through your mind? Do you
remember the Ferdinand Müllers? And the new sign, the white head of
Æsculapius? How we laughed....”
“In those times everything was different,” said Walter dryly.
Anne looked at him. “He too has become old. How hard his looks are,”
and the smile that had rejuvenated her vanished from her face.
And Walter’s voice became ironical.
“And I thought I would create like God, just like Him. Then my opera
failed, nobody wanted my sonatas. Nobody ... and now I am humbly
thankful to become assistant professor in the National Academy of
music.” He laughed lifelessly. “But perhaps it was bound to be like
that. When a man in his youth wants to become like God, he becomes
at least an assistant professor in the end; who knows that if he had
started with the ambition of becoming an assistant professor he would
have ended by becoming nothing at all.”
Anne looked sadly down. “So he too has failed to grasp what he reached
for. Does nobody grasp it?”
“Once upon a time we were all revolutionaries,” said Walter, “for is
not youth a revolution in itself? We are all borne to the executioner:
one for a thought, the other for a dream, and ... all of us for love.
It sounds mad, but it is so. Man must die many deaths in himself to
be able to live. I was just the same as the others and those that are
young to-day are as we were in old times. In its unlimited conceit
youth of every age believes that it has discovered the rising of the
sun and all youth shouts vehemently that its sun will never set. That
is as it ought to be. When the sun comes to set, the youth of another
age believes the same thing. Men drop out, but their faith remains in
others, and in others again, and that is the thing that matters.”
It seemed to Anne, that Adam Walter, who once, when he was young, had
guided her thoughts to freedom, now taught her the art of compromise.
Again Walter attempted to be ironical, but his voice failed him.
“Man is full of colours, brilliant colours, when he starts. They all
wear off. Only grey remains. The awful grey spreads and becomes greyer
and greyer till it covers the man and his life.”
“Oh, Walter, how sad all this is....”
“To me it is sad no more. I have got over it. Don’t be sorry for me,
please. Even for the grey people there are still some lovely things
in this world. The grey ones see other people’s colours. They alone
can see them truly. Since I have renounced creating myself, I enjoy
peacefully, profoundly, other people’s creations. Before, I was
aggressive and impatient, now I love even Schumann and Schubert, and
all those who have dreamed and who woke from their dreams.”
Anne sat with half-closed eyes, bent a little, and her pale hands were
interlocked over her knee.
“Have I grieved you?” asked Walter hesitatingly.
The woman shook her head.
“You have made me understand my own life....”
“So she is no happier than I am,” thought Walter, and for the moment he
felt irrepressibly reconciled to his fate. Then he was ashamed of the
feeling. He had no right to it. Anne was not to blame for his state of
mind. She knew nothing of it.
“Do sing something....”
She looked at him with large, beaming eyes. It was a long time since
anybody had said this to her.
They began to talk of music. And this changed them into their old
selves; they were boy and girl again, just as on Sundays in the old
days.
“Come again soon and bring your violin with you,” said Anne when they
took leave of each other. Then it struck her that neither of them had
mentioned Thomas.
Adam Walter and Thomas Illey never became friends. They met with
courteous rigidity. Adam Walter smiled disparagingly at Illey’s views,
while Illey’s mocking gaze tried to call Anne’s attention to the
musician’s ill-cut clothes and shapeless heavy boots.
It mattered little to Anne. The piano stood mute no more in the
sunshine room and a bright ray of light was cast on her life by the
revival of music, which indifference and want of appreciation had
silenced for so long. Its resurrection was her salvation. Her soul
ceased to be strangled by the torture of enforced silence; it found
relief and took flight on the wings of songs, attended, through many
quiet evenings, by Walter’s soul cast into the music of his violin.
Christopher looked in occasionally. He patted his old school-mate on
the back and whistled softly to the music while he ran through Stock
Exchange reports in the papers. Soon after his uneven steps passed
again through the corridor.
He could not find peace anywhere. Calculations swarmed in his head.
They appeared, but before he was able to grasp them they scattered and
vanished. He had no idea if he was winning or losing and he dared not
look at his accounts. Money became dearer and dearer. Banks restricted
their credit. Suspicious rumours from Vienna reached the Stock Exchange
of Pest. Quotations fluctuated and declined slowly, but he lacked the
resolution to wind up his transactions. He was still waiting, still
buying. He became intoxicated with the fascination of risks and blind
hopes. His nerves were in a constant state of tremulous tension. The
lust for gain became the torturing passion of his soul.
His grandfather had been the money’s conqueror, his father its guardian
and he, it seemed, was to become its adventurer. No matter, chance
helped adventurers.
His nights became very long. Restlessly, Christopher turned his head
from one side to the other on his hot pillow. He rose early. He was no
longer contented to send his agents on ’Change. He wanted to see the
confusion, hear the noise, feel the universal pulsation of money as
evinced in the excitement of the crowd.
He rushed through the office. Otto Füger had become manager with full
powers. He arranged the cover for speculations, he received and paid
out money in the name of the firm. Christopher had no time to see to
anything. In unbusinesslike handwriting he put his name to anything.
Then he rushed away, leaving the doors open behind him.
It was a lovely May morning.
At the Exchange in Dorothea Street brokers stood on the stairs and
transacted their business, leaning against the balustrade. Men stood
in small groups in the acid, stuffy air of the cloak-room. Subdued
talk was heard here and there. An old fat man with his hat perched on
the back of his head, passed wheat between his fingers from one hand
to the other. Near the window a red-haired broker held some crushed
maize in the palm of his hand. He lifted it up, now and then, and at
intervals pushed his tongue out between his yellow teeth. Scattered
grain crackled under people’s feet.
Doors banged in the big hall of the Stock Exchange. The lesser fry was
pushed back. There was a crush round the bankers’ boxes. Slowly the
masters of the Exchange arrived. People saluted them respectfully,
as if they were paid for it. The unimportant ones used to read their
faces, the gestures of their hands. The great ones looked indifferent,
though they were the men who held the secrets which mean money. Nervous
heads swayed round a fat, owl-like face. Those behind pressed eagerly
forward.
Near Christopher a red-eyed, seedy-looking man shrank to the wall.
A worn out, long, silk purse was in his hand. He began to suck the
ivory ring of the purse; people collided with him and the ring knocked
against his teeth; but he went on sucking it.
“I sell....”
“I buy ...” cries came from all sides like the shrieks of hawks.
Somebody’s hat fell on the floor ... it was trampled under foot. A
freckled hand waved a bundle of papers.
“I sell ...” it came denser and denser. The brokers of the big banks
shouted themselves hoarse. The noise increased. The stocks fell.
“Now ... now is the time to buy,” thought Christopher in deadly
excitement. His shrieks joined the general pandemonium.
“People’s Bank, ninety-two....”
“Eighty ...” bellowed a brute voice.
“Seventy-six....”
Arms rose. Hands moved from their wrists, flabby, like rags.
“Industrial Bank....”
“Credit Institute....”
“Forty-five ... forty-two.”
Faces were aflame. The gamble became a wildfire, roasting people’s
skins. Rumours spread through the hall. Nobody knew whence they came,
they simply were suddenly there and then scattered all over the place.
A deafening uproar followed. People blindly believed anything. Prices
fell. Somebody bought. Blind confidence returned.
“I buy....”
Unconfirmed news of disaster came again. The whole ’Change became
a whirlpool, as if it had been stirred round. Nobody knew what was
happening. Telegram forms flew over the place. Fists beat wildly on the
air.... Everything was upside down.
A man with sweaty face flew like an arrow into the crowd.
“There is a Black Saturday in Vienna! News has just arrived. There is a
slump all over Europe.” Quotations fell head over heel.
A big broker tried to stem the tide. It swept him away. It was all
over.... In a few seconds people, families, institutions, were ruined.
Lost were the easily-won fortunes of the day before, never seen by
those who owned them. Lost were the old fortunes amassed by the hard
work of several generations....
Christopher leaned his snow-white face against the wall. Near him, the
seedy-looking man continued mechanically to suck the ring of his purse.
He could not take his eyes off him. He stared at him while he was
ruined.
The brokers came panting. No, it was now impossible to sell anything.
What stood for money an hour ago had become a valueless scrap of paper.
The porter of the Stock Exchange rang the bell. The death-knell.
Christopher could only mumble. Nobody listened to him, his own agents
left him there. Only the weird man looked at him with funny, bloodshot
eyes.
Then strange faces passed quite near to his face. A sickening smell
of perspiration moved with them in the air. Christopher’s eyes became
rigid and glassy. Faces ... faces of a strange race. Some smiled pale
smiles. These had won. Everything would be theirs, it was only a
question of time. Theirs the gold, the town, the country.
And the grandson of Ulwing the builder, ruined, tottered through the
gates of the Stock Exchange among the new men.
Life became confused and dreary. After Black Saturday, the Stock
Exchange differences were enormous. No bright Sunday shone for
Christopher. He had to pay, and, as he had never reckoned, he attacked
Anne’s fortune too. This was a secret between Otto Füger and himself.
He said nothing of it to Thomas.
He clutched like a drowning man. He wanted to turn everything into
money. To hide the truth, to keep up appearances as long as possible
... fighting, lying. Sometimes Otto Füger whispered into his ears and
then he shrivelled up and looked horrified at the door.
“No, no, tell them to-morrow.... It cannot be done to-day!”
From day to day, from hour to hour, he kept things going and the
strings of his nerves tightened in his neck. To gain time, if only
minutes ... even a minute is a long time for a man clinging to his life.
Summer passed like this and then, in autumn, came the terrible wave
of bankruptcy affecting the whole building trade. The firm of Münster
became insolvent. Many of the new businesses went bankrupt. Christopher
alone kept himself still going and one afternoon he carried his last
hope to Paternoster Street.
No one took any notice of him in the office. One inferior clerk to
whom he told his name stared over his head. He had to wait a long time
before he entered the manager’s office.
The manager was reading a letter at his writing-table and seemed to
take no notice of his presence. Christopher could not help remembering
how different everything had been when he signed his first bill in
this same office. The smoky low room had disappeared and the business
occupied the whole building. It had become a bank.
His eyes were arrested by the fat, owl-like head of the all-powerful
manager. He recognised in him suddenly the little owl-faced clerk who
in those old times cringed humbly before him. The proportions of his
face had doubled since, and so had his body; there was scarcely room
enough for him in the armchair.
The director came to the letter’s end. He lowered his head like a bull
preparing to charge and his dull eyes looked suspiciously over his
spectacles at Christopher.
“I have the pleasure of seeing Mr. Ulwing? Yes ... of course, of
course, I know the firm. A connection dating from our youth....
Once I happened to have the good fortune of meeting a certain old
Mr. Christopher Ulwing. Any relation of yours? A powerful man, a
distinguished man.”
“My grandfather....”
The manager became at once very polite. He offered Christopher a seat.
“Can I be of any service to you?”
Christopher was startled by this question, though he had naturally
expected it. He cast his eyes down, pale, suffering. He would have
liked to defer the answer. Until it was given there was still one last
hope. After that none might be left.
Owl-face moved the side-pieces of his gold-rimmed spectacles which made
an impression on his fleshy temples.
“I am at your orders,” he said a little impatiently, looking at the
clock on the wall.
Christopher made an effort.
“I want a loan.”
The manager at once became cold and haughty.
“Everybody wants one nowadays. Black Saturday has ruined many people.”
“I don’t deny that it has caused some temporary embarrassment to my
firm too....”
“I know,” said the manager drily.
The whole face of Christopher was anxiously convulsed.
“A short loan would help me considerably....”
“What security do you offer? The name of Ulwing?” Owl-face smiled,
“that I am afraid is no longer enough....”
“My books are at your disposal, allow me ...” stuttered Christopher. He
felt clearly that he was humiliating himself before a stranger, though
he knew but dared not confess to himself that it was useless. He also
knew that it was hopeless to argue and still he argued.
The manager looked coldly into his eyes.
“The Bank is carefully informed of everything.”
Christopher drew his head between his shoulders as if expecting a blow.
He twisted his mouth helplessly to one side.
“You came too late to me, much too late,” continued Owl-face. “Is it
not a fact that the house alone remains the property of the Ulwings?
It is true it could not be sold at present. Times are bad, but if I
remember aright the grounds are exceptionally large, well situated in
the middle of the town, and could bear a heavy mortgage.”
Christopher hung his head in desperation. The manager looked at him
over his spectacles expectantly. For an instant, kind, human pity
appeared in his eyes, then he sighed and dropped his hand with a heavy
movement on his knee.
“I can lend you money on the house. That is the only way I can do it.”
With a motion of his hand, Christopher waved the suggestion away. He
was in the mire, but he had strength enough to escape drowning in it.
He struggled no more with himself. He felt he could never touch the
house. At least let that be preserved clear for Anne. The house, the
dear old house....
The banker rose when he had shaken hands with Christopher and went with
him to the door.
“I was a great admirer of Mr. Ulwing the builder. I am sorry I cannot
oblige his grandson. Perhaps another time,” he added in a murmur, as if
he did not believe it himself.
Christopher smiled convulsively, painfully. Even when he reached the
street this smile remained on his face and tortured his features.
He caught hold of the corner of his mouth and pulled it downwards,
sideways.
He did not know where he went. He ran into people. An old gentleman
shouted at him angrily:
“Can’t you look out, young man?”
Christopher looked at him wearily. He thought how this old man was
younger than he, because he would live longer than he.
When he reached home, he threw himself on his bed. Curiously, he fell
asleep at once. The heavy dreams of exhaustion took possession of him.
Sweat ran from his brow.
When he woke, it was quite dark in the room. At first he knew not where
he was, nor what had happened. Then, with a shock, he remembered.
He moaned like a suffering animal that cannot tell its pains.... He
could stand solitude no more. Already he was on the threshold. On the
staircase he looked at his watch. Eleven o’clock. He knocked timidly at
the door of the sunshine room.
“Anne, are you asleep?”
“Yes, a long time ago,” answered his sister inside. The door opened.
Anne tried to look gay, but her eyes were sad.
“Do you remember, Christopher, how often you asked that question in the
old times from your little railed bed?”
“And you answered then as you did now. Then too I was afraid.”
Anne looked him straight in the eyes.
“What do you mean?”
Christopher laughed curiously.
“Can’t I make a joke when I am merry? And what are you doing so late?”
He looked at the table. Under the shaded lamp lay account books and
bills.
“I have learnt about accounts,” said Anne wearily, “so many bills have
accumulated lately. The tradesmen worry me and I receive no money from
the office. I cannot understand why Otto Füger delays things like
this.” She stopped suddenly, thinking of something else. “Did you
hear?” and she began to run towards the nursery.
Christopher dragged his steps behind her.
On the chest of drawers a night-lamp was burning. In the deep recess of
the earthenware stove water was warming in a jug. Anne leaned over one
of the beds and her voice sounded softly in the silence of the room:
“Here I am....”
Christopher’s heart was touched by these three short words, which meant
so much. He too had, once upon a time, slept in the very same little
bed, he too had waked with a start, had been afraid, but no mother’s
voice came to say: “Here I am.” He had never known a light cool hand
caressing for caresses’ sake, two warm womanly arms embracing chastely,
nor the clear smile that has no design. He did not know her who
understands all and forgives all, and who says when one is miserable:
“Here I am!” Yet just that might have been enough to alter his life.
“They are lucky,” muttered Christopher as he went back to the sunshine
room. Anne, before shutting the door behind her, put a piece of paper
between the two wings. She never forgot that. The loose old doors had
glass panes and rattled if a carriage passed down below in the street;
this frightened little Ladislaus.
“This ought to be set right....”
Christopher sat in silence in the corner of the sofa with the many
flowers. He paid no attention. Under his motionless eyelids he looked
wearily all round the room. He noticed suddenly that Anne said nothing.
Why did she not speak? She would help him if she said something,
anything, words, ordinary matter-of-fact everyday words, which had a
sound, which lived and caught hold of his mind, which held him back if
only for a minute at the brink of the abyss which threatened him and
filled him with horror.
“Anne, tell me a story.”
She looked up from the little drawer into which she had locked her
bills.
“Tell you a story? What are you thinking about? How can I tell a story
who am living within four walls?” she smiled and put her hand on her
brother’s shoulder.
“Well, little Chris, once upon a time there was an old house: in that
house lived a woman who never could sleep her fill, because her two
sons waked her up early every morning....”
Christopher’s face twitched as he rose.
“You are right, let us go to sleep....” He bent down and kissed his
sister’s hand. “Good night, Anne, and....” He wanted to say something
more, but turned his head away with an effort and left the room.
In the corridor he stopped near the loose stone slab and tried it. It
was still loose. The ticking of the marble clock accompanied him once
more down the stairs.
In his deep, vaulted room a candle was burning, but the small flame
could not cope with the big room and left cavelike dark corners. A big
white spot attracted Christopher’s eyes. While he had been with Anne,
the servant had made his bed and his clothes for the morrow were lying
there ready on a chair. He could not bear this sight. To-morrow.... He
choked. In that moment a delicate crackling reached his ear. He turned
towards it.
The fire was burning in the stove and shone through the old tiles.
Christopher went up to it, leaned his hand on the stove and looked
through the ventilators. Small flames flickered among the logs. He
looked at them for some time with extraordinary interest, then raised
himself with a sigh.
Life had deprived him of everything. Whenever he inspected closely
things he believed in, he always found them to be delusions, just like
the stove fairies. He had been running after delusions too when he had
fallen. He had broken when he fell; it was useless to try to stand up
again; he could do it no more. Even if he could, what good would it be?
All the people he had come in contact with had broken a piece off his
soul, taken it with them and cast it away. Where was he to seek the
scattered pieces?... What was left to him was too little for life. A
little honour, very little. A little pity for Anne ... nothing else.
His hand slid from the stove. Why warm it now, it was no longer worth
while....
He went to the writing-table. Then, as if disgusted, he pushed the
papers away from himself. He turned back at the threshold. He threw a
packet of letters into the fire. He put his watch and his empty purse
on the table. No, he had nothing else on him.
In the garden the autumnal leaves rustled gently, as if somebody’s
teeth chattered in the dark. Christopher slunk with bent back out of
the gate ... only the two pillar-men looked after him.
“Just like a thief.” Somehow, he could not understand why, his
grandfather’s funeral came to his mind. The mayor, the city councillors,
the flags of the guilds. The priests sang and the bells tolled.... He
leaned back, then he went on with his unsteady, heavy steps.
The night was dense. In the mist the city looked like a reflection in
grey, murky water. The light of the gas lamps faded away into the air,
the walls of the houses faded, the people’s faces faded. With a shudder
Christopher turned up the collar of his coat.
He reached the Danube. He sought his way between the barrels and bags
of the docks. Then he sat down on the lowest step, put his arms around
his shins and leaned his forehead on his knees. He only wanted to rest
for an instant. Just for a short time.
He opened his eyes. Why did he wait? All that was worth waiting for had
gone.
In the damp air, the Danube seemed to rise.... It approached him with a
soft black movement. He shrank back instinctively, as if to escape, and
his hands clung in horror to the stones.
Suddenly this passed away. The great river became beautiful and calm.
The lamps of the shore dipped swaying stairs of fire into the deep. The
river ceased to be hostile to Christopher. It whispered to him and, as
if recognising him, it called him, as it had called the Ulwings of old.
The tired soul of Christopher responded to the appeal and his body
followed his soul.
After that he never came back again.