I
It was not that _he_ thought her beautiful; but other people thought so,
which made him think of her as such. And when these others came in
swarms to wrest the prize from him which he had looked on as his own, he
fell in love with her. During his first week in Salzburg, he received a
card from Frau von Kranich: “_As you whish to be introduced to
interesting people, I would like to bring you on Monday next on the 15
February inst. to Professor Hollmann-Blum where there will be a pretty
large party. Please komme to me at a quarter to five o’klock_ P.M. _We
will go together or better still, in the tram car. With my kind regards
yours truly,--Emmy von Kranich._”
Calling, he beheld in the drawing-room with Frau von Kranich a young
girl with clean-cut regularly chiselled features--he remembered
later--of a quite extraordinary beauty. After introducing them: “Mr.
Mackintosh Beck, of America;--Miss Schulz,” Frau von Kranich suddenly
excused herself and went out. There was a pause. “What the devil can I
say?” he thought.
“Do you dance a great deal?” He felt this was a happy shot.
“No,” said the girl.
“I notice that you Austrians dance very differently from us, and I have,
so as not to feel provincial” (he smiled: the girl did not), “gone in
for dancing lessons at Herr Pfleger’s--despite my middle age!” (Again
she did not smile.) “I am told, on good authority, that he is better
than Herr Loewe.”
“No,” said the girl. “Loewe is better than Pfleger.”
“But I think Herr Pfleger dances better then Herr Loewe,” he proffered
tentatively.
The girl smiled a faint smile, as if of compassion for Mr. Beck’s poor
understanding. “No,” she said. “Loewe dances better than Pfleger.”
There was an end of it. Mr. Beck was silent. Frau von Kranich came back
with an enigmatic look on her face which implied: “Well, have you two
young people hit it off?” And Mr. Beck felt sensitive for Fräulein
Schulz, for, beside her, he was no longer young. But Frau von Kranich
was so old that from the vantage-ground of her years the ages of both
Mr. Beck and Fräulein Schulz seemed quantities so small as to appear to
have no visible differentiation. She overtly began the matchmaking. “You
must take long walks together in the spring as soon as the snow begins
to thaw. She must show you round the lakes and up the hills.” Now that
Frau von Kranich, who had no illusions about the hearts of young girls,
was back, Fräulein Schulz ceased to be assertive and became the shy and
diffident young maiden Frau von Kranich must have thought her. When
called upon to speak, she blushed and lowered her lashes. They put on
their coats. Frau von Kranich, very small and old, and carrying a little
pot of flowers in pink tissue-paper, crawled into the tramcar, Mr. Beck
after her; and Fräulein Schulz, murmuring “Kiss the hand,” went her way.
“She’s a beautiful girl--he, he,” said Frau von Kranich. The trolley
rattled on. “She is a Cindrella who is waiting for the golden coach to
halt at her door and for the Prince Charming to alight and offer her the
shoe.” And she pierced him searchingly with her sharp watery old eyes,
as if considering whether he might conceivably pass off as the desired
Prince Charming, and laughed--“He, he, he!”
When they had crawled out of the tram and crawled upstairs into the
flat, they made their way into a hall overcrowded by people’s overcoats,
and added to the huge stack, with the aid of a bewildered parlour-maid,
their own particular contribution. Frau von Kranich crawled towards the
festive birthday table heaped with flowers and deposited thereon the pot
in the pink tissue-paper.
“Ah! ah! Herr Direktor Schulz!” A tall massive man of sixty-five, with
long silver locks, stood in the doorway and now sat down by Frau von
Kranich and talked to her, his big hands moving all the while in little
gestures. Mr. Beck, amid the hum of conversation, was grateful for such
fragments as his ear could catch. “This invidious meanness ...
this--this ... mean invidiousness ... this--how shall I say?” Herr
Schulz was saying, when Frau von Kranich introduced them. “Sit down,”
she said. “He-he-he; you are so tall!”
Mr. Mackintosh Beck _was_ tall. He was not handsome, but he thought he
was; and when at home in Philadelphia the shop-girls stared at him
behind the counter he thought they were admiring his features. From time
to time, when, trying on a new suit at his tailor’s, for example, he
beheld his face in the three mirrors simultaneously from all four
sides, he would experience a mild shock of revelation. But as a rule he
would forget about his looks and go on figuring himself as he should
have been instead of as he really was. “You can speak French with Mr.
Mackintosh,” Frau von Kranich told Herr Schulz.
“As a matter of fact,” Mr. Beck rejoined, smiling shyly through his
horn-rimmed spectacles, “I am here to learn the German language, and I
should esteem it a privilege to have the opportunity of exercising my
poor knowledge if you have the patience to talk it slowly to me.”
But Frau von Kranich looked as though she had something more important
up her sleeve and was not to be deflected from her course. “French,” she
said, “is the most wonderful language that I know for telling one _des
plaisanteries_. I remember how, while my father was Bavarian Minister at
Rome, the French Ambassador and I talked airy nothings for an hour and a
half--he, he, he!” And she looked round at Mr. Beck to see if he had
noticed it. But Mr. Beck was looking at Herr Schulz and thinking of his
daughter. He thought of the last girl he should have married and
reflected, with a twinge of melancholy, that it was always girls who
were to blame for the deflections in his career. He had wanted to remain
at Haverford and prepare for a professorship, then a girl came in sight
and he had to think of making money quickly. He left the University and
took to banking. Then she left him, he ceased banking and went back to
the University. And--strange, he thought--every time he was engaged it
always happened that the cause of their estrangement was a male
relative, a brother, father or an uncle whom, as a human being, he liked
better than the girl. He was just thinking now, as he looked at Herr
Direktor Schulz, how really strange it was that he should always like
the fathers or the brothers best, when the host came up to him: “You
come from Philadelphia? Which University? And what is your particular
faculty?”
“Well--my home town is Haverford, but I live in Philadelphia. My
university----”
But Professor Hollmann Blum, with a little nod and smile, was already
off and round the corner, his coat tails flying in the air, and talking
to another guest.
After coffee, the Professor gave a little lecture and passed on pictures
of Tut-An-Khaman; after which each of the more learned guests was
expected to contribute his intellectual quota.
“I am a lonely soul here,” said Herr Schulz.
“I felt that,” Mr. Beck rejoined, and glanced significantly at Herr
Schulz, who looked as if he did not quite take it in; though when later
he discoursed again, he turned with deference to the foreigner, and
praised America. He spoke haltingly, with little gestures, little
pauses, as if fumbling for the right word, and a number of people had
gathered round him, but Herr Schulz turned more and more towards Mr.
Beck. “When we are alone I should like to develop” (he threw out
illuminative little gestures) “before you the whole idea, so to speak.”
“And who is the greatest living writer of the German-speaking world
to-day?” presently asked Mr. Beck.
Herr Schulz smiled, a little mischievously. “With my exception” (and
Frau Kranich also smiled) “it’s Gerhart Hauptmann.”
“The Herr Direktor is a poet,” she explained.
“Oh?”
“I will present you with a copy of my book when next we have the
opportunity of meeting.”
The Professor suddenly bobbed up from round the corner, and turning
deferentially towards his host, the Herr Direktor, said: “The Herr
Geheimrat will be able to reply to your question, Herr Doktor
Mackintosh, with an authority greatly in excess of that which I
command.”
“What’s that? What’s that?” asked the Professor, joining them as if for
a long stay.
“We were talking of----”
But the Professor, with a nod and a smile, had already dashed off to the
table in the other corner of the room and was fussing with a fork over
the apricot cake.
Mr. Beck escorted the old lady home. “I like Herr Schulz,” he said.
“He’s very nice to you because you are a new man, a foreigner at that,
and listen to him--and that flatters him. While we have all heard it
endless times before and are sick and tired of it; and he knows it. But
I will bring his daughter, Irmgard Schulz, for you to the Baroness
Hauch’s dance on Thursday afternoon. Baroness Hauch has the finest china
set in Salzburg.”
“Must I dress?”
“Yes.”
“Dinner-jacket?”
“No--cut-away.”