Next morning he despatched the vanity-bag, with a note, to Frau von
Kranich, requesting her to hand it to the proper owner, and having done
that he felt relieved, and even whistled. When he came back to lunch, he
was informed that in his absence Herr Direktor Schulz had telephoned no
less than half-a-dozen times, and that Frau von Kranich had also
telephoned. “Aha!” he thought “They’ve smelt a rat! They’ve got the wind
up!” He remembered the attitude of Frau von Kranich right from the
beginning. He recalled the glib, glossy manner of Herr Schulz. A bag of
vanity! What was he after? What was this indeed? An attempt at the
eleventh hour to enmesh him, an American, into matrimonial
entanglements. He pictured how they had prevailed on her, the dollars
looming largely in their mind, to give up the student and to accept him
before too late. Like a good American, he was afraid of being drawn into
the dark jungles and tangles of European affairs--family affairs most of
all--and, for the first time in his life, he perceived the deep
significance, the traditional sacrosanctity of the Monroe Doctrine of
uncompromising isolation and entrenchment. As he finished his soup, the
maid came in to say that Herr Direktor Schulz was at the telephone and
had also sent up his son with a message of an urgent kind. The blood
rushed to his temples. “A plot!” he thought. “A finely laid snare!” Mr.
Mackintosh Beck became that most scared of all things--a middle-aged
gentleman afraid of being seduced. But he conquered these insidious
thoughts. He held fast to his chair and spoke:
“My head is bloody, but unbowed.”
He packed in a frenzy, strapping up his bags before he was quite ready,
and at the last shoving things into his pockets, and set off to the
station, and as he crossed the bridge chucked _The God Triumphant_,
unread, into the river. He was pacing the platform, muttering through
his teeth--
“It matters not how straight the gate,
How charged with punishment the scroll;
I am the master of my fate,
I am the captain of my soul,”
when he heard a heavy puffing at his back, and turning, he perceived
Herr Schulz in the square bowler hat and astrakhan coat (looking like an
English lord), striding up to him in his pale-yellow boots. “Herr Doktor
Mackintosh!” The man was holding out his arms. “_Ach!_ how incredibly
glad I am to have caught you!”
“Now he’ll begin throwing the girl at me when I don’t want her,” the
American reflected, and steeled his heart, and bowed his head as if to
meet the attack. Herr Schulz breathed heavily and wiped his brow.
“It’s ... awful! On the one hand, this lovely weather--these
mountains--lakes--the breaking rigour in the sky--when I look at nature
I feel--I feel I want to go _praying_ through the world! On the other
hand, this other life, immediate, extravagant, calls on my nervous
force.” He spoke on, with little wavy movements of the hand. “If I had
some great sorrow, by God I would bear it--like a Lucifer, I would bear
it! But these petty, senseless, dirty little pinpricks ... setbacks,
bills, petty tyrannies, telephone calls, interruptions. At last, I could
stand it no longer, I opened the door. When I’m angry I’m like a raging
elephant. I’m a big man, and my family know that at such moments I am
capable of anything; they are then like frightened mice--he, he! ‘I want
Herr Doktor Mackintosh!’ I shouted. I felt that I must have a kindred
soul to talk to--immediately, that very moment--if I was not to
suffocate of rage and bitterness which rises--rises and boils here in my
breast! My wife began undoing trunks and boxes, looking, if you please,
for my old waterproof! I lost my temper. It’s not the act, the absurdity
of looking for a raincoat when you crave the presence of a human soul:
it’s the thought _behind_ the act--or rather this sheer thoughtlessness
and inattentiveness, this--this invidious meanness and perversity latent
in mankind that stabs me. I said: _Herr Doktor_ Mackintosh. There was no
possible chance of misapprehension. Well, I had them telephone to you
all morning--to Frau von Kranich. They couldn’t get you. They can never
get anything. I slammed the door and went. Hellmuth ran up against me
and said they’d told him you had gone straight to the station. And now
I’m here. Well, how are you? Where are you going?”
“At first to Vienna. Then to Venice, Florence, Rome, Paris, London, and
so home _via_ New York.”
Herr Schulz looked at him, and down at his own pale-yellow boots, but
with a vacant stare, obviously not perceiving either. “We poets need
friends. Goethe had Schiller. I have nobody. I am alone, and the divine
gift in me is dribbling to no purpose. There are no real people here.
The professors--I tell them straight what I think of them--he, he! They
don’t like me. Yes, we need friends. Even little poets,” Herr Schulz
added, unexpectedly.
He listened to Herr Schulz. And he experienced an agreeable feeling of
elation at his self-control. That he was able, for the time, to shelve
his love and give attention to those other matters proved to him that he
was stronger than his love, not then suspecting that, perhaps, his love
itself had temporarily abated. “Been doing any work?” he asked.
“My head is full of ideas--for a novel--a philosophical work--a series
of short stories--an epic--a drama--and a comedy. But what I lack is
peace. Peace and the opportunity to collect my mood and spirits.”
Mr. Beck stood speechless, thinking hard what he could say. “Your book
was wonderful,” he said at length.
“It was very well received.”
The guards were already slamming the doors, and Mr. Beck stepped inside,
and let down the window and shook hands with Herr Schulz. The whistle
went. The train moved. And Herr Schulz, waving his hat in the air, his
long silver locks flying grotesquely in the wind, receded and glided
away.
“_She_ had not stirred at all then....” He felt a mild pang for his
pride. He had adjusted his things on the rack. It was hot in the
compartment, but he had not yet taken off his coat because the old lady
next him was sitting on his coat buttons. Past glided the long yellow
building, the barracks, the hills, the Café Schindler, the City Hall,
the river--towers and pinnacles. “All the same,” he reflected, “I think
I like the old duffer best.”