When next day he went to Gmunden, he was stopped in the street by a lady
whom he recognised as one of the two middle-aged disciples of Herr
Schulz, to whom he had been presented after the concert. “Have you, Herr
von Mackintosh, come to see the Herr Direktor Schulz?” she asked.
Mr. Beck had come to have a quiet view of Gmunden. But he did not deem
it polite to say so, and answered, haltingly, “M-yes--I think I have.”
“Splendid! The Herr Direktor is now taking his after-dinner nap, but he
will be up for coffee at a quarter past four o’clock and would be
delighted to have you take a cup with him.”
“Curse him!” he thought. But at a quarter past four Mr. Beck was at the
green, freshly painted gate of a beautiful white villa, trying hard to
open the latch from inside, and Herr Schulz, just up from his nap, was
coming smilingly down the steps in his pale-yellow boots to Mr. Beck’s
assistance. He wore a coloured jersey with a plain back to it, and no
coat, so that if you looked at him from behind, his shoulders appeared
like gigantic epaulets, and there was something which suggested a
fieldmarshal in his colossal bulk. They settled down to coffee in the
over-heated glass veranda, the two ladies watching every movement of his
brow. “Have you had a good sleep, Herr Direktor?” they inquired in
unison.
“Yes.”
There was a pause.
“Yes,” he repeated, “I have had a good sleep.”
“That’s good.”
Herr Schulz sighed. “Creative work is very exhausting. It’s not the same
as giving a lecture. It’s work of the spirit and must be spun out of
your own soul’s substance, so to speak. That’s what I keep telling the
professors here--he, he!” he laughed maliciously.
“Entirely so,” agreed Mr. Beck. Odd: all the time that the other was
talking he could see through his pretense and laugh inwardly; yet Mr.
Beck’s replies were sincerely respectful.
“I don’t mince words. I tell the professors here straight what I think
of them--he, he! They don’t like me.”
“No wonder,” said the guest, instinctively falling into line with the
commanding personality of the other.
“At the heat of creative work I can’t write, and so I dictate my
thoughts to this lady here. I wish to goodness, Grete,” he turned
towards the younger of the ladies, “that you would learn to use a
typewriter.” He held out his cup: the lady filled it. “To attempt to
read your hand is insufferable. How do you, Herr Doktor Mackintosh, do
your work--Ethnology is your subject, I think you told me?--do you use a
typewriter?”
“I’ve an Underwood Portable--it’s quite small.”
“H’m. I don’t think I could ever use a small typewriter. I should want
something big and solid by way of a typewriter.”
“Yes! Yes!” the two sisters exclaimed ecstatically. “You must have
everything big and solid, Herr Direktor, to express your personality.”
“He, he!” he laughed, and turning to the guest--“These ladies are
hero-worshippers,” he explained.
“The Herr Direktor is always making fun of us,” they said, and looked at
him adoringly.
“Perhaps if you will kindly follow me upstairs it might be of interest
to you to see the room where some of the more significant strands of
thought occur to me of a morning. Sophie and Grete come in and draw the
blinds open for me when I ring. I let the sun shine in my eyes, and as I
lie in bed all the morning, I think--God! the wonderful things that
come into one’s head at these times. _Ach!_ ... My family are jealous of
these ladies because I spend so much time here. But I can’t work at
home, with my wife and fourteen children in the house and the telephone
going, doors banging. As I said to my wife when I left the house the
other day, in protest: ‘It’s not the _fact_ of the door banging that
upsets me. No: it’s the brazen thoughtlessness _behind_ the act, the
invidious ignorance of the effect of such a bang upon an intellectual
worker.’ That’s what drives me away from home to seek my real ‘I’ in
solitude amid nature. Here I have peace. The ladies are so kind and
thoughtful. It costs me nothing. They are only too glad to have me, and
my company, they say, amply compensates them for whatever food I may
consume here. Here I feel I can work. The sun shines in my window till I
get up for dinner at two o’clock. After dinner I take a little nap on
this tiny balcony till about a quarter past four, when I go down to
coffee. After coffee--this reminds me--I take a little walk--you must
come with me--till suppertime. H’m. We might as well go now.”
They went down the steps, Herr Schulz breathing heavily upon the nape of
the visitor’s neck, who, turning round, asked, “Do you do most of your
work after supper then?”
“No. I turn in early. Creative work is very exhausting. After supper we
have a little game of chess--and then we all turn in.”
“I see. You do your writing in the morning, in bed?”
There was a pause. “I have ideas buzzing in my head for a novel, a
play--a philosophical work. But what I lack is the _inner_ freedom. I am
upset by the invidious perversity of the people around me, by the
perfidious, shameless, iniquitous meanness of mankind!”
Grete met them at the foot of the stairs. “I suppose, Herr von
Mackintosh, that you’re an American journalist who has come over to
Europe to acquaint himself with the life and works of Herr Direktor
Schulz?”
“Well--perhaps--yes--though of course----” mumbled the visitor.
Herr Schulz now stood half turned away from them, with his hands behind
his back, brooding.
“I should be glad,” said he, turning back to them suddenly, “if you,
Herr Doktor Mackintosh, would acquaint the people of America--for whom,
I assure you, I cherish the warmest regard (their achievements in
technical knowledge are most valuable, I am sure, and are a significant
contribution to mechanical progress)--if you would acquaint them with my
writings and works and ... if you would be so kind,” he concluded.
“Gladly.”
“For I must confess that I do not expect much recognition at the hands
of my own people--the professors especially. I have even coined a good
aphorism about these gentlemen--‘science officials,’ I call them--he,
he! They don’t like me. It’s nothing new, of course. There is even the
proverb: ‘No man is a hero to his own valet’--I rather meant another
proverb: ‘No man is a prophet in his own country.’”
“Pardon me, Herr Direktor, but will you be good enough to acquaint me
with the titles of your works.”
Herr Schulz suddenly grew earnest. “There is that--_God Triumphant_--you
know that. Or--I beg your pardon--I will send you a copy of it when I
get home. Then--then there are one or two little--well, youthful
attempts--school essays. Since I left the Bank two years ago I have not
been able to do anything at all. I lack the inner freedom.”
“No matter. With us it’s not so much the work as the personality that
counts. And that, I can assure you, you have in ample measure. You even,
if you will pardon me for saying so, remind me of Henrik Ibsen.”
“Of Björnson,” corrected Herr Schulz. “Ibsen was
small--insignificant-looking. But Björnson was a man after my own face
and stature--he, he!”
“Yes! Yes!” chimed in the ladies. “The image of Björnson!”
“Though some people say I look rather like an English lord--he, he!”
Mr. Beck had never seen an English lord and did not know what a lord
exactly looked like; but he knew he did not look like Herr Direktor
Schulz. He gazed at the Director as he stood there with the “epaulets.”
He _was_ a great man; there was no doubt about it when you looked at
him--six feet and a half high and two full spans between the shoulders!
“I shall now leave the two gentlemen to themselves,” said Grete. “They
have doubtless important matters to discuss which are not for a woman’s
poor mind.”
“We shall be back for supper, Grete,” rejoined Herr Schulz, “which I
trust we shall enjoy the better after our walk.”
“I will do my best that it may come up to your expectation, Herr
Direktor.” And the two men went through the garden into the adjacent
wood, Herr Schulz breaking off dead branches (an easy enough job, the
visitor reflected) as if to bear out the impression that he was, in
every respect, a colossus. “You are lucky,” he said. “You’re still
young, independent, can do your work without interruption. But I--I try
to keep it down, but bitterness--bitterness rises here in my breast
against--against people--debts, petty tyrannies--the invidious meanness,
the iniquitous perfidy of mankind!” Herr Schulz broke off a dead branch.
“If I had some great sorrow, I would rise to the occasion, like a tragic
hero--a King Lear, let us say--with credit and glory. But no! These
petty, senseless little pinpricks--the telephone ringing while I am
composing a lyric, the door slamming away--these pinpricks ...
these--these dirty little setbacks....”
Mr. Beck looked sympathetic. “I understand. Even Tartarin de Tarascon
used to say: _Des coups d’épee, des coups d’épee, messieurs, mais pas
des coups d’épingle!_”
“Don’t know. Haven’t read him.” He stopped, and suddenly, from habit,
though no one was about, took off and waved his hat high in the air, as
if acknowledging the greeting of somebody behind the trunk of the tree,
then put it back on his head. “While I am trying hard to mount Pegasus
I am pulled down ignominiously by the breeches, so to speak, because
they come to tell me that baby has choked himself with orange pips. My
wife has given birth to fourteen children. I ask: “What can a poet do?”
“Exactly. On that ground I am in favour of Eugenics.”
“What!” Herr Schulz broke off a dead branch. “You are in favour of
that--that invidious--that--that infamous practice. You----”
“I am. I have a nightmare: over-population.”
Herr Schulz pooh-poohed this statement. “Nonsense! Look,”--his eye was
searching forward past the densely growing trees; he pointed to an empty
meadow,--“Look: plenty of standing room.”
“I am thinking,” the American pursued, “of the poor women who bear child
after child without respite.”
“It’s their business.”
“But surely, Herr Direktor, there is many a wife who does not want any
children. What are you to do with such a woman?”
“Fling her out of the window,” was the advice. “No, no, Herr Doktor
Mackintosh, it’s no good arguing. My wife has had eleven children by me
and three by my predecessor. I have no money. Being honest, I retired a
poor man. I am creaking under a burden of debt. But I won’t stop. I will
not contradict the will of God. And my old woman knows better than to
show signs of unnatural reluctance. She knows her man--he, he!”
“But don’t the children get to be weaklings?”
“Not a bit of it. My youngest boy, who is only two, is the cleverest of
the lot. I can talk to him as I do to you. Though naturally,” the
Director hastened, “he hasn’t got your knowledge. Ethnology, is your
subject, is it not?”
“Quite so.”
“Of course.”
“And your daughters, Herr Direktor?” Mr. Beck thought this might be the
chance to ask Herr Schulz for the hand of Irmgard, though, on second
thoughts, he resolved that it would be wiser to approach the daughter
first.
“My daughters are not quite so clever. But then what can you expect of
mere women? Though, Irmgard is awakening. She has vague unfocussed
longings....”
“That reminds me,” chimed in the guest. “I have been reading recently
the correspondence between Goethe and Schiller. There is a passage where
Goethe speaks of Spring: ‘I have an objectless sorrow in Spring....’”
“I too,” said Herr Schulz. “_Ach!_ when I look at the hills and the
lakes and the breaking rigour of the sky, I want--I want to go _praying_
through the world!”
“Entirely so,” said the other.
They were returning to the villa, and Grete was waiting for them on the
steps. “All’s ready,” she smiled dotingly.
V
And now Frau von Kranich began inviting him: “_Please komme on Fryday
next at 4 o’klock p.m. We will go together to Wolfs._” Or, “_Please
komme on Thursday at 3 o’klock p.m. We will go to Schmidts._” Presently
he had another letter:
“_Miss Schulz is just staying with me und whishes me to invite you for
next Thursday to komme to the castle at 4 o’klock p.m. Then she advises
you further to take dansing lessons by Herr Loewe to learn Wienerwalzer.
I hope you don’t think me forward. If so, I beg your pardon. With her
und my best compliments, Yours truly, Emmy von Kranich._”
Next morning there was another missive. Across a visiting card on which
stood “Emmy von Kranich, née von Kolbe,” she wrote: “_You are geting
with this an invitation for a closed society fancy dress to which Miss
Schulz will also komme. She is kounting on you beeing there because you
are to accompany her home. Yours truly._”
When on Thursday he set out for the Schulz’s, he walked as it seemed to
him a deuced long way, until at last the river spread wide before him
and he perceived the castle on the hill, looking more than ever less
than a mere house. He went up the winding path, till in the annexe on
the second floor (the castle had been commandeered during the war and
ever since the Schulz’s could not get the lodgers out) he rang the bell
and waited, while his heart thumped loud within him. It was Irmgard
herself who opened the door for him--Irmgard in a dark-blue velvet dress
which she might have worn when she was only fifteen, and her hair, he
noticed, was put up for the first time. As he entered the drawing-room
(which, for lack of space, served also as a dining-room, and, in fact,
as a study for the Herr Direktor at such rare times as he was at home:
to-day he wasn’t) the mother of the fourteen children rose to greet
him--a woman remarkably fresh for her achievement. On a pedestal stood a
huge bronze bust of Herr Schulz, and on the shelf behind, two small
busts--of Goethe and Schiller. There was a moment of confused silence.
Mr. Beck surveyed the view through the window and expressed ravishment
in no measured terms. A tiny little boy of two came in. “This is Karl,
our youngest,” said Frau Schulz. And Irmgard, to give herself something
to do--for she seemed very shy, Mr. Beck felt, at this overt arrival of
the first grown man who had come expressly for her sake--took her little
brother on her lap and screened her face with him from the visitor. But
tight as she held him, he managed to crawl off and whispered something
into his mother’s ear.
“No, the Herr Doktor is not interested to see your horse,” she rejoined
aloud.
“Oh, but I am!” And by the mother’s pleasant smile he felt that he had
thus commended himself to her heart.
“Well, fetch it then,” she said to Karl, who vanished; and presently
there came a scratching, squealing noise from the adjoining room, and
Karl dragged in on a long string a cadaverous moth-eaten rocking horse
and began taking off the saddle in front of the visitor, who patted it
to gain time, while thinking hard of what he might say next. He had an
agreeable feeling of being taken straight into the heart of the family.
Mother and daughter had fixed their eyes on Karl and Mr. Beck, who as it
were made a tableau together, and the guest ransacked his mind for
something at once appropriate and amusing to say to Karl. But--“Can you
strap the saddle to the head?” was all he could produce. The little boy,
evidently not amused, gravely repudiated the suggestion. Irmgard got up
and busied herself with the tea-things. Her mother’s glance followed her
fondly. “You can’t guess, Herr Doktor, what Irmgard will be wearing at
the fancy-dress ball?”
“No, no!” cried the girl. “You mustn’t tell or he’ll recognise me!”
On the piano lid stood a family group which attracted Mr. Beck’s
attention--_padre_, _madre_, and fourteen _bambini_: twelve girls, two
boys. “This is Hellmuth, our grown-up brother. He is twenty-nine.”
“H’m. A good-looking youth,” commented the visitor.
“He used to be good-looking. But a year ago in tobogganing down the hill
he banged with his nose into a tree, and ever since his nose is twice
its former size. I always tease him about his double nose.”
“How very funny!”
The hours flashed by like lightning. The window grew dim. The maid came
in, lit the lamp and drew the curtains. The hostess looked as though she
thought that Mr. Beck ought to go now. But Mr. Beck sat still, and did
not move.
“Irmgard is going to town now to a dancing lesson at Herr Loewe’s. She
feels a little out-of-date and wants to regain confidence before the
dance to-morrow,” Frau Schulz imparted to the lingering guest.
“You can come with me,” said Irmgard, “and arrange with Loewe about your
_Wienerwalzer_ lessons.”
They went down the endless road, Irmgard smiling to herself. She called
in at several shops--“Just wait outside, will you?” He noticed through
the glass door how the men behind the counter stared at her with
rapture, and he felt proud of being--even if compelled to wait
outside--her immediate companion. “Now we can go to Loewe’s,” she
said--and sighed. And at that sigh, consummative of their arduous day’s
work, he felt a thrill--and also sighed. “Now I should ask her,” he told
himself, but they were crossing the main street and dodging vehicles,
and now already they were at Herr Loewe’s door. He watched her take her
lesson, Herr Loewe, as he held her in his practised arms, smiling all
the while into her eyes. And when she left Herr Loewe exercised him for
an hour and a half in the whirling motions of the _Wienerwalzer_,
charged him a hundred thousand crowns and instructed him to come again
to-morrow.
On the way to Herr Loewe’s next day he called on Frau von Kranich. “Mind
the lamp,” she drawled. But Mr. Beck had already knocked his scalp
against the pike of the brass fitting, and so sat down, feeling a
little stunned, facing the old dame. “He, he, he--you are so tall,” she
laughed, and looked at him in a strange way, as if to ask: “Is it coming
off all right?” Mr. Beck responded with a look of joyous confidence. And
she said, “We may soon be able to congratulate you?--he, he, he!”
“I hope so,” he responded, rising and once more knocking his head
against the lamp.
“Mind!” said Frau von Kranich. She sat there in a soft armchair, with
feet resting on a cushion, and smiled before her faintly--an old, old,
white-haired woman with one foot already in the grave.
“What’s this?” he asked, striding over to the wall.
“A miniature of my mother as a young woman at the time my father was
Bavarian Minister at Rome.”
Herr Loewe that day had hired two girls to spin Mr. Beck round, and,
clad in his new cut-away, with his tails in the air, he went round and
round, till one girl was fagged out and the other took him on and
whirled on with him till he felt faint and the blood rushed to his eyes.
“Come now, beat the time with the right heel,” Herr Loewe admonished
relentlessly. Mr. Beck spun round in a pink faint and reflected that his
suffering must be endured for love’s sake.
“Now you’re all right,” Herr Loewe absolved him, more kindly, pocketing
another hundred-thousand-crown note. “The secret remember, lies in
beating the time with the right heel.”
On his way home, his heart thumping irregularly after the lesson, he
thought: “Am I too old for her? Can girls like Irmgard really begin to
love middle-aged men like myself?” The tailor had brought the new
dinner-jacket and retired: “Have the honour--kiss the hand--greet
God--commend myself--my compliment,” and as he was putting on his new
clothes he whistled: “I, Mackintosh J. Beck, am taking out the prettiest
girl in Europe!” He shaved with especial care, and beheld his face and
his entire figure in the looking-glass with genuine satisfaction.
Walking through the sloppy streets--it seemed that spring was already
beginning--he remembered a bet with a college chum at home. The first of
them to be engaged was to send the other a cheque for fifty dollars. He
imagined his chum opening the envelope. He pictured how he would arrive
in America with his young wife, how he would spite the dark-eyed Susy
who had broken with him just because he happened to prefer the company
of her intellectual brother to her own.
Schindler at last. All shake hands and introduce themselves, the
Secretary in addition presenting Mr. Beck right and left as “Mister
Captain Mackintosh.” He waits at the door. She comes in at last, dressed
as a butterfly and wearing a black mask with a tilted nose. It was cold
in the room and she twitched her nude girlish shoulders.
“I recognised you straight away.”
She looked a little sulky. Or was it the black mask that made her look
so? The mother smiled sorrowfully. “I said he’d recognise you straight
away if we went in together.”
“I’m afraid this is not a very good table,” said the cavalier, escorting
them.
“It will do,” said the girl.
“Why so sulky?”
“I was so before we left.”
“Why?”
“Oh, never mind.”
The waiter came up. “What will you have?”
“Nothing yet.”
Remembering what Frau von Kranich said,--“You ought to have come not as
a butterfly, but as Cindrella,” he ventured.
Her mouth smiled behind the mask, but the eyes still looked defiant.
“Oh, yes, while I remember----” The mother was fumbling in her bag, and
presently produced from there a copy of _The God Triumphant_ with a huge
brown man with a broken nose upon the cover, and duly autographed
inside. “My husband sends you this, with his respectful compliments.”
“Oh, thanks--” Mr. Beck was peeping furtively into the pages, and--“It’s
a great book,” he gave his grateful verdict.
“Yes, not everyone can understand it,” agreed the author’s wife.
Through her black mask with the unbecoming tilted nose Irmgard’s eyes
glared angrily, defiantly, and he wondered what precisely was the
matter. When the waiter came again, she would have nothing. When he came
a third time, she would have nothing. When he came a fourth time,
Irmgard said, abruptly, that she would have lemonade. Mr. Beck suggested
wine, and she said she would have none, and Mr. Beck, thinking she was
sorry for his pocket, hastened to suggest lightheartedly that Tokai wine
was very nice and sweet. “I know Tokai wine,” she said, in a tone
implying that it was certainly as familiar to her as to himself. “But I
don’t want it.”
After that Mr. Beck sat silent for a while. And the waiter brought the
lemonade. She sipped at it once, and then did not touch it again. The
waitress came along with the cakes. “Will you have some?” he ventured.
But she shook her head and sighed. He looked at the mother, and the
mother cast a sympathetic look at her. “Cheer up. He may come yet.”
The girl did not answer. Mr. Beck thought that he must on no account
whatever miss the moment of proposing to her. “Shall I now?” But at the
sight of her defiant eyes he let his head drop on his chest: and,
behold! he noticed with dismay, that he had dropped pieces of the sticky
chocolate-cream cake upon his trousers, and thinking this was possibly
the reason why she was angry, he began to scratch it off, tentatively
with his finger-nail. She averted her glance, still looking angry; and
thinking that _this_ was then why she was angry, he stopped scratching.
Mother and daughter exchanged vague glances. “But to-morrow he is sure
to come.”
“Yes, I think he’ll come to-morrow,” said the girl--and looked more
friendly.
Mr. Beck rose. “May I have this dance?” She got up, without answering
him, and adjusting her butterfly wings which hung down from her wrists,
came into his arms, and they glided away cautiously and not too
confidently. “Shall I now?” But he had to concentrate his attention on
manœuvring her past other couples, while she seemed very frightened of
making a mistake, and it was a relief to them both when the music
stopped and they returned to the mother. “A bad floor,” said Mr. Beck.
“Yes, the floor is not good.”
“Do take off your mask.”
She shook her head.
Mr. Beck did not dance the next dance, nor the one after. Nor did a
single cavalier come up to her.
“Oh, come, take off that mask!” her mother urged at last.
Irmgard shook her head. A minute elapsed; and she took off the mask.
No sooner had she done so than a cavalier was at her side, then a
second, a third, a fourth, a tenth. Introductions--Herr Baron----, Herr
Graf----. All the impecunious aristocracy of Austria was wooing her
virginal charms. Irmgard brightened up. She danced. “What a beautiful
girl!” “What an exquisite face!” said the old fogeys surveying her. They
wished they could dance too, but their dancing was of the old school:
alas! they were ignorant of the jazz.
But at last the conductor held up his _baton_ more defiantly--and it
went off, the old ever-popular waltz _To the Beautiful Blue Danube_. All
the old fogeys, who had so far languished in obscure corners, crawled
out, like beetles, at the sound of the first bars, and went spinning
round on their axes, to the large, deliberate rhythm. Mr. Beck wanted to
try his luck, but before he could open his mouth Irmgard was off,
whirling round with Baron Karl Franz Egon Gaestner zu Hauch
Wolf-Kadelburg von Hofmannsthal. Mr. Beck looked at her complexion. It
was perfect as in a child, and the nose shone slightly. Clearly she
hadn’t even begun to use powder.
Elated by her sudden success, Irmgard wanted to go to Herr Loewe’s dance
next door. She was impatient--could not wait for the cloak-room
ticket--could not wait till Mr. Beck had got back his change. She danced
with him, excited by the stares which she received from every side,
drunk with success. “Now let’s walk,” she said, taking his arm.
“This is the time,” he thought. “Still one can’t very well barge into it
like that. One ought to tell her something about oneself,” he argued
with himself; and opportunely said: “You hardly know anything about my
life and work. I must seem a stranger to you--a blank signifying
nothing. And yet I’ve written some standard works in Ethnology and am of
some account in that branch of science.”
“You must write in German if I am to read them,” she replied. “Now we
must rush back.”
At that “we” he felt unusually intimate, and he said as he helped her on
with her coat, “Turn up your collar,” and even turned it up for her, at
which she frowned. “Now for it!” he thought.
“I want to tell you something.”
“Afterwards,” she said, and rushed away from him back to her mother.
He walked with them to the castle. At the injunction of the mother
Irmgard did not speak and held her shawl close to the chin. When he went
to bed it was past five o’clock.