NEW WONDERS
The programme of that evening began with an aviation festival over the
lake. A surprise had been prepared: the first trial of a new method of
flight. The invention had been worked out and tested privately under
John Toker’s patronage; this day it was to be exhibited before the
world.
The festival began at six o’clock. The weather was marvelously fine. A
cloudless blue sky, the temperature, seasonable for June, was warm, but
agreeably moderated by a cool breeze which ruffled the surface of the
lake. On the shores a fleet of boats was arrayed with streamers and
flowers, and provided with rugs and soft pillows. On the opposite side
lay a number of passenger vessels, the decks of which had been hired for
spectators. The population of Lucerne stood in dense throngs along the
lake. Excitement and anticipation stirred through the crowd. The
spectacle of aeroplanes and flying-machines had, indeed, already by this
time lost its heart-thrilling fascination. It was no longer as in 1909
and 1910, when the sight of these pioneers of the upper air seemed to
take one’s very breath away, when they still seemed to be both dream and
miracle. The device had now become extremely common everywhere: in many
places airships were making regular trips, aeroplanes had been adopted
widely as vehicles of sport and luxury, just as automobiles had several
years before, and every nation possessed its little air-fleet. No one
longer uttered the exclamation, “Ah!” when a flyer shot up into the
air—the marvel had become a commonplace—was simply taken for granted.
But on this occasion, expectation had been once more keyed to the
highest pitch. It was known that when Toker promised a surprise,
something sensational was going to be produced, something that was not
only magnificent and unprecedented, but also of vital significance and
calculated to give contemporary society an uplift into new regions.
A programme had been issued for the aviation festival. At six o’clock
commencement of evolutions in the air over the lake; at seven o’clock: a
surprise announced by three cannon shots.
More than half an hour before the specified hour, the boats, the
vessels, the wharves, and also the windows and balconies of the villas
and the hotels facing the lake were packed. At the stroke of six, the
Toker flotilla of flying-machines ascended and began to perform their
evolutions.
“Those aeroplanes are masked and costumed,” cried one of the spectators,
and that exactly expressed it. These air-vehicles had the shape of all
kinds of historical and imaginary equipages. The primitive type of
superposed and juxtaposed frames without sides was no longer affected.
The wonderful things swept slowly, one behind the other, at a
comparatively low elevation, circling about the lake, as far as it was
peopled with spectators.
Now the throng really uttered its “Ah!” for such graceful vessels had
never before been seen in the air. Slender ships with inflated sails,
Roman chariots, Venetian gondolas, Lohengrin swans, enormous shells
glittering in mother-of-pearl and the like, were occupied by aviators,
appropriately costumed. The planes and apparatus used for propulsion and
steering were concealed with plenty of white and gray material, which
looked like clouds, giving a magically picturesque effect. A
manufacturer of flying-machines, present among the spectators, shrugged
his shoulders and remarked to a bystander: “Child’s play with
masquerade!”
Several hundred metres high in the air above the heads of the spectators
circled a great airship of the Zeppelin type. That, according to the
rumor, was to be the bearer of the surprise.
Franka sat in one of the boats with her companion and several other of
Toker’s house-guests. General conversation was going on, and Franka,
leaning back on her cushion, gave herself up to her thoughts. A peculiar
melancholy weighed on her spirit—a feeling of isolation. A few hours
previous there had been awaiting her something which she had looked
forward to with keen anticipation, something which promised to give her
a powerful emotion:—the visit of Prince Victor Adolph. Helmer had been
responsible for this expectation. The words in his letter were, “He
worships you”; he must have known it, else he would not have written so
authoritatively, and those three words had gone through her like an
electric shock. And what had the visit brought her? A bit of ill humor,
nothing else. Not only the man did not worship her; he did not even
understand her; her activities and her views were alien if not repulsive
to him. Fortunately, she was not in love with him as yet, but only on
the point of being. Consciously she had felt: It has not come as yet,
but it is coming, it is coming.... She had heard it knocking at her door
and had said, “Come in!”—but across the doorsill entered—nothing.
At this moment a mortar shot rang out. All looked up into the air. The
Zeppelin began to descend in great spirals; now it was about fifty
metres high. The basket and its passengers could be distinctly seen.
Three or four persons were sitting in it and two forms were standing
close to the rail. Another shot: the rail was thrown open. For Heaven’s
sake—the two forms might fall out. And sure enough—for just here the
third shot was heard, and the two swung off over the edge. A cry rose
from all throats. The two figures as they fell stretched out their arms
and with a quick motion unfolded a great pair of wings. It was a young
man and a young girl. The youth wore striped tricot which gave his body
the aspect of a butterfly’s form and the two wings were shaped like a
butterfly’s. The maiden was enveloped in a white flowing robe which came
down below her feet; her face was framed in blond curls and her wings
were white and long like those frequently depicted as adorning the
shoulders of the guardian of Paradise, the Archangel Michael, or those
of the angel of the Annunciation.
Butterfly and angel floated down in an oblique, gently gliding flight.
The throng was now breathless and dumb. In the center of the lake was
stationed a large float; it was supposed that the daring flyers would
land on it, but before they reached it, they turned up from a height of
five or six metres, and, mounting, flew horizontally, came back, then
flew down, and mounted again, performing aerial evolutions, crossing
above the fantastic aeroplanes, and then returned to the Zeppelin which
once more received them.
A tumultuous uproar of applause rang through the air. An immense feeling
of happiness and victory stirred all hearts. So now the air was actually
made subservient to mankind. Without an engine, independent as a bird,
one could rise from the ground, glide through the air, rise and sink
away, be conscious of the motion; it was, indeed, an intoxicating gain!
The address given that evening in the theater auditorium of the
Rose-Palace concerned the new acquisition. The inventor, a hitherto
unknown young English engineer, gave an exposition of the mechanism of
his artificial wings, and related how for some years in all secrecy,
under Mr. Toker’s auspices, he had been carrying on his investigations,
labors, and experiments until at last he had been able to make a gift of
his accomplished work to his fellow-men.
After the inventor had concluded his address, Toker himself stepped
forward and announced that no other addresses would be given that
evening, but that the respected public might enjoy the consciousness
that henceforth no one would any longer need to envy the birds.
The auditorium was now transformed into a social assembly-room where the
liveliest conversation was carried on. The topic of applicable pinions
truly gave sufficient material for all sorts of interesting variations.
Some rejoiced, others bewailed, still others tried to perpetrate
witticisms; all were full of astonishment; exclamations flew about in
merry confusion.
“I shall be mighty grateful when market-women, instead of swallows and
doves, shall be seen flying round in the air with their baskets.”
“In place of the light-horse regiment we shall now have regiments of
light birds.”
“The joy of such self-constituted flight must be supermundane in the
true sense of the word.”
“The world grows richer, more beautiful, more wonderful every day.”
“We will rather say: more unpleasant, more weird.”
“Where are the days when people were satisfied to travel on two feet or
at most with four or eight horses’ feet? Now we must have roller-skates,
skis, bicycles, motors, balloons, aeroplanes, and here at last
duplex-elliptic back-action folding wings.”
“Women will no longer turn into hyenas, but rather into wild geese.”
“Do you long for constancy still, my dear madam? now, when we are all
become fly-away?”
Franka had retired early to her own rooms. She felt quite unstrung and
hungry for solitude. Prince Victor Adolph had not put in an appearance
either on the water or in the hall. Was he avoiding her? This was the
first time that he had missed any of the exercises. His absence troubled
Franka, and she drew disagreeable conclusions from it. Her conclusions,
however, were baseless. The absence of the prince was not in any way
connected with Franka. That afternoon, a near relative had arrived at
Lucerne, to stay only a few hours, and the prince had been obliged to
spend the time with him. The two had watched the wonderful flights from
the balcony of their hotel.
Franka was glad that Frau Eleonore had not joined her in coming upstairs
but had remained below in the hall. Her companion, who had been with her
now for some years, was dear and sympathetic to her, but she had never
admitted her to a real heart intimacy. Spiritually, also, the woman had
never been to her what is called a “resource”; she lacked the “uplift.”
A cheerful, harmless, honest mind, a lady to her finger-tips, not given
to narrow judgments, but also lacking in a bold outlook, she had every
quality of a model companion; but she was far from being the ideal of an
intimate friend such as Franka really needed. And, therefore, in hours
when she was in any way depressed, when an indefinite yearning came over
her, when she meditated on God and the world and herself, she always
preferred to be alone rather than have Frau Eleonore with her.
She stepped out on the balcony and leaned against the railing. It was a
warm night; the air was heavy as if a storm were threatening. Along the
horizon frequent sheet-lightning flashed against a background of
intensely black clouds; above, the sky was clear and the stars were
shining brilliantly. The fir grove which bordered the garden stood dark
with the white sand-strewn paths meandering through the trees. A gentle
rustling could be heard in the branches. A screech-owl lamented
somewhere in the distance, and from the near-by pool came the subdued
call of a toad at long intervals; it was assuredly a lonely creature
which, sighing again and again, queried: “Is there no other toad near
me?” Everywhere—loneliness! That was the mood that drifted down upon
Franka from this nature—perhaps because she invested nature with this
very mood. Yonder, each flash of lightning zigzagged down for itself
alone, unconcerned about its forerunners and successors; in obtuse
egoism sparkles every star without caring that, many millions of miles
away, other stars are pursuing their own courses; the tree-tops must
rock as the wind bends them without other trees coming to their aid—yes,
the most perfect indifference reigns wherever she might turn; were she
to die that moment, the lightning would continue to flash this way and
that; the toad would not call in the least degree more mournfully and
the stars in all eternity would not have the slightest notion of it.
Alone ... alone ... that was the keynote of the whole concert of dread
and melancholy which whispered around her.
She stretched her arms out toward the vacant night and drew such a deep
breath that its expiration was a groan. Then she sat wearily down in a
soft, upholstered wicker chair, leaned her head back, and in her
lassitude and depression of spirits the consciousness that she was
resting did her good physically. But psychically her indefinite longing
developed into a hot sense of woe. Her eyes filled with tears. Oh, how
good it would be to have some fond heart on which she might pour out her
sorrows ... yet if she had, perhaps she would not have the impulse to
weep! For in that case the pain, the dull pain, called “loneliness,”
would be cured!
She sat there for some time, thinking of no definite person and
conscious of no definite trouble; she merely felt sad, in a certain
sense platonically sad. Her thoughts were without clear outlines: all
that she had experienced—and missed—that day flowed into a hazy picture.
Her eyes closed and gradually she began to doze: her indefinite thoughts
were confused into a still more indefinite dream.
Again it seemed to be clear day around her. The call of the toad and the
rustling of the leaves had ceased. In place of them there seemed to be
the light, murmuring plash of the oar. She was sailing in a gondola on
the lake and the boatmen were Helmer and Victor Adolph—both in the
characteristic garb and attitude of Venetian gondoliers. The slender
black boat was surrounded by cloud-borne aviators. Ah, if she could only
wing her way up into the upper air in such an airship. The wish was
followed—as so often occurs in dreams—by its instantaneous fulfillment.
A hovering cloud-car took her up and bore her away. She wanted to call
to the gondoliers, but they had vanished together with the gondola. All
around her only clouds were to be seen, rushing onward and changing
their shapes like locomotive smoke which one sees streaming by the train
windows. Soon her equipage rose above this region of clouds and the sky
grew blue over her head. In easy motion it went up—up and down in
rhythmical regularity like a swing, but like a swing which at every
gyration lifts farther from the earth; then another forward plunge in
speediest flight—like a sailboat driven before a wild wind;—nothing more
was to be seen of the earth. On the zenith a dazzling orb—is that the
sun? How, then, can her eyes endure its brightness? The orb grew ever
larger; it was coming nearer ... for Heaven’s sake, how high was she
doomed to mount?
A sense of terror darted through Franka’s limbs.... “Enough! Enough!”
she cried and looked everywhere in her vehicle.... Where then is the
helmsman? No one! she was all alone. “Alone”—that was the anguishing
word which just before had been oppressing her heart; but now for the
first time she understood it in its most gruesome sense: alone in the
universe! What in comparison was all earthly solitude? Ever higher she
arose toward the sun-resembling orb; ever wilder became the storm
wind ... whither, whither, into what boundlessness filled with horrors?
A paroxysm of anguish and terror contracted her heart. Then she felt a
strong arm flung protectingly around her; one of the gondoliers stood at
her side. She could not see his face; only that strong, rescuing arm
with its warm clasp filled her dreamy consciousness with a hitherto
unknown joy of security. The little airship now glided gently downwards.
It was a blissful feeling: the antithesis of loneliness, a lovely sense
of safety; a tide of tenderness billowed, literally billowed, around
her, for it was to her as if great warm drops fell on her forehead and
trickled caressingly over her body. If one might imagine a paroxysm of
appeasing—this miracle she experienced in her dream.
But even in a dream the extreme of happiness lasts only a second. The
equipage had become entangled in a knot of other airships which
precipitated themselves on one another—painfully their fragments fell
into her face; a booming salvo of artillery tore the air, and Franka,
awakening, found herself sitting on her balcony in a heavy shower of
hail, and the storm, which had broken, was raging with lightning and
loud peals of thunder. She jumped up to run into her room and at that
instant she felt that the bar of the blind, loosened by the wind, had
fallen on her chair, and slipped down to her side.
Just then Frau Rockhaus appeared at the balcony door. “Why! Are you
here? I should not have thought of looking for you here. How do you
happen to be out in all this storm? It has been raining for a long time,
and now it is hailing and thundering. You are wet through.”
“Yes, dear Eleonore; I merely fell sound asleep.”
“Who ever heard of such a thing! Now, get to bed as quickly as you can.”
“Yes, I will. Please ring for the maid, and goodnight.”
As soon as her light was put out and she had composed herself for going
to sleep, a vivid recollection of her dream came to her. Again she
believed that she felt the strong arm at her side,—it must have been the
bar,—and she tried to conjure back that peculiar consciousness of
security which, after the terror of the blood-curdling plunge into
endless space, had so deeply inspired her.... She succeeded in doing so:
she could bring back almost the whole dream with all its details, and
she felt enriched by a new experience. Can it be, then, that such a
heavenly refuge, such a paradise of security can be found?
It was long before she went to sleep again; indeed, she did not care to
sleep, for the sweet recollection of the dream, like a slight
intoxication of opium, was more refreshing, more tranquilizing than any
sleep. Only toward dawn did she fall into a deep, sound slumber.
When she awoke the sun was already high. She felt strengthened and full
of joyous life. The melancholy of the evening before had been dispelled.
It even caused no diminution of her good spirits, when, in the course of
the forenoon, her aunts came to see her.
“Oh, it is lovely of you to visit me ... please sit down. Now tell me,
how do you enjoy being with us? Isn’t it all wonderful?”
The old ladies sat down. Then Franka for the first time noticed that
their faces expressed a certain solemn sullenness.
“We have come to say good-bye, Franka,” said Countess Adele.
“We cannot endure it any longer,” added Fräulein Albertine in
explanation.
“What, you are going to leave Lucerne, before the Rose-Week is ended?”
The countess nodded. “Yes, we are leaving to-day. I believe that, if I
were to remain longer, I should lose my mind. These flyings up in the
air, these uncanny pictures on the sky, all these upsetting performances
and declamations.... No, it is not normal at all, I might almost say not
_comme il faut_. We of our class cannot take any pleasure in it.
Yesterday evening, at supper, I declared that I was going home.
Albertine was agreeable.”
“Perfectly agreeable,” corroborated Albertine.
“Coriolan was delighted; only Malhof—he was furious—he is going to stay.
We do not need him. Coriolan is sufficient protection for our return
journey. He is a genuine knight of the good old stamp.... Now, tell me
about the prince who was paying you such pronounced attention the day
before yesterday.... Why did he not show himself yesterday? Is the
affair at an end?”
“’Tis no affair at all,” replied Franka testily.
Fräulein Albertine nodded assent: “You are quite right, not to get any
such idea into your head. Men of such elevated rank seldom have honest
intentions—certainly not with one of the ‘emancipated’ women.”
“Well, I should have liked Franka to make such a match,” said the
great-aunt soothingly. “Morganatic marriages are frequently contracted.
But you will never lack suitors, for you are pretty; and such little
escapades as lecturing will be forgiven you, especially as in the mean
time you have managed to retain your respectability.... But where is
Rockhaus?”
“Gone out for a walk.”
“And you here alone? That is not correct. You must be very circumspect.
What I was going to say apropos of your getting married ... there is a
cousin of mine—not Coriolan—no longer as young as he used to be, a
widower, but of very high nobility; that would be worth while. Do you
know, with the Sielenburg estates you ought to marry into the
aristocracy, so that they would come into the right hands again. You
yourself could get an assured position in society and lead a happy life.
Certainly, you could never feel lastingly contented among all these
Americans and Russians and vagabond people, and wandering round yourself
with them.... I should wish my brother’s grandchild a pleasanter
existence: I want to see her respectably settled.... Didn’t some one
knock? It must be Coriolan; he promised to come round here and fetch us.
He has only to get the railway tickets for us, ... I was right ... it is
he. Come in, come right in, Coriolan; Franka will be glad to see you.”
Franka was, indeed, glad—but chiefly because these three inestimable
relatives were going to betake themselves away, and she firmly proposed
to break off once more the interrupted and patched-up acquaintance.
Behind Coriolan followed a servant, who brought the customary great
basket of violets.
“From His Royal Highness, Prince Victor Adolph,” said he.
A vivid flush mounted to Franka’s cheeks. She indicated with her hand
that the basket was to be placed on the table. The servant obeyed and
left the room.
“Aha!” exclaimed the Countess Adele sagaciously.
“Ei, ei,” commented Fräulein Albertine.
Coriolan felt that it was incumbent on him to say something. “When a
pretty woman sings or dances or speaks on the stage, then they send her
flowers—that’s the way it goes.”
“Yes, it has no other significance,” said Franka. “Will you not sit
down? And are you really going to take the ladies away?”
“Indeed, I am, and with the greatest pleasure. I am more homesick even
than they are. Here one gets the blues, or is driven wild with rage.”
“But there are such interesting events still coming off,” remarked
Franka. “An American inventor is going to tell us of the most unheard-of
things, things that will quite revolutionize the future.”
Coriolan shrugged his shoulders: “There are nothing but unheard-of
things here. It would be much better to teach people to go back to the
past, to cultivate their historical sense, than to be always trying to
stir up new rubbish. Is the man going to speak to-day?”
“No, Chlodwig Helmer is to speak to-day.”
“Well, that does not tempt me. On the Sielenburg he always preserved a
discreet silence; only once he broke out and what he said—I don’t
remember what it was—turned my stomach. I regard him as a radical.”
“Eduard was very much attached to him,” spoke up the Countess Adele in
defense of the former secretary; “he would not have kept a radical so
long.... But, children, we must be going now. It is lunch-time and there
is still much to do about packing.”
She stood up. The others followed her example, and they took their
leave. It was not a painful parting. Franka drew a breath of relief when
the door closed behind her relatives. But the door opened again, and
Fräulein Albertine came back with a deep air of mystery.
“Franka,” she whispered, “I have restrained myself all the time we were
here, because I did not want to offend you; but I consider it my duty to
warn you—it is for your best: do not eat too much, and take much
exercise, you are beginning to grow stout! There, now I must hasten to
overtake the others. Adieu! God bless you!” And she was off.
Franka had to smile: that was so like Albertine. She cast a glance at
herself in the pier-glass and turned away not at all alarmed: there was
no fault to be found with the elegance of her figure.
Now she hastened to the table where the basket of flowers was standing
and detached the note that she saw gleaming among the violets. What
might the prince—one of the gondoliers of her dream—have written to her?
Perhaps a declaration of love! She hastily tore open the envelope which
bore a small royal coronet in gold. It was no declaration of love, but
only a formal apology for having been absent the day before, which he
explained “was due to the passage in Berne of an exalted personage.”
Franka was possibly a little disappointed—but in reality it was better
so. The one, on whose strong arm she leaned in her dream, was perhaps
the other gondolier.