The interview with Wolfgang Wahnschaffe made a thoroughly unpleasant
impression on Lorm. He had the vexatious feeling that this well-bred
young gentleman harboured the very naïve opinion that in the presence
of a mere actor he could exhibit his complete ruthlessness and brutal
self-seeking. Because what did an actor matter? One need take no
trouble and could magnificently show one’s cards.
On that very evening Lorm felt the approaching symptoms of serious
illness. He was laconic; what he said was brief and sharp.
It was proposed to him to take part in a conspiracy. The plan was to
imprison Christian in a sanatorium by the unanimous decision of the
family.
“I can quite imagine what you mean by a sanatorium,” said Lorm, “but
what do you gain by it?”
“A clear road,” was the answer, “the immediate setting aside of his
troublesome rights and claims as the firstborn. The shame and disgrace
that he spreads pass all belief.”
He explained that certain individuals, including physicians, were
willing to serve as witnesses and to co-operate. Yet actual internment
was an extreme measure. If it should fail or the parental consent to
carry it out should be unobtainable, there was another plan which was
being prepared with equal care. The ground would be dug away from under
his feet; he must be brought to leave the city and, preferably, the
country. It was possible to have Christian boycotted at the university,
though he rarely appeared there now. Another promising plan was to
prejudice against him the people of the quarter where he lived; a
beginning in that direction had already been made. But there wasn’t
much time; the evil was infectious, and the shameful rumours grew
more troublesome daily. It would not do to wait until the murder case
with its fatal publicity came to trial; he must be made to disappear
before that. There would be good prospects in Judith going to him in a
friendly way and persuading him with sisterly kindness to disappear and
not compel his relatives to use the force which the law would readily
place in their hands. If Judith failed and he refused, everything must
be done to send their father on the same errand. He had written to his
father; if no decisive measures were taken within a week, he would
telegraph. Furthermore, friends had gone to the Privy Councillor to
plead for swift action.
There Wolfgang sat, pale with rage, balked in his mean worldliness.
“So far as Judith is concerned, she’s unapproachable in the matter,”
Lorm said coldly. “I’ll speak to her once more, but I fear it will
be useless. I myself would consider it desirable for her to go to
Christian, though my reasons are not yours; but Judith cannot be
persuaded. The fate of others, even of her own brother, are mere
phantoms to her. A year ago she was still capable of refusing
passionately any participation in such a plan; to-day she has probably
simply forgotten Christian. She plays and dreams her life away. I am
sorry that I do not know Christian myself. But people have come to seek
me out for so many years that I have lost the impulse and ability to go
to them. I must resign myself to that, though it is an evil, no doubt.”
Wolfgang was surprised at these words and grew quite icy. He asked Lorm
whether Judith would receive him, Wolfgang, pleasantly. Lorm thought
that she would. Therewith the interview came to an end. They shook
hands with conventional indifference.
Lorm did not dare tell Judith of his meeting with Wolfgang. He was
afraid of her questions, of her feeling his sympathy with Christian,
of clouding the puppet-show of her life. Yet she was gradually draining
all the light out of his own existence. Her niggardliness in the
household became so extreme that the servants complained of hunger. The
baker and the butcher could obtain settlement of their bills only when
they threatened to bring suit. Judith intercepted the dunning letters
they addressed to Lorm. She sorted the mail every morning. He knew it;
one of the maids, whom she had discharged after an ugly quarrel, had
flung the information at him. He did not reproach Judith. She began
to cut down the expenses for his personal needs too, and he had to
eke out his diet in restaurants and wine-rooms. But the sums that she
wasted for frocks, coats, hats, and antiquities increased to the point
of madness. She bought old cases and chests which she promptly sent
to the attic; Chinese vases, Renaissance embroideries, ivory boxes,
cut-glass goblets, candelabra of chased metal work. Her purchases were
without discrimination, and served only the whim of the moment. The
things stood or lay about as in a shop; they served neither use nor
adornment. Now and then she had a generous impulse, and presented some
object to one of the women who flattered her and whose society had
therefore become indispensable to her. Afterwards she would regret her
generosity, and abuse its recipient as though a trick had been played
on her. In spite of the great number of things about her, she would
observe the absence or displacement of any object at once, accuse
every one who had entered the room of theft, and know no rest until
the lost thing had been found. In her dressing-room there hung dozens
of garments and hats and shawls that had never touched her body except
when she had tried them on on the day of their purchase. It satisfied
her to possess them. They might go out of fashion or be full of moths;
to possess them was enough.
Lorm knew this, but he bore her no resentment. He made no objection;
he let her do as she desired. He did not or would not see the obvious
consequences of his boundless acquiescence--her degeneration and
degradation and heartlessness. She was to him still the woman who had
sacrificed everything in order to enter his lonely and joyless life.
He had condemned his achingly modest soul to permanent gratitude, and
had no conviction of any right of protest. He who had thrust so many
from him, and had been cold toward so many, and had contemned so much
genuine and active love, whose gentlest gesture had not only commanded
but entranced thousands of watchers and listeners, this same man
endured humiliation and neglect as though to expiate his sins, and was
silent and steadfast in undeviating fidelity.
During this period his colleagues in the theatre trembled at his
outbursts of irritability; even Emanuel Herbst’s philosophical calm had
little power over him. He went to fill engagements in Breslau, Leipzig,
and Stuttgart. He impressed people more profoundly than any actor had
done for decades. One felt in him the turning-point of an epoch and
the ultimate perfect moment of an artist. The public, wrought upon by
his spirit to the height of rare perceptions, had a presentiment of
the finality of his appearances, and was shaken in the passion of its
applause as by the tragic, scarlet glow of a sunset that betokens doom.
He returned home, and took to his bed. After a thorough examination
his physician’s face grew serious. He demanded a trained nurse. Judith
was at a concert; the housekeeper promised to report to her mistress.
When Judith returned, she sat down at his bedside. She was astonished
and pouted a little, and talked to Lorm as though he were a parrot who
refuses to chatter his accustomed words. It was the housekeeper who
received the trained nurse.
“Well, Puggie dear,” Judith said next morning, “aren’t you well yet?
Shall I have them cook you a little soup? I suppose the Suabians gave
you too many goodies?”
“Puggie” smiled, reached for his wife’s hand, and kissed it.
Judith withdrew her hand in terror. “Oh, you wicked boy,” she cried,
“you mustn’t do that! Do you want to infect your sweetheart? Think of
it! Puggie mustn’t do that till we know what ails him and that it isn’t
dangerous. Understand that?”
Letitia had announced her visit for that afternoon. She came,
accompanied by Crammon. Judith’s cordial reception was largely the
result of consuming curiosity. The two women, who had not seen each
other since their girlhood, regarded each other. Where have you been
stranded? And you? Thus their eyes asked, while their lips flowed with
flattery. Crammon seemed to curdle of his own sourness.
Fifteen minutes later the maid appeared and announced that Count
Rochlitz’s chauffeur was at the door. The count was waiting in the car.
“Ask him to come up,” Letitia commanded. “You don’t mind, do you?” She
turned to Judith. “An old friend of mine.”
The count obeyed and came up. He was charming and told racing anecdotes.
At the end of another fifteen minutes came the Countess Brainitz with
Ottomar and Reinhold. It had been agreed that they were to call for
Letitia. They all filled Judith’s drawing-room, and there was a hubbub
of talk.
Crammon said to Ottomar, whom his condescension at times permitted
to learn his opinions and feelings: “Once when I was in Tunis I was
awakened by violent voices in the morning. I thought the native
population had risen in revolt and rushed from my bed. But there were
only two elderly, dark-brown ladies carrying on a friendly conversation
under my window. It is characteristic of women to produce a maximum of
din with a minimum of motive. They are constantly saving the Capitol.
I am inclined to believe that the Romans, a nation of braggarts and
sabre-rattlers, infused a rather ungallant implication into the
pleasant fable of the geese. Usually their judgment of female nature
was blithely sophomoric. As proof I adduce the story of Tarquin and
Lucretia. Monstrous nonsense, penny-dreadful stuff! In my parental
house we had a calendar on which the story was related in verse and
bodied forth in pictures. This cataract of chastity gave me an utterly
perverse notion of certain fundamental facts of human nature. It took
years to penetrate the character of the deception.”
Ottomar said: “I grant you what you say of all women except of Letitia.
Observe how she moves, how she carries her head. She is an exquisite
exception. Her presence makes every occasion festive; she is the symbol
of lovely moments. She will never age, and all her actions are actions
in a dream. They have no consequences, they have no objective reality,
and she expects them to have neither.”
“Very deep and very finely observed,” said Crammon, with a sigh. “But
heaven guard you from trying to establish a practical household with
such a fairy creature.”
“One shouldn’t, one mustn’t,” the young man replied, with conviction.
Crammon arose, and went over to Judith. “Isn’t Edgar at home, Frau
Lorm?” he asked. “Can one get to him? We have not seen each other for
long.”
“Edgar is ill,” Judith answered, with a frown, as though she had reason
to feel affronted by the fact.
A silence fell on the room. All felt a sense of discomfort. And Crammon
saw, as in a new and sudden vision, Judith’s projecting cheek-bones,
her skin injured by cosmetics, her morbidly compressed mouth with its
lines of bitterness, her fluttering glance, and her restless hands.
There was something of decay in her and about her, something that
came of over-intensity and the fever of gambling, of a slackening and
rotting of tissues. Her cheerfulness arose from rancour, her vivacity
was that of a marionette with creaking joints.
Letitia had forgotten to mention Christian. Not until they reached the
street did she recall the purpose of her visit. She reproached Crammon
for not having reminded her. “It doesn’t matter,” Crammon said. “I’m
going back to-morrow and you can come with me. I want to see Lorm. I
have a presentiment of evil; misfortune is brewing.”
“O Bernard,” Letitia said, plaintively, “you croak enough to make the
sun lose its brightness and roses their fragrance.”
“No. Only I happen to know that a change is coming over the face of the
earth; and you poor, lost souls do not see it,” answered Crammon, with
forefinger admonishingly raised.
And he departed and went to Borchardt, where he intended to dine
exquisitely. Each time he dined there, he called it the murderer’s last
meal.