The house that Eva had taken was not very far from the beach. It was an
old manor, which William of Orange had built, and which had belonged to
the late Duchess of Leuchtenberg until a few years ago.
The rooms, built of mighty blocks of stone, soothed Eva. By day and
night she heard the long-drawn thunder of the waves. Whenever she
picked up a book, she dropped it again soon and listened.
She walked through those rooms, full of ancient furniture and dark
portraits, glad to possess herself, and to await without torment him
who came to her. She greeted him with half-closed eyes, and with the
smile of one who has yielded herself wholly.
Susan practised on a piano with muted strings. When she had finished
her task, she slunk away and remained hidden.
Christian and Amadeus Voss had taken lodgings in a neighbouring
villa--Voss on the ground floor, Christian above. Since Christian
neither asked questions nor detained him, Voss went out in the morning
and returned in the evening or even late at night. He did not say where
he had been, or what he had seen or experienced.
At breakfast on the third morning, he said to Christian: “It’s a
thankless task to unchain a fellow like me. I breathe a different
breath and sleep a different sleep. Somewhere my soul is ranging about,
and I’m chasing it. I’ve got to catch it first, before I know how
things are with me.”
Christian did not look up. “We’re invited to dine with Eva Sorel
to-night,” he said.
Voss bowed ironically. “That invitation looks damnably like charity,”
he said harshly. “I feel the resistance of those people to me, and
their strangeness, in my very bones. What a superfluous comedy! What
shall I do there? Nearly all of them talk French. I’m a provincial, a
villager, and ridiculous. And that’s worse than being a murderer or
thief. I may make up my mind to commit arson or murder, so as not to
be ridiculous any more.” He opened his mouth as though to laugh, but
uttered no sound.
“I’m surprised, Amadeus, that your thoughts always cling to that
one point,” Christian said. “Do you really believe it to be of such
decisive importance? No one cares whether you’re poor or rich. Since
you appear in my company, no one questions your equality, or would be
so vulgar as to question it. The feelings that you express originate
in yourself, and you seem to take a kind of perverse joy in them. You
like to torment yourself, and then revenge yourself on others. I hope
you won’t take my frankness amiss.”
Amadeus Voss grinned. “Sometimes, Christian Wahnschaffe, I’d like to
pat your head, as though I were your teacher, and say: You did that
very well. Yes, it was wonderfully well done. And yet your little arrow
went astray. To hit me, you must take better aim. It is true that the
morbidness is deep in my soul, far too deep to be eradicated by a
few inexpensive aphorisms. When this Russian prince or this Spanish
legate shake hands with me, I feel as though I had forged cheques and
would be discovered in a minute. When this lady passes by me, with her
indescribable fragrance and the rustling of her garments, I grow dizzy,
as though I dangled high over an abyss, and my whole soul writhes in
its own humiliation and slavishness. It writhes and writhes, and I
can’t help it. I was born that way. This is not my world, and cannot
become mine. The under dogs must bleed to death, for the upper dogs
consider that the order of the world. I belong to that lower kind.
My place is with those who have the odour of decayed flesh, whom all
avoid, who go about with an eternally festering wound. The law of my
being ranges me with them. I have no power to change that, nor has any
pleasant agreement. This is not my world, Wahnschaffe; and if you don’t
want me to lose my reason and do some mischief, you had better take me
out of it so soon as possible, or else send me away.”
Christian passed the tips of his fingers over his forehead. “Have
patience, Amadeus. I believe it is not my world any longer. Give me but
a little more time in which to straighten out my own thoughts.”
Voss’s eyes clung to Christian’s hands and lips. The words had been
quietly, almost coolly uttered, yet there was a deep conflict in
them and an expression that had power over Voss. “I cannot imagine a
man leaving this woman, if once he has her favour,” he said, with a
hovering malice on his lips, “unless she withdraws her favour.”
Christian could not restrain a gesture of aversion. “We’ll meet
to-night then,” he said, and arose.
An hour later Amadeus Voss saw him and Eva on the beach. He was coming
down the dunes, and saw them on the flat sands by the foam of the
waves. He stopped, shaded his eyes with his hands, and gazed out over
the ocean as though watching for a sail. The other two did not see him.
They walked along in a rhythmic unity, as of bodies that have tested
the harmony of their vibrations. After a while they, too, stopped and
stood close together, and were defined like two dark, slender shafts
against the iron grey of air and water.
Voss threw himself into the sparse, stiff grass, and buried his
forehead in the moist sand. Thus he lay many hours.
Evening came. Its great event was to be the appearance of Eva with the
diamond Ignifer in her hair. She wore it in an exquisitely wrought
setting of platinum, and it shone above her head, radiant and solitary,
like a ghostly flame.
She felt its presence in every throb of her heart. It was a part of
her, at once her justification and her crown. It was no longer an
adornment but a blazing and convincing symbol of herself.
For a while there was an almost awestruck silence. The lovely Beatrix
Vanleer, a Belgian sculptress, cried out in her astonishment and
admiration.
The smile of gentle intoxication faded from Eva’s face, and her eyes
turned far in their sockets, and she saw Amadeus Voss, whose face was
of a bluish pallor.
His mouth was half open like an imbecile’s, his head thrust brutally
forward, his hanging arms twitched. He approached slowly, with eyes
staring at the ineffable glow of the jewel. Those who stood on either
side of him were frightened and made way. Eva turned her face aside,
and stepped back two paces. Susan emerged beside her, and laid
protective arms about her. At the same moment Christian went up to
Voss, grasped his hand, and drew the quite obedient man aside.
Christian’s attitude and expression had something that calmed
every one. As though nothing had happened, a vivid and twittering
conversation arose.
Voss and Christian stood on the balcony of stone. Voss drank the salt
sea air deep into his lungs. He asked hoarsely: “Was that Ignifer?”
Christian nodded. He listened to the sea. The waves thundered like
falling fragments of rock.
“I have grasped the whole secret of your race,” Amadeus murmured, and
the convulsion in his face melted under the influence of Christian’s
presence. “I have understood both man and woman. In this diamond are
frozen your tears and your shudderings, your voluptuousness and your
darkness too. It is a bribe and an accursed delusion, a terrible
fetish! How keenly aware am I now of your days and nights, Wahnschaffe,
of all that is between you and her, since I have seen the gleam of this
mineral which the Lord created out of the slime, even as He created
me and you and her. That stone is without pain--earthly, and utterly
without pain, burned pure and merciless. My God, my God, and think of
me, of me!”
Christian did not understand this outburst, but it shook him to
the soul. Its power swept aside the vexation which Voss’s shameless
eloquence had aroused. He listened to the sea.
Voss pulled himself together. He went up to the balustrade, and said
with unnatural self-control, “You counselled patience to-day. What was
your purpose? It sounded as equivocal and as general as all you say to
me. It is convenient to talk of patience. It is a luxury like any other
luxury at your command, only less costly. There is no word, however,
worthier of hatred or contempt. It is always false. Closely looked
upon, it means cowardice and sloth. What have you in mind?”
Christian did not answer. Or, rather, he assumed having answered; and
after a long while, and out of deep meditation, he asked: “Do you
believe that it is of any use?”
“I don’t understand,” said Voss, and looked at him helplessly. “Use? To
what end or how?”
Christian, however, did not enlighten him further.
Voss wanted to go home, but Christian begged him to stay, and so they
went in and joined the others at dinner.