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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/77496-0.txt b/77496-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..4ffd502 --- /dev/null +++ b/77496-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,3584 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 77496 *** + + + + + PRETTY CREATURES + + + + + PRETTY + CREATURES + + _By_ + WILLIAM GERHARDI + + [Illustration] + + _1927_ + DUFFIELD AND COMPANY + _New York City_ + + Copyright 1927 by + DUFFIELD & COMPANY + + + _Printed in The United States of America + By The Cornwall Press_ + + + + +CONTENTS + + +_The Vanity-Bag_ _Page 3_ + +_The Big Drum_ _Page 69_ + +_A Bad End_ _Page 85_ + +_In The Wood_ _Page 135_ + +_Tristan Und Isolde_ _Page 153_ + + + + +_Other Books by William Gerhardi_: + + +ANTON CHEHOV, _a critical study_. +THE POLYGLOTS, _a novel_. +FUTILITY, _a novel_. + + + + +THE VANITY-BAG + + + + +PRETTY CREATURES + + + + +THE VANITY-BAG + + +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.” + + +II + +The trouble was that Mr. Beck possessed no “cut-away.” Accordingly, he +had one made, and standing facing the three glasses at the front, with +his back against three more, he suddenly perceived that he was very +ugly. The tailor looked at him with glee, “American? Ah! ah! Dollar! A +lot of dollar--he, he, he!” and recommended the most expensive stuff +available, while Mr. Beck reflected with discomfort that not the least +of his reasons in coming over to Austria was the resolve drastically to +reduce expenditure. “Have the honour--kiss the hand--my +compliment--greet God--commend myself,” the tailor bowed him out. In the +afternoon Mr. Beck dropped cards on Baroness Hauch, on the door of whose +apartment he read: “Baron Karl Franz Egon Gaestner zu Hauch +Wolf-Kadelburg von Hofmannsthal,” and on Thursday, as arranged, he +called on Frau von Kranich. Irmgard came. In her brown hat which covered +her exquisitely moulded forehead she did not look quite so lovely, and +he noticed that she had the small burning eyes of her father. At the +Hauchs’ Irmgard appeared a little shy. She wore a blue dress with white +lapels and American brown shoes, and all the young men fell in love with +her at first sight and danced with her uninterruptedly. Mr. Beck found +himself seated far away from the table, with a cup of tea in his hand. +There was no sugar in the tea, but the cup was too full and too hot: he +knew he could never get up without spilling it--and he suffered in +silence. Moreover, he remembered being told that the Baronin Hauch +possessed the finest china set in Salzburg and he was tormented by the +thought that at any moment he might drop the cup and smash the precious +thing to smithereens! And what then----? The hostess spoke agitatingly, +with her mouth full of crumbs, and every now and then a crumb would be +shot out of her mouth to fly like a bullet into the middle of the cakes +and pies. “What a beautiful girl,” she remarked, watching Irmgard dance +with her son Franz Egon Rudolf Ferdinand. + +“She’s just like a Cindrella,” answered Frau von Kranich, “waiting for +Prince Charming to claim her.” + +“But I hear,” breathed a nondescript lady, “that her father is not liked +because of his intolerable conceit. I am told that when someone asked +him recently about German authors, Herr Direktor Schulz had the +indiscretion to reply that he was by far the greatest writer living! And +he looks as though he thought it--walking round in that old-fashioned +bowler and the astrakhan coat, looking like an English lord.” + +Frau von Kranich wrinkled her nose. “He is a little bit of a _parvenu_,” +she said. + +“I haven’t noticed that,” rejoined the Baroness, while a crumb shot from +her mouth right into the sugar-basin. + +“Still--a little.” + +They were beginning to play bridge--the princes seated in one room; the +counts in another; the barons in a third, Mr. Beck among the barons, who +spoke to him of the high purchasing power of the U.S. dollar and urged +him to subscribe to various aristocratic charities. Frau von Kranich had +long since gone away. When the gathering at last dispersed, he went +with Irmgard to the tram, but she suggested walking home together to the +castle. “I like walking after a dance.” + +Mr. Beck considered. “I like walking--with you.” He thought this very +daring. And he reflected, with inward satisfaction, that he was actually +making love in German--for the first time in his uneventful life. It +wasn’t ... “half bad!” + +She paused. “I like--walking,” she said. + +This was cautious. And Mr. Beck put out feelers. “I don’t want to impose +myself on you, and please tell me when you’ve had enough of me.” + +“I’ll tell you.” + +“I mentioned it because it seems to me that Frau von Kranich is rather +inflicting my heavy company upon your slender shoulders. Needless to +say, for my own part I like it. At the same time, I feel I may be boring +you with my imperfect German, and I’d do anything in the world rather +than be a nuisance to you.” + +“She means well,” said Irmgard; and they walked along in silence +through the frosty streets. + +“Have you always lived in Salzburg, then?” + +“Always--since my birth.” + +“Do you like it?” + +“I hate it.” + +“But the people here are good people.” + +“I hate them.” + +“You ought to go abroad where the people might be more to your liking,” +suggested Mr. Beck. “You’d like America.” + +“I hate Americans.” + +“Why?” + +She thought hard. “Because they wear such ugly knickerbockers--the +tourists here.” + +“The child!” he thought. “The touching innocence!” + +They were now going by a long country lane that stretched across a +lonely field of snow. Far away an engine whistled. The snow hung heavy +on the trees. Mr. Beck conceived the plan of approach by way of her +father. “I do love the way your father speaks--these little movements of +the hands, this fumbling pause, this seeking after the right word. He +is by far the most considerable intellectual in the city.” + +“Yes, Papa is very clever.” + +They came out into an open space at the mouth of the river which +extended wide into the distance, chained in ice. “This is our castle.” +At the top of a hill surrounded by a fence stood the castle--looking +rather less than a mere house. Irmgard quickly vanished up the steps. +Mr. Beck stood still a while. The ice-chained river was bathed in +moonlight. + +There was an added warmth that winter evening about the sky and moon as +he walked home to his _pension_. + + +III + +The night after, he met the Schulzes at the concert in the City Hall. +Herr Schulz always sat in the first row and championed foreign artists +and blamed his own. That night the Russian Cossacks, visiting the city +for two days, were giving a concert, and he presented them with an +autograph copy of his book, _The God Triumphant_, and made a speech to +them, sprinkling it with words that came most readily and, as he +thought, appropriately to his lips: “Gorki ... Tolstoy ... Dostoevski +... the great Russian soul....” During the first interval they all sat +down to refreshments. Herr Schulz held out his glass without a word. His +daughter filled it. + +After the concert they walked together down the slippery street, +drifting along with a crowd of Herr Schulz’s admirers, in particular two +middle-aged ladies, to whom Herr Schulz took the opportunity of +presenting the new arrival from America. They seemed to hang upon every +word that issued from the master--the master expatiating on the concert +with his customary little gestures and taking off his hat and waving it +to right and left, in acknowledgment of innumerable greetings. + +“You have a lot of acquaintances,” Mr. Beck remarked. + +“Yes, a lot of acquaintances, but not a single friend!--I come out with +such aphorisms quite spontaneously, you know. _Ach_, if, like Goethe, I +had an Eckermann to take them down! As it is, they are not taken down +and are forgotten. Ah, wait a bit: the other day a splendid aphorism +occurred to me: ‘The only decent people nowadays are to be found among +the Jews.’” + +“Come, try another!” the American commented to himself. + +“Or this morning--‘What we call morality is merely envy.’” + +“H’m.” There was a pause. “He was a great man--Goethe,” uttered Mr. +Beck. + +“Goethe was--I once put it so well--Goethe was the illegitimate child of +the gods.” + +“And Schiller?” + +“Schiller was a fallen angel who, through a faultless life on earth, has +redeemed his fall and secured his amnesty.” + +“And Shakespeare?” + +“Shakespeare--Shakespeare----” the Director fumbled. “Shakespeare----” +It was clear that he was forced this time to make it up on the spot. +“Shakespeare is a huge black angel.” + +“Try another!” the American reflected. + +“Shakespeare----!” Herr Schulz suddenly became excited. “It’s +incredible.” He walked up and down. He waved his hat high in the air as +if acknowledging the greetings of acquaintances (who were not there), +then stopped dead. “It’s--it’s--it’s beyond words. _King Lear._ _Antony +and Cleopatra._ _Hamlet._ It’s--it’s--it’s----” + +“And Goethe too,” the American took up gratefully. + +“Yes, Goethe! What a life the fellow had, long, rich, and complete. And +he was understood. Goethe had Schiller. But I am alone: I have nobody.” + +In bed, Mr. Beck pictured the wedding. Her dad showing off to advantage. +What a splendid old fellow! Then the honeymoon, the bridal night, the +return to her parents, the departure for the United States. Their +married life when she would get used to him and find in him a vessel for +her tenderest outpourings: when she would take him by the hand and, +looking frankly in his eyes, would say: + +“Mackintosh, I love you.” + +Through his mind flashed pictures of travel, hotels in the hills, of +evenings together, and kisses, caresses and love. And life seemed +wonderful and miraculous and full of exquisite anticipations. + + +IV + +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. + + +VI + +The night after, he joined them at the dance in the City Hall. It seemed +that the entrance ticket had already been provided for him by the girl. +But when, pocket-book in hand, he was about to give her the money, she +flared up--“Don’t give it me here!” + +And he smarted. When he came up to her in the ball-room he saw that she +was red and angry, standing with her brother Hellmuth with the double +nose, who was also red and angry. They could not secure an empty table +and stood in the drafty doorway, jammed by the crowd. “Will you put +this into your pocket?” She handed him her little vanity-bag. The band +struck up a _Wienerwalzer_, and he asked her. It didn’t go as well as it +should have done, after two lessons. “Beat the time with the right +heel,” he remembered Herr Loewe’s injunction. And he _did_ beat it, and +with the right heel. Only he could not get it exactly in time, and the +left heel came down of itself just as the right one was due, every time. +They had only done a few paces. “No, that won’t do,” she said, releasing +him. + +Two lessons gone for naught! However that may be, he must not miss the +chance--perhaps the last--of proposing to her: “Shall I now?” + +But she looked angry. Her (father’s) small eyes looked angry, as if at +the perfidious meanness, the invidious perversity of mankind. Her sister +Elsa’s fiancé, a young man employed at the local circus, was making +funny little signs to Irmgard, to amuse her. But she never looked. Mr. +Beck gave up talking to her. + +“Ah! Mister Captain Mackintosh!” A man whom he had met the night before +came up to him and, taking him by the arm, imparted to him that he was +looking for a certain Dr. Schmidt. And for an hour Mr. Beck was dragged +about all round the rooms and through the vestibule and down the +restaurant and up the stairs all round the gallery, in search of the +elusive Dr. Schmidt whom he had never seen nor even wished to see. They +did not find Dr. Schmidt; and it is to be presumed that Mr. Beck died +without seeing him; but he killed, however disagreeably and +unprofitably, one hour of his mental agony. + +Exhausted, he sat down in the gallery and watched the crowded ball-room +heave in whirling couples to the mighty rhythm of the _Danube Waltz_. +The big orchestra put a dashing emphasis into the mighty regularly +whirling rhythm. “For you the hesitant irregularities of jazz: for us +the regular abandon of the _Wienerwalzer_,” these whirling sounds and +faces seemed to sing aloft. And behold, a military figure holding in his +martial arms a slim fair lady went round and round, tapping the time +with his right heel. And there again--an elderly couple: they had placed +their hands on each other’s shoulders at arms’ length and went round, +the man tapping his heel. A postal official whirled round with his girl, +his face all of a smile. These multitudinous couples did not bang into +one another as often as one might expect. Like so many spinning-tops, +they each turned on their particular axis, just clearing each other, +while the music lashed them on into a frenzied passion of regular +rhythm. Mr. Beck leaned forward, watching down into the vulgar opulence +of the gilded ball-room--stunned, fallen into a trance or reverie. And +the conglomeration for some reason recalled to him those crowded +frescoes packed with human figures that one sees in Botticelli. Away, +away was the postal official. And there, nearing his end of the room, +was Irmgard, the beautiful girl! + +When at length he returned to the joint table, Irmgard was not there; it +seemed as if she avoided him. Mr. Beck caught a sentence which had +passed between Elsa and her fiancé: “It’s too late--he won’t come now. +Poor Irmgard!” The betrothed young couple took pity on the lonely Mr. +Beck and, with the aid of another young couple, got him to join in a +complicated dance in which Mr. Beck had to describe elaborate, intricate +figures with his tired legs--and felt like a fool. Irmgard, with an +angry frown, danced with a pale young man with a pinched look. Mr. Beck +paced round alone, pulling out his watch and rehearsing mentally how, in +parting, he would thank the betrothed young couple for their kindness to +him and hand Irmgard back her vanity-bag, without a word--and go. They +talked of wanting to go on to a coffee-house to drink coffee till eight +in the morning, by way of doing justice to the Carnival, but Mr. Beck +only wanted to get into bed and to calm his poor nerves. The hours +dragged. It was four; then it was five--but still the dancing went on. +At last he buttonholed the circus man. “I want to go home,” he pleaded +wearily. + +“No, no! We’re staying on till six. Surely, Herr von Mackintosh, you +don’t want to be guilty of ruining our little Carnival party?” + +Mr. Beck did not want to ruin anything and as a cultivated man in +foreign parts, deemed it only right not to do anything which might cause +them, in their own poor light, to think him ill-mannered. So he paced on +by himself round and round (he was afraid that if he sat down he might +fall asleep), now and then pulling out his watch and yawning into his +white-cuffed hand. The clock struck half-past seven. It struck eight +o’clock. Somebody was making a collection for the band, and spoke: “If +we pay them they’ll play on till nine.” A sleepy waiter looked angrily +at Mr. Beck. “All d-ham foolishness!” said he, evidently recognising an +American in him. “All d-ham foolishness! The lights are only paid for +till half-past eight.” He was falling over from fatigue; his eyes were +closing of themselves. He was a tottering figure in the corner. Mr. Beck +was still pacing about, waiting eagerly for the Schulz’s to make a +start--when suddenly he ran into the circus man. “The ladies have just +gone home with their brother Hellmuth and asked me to say good-bye for +them.” + +“What! They’ve gone?” + +He was staggered by the news--his heart all weeping tears. In the large +vestibule there was a draught, and as he pressed his way through the +crowd, Mr. Mackintosh Beck felt all nasty inside--as if he had just +arrived at the Hook of Holland after a particularly vile crossing from +Harwich. While waiting for his coat and hat in the icy cloak-room with +the doors swinging to and fro, he had a chilly feeling in his bosom, as +though some improvident maid had left open all windows and doors and a +tremendous draught was sweeping the length and breadth of his inner +rooms. When he came out of the City Hall it was morning, and a round +white mist stood on the sharp mountain edge, like an enormous balloon. +The snow fell in heaps; it seemed as though a new winter spell were +beginning. He shivered in his coat and felt a dull ache in the pit of +his stomach. As he walked home it was bitterly cold, and a sharp wind +blew from across the river. And suddenly it seemed as if the mountains +pressed their awful weight upon his chest, stifling his breath, so that +he could have screamed in anguish--rapped his heart.... + +He could feel the vanity-bag in his side-pocket, and thought: “That girl +ought to be whipped!” And to be treated like that by a mere _Backfish_! +It came over him--the urgent wish to press all of his latent claims to +renown upon her. Impudent nincompoop! The tears in his throat rolled +back at this rebellious thought. He shaped in his mind the letter he +would write to Frau von Kranich: “I return the vanity-bag which---- I am +sorry that your good intentions have involved me----” No, that would +never do. “Of all the rude girls that I have ever met----” No, no, that +might lead to unpleasantness, who knows? Suddenly her brother Hellmuth +with the swollen double nose rose before him, threatening. Mr. Beck did +not know for a fact whether Hellmuth had been a student and so was a +ready hand at sword-duelling. He assumed, nevertheless, that Herr +Direktor Schulz, despite his record, had not begrudged his son a +university education, seeing how extraordinarily cheap it was on the +continent of Europe. He could not remember having seen any sword-cuts on +Hellmuth’s face. But he recalled the swollen double nose, which, though +no direct indication of unusual ferocity, yet did argue a certain +dare-devilry, a love of courting danger--which well might mean danger +for Mr. Mackintosh Beck. “Damn!” he thought, “blast the whole bally crew +of them!” + +He pictured the duel, the rising in the cold early morning--a sword in +his vitals--his death. “No,” he thought, “the blooming girl isn’t worth +it!” + +Suddenly he felt old, too old to take on such risks. He understood that +young girls like Irmgard could not love men like himself. He crossed the +bridge, and slowly began the ascent to his _pension_. It was still +snowing, and the sky looked bleak, solitary, senseless. And he thought: +“I am glad; I am glad.” + +Going back to his room--all upside down from the erewhile ardour of +dressing--he remembered how he had looked forward to both nights and had +dressed with particular care. It had seemed to him then that he looked +very smart. Now the new dinner-jacket looked loose, the shirt crumpled, +the new patent leather shoes cracked. He sat down at the table and saw +his face in the glass: it was sallow, haggard--as though he had been +travelling for three nights on end without a sleeper. What mental +suffering could do! And the powder on the upper lip had melted away and +revealed the red patches from the scraping blade. He noticed that +whenever he shaved with particular care it always came out worse. His +hair was turning very grey--there was a bald patch on the crown. He +remembered how ugly he had looked in the glass at the tailor’s--and +understood. + +And now, with fluttering heart, he opened the vanity-bag--a plain +little wallet of pink chiffon--and beheld its contents: a pinch of +greased powder, sweet-smelling, in a scrap of crumpled paper. And he +thought she never powdered! Two white spotless maiden handkerchiefs with +the initial “I” and three little flowers around embroidered in blue +silk. In another pocket, a crumpled bit of white paper containing rouge. +How touching! And behold! a long hair--Irmgard’s. He took it up between +his fingers and pressed it tight, and it seemed to coil, like a snake, +as if alive. And in that cruel, treacherous movement also was Irmgard. + +But what was this? A photo of a young good-looking student. Another +photo--Irmgard and the student. A third photo--Irmgard, Elsa, Hellmuth, +and the student. It dawned upon him suddenly how during both nights she +had been strangely distracted; he recalled the words and looks that +passed between her and her family. He understood: he perfectly +understood.... + +And the whole vanity-bag smelled sweetly--like her sweet seventeen. By +a simple flash of intuition into her being, he understood how she had +moods and a life independent of his, and that it was right that it was +so. In this her first Carnival dance, long since prepared for, she had +been disappointed, and not the least disappointed in him, and perhaps +also was crying now. And suddenly his sight was blurred. He took off his +horn-rimmed spectacles and wiped the glass with his big handkerchief.... + + +VII + +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.” + + + + +THE BIG DRUM + + +The brass band played _Im Köpfle zwei Augle_, and it seemed to her that +the souls of these men were like notes of this music, crying for +something elusive, for something in vain. To blare forth one’s love on a +brass trumpet! An earnest of one’s high endeavour fallen short through +the inadequate matter of brass; but withal in these abortive notes one +felt the presence of the heights the instrument would reach, alas, if it +but could! + +It touched her to the heart. She would have liked her Otto to play the +trumpet instead of the big drum. It seemed more romantic. Otto was not a +bit romantic. He was a soldier all right, but he looked more like a man +who had started life as a shoemaker’s apprentice, had grown old, and was +still a shoemaker’s apprentice. The band played well--a compact +synthetic body--but Otto was a forlorn figure who watched the +proceedings with sustained and patient interest and was suffered by +them, every now and then, to raise his drumstick and to give a solitary, +judicious “Bang!” And he--a tall gaunt man--seemed as though he were +ashamed of his small part. And as she watched him she felt a pang of +pity for herself: wedded to him, she would be forgotten, while life, +indifferent, strode by; and no one in the world would care whether she +had her share of happiness before she died. And the music brought this +out acutely, as if along the hard stone-paved indifference of life it +dragged, dragged on excruciating its living bleeding soul. It spoke of +loneliness, of laughter, of the pathos, pity and futility of life. + +She watched them. The bayonets at their side. The military badges of +rank. The hard discipline. And the music seemed to say, “Stop! What are +you doing? Why are you doing this?” And thoughts flowed into her mind. +Of soldiers dreaming on a Sunday afternoon. A fierce old corporal, of +whom everyone was afraid, talking to her of children and of daisies. +Soldiers who, too, had dreams in long waves--of what? she did not +know--but not this. And the men who stood up and blew the brass trumpets +seemed to say, and the shining trumpets themselves seemed to say: “We +were not born for the Army; we were born for something better--though +Heaven only knows what it is!” + +That was so. Undeniably so. Yet she wished it were otherwise. It helped +to make allowances for Otto. Whatever else he lacked, it made her think +at least he had a soul. But to be wedded for life to the big drum! She +did not fancy the idea. It didn’t seem a proper career. But Otto showed +no sign of _wanting_ to “get on”--even in the orchestra. The most +exasperating thing about it all was that Otto showed no sign of even +_trying_! She had asked him if he would not, in time, “move on” and take +over--say, the double-bass. He did not seem to think it either feasible +or necessary. Or _necessary_! He had been with the big drum for close +on twelve years. “It’s a good drum,” he had said. And that was all. + +There was no ... “go” in him. That was it: no go. It was no use denying +it. As she watched him--gaunt and spectacled--she wished Otto were more +of a man and less of an old maid. The conductor, a boozer with a fat red +face full of pimples, some dead and dried up, others still flourishing, +was a gallant--every inch a man. He had the elasticity and suppleness +and military alertness of the continental military man. She could not +tell his rank from the stripes on his sleeves, but thought he must be a +major. His heels were high and tipped with indiarubber, and so were +straight and smart, but his trousers lacked the footstrap to keep them +in position--poor dilapidated Austrian Army! How low it had sunk! +Nevertheless they were tight and narrow and showed off the major’s +calves to advantage. He wore a pince-nez, but a rimless kind, through +which gazed a pair of not altogether innocent eyes. But a man and a +leader of men. While Otto had no rubber on his heels. His heels looked +eaten away. He wore a pair of spectacles through which he peered from +afar at his neighbour’s music-stand, and at the appointed time--not +one-tenth of a second too late or to early--down came the drumstick with +the long-awaited “Bang!” So incidental, so contemptible was Otto’s part +that, in addition to handling the drum, he had to turn the pages for the +man who played the cymbals. It seemed to her humiliating. It was very +wrong that Otto had no music-stand of his own. + +He smiled shyly, and she turned away, annoyed. The little modiste walked +on, meeting the stream of people who promenaded the path surrounding the +bandstand; a man on high heels, three girls with a pinched look, a +famous Tyrolese basso with a long ruddy beard, a _jeune premier_ with +whiskers and hair like a wig, whose look appeared to imply: “Here am I.” +Innsbruck looked morose that Sunday morning, and the military band in +the park executed music that was tattered, gross, a little common, yet +compelling, even like the daily fare of life. Oh, why were there no +heroes? Of course she would have loved to be dominated. That’s what men +were for. She was a womanly woman. From Vienna. Exalted, brimming over +with life. These men of the Tyrol! And as for Otto? Why, she could have +only waved her hand! + +She began to wonder whether she had not really better break it off with +him. If men would but realise how little was required from them. Only an +outward gesture of romance: a touch sufficed, the rest would be supplied +by woman’s powerful imagination. Not even so much. A mere abstention +from the cruder forms of clumsiness, a surface effort to conceal one’s +feeblest worst. A mere semblance of mastery, a glimpse of a will. In +short, anything at all that would provide the least excuse for loving +him as she so wished to do. A minute she stood, thinking. “A minimum. +Hardly as much.” There passed along the man on high heels, the three +girls with the pinched look, the Tyrolese basso with the long ruddy +beard, the _jeune premier_ with whiskers and hair like a wig, whose +look seemed to say, “Here am I”; then again the man on high heels, the +three girls with the pinched look, the Tyrolese singer, and again the +“jeune premier” whose look implied, “Here am I.” They walked round and +round as if the park were a cage and there was nothing to do but walk +round--with heads bent, lifeless, sullenly resolute. And again there +came along the man on high heels. “The minimum of a minimum....” + +The music resumed. She consulted her programme. Item 7. Potpourri from +the operette _Die Fledermaus_ by Johann Strauss. She returned to the +stand, prepared to give her fiancé another chance. Otto’s part, as +before, was contemptible, more contemptible than before. He was +inactive. He smiled shyly. She coloured. And, looking at him, she knew. +She knew it was no use, her love could not bridge the chasm. He was +despised by the rest of the band. A stick-in-the-mud. Not a man. A poor +fish. Not for her.... + +The potpourri, as if suddenly turning the corner, broke out into a +resounding march, and behold, the big drum now led the way. Bang! bang! +bang! bang! Clearly he whacked, never once missing the chance; and the +man with the cymbals, as if one heart and brain operated their limbs, +clashed the cymbals in astounding unison, the big drum pounding away, +pounding away, without cease or respite. And the trumpeters smiled, as +who might say: “Good old big drum! You have come into your own at last!” +Bang! bang! bang! bang! The big drum had got loud and excited. And all +the people standing around looked as though a great joy had come into +their lives; and if they had not been a little shy of each other they +would have set out and marched in step with the music, taken up any +cause and, if only because the music implied that all men were brothers, +gone forth if need be and butchered another body of brothers, to the +tearing, gladdening strains of the march, (since it is not known from +what rational cause men could have marched to the war). And if in the +park of the neighbouring town there were just such a band with just +such a drum which played this same music, the people of the neighbouring +town would have marched to this music and exterminated this town. The +conductor, like a driver who, having urged his horse over the hill, +leans back and leaves the rest to the horse, conceded the enterprise to +the drummer, as if the hard, intricate work were now over and he was +taking it easy; his baton moved perfunctorily in the wake of the drum, +he looked round and acknowledged the greetings of friends with gay, +informal salutes of the left hand, his bland smile freely admitting to +all that it was no longer himself but the drum which led them to +victory. Or rather, the hard fight had already been won and these, +behold, were the happy results! Bang! bang! bang! bang! Strangers passed +smiles of intimate recognition, old men nodded reminiscently, small boys +gazed with rapt eyes, women looked sweet and bright-eyed, ready to +oblige with a kiss; while the big drum, conscious of his splendid +initiative, pounded away without cease or respite. + +“Wonderful! Beautiful!” said the public surrounding them. And thought: + +“Noise is a good thing.” + +The band had described the first circle and was repeating it with added +gusto and deliberation. The drum and the cymbals were pounding, pounding +their due through the wholly inadequate blazing of brass. But these did +not mind: “Every dog has his day”--and they followed the lead of the +drum. He led them. He--Otto! Her Otto was leading them. God! Merciful +Virgin! What had she done to deserve such happiness? Otto!... And she +had doubted him, thought there was no “go” in him. No _go_! She burnt +red with shame at the mere thought of it. He was all “go.” And didn’t he +make them go, too, the whole lot of them? How he led them! Puffing, the +sweat streaming down their purple faces, they blazed away till their +cheeks seemed ready to burst, but Otto out-drummed them--annihilated +their efforts. He--Otto! O, God! Watching him, people could hardly keep +still. But that none of them stirred and all of them wanted to, added +piquancy to the illusion of motion. They stood rooted--while the drum +carried on for them: Bang! bang! bang! bang! + +“Marvelous!” sighed the public around them. + +Her Otto--cock of the walk! She could scarcely believe her eyes. +Standing in front of the crowd, only a few paces from his side and +raising herself on her toes ever so gently in rhythm with the music, so +that by the very tininess of her movements she seemed to be sending +added impetus into the band, as if, indeed, she were pressing with her +little feet some invisible pump, she scanned his face with tenderness, +in dumb adoration. And Otto at the drum must have felt it, for, at this +turn, he put new life into his thundering whacks: _Bang! bang! bang! +bang!_ he toiled, and the conductor, as if divining what was afoot, at +that moment accelerated the pace of the march. + +“Bravo, bravo!” said the people surrounding them. + +There was no doubt about it. This was Art. The unerring precision. The +wonderful touch. Otto!... Otto, as never before, whacked the big drum, +whacked it in excitement, in a frenzy, in transcending exaltation. +Thundering bangs! And now she knew--what she couldn’t have dreamed--she +knew it by his face. Otto was a hero. A leader of men. Something +fluttered in her breast, as though a bird had flown in, ready to fly +out. + +“Now it’s all over,” thought the people, “and we are going home to +lunch.” And everyone smiled and felt very happy and gay. A sort of +prolonged accelerated thundering of the big drum, and then one +tremendous BANG! + +The thing was over. The conductor raised a bent hand to the peak of his +cap, acknowledging the applause. The bird in her fluttered more wildly +than ever. She wanted to cry out, but her throat would not obey. She +clutched at her heaving breast with trembling fingers. “My love,” she +thought. “My king! My captain!----” + + + + +A BAD END + + + “Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord; and that + means that it is not the Lord Chief Justice’s.” + --_Bernard Shaw._ + + +It all began by their talking of love and hate, as they set out on a +Sunday afternoon excursion to the moors. Mr. Proudfoot advocated love +and forgiveness; Weaver maintained his faith in a good man’s hate. And +Proudfoot hated Weaver and could not forgive him because Weaver would +not love and forgive. On the way to the tramcar terminus Mr. Proudfoot +called in at the grocer’s (it was Sunday, but the shop was +surreptitiously open, and Betty, the twelve-year-old girl of the grocer, +was reading assiduously a three-penny novelette, entitled--he strained +forward to look--_Only a Mill Girl_). Having bought his usual +cigarettes, “Get away with you!” rejoined Mr. Proudfoot, continuing the +argument. + +“Undoubtedly!” said Weaver stubbornly. He envied the other his command +of the pen, but doubted if the author knew “life” as well as he, Weaver, +knew it. “_I_ could give you material enough to fill a dozen novels if +you asked me,” he would say, and tell him of a thirty-stone man eating +enough for three; of a hangman in the neighbourhood who in his off-duty +hours was an innkeeper. “I want you to meet him. A character for you. +Bites off the heads of live rats if a customer will stand beer all +round.” Mr. Weaver was a dentist. There was something provocative about +all the dentists of Mr. Proudfoot’s experience. They all pretended to +ambitions outside their profession. They had all wished to be writers, +artists, poets, composers or statesmen, and now handled their surgical +tools, extracted teeth, with a kind of embittered “_Tant pis!_” The very +first day on which Mr. Proudfoot had called on Mr. Weaver in Gilbert +Street, Pedlar-with-Thresham, and inquired if it hurt to have a tooth +out, Weaver had said, “No. A second, and it’s out,” and holding it +between his pincers (while his client rinsed his mouth with warm water +and spat out blood), the dentist was already discoursing: “Now I’ve been +reading about this Einstein fellow, you know, and I’ve me own ideas +about this ’ere relativity business, if you know what I mean. I look at +meself in the glass--and am satisfied with meself, metaphorically, don’t +you know. But it does not follow, cosmically speaking like, that I +present the same satisfactory appearance. In the same way, following the +deductions of my--he, he--rather cynical philosophy, you’ll think, +flies, I say, may be as trivial and at the same time as important units +in the cosmos as ourselves, and in the end their souls go back to the +world-soul from which they sprang. Open your mouth.” + +“Is there a world-soul?” + +“_Undoubtedly!_” A rotund little body, smartly arrayed, Mr. Weaver went +on: “This afternoon was a bit slack. Lately I haven’t been feeling very +well. And middle age is upon me. I thought of my past achievements. I +had a look at my old medals--the one I got as a lad for swimming a +race, and that other one for cycling, don’t you know, and those other +two for amateur boxing. My mother, aye, she was proud of ’em! There.” He +sprinkled them out of a tin box on to his palm. “And I thought--how +shall I say?--it didn’t somehow seem as if it was ‘enough,’ if you know +what I mean. Come, open your mouth.” + +“You’re a cheerful old pessimist, aren’t you?” said Mr. Proudfoot, and +opened his mouth. + +“A cheerful pessimist? That’s what I call a contradiction in terms.” + +Mr. Proudfoot smiled, and thought (because he could not speak) that +Weaver was rather like a man who, having grasped with difficulty the +four simple rules of arithmetic, is bewildered at being told that he can +waive them utterly in Algebra. He was fond of using difficult words +unnecessarily, and would trot out a _cliché_ on the slightest pretext. +Mr. Proudfoot might say that he preferred horses to motor-cars, only to +hear Weaver ejaculate: “A horse! a horse! my kingdom for a horse!” Or +Mr. Proudfoot might say that he had served in the cavalry during the +War, for Weaver to remark, with lingering relish, “_Cavalleria +Rusticana_.” Or Mr. Proudfoot, perhaps in reference to the heavy rain, +had only to let fall the word “deluge” for Weaver to comment: “_Après +nous le déluge_, what?” looking at him with a self-complacent smile, to +see if he had noticed his culture. “I had a Frenchy here as an assistant +once, but had to kick him out: his gift of the gab was too much for me. +But I’ve picked up things, and I think I’ve got the hang of the lingo +all right, what?” But they had at once become friends, and in the +evening Weaver would invite him to his house, push out his wife--a thin +complacent woman with a long aquiline nose which Weaver thought +aristocratic, and whose contribution to any conversation did not extend +beyond the invariable affirmative: “That’s right.” “Out you go,” he +would say, “we’re an old bachelor party to-night.--Now then,” rubbing +his hands. “Now for it! I’ve been reading about this ’ere fellow +Spinoza, you know....” + +And so on till after midnight. Mr. Proudfoot remembered these nights +afterwards: Weaver, tottering slightly after the beer, coming out into +the open and standing hatless in the middle of the street and saying (in +reply to Mr. Proudfoot desirous of making a professional appointment +with him on the morrow), “Any day, old chap! any day!” + +Arguing, they had reached the tramcar terminus and boarded the train +which was to take them on their picnic out on to the moors. The world +seemed transfigured that wet but happy afternoon. It seemed to Mr. +Proudfoot that everything certainly was for the best in this best of all +possible worlds. The tramcars were running smoothly and efficiently. The +gay, handsome conductor performed his duty as if it were a pleasure. The +policeman looked well fed, well paid, well satisfied. Even the rain fell +satisfactorily from a dull but sober sky, and everybody was duly +provided either with raincoat or umbrella--all was undoubtedly just as +it should be. The world was well oiled and ran smoothly; everything was +a wheel turning round easily on its axle, and God the Mechanic walked +about his machinery and was well pleased. + +And Mr. Proudfoot stood at once right inside and outside this +astonishing world. He had a pointed beard, long hands, and shy manners. +His name was said to have been “Proud-bottom.” There is a theory that an +ancestor of his applied for royal permission to annul the unpalatable +name, and the Sovereign had been graciously pleased to amend the +“bottom” to “foot.” Now Weaver had felt from the first that Mr. +Proudfoot was “different.” And he was right. Mr. Proudfoot was an author +of standing. And as for his being immortal, who can tell? He wrote +private letters with an eye to their post-humous publication, keeping a +copy of each, in case his friends should lose or mislay them. He was a +student of the old giants of literature, and he walked in their wake. He +did not throw away his old sponge, for example, recalling that Goethe’s +was on exhibition at his famous house in Weimar, and accordingly gave +his own to his sister to put away. As for the critics, whenever Mr. +Proudfoot published a new book, they wrote: “Very suggestive ... never a +dull page ... the interest sustained to the end. Nevertheless, one +wishes that the author would break new ground, express life from a new +angle....” But if he did leap over the fence and explore new tracks, “Go +back, go back,” they wrote in the newspapers, “get you back to the +simple delights of your earlier books and we will listen to you till the +crack of doom....” Mr. Proudfoot had arrived four months earlier in +Pedlar-with-Thresham. And why, in God’s name? you will ask. And indeed +it would be difficult to imagine why anyone should arrive there, if he +were not cursed by having to be there from the beginning. At the last +General Election a local magnate in welcoming the Liberal candidate to +Pedlar-with-Thresham from the dais raised outside the town hall, +exclaimed with patriotic emotion: “In Pedlar-with-Thresham we spin well +and vote well!” + +“Aye--and starve well!” came a voice from the audience. + +Such a place was Pedlar-with-Thresham. Mr. Proudfoot went there to get +“local colour” for a Lancashire novel he was then writing. Nor was this +the only reason. He had read in the newspapers of the low deathrate of +Pedlar-with-Thresham and so, as he was afraid of dying young, he went to +live there. + +The sun had come out as the two men walked up on to the moors, arguing +heatedly, till Weaver, still maintaining his belief in hate, suggested +good-naturedly, “Let’s sit down here and have a go at what we’ve brought +with us, what? Open that basket. Come on, look out what you’re doing! +See, you can’t handle your tools properly. Oh my! Watch me. That reminds +me. I once captained a working men’s football team up North, and had to +take the blighters to London, where they were being entertained--mighty +lavishly too! They were the scum of the earth--no idea how to hold a +tool or to behave in decent society. So I said to them, ‘Look here, you +old blokes, watch me in everything, do just as I do, follow me, see? and +you’ll be all right.’ And I took the serviette--or what you fellows +would call the table-napkin, I s’pose--placed it carefully on me seat +and sat down on it. And they all--the whole blinkin’ crew of ’em--got +up, you know, placed their serviettes on their seats carefully and sat +down on ’em. Makes me roar even now when I think of it. Have another +beer. Look here, old chap, shall we run up and see the hangman I told +you about who bites off the heads of live rats--eh? He has his inn down +the road further up on the moors. Good material for you, what?” + +“I wouldn’t go near one.” + +“Why? he’s a necessary institution.” + +“I question that. If it is impossible to prevent homicidal maniacs from +killing their fellows, then by all means let them forfeit their lives +painlessly at the hands of a doctor. So much mercy is shown to mad +dogs.” + +“You need a hangman to frighten folk with.” + +“Get away with you!” + +“Undoubtedly!” said Weaver passionately. + +“Nonsense. It’s suffering to no purpose.” + +“It contributes in a way to the experience of the world-soul,” said +Weaver philosophically. + +“Damn your world-soul! Damn your fanatical readiness to sacrifice real +suffering units for the sake of God knows what misty and unfeeling +generalities. You’ll burn human beings in furnaces as sacrifices for +what-not tin gods. You’ll plunge into war for what-not shaky +nationalist, imperialist, religious ideals. This fanatical _laisser +faire_, this hapless surrender of the only vital feeling +thing--individual human life--for an abstraction! It’s just here that +you let in Beelzebub, in the name of what-not vague and void +resplendence!” + +“But there are compensations. Think of the pleasure a condemned man +enjoys in knowing that the entire world is talking of him. They enjoy +the vanity of it, without a doubt.” + +“Get away with you!” + +“_Undoubtedly!_” said Weaver, with tremendous emphasis, as he was wont +to do when feeling his opponent to be full of scepticism and doubt. + +“When I say you are a fool, Weaver, I really don’t mean to insult you: I +merely wish to illustrate the word.” + +“When I am landing you one on the chin, I do so entirely without malice. +There,” he said. + +Proudfoot blinked. “You are right. I congratulate you on admirably +illustrating the incommensurable qualities of our respective weapons of +offence. Still, allow me to doubt the amount of a condemned man’s +enjoyment. An ex-warder told me once how out of ninety-eight executions +he had witnessed there was not one case when the victim did not either +collapse or was dragged fighting and screaming to the gallows. And the +women, they cry and kick their heels as they are carried there. But the +Press prints the official version that the prisoner ‘walked firmly to +the scaffold’ and that it was all over in less than twenty-five +seconds.” + +“Still, I am in favour of hanging,” Weaver said, thoughtfully. + +“No man has any right to be in favour of something the full horror of +which he is, through his own defective imagination, incapable of +realising.” + +“Abolish capital punishment, and nobody’s life will be safe.” + +“Stupidity,” said Mr. Proudfoot, “is in itself a hollow term: it is +people like yourself who lend it meaning. Nobody’s life will be safe!” +he mimicked derisively. + +“Undoubtedly!” + +“This is what they said of sheep-stealing at the time. ‘Abolish the +death penalty for stealing sheep, and not a sheep will be left in this +fair England of ours!’ And all those little boys and girls who, in Queen +Victoria’s golden reign, were hanged for stealing a spoon. ‘Abolish +hanging,’ the people said, ‘and there will not be left a single silver +spoon in England.’ Oh, my God! I’m ashamed of humanity.... Little boys +and girls ... in the condemned cell ... dragged out in the morning and +hanged ... in Victoria’s complacent time--when Englishmen were ‘good.’” + +“Serve ’em right, the brats! Teach ’em a lesson! We had a case +recently----” + +“Devil!” he said. “Devil!” Mr. Proudfoot clutched the stick in his +shaking fist--he was not to blame that the other end of it shook at a +far greater tangent--and thus shaking it at one end touched Weaver’s +neck with the other. Even as he did so he had a feeling that he had +overstepped the mark, and he was about to crave his friend’s +pardon--when he saw that he had indeed overstepped it. Weaver leaned +back and turned his face to his friend as who might say, “Hello, old +chap, what’s up?” But the singular thing was that Weaver remained +sitting there with just the same astonished look in his face. Only blood +was now trickling from the corner of his mouth down his new light-grey +suit. + + * * * * * + +Proudfoot remembered how distinctly his senses registered the details of +subsequent events. As he walked home one little boy out of a group of +little boys and girls asked him for a cigarette card. He said he hadn’t +any and passed along, but the little boy ran after him and shouted, +“Give me a cigarette card!” + +“_Haven’t got any!_” he bellowed in reply. + +And the little boy, frightened, began to cry softly. + +“You shouldn’t ask like that,” he was consoled by his little sisters. +“You should ask properly.” + +And suddenly Mr. Proudfoot felt that he was not the man to bellow now. + +The tramcar was nearly empty. He would have preferred to have it full. A +fat old woman was holding forth to the conductor, who punctuated her +flowing narrative with periodical “Aye--aye”’s: “’Ad a real good time. +Forty of us went to Blackpool in a sharry. It cost us ten bob a ’ead. +Ee! but we did ’ave a fine h’outing. An’ such a dinner! We started wi’ +lamb and green peas and fresh potatoes; after that we ’ed potato-pie, +an’ ’alf a chicken for each one of us, and pop to drink. After dinner we +went for a picnic and took us tea wi’ us. Eh, _’twas_ a treat! We ’ad +three fine tongues all cut up an’ ready like and plenty o’ bread an’ +butter. But th’ pity was as I was off me h’appetite an’ couldn’t manage +me share. When we was coming w’home we called at a pub or two, as we was +very dry. Ee! but it _was_ a fine outing!” + +Wasn’t life wonderful! + +And suddenly Proudfoot remembered. + +As he went down a narrow lane, a little girl said to a smaller one who +had fallen on a stone, “Now ye’ve made a ’ole in yer leg.” And he felt +that, in other circumstances, he might have smiled. Passing the +grocer’s, where Betty was still reading _Only a Mill Girl_, he wondered +whether he should go in as if nothing had occurred and buy his usual +packet of cigarettes. Or better not be seen. One less witness at court. +What had he better do? Now he was back in Pedlar-with-Thresham, and +passing the familiar brass plate with “Gilbert French, Solicitor,” he +wondered whether he should go in, remembering the pun he used to make +that Gilbert was a French solicitor. He somehow wished he was. He wished +he himself were away in France. But they would extradite him on a +warrant. Oh, God! was there really no escape? + +Then things moved very quickly. He went home. The sun was still shining. +His father was sitting in the garden which gave upon the street. The two +men lived silently beside each other. They had never had much to say to +each other. The father, when the boy first showed signs of an +independent mind and temper and of wanting to adopt an unconventional +career, warned him solemnly: “You’ll come to a bad end, young +feller-me-lad!” Now the old man was very old: so old that his +thoughts--let alone his body--stirred with difficulty. He sat all day +long in the sun and at intervals would make remarks such as: “Aye, she +is a strong wench she is,” or “Aye, he is a big man he is that.” Then he +would sit very still, staring ahead with his watery old eyes, munching +with his empty loose mouth. Suddenly he would fall asleep, his mouth +hanging wide open. One day when he would thus fall asleep they would +nail him up in a coffin and drive him at great speed to the graveyard, +and put him into a wet black hole and cover him up altogether with +earth, and plant a great heavy stone on the top of him--and then come +home and take tea. + +“Just as well,” Proudfoot reflected. “Just as well now.” + +The sun had gone; it was just beginning to drizzle. His father turned +in. He sat by him and stared into the fire, waiting for the police to +come and arrest him. They did not come, and unable to bear the suspense +any longer he went out in order to give himself up at the police +station. It was beginning to get dark and chilly out-of-doors; the +polluted rain fell out of a soot-infested sky; and close to the door his +courage failed him and he went away again. What could he do? Where +could he go? It seemed all one. Mrs. Weaver knew that they had gone out +together and even knew the place. Was it really possible that such a +thing had befallen him? If it had befallen another man, if he had read +about it in the papers, it would seem natural enough; but that it should +have befallen _him_! It seemed impossible. The uncanny thing was that +the others would not know how impossible it seemed to him and would +require an intelligent account of it from him. Tired of walking, +frustration on all sides staring him in the face, he turned home and was +arrested by the two policemen who were already waiting for him. + +The court next morning had no hesitation in charging him with wilful +murder, and, in charge of two men, he was taken to Liverpool, where a +grand jury brought in a true bill against him, and he was taken away to +await trial at the Assizes. Here the matter was put elaborately before a +grand jury, and he listened, bedraggled and bewildered, to his heinous +deed being recounted in the hearing of the public and ably handled by +the learned advocates; and he had a sense of clumsy unreality, as he had +had when attending the performance of his plays or reading in a printed +notice the reviewer’s brief narration of the plot of his own novel. All +this, attributed to him, did not seem his, was not of his own making. +But he was hopeful: there was time enough for despair later on. He +watched the prosecution unbend itself. A sly old fox counsel for the +Crown. He put it to them that the circumstances were most suspicious. +Prisoner had decoyed his victim into a lonely wood away up on the moors. +The wound witnessed that the blow had been inflicted with a blunt and +heavy weapon. Prisoner confessed as much. What more proof was needed of +his murderous intent? Mr. Proudfoot’s faith was in his counsel, as once +upon a time when he visited the races it had been in his jockey. He had +a reputation for an unbroken record of acquittals to sustain. He would +fight for them both to the last breath. And the judge seemed a +gentleman. Mr. Proudfoot had the same feeling of confidence in that +presiding wigged figure as in the umpire when, as a boy, he took part in +a lawn tennis tournament. But what was strange and uncanny was the +smooth procedure of it: the deference and kindness shown to him on all +sides. He was afraid that with that suave politeness, that unfailing +legal gloss, in those beautifully modulated Oxford accents, they might +bring him theoretically to within an inch of death, and then get the +common churl to carry out the messy business. + +The judge was really nice--and so witty. Mr. Proudfoot smiled +good-naturedly at his remarks. He would have laughed, too, but that +might seem uncanny, irresponsible; might be considered as bravado on his +part; might even strike the judge as bordering on contempt of court. But +the judge must know that Mr. Proudfoot was an author and critic of +standing and might be flattered if he saw that his witticisms were +appreciated by the critic even at a trying time. The judge was detached +by virtue of his training. He pictured him as an elderly cultured +bachelor who had an ancient library and tender nieces who adored him. +Mr. Proudfoot and the judge would get on very well together. It was the +jurymen he was afraid of. God only knew in what wise the particular +machinery in their skulls manipulated thought. Counsel for the Crown was +a little ratty, to say the least of it. He would ask incriminating +questions: Who killed him? The devil killed him. He did not kill him. As +if he, Joseph Proudfoot, would ever do such a thing. He had merely +shaken his stick at him: the devil had operated the other end of it. But +if he had now told them that it was the devil who had killed Weaver, the +jury, being of the type who prided themselves on not being born +yesterday, would all the sooner come to a conclusion of his guilt. But +murder him, he didn’t--because murder had indeed never crossed his mind. +But counsel for the Crown thought otherwise. He could see no trace of +provocation to manslaughter, in the absence of which he saw murder, the +possibility of self-defence not even being mentioned by the other side. +And he suggested Mr. Proudfoot had murdered his friend for money. + +“I suggest,” he said, “that you murdered him for his money and took it.” + +“I repudiate your suggestion,” Mr. Proudfoot said, very pale. + +Counsel for the defence was stipulating for manslaughter under +provocation, the provocation being Weaver’s inhuman attitude to those +poor children who, in Victoria’s crass time, had been suffered by a +callous public to forfeit their young lives at the hands of the hangman, +a dastardly crime which Weaver had offensively condoned; and this +general attitude to juvenile capital punishment raised a tremendous +controversy between the two sides, involving the merits of capital +punishment as a whole, the defence representing it as a barbarous relic +of a bygone age still lingering among us, and to which indeed his client +may fall a ready victim if the jury did not do their duty by him; till +the judge, resenting such round-about intimidation of the jury, said +that they were not here to debate whether the death penalty was right +or wrong in principle, but that the question which the jury had to keep +before them was whether prisoner had murdered Weaver or killed him under +justifiable provocation, in which latter case it might be said it was +manslaughter. Whereupon counsel for the defence respectfully +submitted to his lordship that the degree of provocation would +seem to be intimately bound up with his client’s sensitive and +all-too-human--perhaps over-sensitive, but he would hesitate to call it +over-human--attitude to a practice which to-day all right-thinking +people (“Hear, hear!” from the audience, the judge interrupting to say +that at the repetition of outside comments he would clear the +court)--yes, he repeated it advisedly, all right-thinking people could +but recall with a shudder of horror and disgust; and the learned judge +(the point at issue having crystallised itself by now) allowed the +argument to stand, limiting it strictly to the merits of the death +penalty as applied to children for stealing silver spoons at a +particular period in social history. Prosecuting counsel, in his turn, +submitted that if there was any provocation at all, even of a kind that +some people--though he himself was far from doing so--might find, if not +a ground, at least an extenuating circumstance for taking the life of +another human being, they had only the prisoner’s word for it. It was a +matter of credulity. He repeated the assertion of the learned counsel +for the defence in a faintly ironic tone, and added that he would ask +the jury to please declare the prisoner innocent of murder--if they +could honestly believe it. (He implied by a shade of sarcasm, if they +were really simple enough to believe such a wild thing.) Mr. Proudfoot +cast a quick glance at the jury. Two jurymen, looking singularly like +Messrs. Asquith and Lloyd George, he thought, mingled their locks in +contemptuous mirth. They seemed men with “no nonsense about them,” men +who would ask, “Do you see any green in my eye?” men who were prone to +believe that “there is no smoke without fire,” men who had sent saints +to the stake; men of whom Mr. Proudfoot all of a sudden had become +immoderately afraid. If they could believe such a thing, the prosecution +argued, there was an end of it and he had nothing further to say. But if +they did not, indeed _could_ not believe it, and there was no +provocation, he said (suddenly jumping one peg), then, he submitted, it +was murder pure and simple. + +The proceedings made a web of rather illiberal quibbles, difficult for +any but a trained mind to unravel, but through all the crude, inaccurate +and intellectually dishonest cross-examinations there ran two threads: +the black thread of the prosecution and the white thread of the defence, +which the jury hoped the judge would disentangle for them in his +summing-up. Unable to sustain the charge that prisoner had taken any of +the victim’s money (though producing witnesses to show that Proudfoot +was in financial embarrassment), prosecuting counsel modified it to +saying that he _would_ have taken it, but in the horror of the crime +itself forgot the object of the crime. The defence thereon came forward +with a challenge to the prosecution either to substantiate the charge or +to withdraw it--a challenge which the prosecution met with a subversive +question: Indeed what other rational cause could have prompted prisoner +to commit the murder? A question retorted to by the defence with the +suggestion that the absence of all rational motive precisely pointed to +the view that apparently it was not murder, but manslaughter under some +sharp and instantaneous provocation, which tallied with his client’s +story. But prosecuting counsel knew his jurymen, and questioning whether +the expression of a contradictory opinion on some event in history could +be described as provocation, and questioning further whether prisoner +could be believed to tell the truth, he wound up his case with a +pseudo-generous invitation to the jury to exercise their credulity, if +they possessed enough of it, in believing the case for the defence. +Again Mr. Proudfoot glanced at the jury: hard-faced business men all, +“with no nonsense about them,” and one meagre “emancipated” woman who +looked as though she would not lag behind the men. “My God, my God, why +hast Thou forsaken me?” + +He stared in front of him. Now they seemed very near, and now they +seemed very far, as if he were looking at them through the other end of +a pair of binocular glasses. He started from his trance: Good God! he +was actually in court, being tried, in fact, for his life! + +He found the final speech for the defence inadequate. These lawyers were +all so suave and satisfied with one another: his man, while fighting for +his life, seemed so mindful of the prosecution, so gentlemanly, so aware +of his opponent’s high character and diverse gifts that Mr. Proudfoot +felt his barrister might easily betray him to his foe out of gracious +deference and general drawing-room politeness. So on the declaration of +a war, the signal for the indiscriminate butchery all round of human +flesh, ambassadors who had demanded the return of their credentials +will cordially shake hands with the immaculate kid-gloved Foreign +Secretary, before departing to the country with which the realm is “in a +state of war.” “This,” said Sir Frederick, laying down his brief, +“concludes the case for the defence.” + +And now he felt there was only God between him and his doom. + +Among men, who was his friend? Not the judge, you would think any more, +if you followed the hostile tone of his summing-up: the arguments +themselves were far too intricate for any layman not specially versed in +legal ways to follow. And Proudfoot wondered which of all his friends he +would want to help him in his present plight; and he thought that of all +men he wanted the good, fat, cheery, smiling Weaver. And a laugh broke +from his mouth and tears came to his eyes as he remembered that all the +present trouble hinged on Weaver. + +There was a moment during the judge’s summing-up when something in +Proudfoot protested. What right had they to sit in judgment on him? “I +have understanding as well as you. I am not inferior to you. Yea, who +knoweth not such things as these?” That ridiculous wigged figure, immune +from insult, sitting aloft impersonating the divine justice. He felt +like telling it, “You old cuckoo, you wouldn’t be sitting there if it +weren’t that you are only half a man.” + +The jury retired. How very long! It seemed as though they would never +come to a unanimous decision. He had hopes of disagreement, +procrastination, a new trial. But at last they came back, headed by the +foreman. He heard the clerk’s fateful question. He heard the answering +“Guilty.” There was no recommendation for mercy. Before he could take it +in he saw the “black cap” on the judge’s wig. “ ... hanged by the neck +until you are dead....” The judge and all of them seemed very far off in +the electric light, as if at the far end of a long hall. He could not +believe it, he did not believe it. Absurd! They were wanting to despatch +him, to liquidate his existence: whereas he was the world spirit +itself, the world spirit that descends into each living creature whole +and unsplit: as if each creature only mattered by itself and no other +creature. To be told that you are to be killed is therefore like being +told that the end of the world has come: impossible to fathom. They must +be under some error. They had forgotten that he was the world spirit +incapable of being quenched by a judge of that kind. The judge’s slender +hand moving up, the clerk removed the piece of black cloth from his +lordship’s wig. It seemed that all was over. The judge was thanking the +jury for the commendable manner in which they had carried out their +duties and was absolving them from further service for the next fifteen +years. He felt the warder’s hand on his shoulder; they led him down to +the cells; afterwards out into a taxi, the two warders inside with him. +He looked out of the window as they were wafted down busy streets; past +door porters at picture palaces who looked like major-generals; then +through shabbier streets. He still looked out. An auctioneer was +holding forth with gusto outside his shop, talking vociferously but +apparently to himself. + +Then the bath at the prison. The kindness of the warders. It was like a +working men’s hotel. He could smile--and there was plenty of time--two +weeks yet or more. He now lived in the hope that the High Court of +Criminal Appeal would revoke the sentence. But the day came, and the +Lord Chief Justice gave it out as his opinion that he could find no +fault with the proceedings at the trial, and, speaking _ex cathedra_, +added some mordant comments of his own upon the class of novelists now +generally perverting the public. The friend who brought this news to him +consoled him with the lame remark that it was better to be hanged once +than to be imprisoned for a period of twenty years. After all, hanging +was more merciful. + +“If it is,” exclaimed Mr. Proudfoot, feeling chilly at his friend’s +taking his death so philosophically, “if it is, and they are so +solicitous as to what is better for me, why don’t they let me make my +choice? I know what I would choose.” + +“What?” + +“Life imprisonment, of course. I am locked up, but I can still think, my +thoughts can still roam, my mind is still free and unfettered.” + +“That is the cowardly choice, not the good choice.” + +“I am only human,” said Proudfoot--and faltered. + +There came a time, after the High Court had dismissed his appeal, when +he felt quite light and cheery in the confident anticipation of the Home +Secretary’s intervention. He thought of the Home Secretary as a man with +a soft grey moustache and kind eyes. But just as he had feared the suave +punctilio of the trial, he began to fear the sensitive, kindhearted men, +who, wincing in their sensibilities, would turn aside and leave it to +the other men to deal with the raw places. He read of the Home Secretary +going off for his customary week-end; he learnt of his solicitor +travelling to him with a batch of signatures, and coming back, +ambiguous in the extreme, only saying that the Home Secretary’s decision +would be duly published after his return to London from his week-end +holiday. Then he saw it in the morning papers. The Home Secretary could +see no ground for advising his Majesty to intervene with the normal +course of the sentence, and the papers further stated that the sheriff +had arranged for the execution to take place on the 22nd of this month, +and that on the morning of the 21st Hanbury, the executioner, would +travel to Liverpool to put up the gallows. + +And then he asked--it was a desperate afterthought--that they should let +him finish his new novel. It was all but ready; he only asked two weeks’ +respite. Secretly he hoped that it might be found so good that all the +writers and critics in the world and the Great British (Reading) Public +would see to it that he was granted life. It was an application truly +without precedent. But there was nothing lost by trying. There was still +time, and his solicitor got busy. The petition was drawn up and had +appended to it a long list of signatures from all the leading lights in +letters, music, art and science, some from the dramatic stage, and not a +few illustrious foreigners from France and Italy, even one from Poland +and Czecho-Slovakia. A German writer’s name was intentionally omitted +from the list, as it was feared that a certain daily paper would be sure +to cry out that opinion in this country was being dictated from Berlin, +and that the convalescent mind of our post-war public might echo the +cry, and the Government would find it difficult to grant the +application. + +However, the respite was granted. It was his first success after a long +series of reverses. He had another two weeks clear to finish his book +in. Some newspapers, of the howling kind, duly howled against it. “What +Can Murders Teach Us?” was the headline of a certain Sunday paper. “Why, +to murder,” he could almost hear the responding voice of certain +readers. “Writers are worse than some other folk,” he could just hear +them saying it in Pedlar-with-Thresham. “Aye, they are a bad lot.” And +Mrs. Weaver answering, “That’s right.” + +He remembered how she had sat in court, saying in reply to a question +put to her by counsel, “That’s right,” and never once looked up at him. + +The book was got out with all haste. Three days before the execution it +was published, and his publisher sent him the first batch of reviews. +The stimulus given to it by his impending execution was tremendous. His +publisher recognised it as an invaluable advertisement and rose to the +occasion. For the first time in his life Mr. Proudfoot was a rich man, +and he made generous provisions for his father, for the few years that +he could yet be expected to survive. But the integrity of the British +reviewer is proverbial. The mere fact of Proudfoot’s impending death +could not influence their critical opinion of his work one way or +another. One critic wrote: “This book, while quite pleasant and +readable, is in no way remarkable.” And another critic, ignorant, it +would seem, of the fate involved, pleaded: “Go back, get you back to +your former style, and we shall listen to you till the crack of doom.” +He _had_ gone back; he had deliberately gone back on the advice of that +same critic, and in any case there was no looking forward now. But still +another critic wrote: “One would wish the author had begun to break new +ground, express life from a new angle....” The Great British Public was +silent as the grave. + +The last hope had gone, and the last full day of his remaining life was +beginning to unfold itself. The warders, like old friends, played cards +with him all day to take off his mind from the event. In the little +intervals he wondered whether Hanbury who was to hang him on the morrow +was not perchance the man who bit off the heads of live rats whom he and +Weaver should have visited that fatal Sunday. Weaver had not disclosed +his name. But there were few hangmen, he knew, and this might very well +be the man in question. “Where does Hanbury, the hangman, come from?” +he inquired from the warder. + +“Up Manchester way.” + +It _was_ the man! + +What emotions, what a multitude of moods he experienced in those few +brief hours. Till twelve he was sprightly and not very nervous. The +hangman, peeping at him through the observation hole, to decide what +“drop” to give him, saw him pacing up and down in the cell, puffing +calmly at a cigarette. But as, at midnight, the prison clock boomed out +the hours, he got agitated, threw away the cigarette and began counting +the remaining hours on his fingers. He tried to think of the noble souls +who went before him:--of Anton Chehov, who, after gravely saying to the +doctor who had been called to him during the night, “I am dying,” +drinking the glass of champagne prescribed to him to the bottom and +remarking, with a smile, to his wife, “It’s a long while since I have +had champagne,” turning over on one side, and presently being quiet for +ever;--of Goethe asking that the window might be opened to admit of +more air and more light, and the faithful Eckermann coming to look at +him, lying dead. “And I turned aside,” he records, “to give a free run +to my tears.” And with a shudder he recalled that _his_ body would fall +into lime to be instantly consumed like a foul thing. He must go not +knowing why he lived, and nobody in those bleak immensities would know +or care: no father, no mother, no love in the world would intervene on +his behalf; not even memory would be left him to recall his single spell +of life, as if he never had been, as if indeed he was never meant to +matter. There was but to “curse God and die.” + +And suddenly his soul stirred within him, as if it had wings. “It’s the +end here,” he thought. “But it’s not the end there.” Weaver believed in +the world-soul--which meant that in a while he and Weaver would be one. +It was night, but he could not sleep. Perhaps now, all over the world, +there were people who could not sleep on his account and lay thinking of +him. As by imponderable wireless waves he, alone in the dark cell with +the gallows adjoining, felt himself linked to all compassionate souls; +and to them he sent greetings--his desperate greetings.... At last he +slept. + +His sleep was troubled. He dreamt he had shrunk back from the pale gate +of death, a bleak coldness in his chest and limbs, and was going past a +park where there were children playing and people lounging wearily after +their strenuous day’s work. And he thought that the trivialities of +living were manna compared with death. But by the faces of the people +who came out of the park he knew that they, not realising it, could not +enjoy the gift of life. He walked on, and suddenly found himself in a +beautiful, totally unfamiliar part of the town, the existence of which +he had not even suspected. And he told himself how he would come home +and tell his father of it. He woke--and there was nothing to tell but +that he had dreamt it. And at once an incredible coldness invaded his +heart. + +Besides, it was cold in the cell. Our courage is at its lowest ebb in +the early morning: it is wicked to hang people at dawn, he reflected. +The warder came in. “Get up. Here is your suit.” His old suit that knew +him in different circumstances. No collar to-day. “I’ll go and fetch you +yer breakfast now.” + +Perhaps at the last minute the Home Secretary might ...? He remembered +seeing a film where also at the last moment, also the Home Secretary.... +How cold. They wouldn’t tell his father. Or would they? The warder +brought in a tray with some cocoa and porridge and an apple. He could +not eat. He nibbled at the apple, and the savoury juice reminded him of +some utopian land of fruit and flowers, like Italy, which he had never +known. And he thought that when they had done their worst, and he was +left in peace, perhaps in dreamland he would fly to such a land. + +He looked strangely at the warder. “Is it very bad? Does it ... hurt?” +he asked uneasily. + +“No. A second--and it’s all over. Like having yer tooth out--no more. +All over in a wink.” + +The chaplain, a young man, was more confused than he--and more +miserable. “Perhaps some spiritual consolation?” he stammered. + +“I don’t understand,” said Mr. Proudfoot. “The indivisible universe +speaks and lives only through each separate creature, as if no other +creature existed at all. But it is the same indivisible universe which +so expresses itself. And they--absurd--they want to do away with +me--that means with the universe.” + +“Perhaps a last communion....” + +“Why?” + +“Or a confession? After all, you’ve killed a human being.” + +He thought of Weaver, and would have felt sorry for him if he did not +feel so overwhelmingly sorry for himself. If they’d let him off now he’d +put back what he had taken, put back into the spiritual cosmos what he’d +taken from it. If they would leave it to him, he’d see that humanity +did not lose. + +He was brave, resigned. But a quarter of an hour before time, suddenly +he felt he wanted to live, love, breathe in through these nostrils the +fresh air of, not this, but other, future mornings, when _he_ would be +no more.... He remembered a windy day when the big chestnuts swayed and +lashed their branches like drunken things, and nuts and sticks fell off +like missiles aimed at passers-by. A little boy had turned round to his +mother, hiding his eyes from the dust and the wind in the folds of her +skirt. This had moved him then somehow. And now an intolerable thought +obsessed him that, when, in a few minutes from now, he would be buried +in a pool of lime, he would feel the wind no more. And he thought that +if this life he was leaving was the only life in a bleak universe, then +he could not face the anguish of leaving it. But if there was another +life, he wanted to hide his face in the lap of his Maker, hide from the +missiles that fell all about him and hurt him, weep on His breast, and +be quiet for ever.... + +But perhaps--two minutes yet--perhaps the Home Secretary ...? And before +he could realise it the hangman stood in the cell. Was this it? Was it +this? Was _this_, then, what he had to come to? Could mother but have +known! But the warder, who up to this had been like a friend and +confidant, suddenly began to shout at the executioner, “Come on, you +there, get a move on and get about it quick!” (as though anxious to get +the nasty job over). And Mr. Proudfoot felt almost as though his friend +the warder had betrayed him to that other man. That other man had a +soft, drooping, yellow moustache and glassy eyes, and seemed slow and +good-natured. You wouldn’t think by the mild look of him that he bit off +the heads of live rats. Somehow Mr. Proudfoot wanted to claim +acquaintance: to tell him about Weaver: that Weaver and himself were +about to call on him that fatal Sunday: if they had called he would not +now be here. But the man with his assistants and the warder were +resolutely coming up to him as if they were intent on making a swift end +of him, the governor, the chaplain and the doctor looking on. Yes, yes, +he would die--if they would leave him alone, or do it--handsomely. He +killed Weaver--however inadvertently, he killed him, and he would +forfeit his life, on his word of honour he would. But not so---- The +hangman and his assistant were trying to pinion him; and suddenly he put +up a fight for his life. What right had they? All nonsense apart, what +right? A glimpse of the jurymen all back in their homes, and at +breakfast, flashed through his brain. What right? Where he got the +strength from he did not know, but the prison bell was already tolling +for the soul departing, and its last stroke had boomed its melancholy +message across the yard into the streets, but Mr. Proudfoot was still +alive and struggling desperately with the executioner and three warders, +who only knew that they had to despatch him: he should have been +liquidated ten minutes ago: there was no document to account for his +unwarranted existence after 8 a.m. They were shocked: it was improper in +the extreme. “Don’t! Oh!” He wanted to tell them--if they would only +stop to listen--he wanted to tell them that--yes--he was a soul, a +universe with things in it which had nothing to do with that devil in +him they were intent on destroying. It was unjust. A whole universe. +“Stop! Think: what are you doing?... _No!_” he cried, struggling in +their grip and realising that nothing save his poor physical exertion +now stood between him and their grim determination to do away with him. +“No! You _mustn’t_!” he pleaded, his soul filled with a sickening animal +fear. But they dragged him on without respite, the chaplain leading the +way, reading words from the Bible. And if--he thought--there was a God +in heaven, why did He stand aside? What God was He to stand aside? “No! +No!... _Oh!_ ...” But they were dragging him on none the less, dragging +him on to his doom. Swiftly he looked at each of them, for a spark of +compassion. But they were all men who valued their duty before +everything else. He was in the open. And suddenly a wave of awe came +over him, standing as he did on the brink of eternity or extinction: so +that the hangman at his neck seemed like a friend who was assisting at a +parting, and those others, too, seemed as if they’d come to see him off +at the railway station as he was about to step into the train on his +awful journey; and he clung to them with fraternal, desperate farewell. +But they only looked as though they had no time for that, but wanted to +get the nasty business, long overdue, over at last. It seemed minutes +before he toed the chalk line on the drop--when suddenly he fell, it +seemed minutes, he expected it with drawn breath, the pulling up--when +_snap!_ it came! + +And all was darkness. + + * * * * * + +The great harbour was awakening in the cold fog. From the terminus a +tramcar set off half empty. The conductor strode inside and began +collecting the fare. Then newspapers appeared on the street corners, +and posters announced in red and black letters: + + “SPECIAL EDITION. + “PROUDFOOT EXECUTED.” + +They were eagerly snapped up by busy hurrying people, who stopped and +read: + + “Proudfoot had a quiet night and is believed to have been greatly + relieved at the end by confessing his crime to the chaplain. The + condemned man breakfasted lightly and walked with a firm step to + the scaffold. From the moment of prisoner leaving his cell to the + execution of the sentence there barely elapsed twenty-five + seconds.” + + + + +IN THE WOOD + + +Lieutenant Barahmeiev, late of the Hussars, was making amorous advances +to his landlord’s wife, a Jewish lady of about thirty. “Your lips are +saying No! No! No! whereas your eyes are saying Yes! Yes! Yes!” + +Vera Solomonovna looked at him with her golden eyes and shook her +handsome head and said to him, + +“Boris Nikolàech, you’re thirty-eight, and you have no more sense than a +boy of twelve.” + +Lieutenant Barahmeiev looked more self-confident than ever. It was a +fixed idea with him that no woman could refuse his amorous advances, and +that no landlord really meant him, seriously, to pay his rent. To +whatever women said in proof of their refusal, to whatever landlords +said in confirmation of their claims, Lieutenant Barahmeiev had a +simple answer. He called it “bluff.” Some English words like “bluff” +and “gentleman” have passed into the Russian tongue in the original. He +wasn’t born yesterday, he said. + +And fully confident of the result, the Russian officer continued, “Why +this pretence, this hypocritical reluctance? Why not be frank about it? +To-night,” he whispered. “In my room....” + +“Go to the devil!” she said, but her eyes seemed to say, “Go on +talking.” + +“You say ‘Go to the devil!’ But what do you mean? I know what you mean. +Wasn’t born yesterday. Why not be honest about it?” + +Odessa had been changing hands from Bolshevik to anti-Bolshevik in turn; +but the habit of love-making persists through such irrelevancies as wars +and revolutions. Life in the flat of Finkelstein, where Lieutenant +Barahmeiev occupied a bedroom, went on essentially as it had gone on +before the war. I liked my hosts. She, a woman of considerable beauty, +greedy for admiration. He, a successful broker, tall, handsome, +prepossessing, inordinately proud of being a Jew and always selling +foreign currencies to his guests at table. I liked the free and easy +manner in the household, the total absence of suspicion on the part of +Finkelstein as regards his handsome wife. No doubt he also had no small +opinion of himself, and thought that as compared with the Lieutenant he +was the better specimen of male all round. And I think that perhaps he +was. + +At lunch he was saying to Lieutenant Barahmeiev, “Yes, Boris Nikolàech, +you Christians like to run us down. You say that we are swindlers, and +‘Never trust a Jew.’ But the fact is that we Jews can trust each other, +but I am dashed if we are often given an opportunity to trust a +Christian. Take yourself. You call yourself a ‘paying guest.’ But what +right have you to the adjective? If it comes to that, what right have +you to the noun? Have I asked you to come and stay with us, and +overlooking that point, is it a usual thing for guests to stay +indefinitely? But your conscience doesn’t seem to trouble you a bit. +You eat and sleep, and there! you even seem to have designs on my wife. +Ah, you’re a funny fellow, Boris Nikolàech, but, at any rate, it’s some +good to us that you are an officer; it will keep them from commandeering +our flat while you are here. But what was I saying? Ah, yes, does any +one want to buy Romanov roubles? Or I can sell you francs.” + +But the Lieutenant went on talking to the hostess. “What I can’t get +over is this utter want of frankness in you, Vera Solomonovna. Your +soul, your eyes cry out, ‘Take me! I am yours!’ whereas your lying lips +pretend to say, ‘Go to the devil.’ Bluff! All bluff, all bluff!” + +She turned to her husband and looking at her guest with compassion, +said: + +“What _can_ I do with him, Lyova? He doesn’t understand. He _can’t_. He +really thinks he’s irresistible to women. I’ve never seen anything so +brazen in my life. To be quite frank, Boris Nikolàech, you’re not the +least bit attractive. I wonder who put that idea into your head?” + +“Vera Solomonovna,” he implored her, “be frank for once. You know you +are in love with me; why all this hypocritical nonsense about my being +‘not the least bit attractive’? Why all this bluff? I wasn’t born +yesterday!” + +“In matters of love you’re a school boy.” + +“Yes, when I was a school boy I had the innocence to take a woman’s No +for No. But now, I need hardly say, I believe it no longer.” + +“You wise old man then,” she said ironically, rising. + +We followed her into the drawing-room. The window panes were blurred +with rain. The sea, the sky, was one grey mass, doleful and monotonous. +Below, in the street, one could see the shining hoods of passing cabs; +the muffled sound of hoofs reached our windows. In the indoor twilight +of the flat one felt at rest, one’s limbs were seized with languor. +Finkelstein and his stock-exchange associates retired to his study to +play cards. + +“The rain reminds me, Vera Solomonovna,” said the Lieutenant, “of an +incident in my youth. The woman--oh, she had the self-same psychology, +if I may say so, as yourself, and in the end, and in the end ... +complete capitulation.” + +“I am tired of you,” said she, looking languorous rather than tired. + +“Vera Solomonovna,” he said, bending over her; then in a whisper: “Don’t +forget to-night ... my room.” + +She shook her head. + +“How blatantly deceitful women really are,” he said. “You shake your +head. Why? Why, when I know----” + +She flushed. “This is really getting idiotic!” + +“Ha! ha! ha! That is exactly what Zina used to say: ‘idiotic.’ I was +going to tell you about Zina when you interrupted me. This was a long +time ago--let me see--yes, twenty-one years ago, to be exact. I was +seventeen then. I was a cadet at the X---- Military School and I was +spending the summer vacation with my aunt at S----, a sea side resort +some twenty miles from Petersburg. It was an evening in early June, and +we were sitting on the open balcony of the pavilion at the local tennis +club. We were discussing something--literature I think, and then, quite +relevantly, we switched off on to love. There was this Zina I am telling +you about, a beautifully developed girl of twenty-five, who was quite +vehement in her denunciation of everything relating to the attraction +between the sexes, and as she spoke it was urged upon her that for a +person with her views the convent was the only proper place. It was a +lovely night, but we sat there and exchanged inanities. Gradually some +of us dispersed. + +“I was standing by a street stall, buying cigarettes, when I noticed +Zina coming up. She bought herself some chocolate. We sauntered away +from the stall together.” + +“Where are you going?” I asked her. + +“Nowhere in particular.” + +We went along the big road leading to the sea. Our shoulders touched +occasionally as we stumbled over the uneven ground. + +“They’re so absurd with their revolting sentimentality,” I said. + +“Why talk about them? Look at the clouds,” she said. “How they chase +each other. We couldn’t keep pace with them if we ran. And the moon! +Gone--and out again!” + +We made our way together along a narrow lane. The wooden _datchas_ had +been left behind. + +“Is this ‘The Alley of Kisses’?” + +“No, this is ‘The Alley of Sighs.’” + +We went on. + +“The moon again!” + +“Yes.” + +“This is ‘The Alley of Kisses,’” she said, as we turned to our left. +Beyond I could hear the sound of the sea. + +“Let us sit down here.” + +It was an old bench considerably disfigured by a penknife; it bore +initials, monograms and names of lovers probably who had sat there in +former times. + +“So this is ‘The Alley of Kisses,’” I repeated. One seizes with +gratitude on such openings. + +“Yes.” She looked at me strangely. “And the fools at the tennis club +talking rubbish!” + +“Yes.” + +“The sea and the air! and--as I was saying--this ‘Alley of Kisses.’ Can +you feel it?” + +I moved closer to her. “May I kiss you?” I said. + +“Why do you ask?” she whispered. + +“What?” said I. (I am slightly deaf, as you know.) + +She waited, and I, being timid, added, “After all, we are ‘allies’ in a +sort of way....” + +She repeated softly: “Why do you ask?” + +She had soft, warm lips; I held my breath back; it was long before I +released it; and I wasn’t thinking of the night. “My hand----” + +Vera Solomonovna became fidgety with excitement. “Lyova! Lyova!” she +cried out; and when Finkelstein appeared, she said, “Come here, all of +you. Boris Nikolàech is telling of a romantic episode from his life. +It’s most attractive, I assure you, most _piquant_.” + +Finkelstein and his stock-exchange associates, abandoning their game of +cards, sauntered into the drawing-room, and, still smoking, sank into +chairs and stretched out their legs, ready to listen. + +“Well, go on,” said Vera Solomonovna. + +“My hand, I think I said, was round her waist----” + +“Whose waist?” said Finkelstein. + +“Zina’s,” explained his wife. + +“Who’s Zina, anyhow?” + +“Oh, well, it doesn’t matter. Go on, Boris Nikolàech.” + +“My hand was round her waist. She pressed it to her bosom. I looked +round. There was not a soul around, not a sound abroad but for the waves +that broke on the sea shore. Dark clouds ran swiftly across the sky. + +“Let us go there,” she said, pointing to the wood. We made our way +across the shrubbery. I held her in my arms; she began to breathe in a +queer, panting way. + +“What is it?” I asked ignorantly. + +“It’s ... good,” she whispered. + +The moon showed between the tall trees; in a few yards’ distance the sea +roared before us. Then a big, heavy drop of rain fell on my face--it was +warm; and then another. + +I sat on the moss, dazed, completely overtaken by the wonder of it all. +Suddenly, I heard the rustle of her movements; she had disappeared +behind a bush. + +“What are you doing?” + +There was no answer. I was rather shy about it all, for I was only +seventeen. “Don’t!” + +She stood behind a shrub and I could hear the rustle of the twigs, the +rustle of silk linen, the hollow sound of press-studs. “Don’t,” I said. + +“Yes,” she whispered. + +“But why? Why?” I said confusedly. “I don’t want to.” + +Unveiled, she stood behind me. The big pale moon looked down upon her, +but she didn’t mind it. The dark blue wood leered from behind at her; +and the roaring sea rushed to her--and receded, rushed and receded. Drop +after drop, at long interval, the soft warm rain fell from the dark +gathering clouds. “I want, I want you to remember me,” she said softly, +“_always_, and now you can’t forget ... that the first woman you have +ever seen like that ... was _me_.” Then she crouched to the ground. She +began to sob and laugh at the same time. “What am I doing? Oh, I’m mad, +mad.... I couldn’t help it. I’ve been reading--all day long I’ve been +reading ... such a wicked book. It was awful, unbearable. These silly +people on the veranda talked such nonsense, but it wouldn’t have really +mattered what they’d said; I would’ve disagreed with them all the same. +I couldn’t bear it any longer. And then I felt I wanted--I wanted to do +as she, the woman in the book, had done to him. Besides,” she added, +“you really are rather attractive, aren’t you? Oh, do you think it’s +going to rain properly? It didn’t in the book.” + +The Lieutenant ceased. + +“Well?” we said. “Go on.” + +“That’s all,” said the Lieutenant. + +“But what happened afterwards?” asked Vera Solomonovna. + +“Nothing happened.” + +“But _how_?” she said in a tone as though she had been wronged. + +“Well, that’s all there is to tell.” + +“But--it’s no proper story even.” + +“I can’t help that,” he answered almost angrily. “This is what happened, +and this is where it ended. I can’t falsify the facts to suit your +taste. We don’t, my dear Vera Solomonovna, live our lives to provide +plots for stories.” + +“Well, I _am_ disappointed in you, Boris Nikolàech. Really! To begin so +well, so fascinatingly, and then, suddenly, to break off ... so +shamelessly! Well, really, you’re just like a boy of twelve. You have no +sense of proportion, Boris Nikolàech. None whatever! The whole thing, +as it stands, is silly....” + +“You are a hopeless washout!” Finkelstein was teasing him. “Miss your +opportunity like that! My goodness! And call yourself a Don Juan at +that!” + +“If that’s the end of it,” said Vera Solomonovna, “there was no need to +tell the story. You had no business to begin, Boris Nikolàech. It’s +simply disappointing.” + +“Well,” said Lieutenant Barahmeiev, who seemed hurt, “if it comes to +disappointment, I think I have been disappointed more than anyone.” + +“The more fool you,” said Finkelstein. + +“Nothing to do with me. Didn’t I tell you it was raining?” + +“Raining?” + +“Pouring! It came on suddenly, burst upon us through the sky. A flood. +The revenge of heaven on us.” + +“But what’s the point of your story, anyhow?” asked Finkelstein. + +“The point?” + +“Yes, the moral? Why have you been telling it?” + +“Oh, well, I told it to Vera Solomonovna by way of illustrating the +psychology of women, because, like Zina, she affects derision of human +passion, calls my amorous advances ‘idiotic’; but just you wait and +before the day is up---- There you are!” + +Vera Solomonovna rose and left the room in protest. + +“There,” said Finkelstein, “you’ve disgusted Vera.” + +“Disgusted her! Ha! ha! Don’t you believe it. Bluff! my dear fellow. All +bluff. You don’t know women.” + +“You’re a funny fellow, Boris Nikolàech. One can’t say you’re altogether +stupid, but there are things you simply cannot understand. Impossible to +penetrate yon marble brow of yours; it’s just like throwing a rubber +ball at a stone wall: jumps back at you every time. And you don’t know +women. To take my wife, for instance. She’s had enough of you already; +she’s gone back to her bedroom in disgust.” + +“To _her_ bedroom?” questioned the Lieutenant in a derisive tone of +voice. + +“You don’t expect her to go to yours, do you!” + +“Why.... Oh, well, really, my dear fellow, I can see that you don’t know +women--although you’ve got a wife. Believe me, I know a thing or two +about them. Wasn’t born yesterday. Disgusted! Ha, ha, ha! You wait till +I finish my cigarette and retire to my bedroom. You may be sure +she’s----” + +“Boris Nikolàech,” said Finkelstein, looking at him tranquilly through +the smoke from his cigar, “you are an optimist.” + +And, looking dignified and prepossessing, he sauntered over to his study +where his stock-exchange associates were already waiting for him to +resume their game of cards. + +“Just a moment ...” muttered the Lieutenant, “ ...finish my +cigarette....” + + + + +TRISTAN UND ISOLDE + + +He met her at one of those numerous little dancing clubs of Vienna which +assemble regularly once a week at a particular café, where the +facilities for introduction are only equalled by the ease of admission. +When he asked where they could meet again, she told him, smiling +sweetly, where to call her up next day, and he noticed that, besides +having beautiful grey eyes with lashes like black needles and luxuriant +black hair, she had an even, gapless semi-circle of white teeth and, at +the corners of her mouth, the foreshadowing of a moustache in after +years. “And what name?” + +“Ask for Fräulein Isolde.” + +“Isolde! How romantic! Will you dance?” + +“I do not dance.” She smiled divinely. + +“Well, it’s a relief, if anything. I am tired of jazz music, tired of +having to prance about every night on my flat feet on the dubious chance +of meeting a nice girl.” + +“I like,” she said, “to sit at home with a book.” + +“I can’t tell you how glad, how--” + +“Are you fond of Art?” + +“Love it!” + +“I will take you to the Art-Historical Museum.” + +“Good?” + +She closed the eyes with the long lashes and nodded rapidly in response. +Her brows twitched. And he loved her. + +Next day they met at a café in the Ring. She turned up three-quarters of +an hour after the appointed time in a black coat, black hat, and a black +frock buttoned to the neck. With dark abundant locks and pale powdered +face she sat, mysterious, smoking innumerable cigarettes. And only +asked, “What is it like in America?” + +“Very nice,” he said. + +“Are you studying here?” + +He nodded. She smoked on. + +A dingy pox-marked poet came in and sat down beside them and opened the +portfolio he carried stuffed with his writings. She laid a tender hand +on his shoulder, scanning the while the pages of a story. “Yes,” she +commended. “You have hit it off all right.” + +They motored to the castle of Schönbrunn and sat in a summer-house by +the water, romantically, and walked in the park. He took her arm +tenderly. She was sad. “Why?” he asked. + +“Memories.” They walked on in silence. “We shouldn’t have come here,” he +said. She pressed his arm in mute recognition. He helped her into the +motor. “You’re so kind and tender to me. I am not used to it,” she said. +He kissed her hand in dumb adoration. “I woke up this morning and +smiled. I wondered why I was smiling, and then remembered I had met a +nice man.” + +“When I leave Vienna you must come abroad with me,” he said jestingly. + +“It’s not out of the question,” she answered seriously. + +He talked glibly about the dearth of intellectual satisfactions. “You’re +so different from other girls. Your nature is artistic.” + +“I will show you round the gallery,” she said. + +When they went--“This is a picture over which I wept,” she told him. + +“This is not bad,” he said, stopping at a Rembrandt. + +“Yes, he has hit it off.” Her eyes filled. + +“What is it?” + +“We used to come here, Hans and I.” + +“And where is he now?” + +“Dead.” + +“Long?” + +“Nine months. We had been engaged three years. And then, suddenly, he +died--for no reason--of a mere cold. So young--twenty-two.” + +“But you too are so young, you have your life to live.” + +“It’s all in the past.” + +“No, no! And you’re so beautiful.” + +“I will show you my big picture.” + +He waited in the motor while she ran upstairs to the apartment to fetch +it. + +“Wonderful!” he commented. + +“Now I must rush back, father is waiting. And you can have the picture +of me till we meet again to-morrow.” + +But she stepped inside and they went for another ride with the picture. +“Where to?” asked the man. + +“Round and round,” she said. She crossed her legs, the skirt slipping up +above her knees, and lit a cigarette. And suddenly he leaned over to her +and kissed her on the mouth. + +“Tut-tut-tut--You mustn’t kiss. Wait till I kiss you.” + +“I _have_ waited,” he answered, “and I’m still waiting, and, by God! I +can’t wait any longer” (with the taxi-meter piling up, he thought, +piling up all the time while we wait, and the chauffeur the only one to +gain by it.) + +“This is the Prater,” she said. + +“Where to?” asked the taxi-man. + +“Round and round,” he said dismally. + +She burst out laughing. “You said this so funnily!” She gave him a +furtive kiss on the lips. “What is your name?” + +“I have a silly name. I’m called Ebenezer.” + +“It is--rather silly.” + +“Well, you needn’t call me by it. You can invent another name for me.” + +She considered. “Peter,” she said. + +“All right--Peter.” + +When she fell ill he sent her flowers, and every day she sent a +message--that she was a little better, or a little worse. Then she came +again to the café. “Beautiful, beautiful flowers! I was breathless when +I saw them. And so much!” + +He buried his face in her hands, “Beautiful girl ... beautiful flowers. +Wonderful when I think: I’ve been seeking, all these months, all these +years I’ve been seeking, and now I have found.” + +“I too. For nine months I was alone. Now when I come to the café, the +waiter says confidentially: ‘The gentleman is already here.’ One feels +one has somebody.” + +“While you were ill, when I used to come here by myself, the waitress +looked at me with sad eyes, as if she thought you’d left me or we had +broken it off. I notice we’ve become privileged guests and are treated +accordingly.” + +She smiled--so sweetly and intimately, and, watching him, laughed. He +looked up from his cup. “I must laugh,” she said, “at the way you +scratch the last drop of sugar out of the cup.” He laughed too. She was +delightful. “I’ve just come back from Adolf’s bedside,” she remarked. + +“And who is Adolf?” + +“My fiancé.” + +“This is new to me.” + +“At least he thinks he is my fiancé.” + +“And you don’t think so.” + +“No.” + +“This is a relief.” + +“He is dying now.” + +“Oh--is he?” And secretly he thought: This is a relief. “What does he +do?” + +“He is a doctor--venereal and skin diseases. But he is very tender and +aesthetic and plays the piano wonderfully--Schumann and Chopin. He says +he will let me live as I like and love whom I like, that he will never +touch me, and only wants to be allowed to marry me and to live by my +side.” + +When they came out of the café, it was a sunny afternoon. “Come, I’ll +show you where I live,” he said, and they made their way to Am Hof--the +old-fashioned square of Vienna where he had rooms. She took off her hat +and used his comb and sat down at his writing-table. “It must be nice to +live like that. If I were you I would give myself up to my work, and +never tie myself up with any woman.” + +“How you understand me! Other women are so conventional and +self-seeking. But you--you are so delightfully free and easy, so unusual +and romantic!” + +She sat in his chair, and suddenly sleep overcame her. “I want to lie +down.” She lay down on his bed, and he sat down beside her. “I feel like +a faithful old dog sitting at your feet and seeing that you come to no +harm.” She gave him her hand, which he pressed to his lips. He looked at +her legs in the glossy silk stockings, the seductive shoe. Warm, +yielding curves, unexplored mysteries. And he said, “After all this +seeking, to feel you have found ... at last. It’s not--no, not your +face; it’s....” He was gently pressing her knee; she made an involuntary +attempt to disengage it. “ ... your soul,” he said--and she left it. +“I’m content: I really need nothing. Not by a word would I suggest or +precipitate the moment.... Not till you yourself ... an offering, a +priceless gift.” She pressed his hand to her heart. “Not even then. I’m +content, I need nothing.” She touched his brow silently with her lips. + +“Yes?” he asked, suddenly crushing her in his arms. “Yes?” + +She closed her eyes with the lashes like black needles, nodding rapidly +several times. “Pull down the blinds.” + +“Oh, I am grateful! Tristan and Isolde.... _Nacht der Liebe_....” He was +whistling. + +“Is the door locked?” + +“I’ll lock it for you--do anything for you.” Of sheer relief, he felt +like cracking cheap jokes. + +“What is the time?” + +“It’s four o’clock in the afternoon--the time people here take their 5 +o’clock tea.” The yellow blinds drew to and fro in the breeze. Outside +in the sunny square the women were selling oranges and flowers. Upstairs +somebody began playing the piano. “This is Schumann,” she said. “Adolf +plays this.” The blinds still swayed gently, gently, and they could feel +the breeze on their burning cheeks. She knitted her brows. “What are you +thinking?” he asked. + +“Adolf is waiting for me. I’ve neglected supper for father.” + +He turned on the switch. “No, no, I am ashamed of the light.” + +It was black night when they went out. Stepping into the taxicab at the +door, she gave her address. “You shouldn’t have told him where you live +before that old caretaker woman. You never can tell.” + +“I take full responsibility for what I do and I am prepared to face the +consequences of my acts, and I have nothing to be ashamed of,” she said. +He remembered the prudish cowardly attitude of his own forget-me-not +eyed sisters, his mother, his maidenly aunts. “You wonderful girl!” he +exclaimed. He felt grateful, so that he did not even mind how much he +had to pay for the taxi. She scanned his face and his figure, and he +instantly looked at his gloves. “They are filthy, I know.” + +“Give them to me, I will wash them for you.” + +“No, no, why should you?” + +“The maid will wash them.” + +“Very well, then.” + +The taxicab pulled up at her house door. “Just see me upstairs. It’s so +dark.” She took hold of his arm and with a sure quick step ran up the +stairs, while he fumbled uncertainly with his feet. She gave him a kiss +in the dark, which missed the mark, handed him the house door key, +begged him for the sake of love not to make a noise--and was gone. He +felt his way carefully by the chalk walk, dirtying his coat and +hands--and presently lost himself. For an hour he fumbled about in the +dark, groping his way down the steps time without end, only to find +himself at the end of each attempt in the coal cellar. Now I’ve made a +noise, he thought, the caretaker will come out, call the police and have +me arrested. I’m a lost man. When, having given up all hope, suddenly he +saw a shimmering of light, then a new turning, the real stairs--and he +was saved. The Votive Church as he went home seemed made of lace: the +tall twin towers, like a prayer, strained heavenward in the blue night. +He sat down on a bench and thought of her. + +He was more than usually courteous to the old caretaker woman. “A +pretty girl, I call her,” she said, opening the heavy outer door for +him, while he paid the customary “lockout money.” “Is she your bride?” + +He nodded. + +“Ah, well, young men have luck. But I’m not one to let the cat out of +the bag.” + +He fumbled in his pockets. + +“Thank you.--I am known to be discreet. Baron Waldmeyer who lived here +nine months ago also used to bring his bride up to his rooms, regularly +three times a week you might say. A pretty girl she was, too, Lina +Holz--you know the chemist’s daughter across the way. The white house +opposite. That’s right. Never a word to anybody. God beware! They were +very satisfied with me. ‘Frau Krampf,’ he used to say to me, ‘I can rely +on you.’” + +Next day they were hurrying in the train into the country. “I too am +glad we’re friends,” she said. “My family is nothing to me. Mother died +when I was fourteen. She was so small I used to take her on my lap. My +sister married rich, but she can’t do anything decently. She is such a +snob--hides the fact that we are Jews. She will give father a new +suit--or rather says she will--and all so haughtily, you know, so +condescendingly, will talk so much about it and in the long run won’t +buy him anything and will even borrow money from him in the end. She +gives me things occasionally, or rather says she will and doesn’t. But +that which is inside one she doesn’t know.” + +“Quite so.” + +Yet he had discovered that Isolde, despite her intellectual pretensions, +was as fond of cabarets and dancing halls as any other child of +pleasure-loving Vienna. And she was not content with going to one +cabaret during a night, but from the one immediately wanted to go on to +another, and from that to a third--in all respects similar to the first. + +“I’m different,” she said. “Already as a child we had no points of +contact. My sister would go out on the Korso to be stared at by men, +while I sought my friends among writers and artists, or went off by +myself to the Opera and tried to find my real ‘I’ in the _Walküre_, the +_Ring_, the _Meistersinger_, in _Tristan und Isolde_.” + +“Very becoming for one named Isolde! If one didn’t know you were above +such cheap romanticism, one would almost suspect you gave yourself that +name.” + +She laughed faintly. + +“Why--_did_ you?” + +She closed her eyes and nodded rapidly. + +“How clever of you!” He kissed her hand. + +“My real name is Rebecca.” + +“Let’s forget that it is. We’ll go to the Opera together--to _Tristan_. +A good performance here, isn’t it?” + +She closed her eyes and nodded rapidly, significantly. “I’ll bring the +complete musical score. I have the entire _partitura_ and we can follow +it.” + +“By God! we’ll follow it!” said he, though he was quite unable to read +music. + +At the Opera, all the liveried attendants seemed to know her. “Ah, +Fräulein Isolde, it’s good to see you again!” + +“It’s the first time that I am here since (her eyes filled)--his death.” +And she ushered him upstairs through drafty corridors with the air of a +proprietress showing a visitor round the premises. “Here Hans and I used +to sit. Or, when we had little money, we stood over there or sat on the +steps.” + +“A fine Opera House.” + +“Yes, this is my temple.” + +She carried an enormous book--the complete musical score of the piece, +and they sat down and he read the biographical note, while the orchestra +enclosure gradually filled and the executants began tuning up their +instruments. + +“Because I have never known love in real life I want now to realise it +in music.” Thus Wagner one day wrote to Liszt. “I have jotted down in my +head a _Tristan und Isolde_, the simplest but the most full-blooded of +musical conceptions: with the black flag which flies at the end I then +want to cover myself and to--die.” + +There was a meagre trickling of applause: the conductor threaded his way +to his seat, passed his hand over the page under the green-shaded lamp, +raised the _bâton_, and began. They sat close together, the Prelude with +its high-stepping, long-striding sinuous tentacles groping after new +resting-places, far out of reach, yet working out its salvation surely +and steadily, swelling and widening, till--the conductor shaking his +locks and his fists--the brass blared its compelling response; and, in a +tide of regaining tranquillity, the Prelude gradually evened itself out +to the level at which it began, and the curtains parted, revealing the +ship. She followed the score with a preoccupied air, now and then +nodding her head with that significant look of critical recognition; but +when he asked for the place they were at she never could find it and +began turning the pages backward and forward, six at a time and in vain. +And when, in the second act, King Marke’s hunting horns died away and +the cast-down torch went out, to a heart-sinking, intolerably dulcet +cadence, and the night was all astir, and Tristan staggered to Isolde, +and the great theatre plunged into the most passionately voluptuous +music that has ever been, then they pressed each other’s fingers more +tightly and their nerves throbbed in unison--until King Marke, returning +at a moment least desired from the hunt, surprised the twain. In this +passionate music, more truly voluptuous than the grosser senses of man +can divine, there lies concealed a certain pledge: a foretaste, maybe, +of a reality awaiting us, or one we needs must forego, wrenched from a +far world by a genius, for us to partake of before we go under. + +In the interval he read more of the biography. Wagner, while working on +_Siegfried_, wrote to a friend: “My musical sensibility already sways +far beyond it--thither where my mood belongs: into the realm of +melancholy.” It was his love for Mathilde Wesendonck--a love of denial +for both--which determined the work. “That I have written Tristan I +thank you out of my deepest soul into all eternity.” Thus he writes to +her three years after completion. It has been said that the musical +drama is unreal because the love in it is the artificial outcome of the +love potion given to Tristan and Isolde during the voyage instead of the +death drink they bargained for. But the potion, of course, is a symbol. +Love was latent in them, but could not face the light of day: it is the +belief in the certainty of their death held for them in the cup which +works the love miracle. Only in death can they give each other. But of +that “realm of stilled longings” they had been cheated. He was +there--_Der öde Tag!_ And now the third and last act--the empty sea, the +hollow day, the dreary convalescence, with the black flag already flying +over their destinies. They sat and listened to the sundown glow now +sensible in the familiar bars of this greatest of love-tragedies--as it +had always been. + +The measured strains of the _Liebestod_ had grown quicker and more +passionate; Isolde, wrenching her hands, was racing along with the +orchestra which, at this turn, was taking the melody from her, easily, +in rapidly rising voluptuous strains, climbing, slipping, climbing anew, +rapidly, rapidly, to a climax, now, now.... The conductor, forgetting +his quasi-reticent attitude, rose in his seat and with a sweep of his +stick commanding one hundred and twenty-six instruments, drowned her top +notes in a mighty volume of rapturous sound. But she did not mind. Nor +did any one mind. On that plane of emotion one does not mind: one felt +one wanted to go home, cover oneself with the black flag--and die.... + +They made their way past the drafty swinging doors into the lighted +streets and stood a while in the crowded Opernring, Peter taking her +arm. He was elated. He tried to whistle bits he remembered, but she +stopped him with a frown. In the café she seemed moody and irritable. +“_Must_ you always scratch the cup out?” + +“I feel I am wasting my life if I don’t.” + +“Why don’t you lick it out with your tongue?” + +“What is the matter?” + +“I must talk to you very seriously.” + +“Well?” + +“Another day--to-morrow.” + +He would have died of anxiety if he had to wait till to-morrow. +“To-night or not at all.” + +“About our--relation. I want to have it out with you. I don’t want you +to be merely playing with me and then, when it suits you, drop me.” They +were going down the teeming Kärntnerstrasse and bent their way into the +Graben, walking up the famous Korso. “Here is father’s jeweller’s shop.” + +“What’s all this nonsense?” he asked peremptorily. + +“Father’s been bullying me. No money to give me. Business going to ruin. +No one buying jewelry nowadays. ‘_Ein Skandal!_ You’re twenty-two and I, +a man of eighty-six, have to go on supporting you!’ and so on, and so +forth. My brother-in-law sits and talks to my father and tells him I +ought to get married. And father curses me: ‘Again you’ve been out all +night. A good bride and no mistake, Adolf sitting and waiting for you +here all the evening!’ Of course, he is right in a way. But I never +promised definitely to Adolf. I tell him, ‘Adolf, I value your feeling +for me, and if no one better crops up I will marry you in the end.’ So +he sits in our drawing-room all evening after leaving the venereal +disease hospital, waiting for me and playing Chopin.” + +Peter thought of what he might say, but couldn’t say much. “Damn him!” +he said. + +“And I mean--I don’t want to be playing ducks and drakes with Adolf, who +is a man of fine feeling--” + +“But hasn’t he died? He was going to.” + +“He wasn’t a bit. He only put himself to bed so as to get me to come and +sit at his bedside and hold his hand. And what I mean is, a man has a +love affair, then another, a third, a fourth, and is only looked up to, +even by women. But a girl has to think.” + +“Is there--is there--well, you know what I mean?” + +“No, there isn’t. All the same--” + +“But why say it like that?” + +“You should have thought of saying it yourself. I waited long enough.” + +“But why in the world did you make out you were +unconventional--romantic--God knows what--unlike other women? Why did +you?” + +“I thought you expected it.” + +Damned shameless lie, he thought; and said aloud: + +“This would not appear to correspond with the facts. Secretly you were +out for marriage from the start and only pretended--don’t I see it +now!--but all the time you were on the hunt for a husband.” + +“You needn’t flatter yourself. I’m good-looking enough to marry any time +I want to. And such birds as you I can find on every bush.” + +“Thank you.” + +They had reached her house. “Well, am I to ring you up to-morrow as +usual?” Her voice was not friendly. + +“As usual,” he said, and thought: As per usual, business as usual. But +the irony of using such decrepit war slang would be lost on her. That +was the worst of it all: they hadn’t really many points of contact. And +making the most of the few they had, he pressed forward to kiss her. + +“No.” + +He shrugged his shoulders, raised his hat and went. He went by the +familiar Kolowatring that he had paced no end of times before--in other, +happier days. How far away they seemed now! + +Next day at two she did not call him up. At three she had not called him +up. By five his anxiety had reached seething point. She would not call +him up. She would never call him up. He was lost--damned. In all Vienna +he could not find a place for himself. He sat and waited, hoping, +doubting. And then, together with her friends, she came, as if not +noticing him, and was about to sit down at a table, when he went after +her and spoke. She turned round, abashed. “You are deadly pale,” he +said. “Are you frightened, or what?” + +“No. But I didn’t expect to meet you here.” + +“And I waited--five hours. God, how I suffered!” + +She looked round at him to see if it was true. His face was haggard. She +was not unkind to him, yet took little notice of him, only now and then, +after the performance of an item turning to him with a--“Quite good, +wasn’t it?” + +“Very good!” He was happy--come what might--for the abating of his +erewhile suffering. He begged for an appointment next day and obtained +one, and they lunched together at a freshly painted table of the +restaurant in the Volksgarten. The foliage was breaking out and +everywhere along the Ring the cafés were putting out their little +“gardens.” He glanced at her legs in the flesh-coloured stockings. How +romantically realistic--as if straight from Maupassant! he thought. And +took her hand. She withdrew it. He took it again. “Don’t touch me.” + +“Why not?” + +“I can’t.” + +He remembered a cabaret singer in Vienna who sang in a feeble hoarse +voice: “I can’t, I can’t, I’m weak on the chest,” and then immediately +after in a voice that would put brass trumpets to shame, a voice so +powerful that it made the window panes rattle--“I CAN’T, I CAN’T, I’M +WEAK ON THE CHEST!!!” And he asked, “What do you mean ‘I can’t’? You’re +not weak on the chest?” + +She did not laugh. “Something has broken within me--and I don’t know if +it can ever be put right.” + +“Then we must set about mending it.” + +“There is a gulf, the bridge has been broken. I can never come back. I +can’t help it. I’ve lost all feeling for you.” + +“But, my darling, we’re mending it, aren’t we?” + +“It can never be mended.” + +How charmingly she walked, with feet a little outward and swaying +slightly from the hips. There was something of the awkward school girl +about her. Would she ever come back? + +But one day, as the scent of jasmine hovered in the air and he gently +passed his hand over her own and said, “My love, come back to me,” she +closed her eyes with the lashes like black needles and nodded rapidly. + +The bridge was mended. + +His emotion of gratitude ran to kissing. “Can’t you sit still?” she +admonished him. + +“But you are mine. Don’t you want to be?” + +“Not in that way.” _Her_ love ran to emotion. + +“In that way. Or I feel I am wasting my time.” + +“Ach!” she waived him aside like a fly. Then angrily, wearily: “Pull +down the blinds!” She began to unhook her high collar at the neck. “Is +the door locked at least?” + +He smiled reassuringly. “I’ve taken requisite steps against the +possibility of King Marke appearing when he is least wanted.” + +He held her in his arms, and sang: “You Tristan, I Isolde, no more +Tristan!...” + +“Shut up!” + +“There is little poetry in you.” + +“And you are a beast.” + +“Thank you.” And looking at her, drinking her in with his eyes, he +thought, “Poor Richard Wagner! Who had never known such love as this!” + +He thought so. He thought so a long time, when she attracted his +attention. “What do you want to do?” + +“Go home.” + +“No-o.” + +“No-o!” she mimicked him angrily. “You’re like that--never enough of a +good thing--lick the sugar out of the bottom of the cup when there’s +nothing left.” + +“Ha-ha!” + +“Nothing to laugh at.” + +He sang: “_Der öde Tag!_” + +He went to the adjoining room. When he returned she had her coat on and +was powdering her face before the mirror. As they were leaving, “Put the +light out,” she said. At the café she read the paper and hardly spoke to +him. He looked at his associate in sin. Her face was still beautiful. +Sin sat lightly upon her. He remembered afterward how they sat in the +taxicab--how it rained outside. She only said, “Oh, yes, I’ve still got +your gloves. You will get them to-morrow.” At the gate she gave him her +hand, looked into his eyes, very kindly, he noticed, and said--“Peter, +farewell.” + +“Good-bye. Matches!” he cried after her. + +“Don’t want any.” + +Walking home, he remembered her words and the strangeness of the +“farewell” dawned upon him. Returning, he found a note on the table +which he had not perceived as they went out. On the back of a slip +“Rimless Stockings. Best Quality” he read: “We shall never see each +other again. I _cannot_. Isolde.” + +And then came a letter. + + “Peter, I have not much to tell you, but I have the feeling that + you are still waiting for something. Somehow a cleft has arisen + between us, which can never be bridged. Is it the fulfilment in us, + was this giving one’s self also the end? I do not know, but it may + well be so. + + “In me there is no mourning, not a shimmer of disappointment, no + reproach either for you or for me. And now I know why so long I + could not find any words for you. + + “And so farewell, Peter, I wish you the best of luck in all the + coming years. + + “ISOLDE.” + +It was Easter. He strolled about by himself. When he perceived a black +hat and flesh-coloured stockings, he invariably thought it was she. And +the town was setting itself for the spring; the gardens, the freshly +painted tables and chairs beckoned invitingly. He remembered how he had +felt lost and damned when she had not telephoned to him one day, and now +felt doubly lost--doubly damned. What sort of thing was life? What sort +of creature was man? Daunted by tiny reverses, already squirming like a +worm at a woman’s feet. There he was, just like Adolf, he who had been +so sure of himself, supplicating for mercy, begging her for a morsel of +bread. He strolled all alone about the town, waited at her gate, sat in +the garden where (he remembered her telling him, though it had scarcely +interested him at the time) she had played as a child. There were rows +of seats lined with mothers and nurses. A little boy in the park was +kicking a ball. A nice little fellow, he thought, but he’ll probably +grow up to be a blackguard. Suddenly he saw her sitting with her +friends. A hot pang shot through his heart. She spoke to him pleasantly +but dispassionately. “How are you, Peter? How is life treating you?” + +“Rottenly.” + +When he had a chance to speak to her alone he supplicated for an +interview. + +“Child, it’s no use,” she said wearily. + +“Yes, yes, a quarter of an hour--eye to eye--to discuss matters--to talk +things over.” + +“All right then, to-night at 8.30.” + +When they did meet--at 9.30--he found that he had nothing to discuss, +nothing to talk over. He only wanted her, craved for her physical beauty +with all the strength of his physical being. She knew a subtler passion +that hovered in her breast and was more like music, that went out in +long curves and found no resting-places. And to her he had been part of +that elusive dream. “Forgive me, Isolde, but really it’s your fault. You +put it all so clumsily. Marriage. Yes. Even so, what can I do now?” + +At the word marriage her eyes lit up and a smile played on her face. + +“What can I say now? I can’t say: Isolde, marry me. I perfectly +understand you can’t say--your pride won’t allow you to say, yes.” + +“I’ll go back to my memories. I knew I should have to be alone. I will +never have another like Hans.” + +“I know it’s the bitter lot of those to follow him to fare badly by +comparison. Alas! no live virtue stands the ghost of a chance at the +side of retrospective illusion.” + +She looked at him sharply. “The comparison does not arise. I didn’t +_love_ you.” + +“But then why, may I ask--yes, precisely, why--?” + +“Because I thought you expected it.” + +“Look here. Listen. I want to tell you something.” + +“Better hold your tongue.” + +“I expect--” it was a desperate step--“yes, I expect you to marry me.” + +Her face lit up at the word. She played with the idea. “I don’t +deny”--she puffed at a cigarette--“that it would have certain immediate +advantages. Father was carrying on again this morning. ‘_Ein Skandal!_ +I, an old man with one foot in the grave, have to keep you.’ ‘What do +you want me to do?’ I cried at last. ‘You never taught me a thing. All +the shops and offices are reducing their staff. Do you want me to go on +the streets?’ He slapped my face. I went to my room and cried. Later he +came to me. He was sorry. ‘I’d like to see you settled before I close my +eyes.’ He’d be glad, and I’d be glad to make him happy. Let me see, I’d +have a little money if I married--not much, still a trifle.” + +“Who from?” + +“My brother-in-law promised. Then there are silver things--knives and +forks, solid silver--not much, but still something.” + +_Der öde Tag!_ + +“Father might be prevailed upon to give something from his shop. Then +furniture--a bedstead--two chairs. My sister has taken the mattress, +though it didn’t belong to her. My mother left it to me.” + +The vulgarity of it--things--cupboards--carpets--meddling relations. How +dismal was our human fate! He felt that one had but to set one’s ship +towards romance, to realise how fruitless were one’s hopes and how soon +frustrated! She thought of her father, of the end of squalor and deceit, +the joy of her brother-in-law, her own home, children, wealth. “But--” +she scarcely meant it--“but I can’t. It’s not honest towards you for me +to accept a solution for reasons of convenience only.” + +“So you can’t?” He was almost relieved. + +“I can’t.” + +All the misery and anguish of his loneliness, his intolerable loneliness +dawned upon him. He had spent a week without her. He knew what it was +like. “Come, it really looks as though you didn’t want to make me happy +for my own sake!” + +“Well, if you are sure that it will make you happy.” + +He was not sure. (He was sure of the contrary.) He drank his cup to the +bottom and then took the spoon and licked off the sugar, while she +watched him critically. And he thought: She won’t let me drink my coffee +as I like. She won’t let me do anything as I like. I’m a lost man. + +She said, “We must look at it sensibly. We both will have our +advantages. You will be proud of showing me to your people and friends, +while I shall be doing things for you at home.” He looked at her: she +was too small and when she walked she waddled like a duck. Indeed, what +would his sisters think of it? He pictured her at forty, at fifty, +sixty and seventy, while he pictured himself all the while at +twenty-five. She complained a good deal of her father, but if the old +man found fault with her it was, of course, with good cause. “I’ll mend +this for you,” she would say--and never did. “I must visit Hans’s grave +to-morrow”--but she went to a dance instead. He recalled that she had +not yet returned his gloves--after keeping them two months! + +“But why are you looking so wretchedly sad? I’ve not accepted you yet.” + +“Not a bit.” He imagined his arrival with his dark bride in the United +States, their appearing before his proud “one hundred per cent. +American” mother, the astonishment of his slim forget-me-not eyed +sisters, the curve of their raised brows. + +“If I married--” and she looked at him out of the corner of the eye to +see how he took it, “we’d have separate bedrooms.” + +He smiled faintly. It was past a joke. + +“Cheer up. You look as though somebody has done you out of your money. +I can see it won’t do. You’re so cold, so calculating, so concentrated +on yourself. I am sure I could never marry you. I was merely joking.” + +“No joke, I meant it. It’s settled--you’re my bride now and I’m your +blooming bridegroom.” + +“Your first experience?” + +“Yes. I feel like a fool.” + +“Thank you,” she smiled. “It’s my second.” She looked at her hands. “May +I keep Hans’s ring?” + +“Yes,” he said gloomily. Hans. Fritz. Grete. Nauseating relations. +They’ll want to congratulate him, see the ring, touch it, maybe--all the +dark Jewish brood, dentists, skin-disease doctors, stock-exchange +frequenters. A nosing father--perhaps suggesting purchasing the +engagement ring at his own shop, offering a wedding ring “cheap” in +advance, or questioning the value of it if bought elsewhere--belittling +the outlay--pooh-poohing expense. It was unbearable. + +“Do your people speak German?” + +He shook his head abjectly. + +“Then you must teach me English.” + +“I’ll try.” He pictured her dumbness, her being tied to him night and +day, his mother and sisters asking her easy simple questions: +“How--do--you--like--America?” and her asking back: “Please?” every +time. A bewildered aunt of his struggling with a dictionary to make +herself understood. Isolde smiling propitiatorily at his mother, trying +to curry favour with her, to appear the tender wife; and he the heavy +father to their common children. + +“You needn’t look so unhappy. I haven’t accepted you yet.” + +“It’s one o’clock, the café’s closing,” he said peremptorily, and called +to the waiter: “Herr Ober! Zalen!--Yes or no?” + +She did not answer, but smiled shyly. He took an empty cigarette box, +unscrewed his fountain-pen, and wrote: + +“?” + +She took the fountain-pen from him and wrote: + +“!” + +He quibbled: “Is that an affirmative or perhaps an equally determined +negative?” + +She did not answer. He helped her on with her coat and while he was +putting on his own, slowly, pensively she was collecting her things into +the bag: the powder-puff, the lip stick, the remaining cigarettes. He +watched her eagerly. If she took the cigarette box with his “?” and her +“!” it meant--he knew what it meant. It meant that in after years she +would be saying: “On this empty cigarette box my husband once proposed +marriage to me.” She would say it, a grey-haired gouty old woman, with a +deep black moustache and a beard, lying in bed with one complaint or +another, in a bonnet, her teeth in the glass at her side. She would say +it to their children, little hairy black Jews creeping about everywhere: +to her children’s children; and all those long years he’d be tied to +her. Her gaze lingered on the cigarette box, and her thoughts, from this +chance _memento_ of a romantic proposal swayed to that which it meant, +her new life in America, her newly-gained freedom, the long-awaited +salvation. But she noticed his searching critical look and did not take +the _memento_. + +“Yes or no, for the last time?” + +They were moving to the door into the street, where the rain was +beginning to dribble, and stood still on the pavement. + +She shook her head, and he made a movement to go. She wanted to say +something to hold him back. “Here are your--your gloves, Peter.” And +tears seemed to come to her eyes. + +He took them as a sign, pressed her hand and went his way hurriedly. At +the corner a gust of wind blew the rain against his face and tried for +his hat. He did not know what he had done, why he had done it, or what +had been done to him. He only knew he wanted to go home, cover himself +with the black flag--and die. + + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 77496 *** diff --git a/77496-h/77496-h.htm b/77496-h/77496-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..c6740e6 --- /dev/null +++ b/77496-h/77496-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,3720 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html> +<html lang="en"> + <head> +<link rel="icon" href="images/cover.jpg" type="image/x-cover"> + +<meta charset="utf-8"> +<title> + The Project Gutenberg eBook of Pretty creatures, by William Gerhardi. +</title> +<style> + +a:link {background-color:#ffffff;color:blue;text-decoration:none;} + + link {background-color:#ffffff;color:blue;text-decoration:none;} + +a:visited {background-color:#ffffff;color:purple;text-decoration:none;} + +a:hover {background-color:#ffffff;color:#FF0000;text-decoration:underline;} + +body{margin-left:4%;margin-right:6%;background:#ffffff;color:black;font-family:"Times New Roman", serif;font-size:medium;} + +.blockquot {margin-top:2%;margin-bottom:2%; +font-size:88%;} + +.c {text-align:center;text-indent:0%;} + +.cund {text-align:center;text-indent:0%; +text-decoration:underline;margin-top:2em;} + +.cb {text-align:center;text-indent:0%;font-weight:bold;} + + h1 {margin-top:5%;text-align:center;clear:both; +font-weight:normal;} + + h2 {margin-top:4%;margin-bottom:2%;text-align:center;clear:both; + font-size:100%;font-weight:normal;} + + h3 {margin:4% auto 2% auto;text-align:center;clear:both;} + + hr {width:90%;margin:2em auto 2em auto;clear:both;color:black;} + + hr.full {width: 60%;margin:2% auto 2% auto;border-top:1px solid black; +padding:.1em;border-bottom:1px solid black;border-left:none;border-right:none;} + + img {border:none;} + +.nind {text-indent:0%;} + + p {margin-top:.2em;text-align:justify;margin-bottom:.2em;text-indent:4%;} + +.pagenum {font-style:normal;position:absolute; +left:95%;font-size:55%;text-align:right;color:gray; +background-color:#ffffff;font-variant:normal; +font-style:normal;font-weight:normal; +text-decoration:none;text-indent:0em;} + +.rt {text-align:right;vertical-align:bottom;} + +small {font-size: 70%;} + + sup {font-size:75%;vertical-align:top;} + +.smcap {font-variant:small-caps;font-size:100%;} + +table {margin-top:2%;margin-bottom:2%;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;border:none;} + +div.poetry {text-align:center;} +div.poem {font-size:90%;margin:auto auto;text-indent:0%; +display: inline-block; text-align: left;} +.poem .stanza {margin-top: 1em;margin-bottom:1em;} +.poem span.i0 {display: block; margin-left: 0em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;} +.poem span.i1 {display: block; margin-left: .45em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;} +.poem span.i3 {display: block; margin-left: 2em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;} +.poem span.i15 {display: block; margin-left: 10em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;} +</style> + </head> +<body> +<div style='text-align:center'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 77496 ***</div> +<hr class="full"> + +<p class="c"> +<img src="images/cover.jpg" +width="371" +height="550" +alt=""></p> + +<h1> +PRETTY<br> +CREATURES</h1> + +<p class="cb"><i>By</i><br> +WILLIAM GERHARDI<br> +<br> +<img src="images/colophon.png" +width="100" +height="133" +alt=""> +<br> +<br> +<i>1927</i><br> +DUFFIELD AND COMPANY<br> +<i>New York City</i><br> +<br> +Copyright 1927 by<br> +<span class="smcap">Duffield & Company</span><br> +<br> +<br> +<i>Printed in The United States of America<br> +By The Cornwall Press</i><br> +</p> + +<h2><a id="CONTENTS">CONTENTS</a></h2> + +<table style="font-style:italic;"> +<tr><td><a href="#THE_VANITY-BAG">The Vanity-Bag</a></td><td class="rt"><a href="#page_3">Page    3</a></td></tr> +<tr><td><a href="#THE_BIG_DRUM">The Big Drum</a></td><td class="rt"><a href="#page_69">Page  69</a></td></tr> +<tr><td><a href="#A_BAD_END">A Bad End</a></td><td class="rt"><a href="#page_85">Page  85</a></td></tr> +<tr><td>In The Wood</td><td class="rt"><a href="#page_135">Page 135</a></td></tr> +<tr><td><a href="#TRISTAN_UND_ISOLDE">Tristan Und Isolde</a></td><td class="rt"><a href="#page_153">Page 153</a></td></tr> +</table> + +<p class="cund"><i>Other Books by William Gerhardi</i>:</p> + +<div class="poetry"><div class="poem"> +<span class="smcap">Anton Chehov</span>, <i>a critical study</i>.<br> +<span class="smcap">The Polyglots</span>, <i>a novel</i>.<br> +<span class="smcap">Futility</span>, <i>a novel</i>.<br> +</div></div> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_1">{pg. 1}</a></span></p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_2">{2}</a><br> +<a id="page_3">{3}</a></span></p> + +<h1><a id="PRETTY_CREATURES">PRETTY CREATURES</a></h1> + +<h2><a id="THE_VANITY-BAG">THE VANITY-BAG</a></h2> + +<h3>I</h3> + +<p class="nind"><span class="smcap">It</span> was not that <i>he</i> 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: “<i>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</i> <small>P.M.</small> <i>We +will go together or better still, in the tram car. With<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_4">{4}</a></span> my kind regards +yours truly,—Emmy von Kranich.</i>”</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>“Do you dance a great deal?” He felt this was a happy shot.</p> + +<p>“No,” said the girl.</p> + +<p>“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.”</p> + +<p>“No,” said the girl. “Loewe is better than Pfleger.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_5">{5}</a></span></p> + +<p>“But I think Herr Pfleger dances better then Herr Loewe,” he proffered +tentatively.</p> + +<p>The girl smiled a faint smile, as if of compassion for Mr. Beck’s poor +understanding. “No,” she said. “Loewe dances better than Pfleger.”</p> + +<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_6">{6}</a></span> +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.</p> + +<p>“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!”</p> + +<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_7">{7}</a></span> 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.</p> + +<p>“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!”</p> + +<p>Mr. Mackintosh Beck <i>was</i> 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<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_8">{8}</a></span> 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.</p> + +<p>“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.”</p> + +<p>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 <i>des +plaisanteries</i>. 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.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_9">{9}</a></span> 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?”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_10">{10}</a></span></p> + +<p>“Well—my home town is Haverford, but I live in Philadelphia. My +university——”</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>“I am a lonely soul here,” said Herr Schulz.</p> + +<p>“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 +illum<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_11">{11}</a></span>inative little gestures) “before you the whole idea, so to speak.”</p> + +<p>“And who is the greatest living writer of the German-speaking world +to-day?” presently asked Mr. Beck.</p> + +<p>Herr Schulz smiled, a little mischievously. “With my exception” (and +Frau Kranich also smiled) “it’s Gerhart Hauptmann.”</p> + +<p>“The Herr Direktor is a poet,” she explained.</p> + +<p>“Oh?”</p> + +<p>“I will present you with a copy of my book when next we have the +opportunity of meeting.”</p> + +<p>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.”</p> + +<p>“What’s that? What’s that?” asked the Professor, joining them as if for +a long stay.</p> + +<p>“We were talking of<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_12">{12}</a></span>——”</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>Mr. Beck escorted the old lady home. “I like Herr Schulz,” he said.</p> + +<p>“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.”</p> + +<p>“Must I dress?”</p> + +<p>“Yes.”</p> + +<p>“Dinner-jacket?”</p> + +<p>“No—cut-away.”</p> + +<h3>II</h3> + +<p class="nind"><span class="smcap">The</span> trouble was that Mr. Beck possessed no “cut-away.” Accordingly, he +had one made,<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_13">{13}</a></span> and standing facing the three glasses at the front, with +his back against three more, he suddenly perceived that he was very +ugly. The tailor looked at him with glee, “American? Ah! ah! Dollar! A +lot of dollar—he, he, he!” and recommended the most expensive stuff +available, while Mr. Beck reflected with discomfort that not the least +of his reasons in coming over to Austria was the resolve drastically to +reduce expenditure. “Have the honour—kiss the hand—my +compliment—greet God—commend myself,” the tailor bowed him out. In the +afternoon Mr. Beck dropped cards on Baroness Hauch, on the door of whose +apartment he read: “Baron Karl Franz Egon Gaestner zu Hauch +Wolf-Kadelburg von Hofmannsthal,” and on Thursday, as arranged, he +called on Frau von Kranich. Irmgard came. In her brown hat which covered +her exquisitely moulded forehead she did not look quite so lovely, and +he noticed that she had the small burning eyes of her father. At the +Hauchs’ Irmgard appeared a little shy. She wore a blue dress<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_14">{14}</a></span> with white +lapels and American brown shoes, and all the young men fell in love with +her at first sight and danced with her uninterruptedly. Mr. Beck found +himself seated far away from the table, with a cup of tea in his hand. +There was no sugar in the tea, but the cup was too full and too hot: he +knew he could never get up without spilling it—and he suffered in +silence. Moreover, he remembered being told that the Baronin Hauch +possessed the finest china set in Salzburg and he was tormented by the +thought that at any moment he might drop the cup and smash the precious +thing to smithereens! And what then——? The hostess spoke agitatingly, +with her mouth full of crumbs, and every now and then a crumb would be +shot out of her mouth to fly like a bullet into the middle of the cakes +and pies. “What a beautiful girl,” she remarked, watching Irmgard dance +with her son Franz Egon Rudolf Ferdinand.</p> + +<p>“She’s just like a Cindrella,” answered Frau von Kranich, “waiting for +Prince Charming to claim her.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_15">{15}</a></span></p> + +<p>“But I hear,” breathed a nondescript lady, “that her father is not liked +because of his intolerable conceit. I am told that when someone asked +him recently about German authors, Herr Direktor Schulz had the +indiscretion to reply that he was by far the greatest writer living! And +he looks as though he thought it—walking round in that old-fashioned +bowler and the astrakhan coat, looking like an English lord.”</p> + +<p>Frau von Kranich wrinkled her nose. “He is a little bit of a <i>parvenu</i>,” +she said.</p> + +<p>“I haven’t noticed that,” rejoined the Baroness, while a crumb shot from +her mouth right into the sugar-basin.</p> + +<p>“Still—a little.”</p> + +<p>They were beginning to play bridge—the princes seated in one room; the +counts in another; the barons in a third, Mr. Beck among the barons, who +spoke to him of the high purchasing power of the U.S. dollar and urged +him to subscribe to various aristocratic charities. Frau von Kranich had +long since gone away. When the gathering at last dispersed,<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_16">{16}</a></span> he went +with Irmgard to the tram, but she suggested walking home together to the +castle. “I like walking after a dance.”</p> + +<p>Mr. Beck considered. “I like walking—with you.” He thought this very +daring. And he reflected, with inward satisfaction, that he was actually +making love in German—for the first time in his uneventful life. It +wasn’t ... “half bad!”</p> + +<p>She paused. “I like—walking,” she said.</p> + +<p>This was cautious. And Mr. Beck put out feelers. “I don’t want to impose +myself on you, and please tell me when you’ve had enough of me.”</p> + +<p>“I’ll tell you.”</p> + +<p>“I mentioned it because it seems to me that Frau von Kranich is rather +inflicting my heavy company upon your slender shoulders. Needless to +say, for my own part I like it. At the same time, I feel I may be boring +you with my imperfect German, and I’d do anything in the world rather +than be a nuisance to you.”</p> + +<p>“She means well,” said Irmgard; and they<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_17">{17}</a></span> walked along in silence +through the frosty streets.</p> + +<p>“Have you always lived in Salzburg, then?”</p> + +<p>“Always—since my birth.”</p> + +<p>“Do you like it?”</p> + +<p>“I hate it.”</p> + +<p>“But the people here are good people.”</p> + +<p>“I hate them.”</p> + +<p>“You ought to go abroad where the people might be more to your liking,” +suggested Mr. Beck. “You’d like America.”</p> + +<p>“I hate Americans.”</p> + +<p>“Why?”</p> + +<p>She thought hard. “Because they wear such ugly knickerbockers—the +tourists here.”</p> + +<p>“The child!” he thought. “The touching innocence!”</p> + +<p>They were now going by a long country lane that stretched across a +lonely field of snow. Far away an engine whistled. The snow hung heavy +on the trees. Mr. Beck conceived the plan of approach by way of her +father. “I do love the way your father speaks—these little movements of +the hands, this<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_18">{18}</a></span> fumbling pause, this seeking after the right word. He +is by far the most considerable intellectual in the city.”</p> + +<p>“Yes, Papa is very clever.”</p> + +<p>They came out into an open space at the mouth of the river which +extended wide into the distance, chained in ice. “This is our castle.” +At the top of a hill surrounded by a fence stood the castle—looking +rather less than a mere house. Irmgard quickly vanished up the steps. +Mr. Beck stood still a while. The ice-chained river was bathed in +moonlight.</p> + +<p>There was an added warmth that winter evening about the sky and moon as +he walked home to his <i>pension</i>.</p> + +<h3>III</h3> + +<p class="nind"><span class="smcap">The</span> night after, he met the Schulzes at the concert in the City Hall. +Herr Schulz always sat in the first row and championed foreign artists +and blamed his own. That night the Russian Cossacks, visiting the city +for two days, were giving a concert, and he presented<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_19">{19}</a></span> them with an +autograph copy of his book, <i>The God Triumphant</i>, and made a speech to +them, sprinkling it with words that came most readily and, as he +thought, appropriately to his lips: “Gorki ... Tolstoy ... Dostoevski +... the great Russian soul....” During the first interval they all sat +down to refreshments. Herr Schulz held out his glass without a word. His +daughter filled it.</p> + +<p>After the concert they walked together down the slippery street, +drifting along with a crowd of Herr Schulz’s admirers, in particular two +middle-aged ladies, to whom Herr Schulz took the opportunity of +presenting the new arrival from America. They seemed to hang upon every +word that issued from the master—the master expatiating on the concert +with his customary little gestures and taking off his hat and waving it +to right and left, in acknowledgment of innumerable greetings.</p> + +<p>“You have a lot of acquaintances,” Mr. Beck remarked.</p> + +<p>“Yes, a lot of acquaintances, but not a single friend!—I come out with +such aphorisms<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_20">{20}</a></span> quite spontaneously, you know. <i>Ach</i>, if, like Goethe, I +had an Eckermann to take them down! As it is, they are not taken down +and are forgotten. Ah, wait a bit: the other day a splendid aphorism +occurred to me: ‘The only decent people nowadays are to be found among +the Jews.’”</p> + +<p>“Come, try another!” the American commented to himself.</p> + +<p>“Or this morning—‘What we call morality is merely envy.’”</p> + +<p>“H’m.” There was a pause. “He was a great man—Goethe,” uttered Mr. +Beck.</p> + +<p>“Goethe was—I once put it so well—Goethe was the illegitimate child of +the gods.”</p> + +<p>“And Schiller?”</p> + +<p>“Schiller was a fallen angel who, through a faultless life on earth, has +redeemed his fall and secured his amnesty.”</p> + +<p>“And Shakespeare?”</p> + +<p>“Shakespeare—Shakespeare——” the Director fumbled. “Shakespeare——” +It was clear that he was forced this time to make it up<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_21">{21}</a></span> on the spot. +“Shakespeare is a huge black angel.”</p> + +<p>“Try another!” the American reflected.</p> + +<p>“Shakespeare——!” Herr Schulz suddenly became excited. “It’s +incredible.” He walked up and down. He waved his hat high in the air as +if acknowledging the greetings of acquaintances (who were not there), +then stopped dead. “It’s—it’s—it’s beyond words. <i>King Lear.</i> <i>Antony +and Cleopatra.</i> <i>Hamlet.</i> It’s—it’s—it’s——”</p> + +<p>“And Goethe too,” the American took up gratefully.</p> + +<p>“Yes, Goethe! What a life the fellow had, long, rich, and complete. And +he was understood. Goethe had Schiller. But I am alone: I have nobody.”</p> + +<p>In bed, Mr. Beck pictured the wedding. Her dad showing off to advantage. +What a splendid old fellow! Then the honeymoon, the bridal night, the +return to her parents, the departure for the United States. Their +married life when she would get used to him and find in him a vessel for +her tenderest outpour<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_22">{22}</a></span>ings: when she would take him by the hand and, +looking frankly in his eyes, would say:</p> + +<p>“Mackintosh, I love you.”</p> + +<p>Through his mind flashed pictures of travel, hotels in the hills, of +evenings together, and kisses, caresses and love. And life seemed +wonderful and miraculous and full of exquisite anticipations.</p> + +<h3>IV</h3> + +<p class="nind"><span class="smcap">When</span> 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.</p> + +<p>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.”</p> + +<p>“Splendid! The Herr Direktor is now taking his after-dinner nap, but he +will be up for<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_23">{23}</a></span> coffee at a quarter past four o’clock and would be +delighted to have you take a cup with him.”</p> + +<p>“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.</p> + +<p>“Yes.”</p> + +<p>There was a pause.</p> + +<p>“Yes,” he repeated, “I have had a good sleep.”</p> + +<p>“That’s good.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_24">{24}</a></span></p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>“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.</p> + +<p>“I don’t mince words. I tell the professors here straight what I think +of them—he, he! They don’t like me.”</p> + +<p>“No wonder,” said the guest, instinctively falling into line with the +commanding personality of the other.</p> + +<p>“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<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_25">{25}</a></span> Doktor Mackintosh, do +your work—Ethnology is your subject, I think you told me?—do you use a +typewriter?”</p> + +<p>“I’ve an Underwood Portable—it’s quite small.”</p> + +<p>“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.”</p> + +<p>“Yes! Yes!” the two sisters exclaimed ecstatically. “You must have +everything big and solid, Herr Direktor, to express your personality.”</p> + +<p>“He, he!” he laughed, and turning to the guest—“These ladies are +hero-worshippers,” he explained.</p> + +<p>“The Herr Direktor is always making fun of us,” they said, and looked at +him adoringly.</p> + +<p>“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,<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_26">{26}</a></span> I think—God! the wonderful things that +come into one’s head at these times. <i>Ach!</i> ... 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 <i>fact</i> of the door banging that +upsets me. No: it’s the brazen thoughtlessness <i>behind</i> 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<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_27">{27}</a></span> walk—you must +come with me—till suppertime. H’m. We might as well go now.”</p> + +<p>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?”</p> + +<p>“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.”</p> + +<p>“I see. You do your writing in the morning, in bed?”</p> + +<p>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 <i>inner</i> freedom. I am +upset by the invidious perversity of the people around me, by the +perfidious, shameless, iniquitous meanness of mankind!”</p> + +<p>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?”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_28">{28}</a></span></p> + +<p>“Well—perhaps—yes—though of course——” mumbled the visitor.</p> + +<p>Herr Schulz now stood half turned away from them, with his hands behind +his back, brooding.</p> + +<p>“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.</p> + +<p>“Gladly.”</p> + +<p>“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 an<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_29">{29}</a></span>other +proverb: ‘No man is a prophet in his own country.’”</p> + +<p>“Pardon me, Herr Direktor, but will you be good enough to acquaint me +with the titles of your works.”</p> + +<p>Herr Schulz suddenly grew earnest. “There is that—<i>God Triumphant</i>—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.”</p> + +<p>“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.”</p> + +<p>“Of Björnson,” corrected Herr Schulz. “Ibsen was +small—insignificant-looking. But Björnson was a man after my own face +and stature—he, he!”</p> + +<p>“Yes! Yes!” chimed in the ladies. “The image of Björnson!”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_30">{30}</a></span></p> + +<p>“Though some people say I look rather like an English lord—he, he!”</p> + +<p>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 <i>was</i> 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!</p> + +<p>“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.”</p> + +<p>“We shall be back for supper, Grete,” rejoined Herr Schulz, “which I +trust we shall enjoy the better after our walk.”</p> + +<p>“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<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_31">{31}</a></span> 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....”</p> + +<p>Mr. Beck looked sympathetic. “I understand. Even Tartarin de Tarascon +used to say: <i>Des coups d’épee, des coups d’épee, messieurs, mais pas +des coups d’épingle!</i>”</p> + +<p>“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<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_32">{32}</a></span> 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?”</p> + +<p>“Exactly. On that ground I am in favour of Eugenics.”</p> + +<p>“What!” Herr Schulz broke off a dead branch. “You are in favour of +that—that invidious—that—that infamous practice. You——”</p> + +<p>“I am. I have a nightmare: over-population.”</p> + +<p>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.”</p> + +<p>“I am thinking,” the American pursued, “of the poor women who bear child +after child without respite.”</p> + +<p>“It’s their business.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_33">{33}</a></span></p> + +<p>“But surely, Herr Direktor, there is many a wife who does not want any +children. What are you to do with such a woman?”</p> + +<p>“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!”</p> + +<p>“But don’t the children get to be weaklings?”</p> + +<p>“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?”</p> + +<p>“Quite so.”</p> + +<p>“Of course.”</p> + +<p>“And your daughters, Herr Direktor?” Mr. Beck thought this might be the +chance to ask<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_34">{34}</a></span> Herr Schulz for the hand of Irmgard, though, on second +thoughts, he resolved that it would be wiser to approach the daughter +first.</p> + +<p>“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....”</p> + +<p>“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....’”</p> + +<p>“I too,” said Herr Schulz. “<i>Ach!</i> when I look at the hills and the +lakes and the breaking rigour of the sky, I want—I want to go <i>praying</i> +through the world!”</p> + +<p>“Entirely so,” said the other.</p> + +<p>They were returning to the villa, and Grete was waiting for them on the +steps. “All’s ready,” she smiled dotingly.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_35">{35}</a></span></p> + +<h3>V</h3> + +<p class="nind"><span class="smcap">And</span> now Frau von Kranich began inviting him: “<i>Please komme on Fryday +next at 4 o’klock p.m. We will go together to Wolfs.</i>” Or, “<i>Please +komme on Thursday at 3 o’klock p.m. We will go to Schmidts.</i>” Presently +he had another letter:</p> + +<p>“<i>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.</i>”</p> + +<p>Next morning there was another missive. Across a visiting card on which +stood “Emmy von Kranich, née von Kolbe,” she wrote: “<i>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.</i>”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_36">{36}</a></span></p> + +<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_37">{37}</a></span> +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.</p> + +<p>“No, the Herr Doktor is not interested to see your horse,” she rejoined +aloud.</p> + +<p>“Oh, but I am!” And by the mother’s pleasant smile he felt that he had +thus commended himself to her heart.</p> + +<p>“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<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_38">{38}</a></span> 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?”</p> + +<p>“No, no!” cried the girl. “You mustn’t tell or he’ll recognise me!”</p> + +<p>On the piano lid stood a family group which attracted Mr. Beck’s +attention—<i>padre</i>, <i>madre</i>, and fourteen <i>bambini</i>: twelve girls, two +boys. “This is Hellmuth, our grown-up brother. He is twenty-nine.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_39">{39}</a></span></p> + +<p>“H’m. A good-looking youth,” commented the visitor.</p> + +<p>“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.”</p> + +<p>“How very funny!”</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>“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.</p> + +<p>“You can come with me,” said Irmgard, “and arrange with Loewe about your +<i>Wienerwalzer</i> lessons.”</p> + +<p>They went down the endless road, Irmgard smiling to herself. She called +in at several<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_40">{40}</a></span> 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 <i>Wienerwalzer</i>, +charged him a hundred thousand crowns and instructed him to come again +to-morrow.</p> + +<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_41">{41}</a></span> 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!”</p> + +<p>“I hope so,” he responded, rising and once more knocking his head +against the lamp.</p> + +<p>“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.</p> + +<p>“What’s this?” he asked, striding over to the wall.</p> + +<p>“A miniature of my mother as a young woman at the time my father was +Bavarian Minister at Rome.”</p> + +<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_42">{42}</a></span> other took him on and +whirled on with him till he felt faint and the blood rushed to his eyes.</p> + +<p>“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.</p> + +<p>“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.”</p> + +<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_43">{43}</a></span> 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>“I recognised you straight away.”</p> + +<p>She looked a little sulky. Or was it the black mask that made her look +so? The<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_44">{44}</a></span> mother smiled sorrowfully. “I said he’d recognise you straight +away if we went in together.”</p> + +<p>“I’m afraid this is not a very good table,” said the cavalier, escorting +them.</p> + +<p>“It will do,” said the girl.</p> + +<p>“Why so sulky?”</p> + +<p>“I was so before we left.”</p> + +<p>“Why?”</p> + +<p>“Oh, never mind.”</p> + +<p>The waiter came up. “What will you have?”</p> + +<p>“Nothing yet.”</p> + +<p>Remembering what Frau von Kranich said,—“You ought to have come not as +a butterfly, but as Cindrella,” he ventured.</p> + +<p>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 <i>The God Triumphant</i> with a huge +brown man with a broken nose upon the cover, and duly autographed +inside. “My husband<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_45">{45}</a></span> sends you this, with his respectful compliments.”</p> + +<p>“Oh, thanks—” Mr. Beck was peeping furtively into the pages, and—“It’s +a great book,” he gave his grateful verdict.</p> + +<p>“Yes, not everyone can understand it,” agreed the author’s wife.</p> + +<p>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.”</p> + +<p>After that Mr. Beck sat silent for a while. And the waiter brought the +lemonade. She<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_46">{46}</a></span> sipped at it once, and then did not touch it again. The +waitress came along with the cakes. “Will you have some?” he ventured.</p> + +<p>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.”</p> + +<p>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 <i>this</i> was then why she was angry, he stopped scratching. +Mother and daughter exchanged vague glances. “But to-morrow he is sure +to come.”</p> + +<p>“Yes, I think he’ll come to-morrow,” said the girl—and looked more +friendly.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_47">{47}</a></span></p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>“Yes, the floor is not good.”</p> + +<p>“Do take off your mask.”</p> + +<p>She shook her head.</p> + +<p>Mr. Beck did not dance the next dance, nor the one after. Nor did a +single cavalier come up to her.</p> + +<p>“Oh, come, take off that mask!” her mother urged at last.</p> + +<p>Irmgard shook her head. A minute elapsed; and she took off the mask.</p> + +<p>No sooner had she done so than a cavalier was at her side, then a +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_48">{48}</a></span>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.</p> + +<p>But at last the conductor held up his <i>baton</i> more defiantly—and it +went off, the old ever-popular waltz <i>To the Beautiful Blue Danube</i>. 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.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_49">{49}</a></span></p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>“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.”</p> + +<p>“You must write in German if I am to read them,” she replied. “Now we +must rush back.”</p> + +<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_50">{50}</a></span> for her, at +which she frowned. “Now for it!” he thought.</p> + +<p>“I want to tell you something.”</p> + +<p>“Afterwards,” she said, and rushed away from him back to her mother.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<h3>VI</h3> + +<p class="nind"><span class="smcap">The</span> night after, he joined them at the dance in the City Hall. It seemed +that the entrance ticket had already been provided for him by the girl. +But when, pocket-book in hand, he was about to give her the money, she +flared up—“Don’t give it me here!”</p> + +<p>And he smarted. When he came up to her in the ball-room he saw that she +was red and angry, standing with her brother Hellmuth with the double +nose, who was also red and angry. They could not secure an empty table +and stood in the drafty doorway, jammed by<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_51">{51}</a></span> the crowd. “Will you put +this into your pocket?” She handed him her little vanity-bag. The band +struck up a <i>Wienerwalzer</i>, and he asked her. It didn’t go as well as it +should have done, after two lessons. “Beat the time with the right +heel,” he remembered Herr Loewe’s injunction. And he <i>did</i> beat it, and +with the right heel. Only he could not get it exactly in time, and the +left heel came down of itself just as the right one was due, every time. +They had only done a few paces. “No, that won’t do,” she said, releasing +him.</p> + +<p>Two lessons gone for naught! However that may be, he must not miss the +chance—perhaps the last—of proposing to her: “Shall I now?”</p> + +<p>But she looked angry. Her (father’s) small eyes looked angry, as if at +the perfidious meanness, the invidious perversity of mankind. Her sister +Elsa’s fiancé, a young man employed at the local circus, was making +funny little signs to Irmgard, to amuse her. But she never looked. Mr. +Beck gave up talking to her.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_52">{52}</a></span></p> + +<p>“Ah! Mister Captain Mackintosh!” A man whom he had met the night before +came up to him and, taking him by the arm, imparted to him that he was +looking for a certain Dr. Schmidt. And for an hour Mr. Beck was dragged +about all round the rooms and through the vestibule and down the +restaurant and up the stairs all round the gallery, in search of the +elusive Dr. Schmidt whom he had never seen nor even wished to see. They +did not find Dr. Schmidt; and it is to be presumed that Mr. Beck died +without seeing him; but he killed, however disagreeably and +unprofitably, one hour of his mental agony.</p> + +<p>Exhausted, he sat down in the gallery and watched the crowded ball-room +heave in whirling couples to the mighty rhythm of the <i>Danube Waltz</i>. +The big orchestra put a dashing emphasis into the mighty regularly +whirling rhythm. “For you the hesitant irregularities of jazz: for us +the regular abandon of the <i>Wienerwalzer</i>,” these whirling sounds and +faces seemed to sing aloft. And behold, a military figure holding in his +martial arms a<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_53">{53}</a></span> slim fair lady went round and round, tapping the time +with his right heel. And there again—an elderly couple: they had placed +their hands on each other’s shoulders at arms’ length and went round, +the man tapping his heel. A postal official whirled round with his girl, +his face all of a smile. These multitudinous couples did not bang into +one another as often as one might expect. Like so many spinning-tops, +they each turned on their particular axis, just clearing each other, +while the music lashed them on into a frenzied passion of regular +rhythm. Mr. Beck leaned forward, watching down into the vulgar opulence +of the gilded ball-room—stunned, fallen into a trance or reverie. And +the conglomeration for some reason recalled to him those crowded +frescoes packed with human figures that one sees in Botticelli. Away, +away was the postal official. And there, nearing his end of the room, +was Irmgard, the beautiful girl!</p> + +<p>When at length he returned to the joint table, Irmgard was not there; it +seemed as if she avoided him. Mr. Beck caught a sentence<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_54">{54}</a></span> which had +passed between Elsa and her fiancé: “It’s too late—he won’t come now. +Poor Irmgard!” The betrothed young couple took pity on the lonely Mr. +Beck and, with the aid of another young couple, got him to join in a +complicated dance in which Mr. Beck had to describe elaborate, intricate +figures with his tired legs—and felt like a fool. Irmgard, with an +angry frown, danced with a pale young man with a pinched look. Mr. Beck +paced round alone, pulling out his watch and rehearsing mentally how, in +parting, he would thank the betrothed young couple for their kindness to +him and hand Irmgard back her vanity-bag, without a word—and go. They +talked of wanting to go on to a coffee-house to drink coffee till eight +in the morning, by way of doing justice to the Carnival, but Mr. Beck +only wanted to get into bed and to calm his poor nerves. The hours +dragged. It was four; then it was five—but still the dancing went on. +At last he buttonholed the circus man. “I want to go home,” he pleaded +wearily.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_55">{55}</a></span></p> + +<p>“No, no! We’re staying on till six. Surely, Herr von Mackintosh, you +don’t want to be guilty of ruining our little Carnival party?”</p> + +<p>Mr. Beck did not want to ruin anything and as a cultivated man in +foreign parts, deemed it only right not to do anything which might cause +them, in their own poor light, to think him ill-mannered. So he paced on +by himself round and round (he was afraid that if he sat down he might +fall asleep), now and then pulling out his watch and yawning into his +white-cuffed hand. The clock struck half-past seven. It struck eight +o’clock. Somebody was making a collection for the band, and spoke: “If +we pay them they’ll play on till nine.” A sleepy waiter looked angrily +at Mr. Beck. “All d-ham foolishness!” said he, evidently recognising an +American in him. “All d-ham foolishness! The lights are only paid for +till half-past eight.” He was falling over from fatigue; his eyes were +closing of themselves. He was a tottering figure in the corner. Mr. Beck +was still pacing about, waiting eagerly for the Schulz’s to make a<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_56">{56}</a></span> +start—when suddenly he ran into the circus man. “The ladies have just +gone home with their brother Hellmuth and asked me to say good-bye for +them.”</p> + +<p>“What! They’ve gone?”</p> + +<p>He was staggered by the news—his heart all weeping tears. In the large +vestibule there was a draught, and as he pressed his way through the +crowd, Mr. Mackintosh Beck felt all nasty inside—as if he had just +arrived at the Hook of Holland after a particularly vile crossing from +Harwich. While waiting for his coat and hat in the icy cloak-room with +the doors swinging to and fro, he had a chilly feeling in his bosom, as +though some improvident maid had left open all windows and doors and a +tremendous draught was sweeping the length and breadth of his inner +rooms. When he came out of the City Hall it was morning, and a round +white mist stood on the sharp mountain edge, like an enormous balloon. +The snow fell in heaps; it seemed as though a new winter spell were +beginning. He shivered in his coat and felt a dull ache in<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_57">{57}</a></span> the pit of +his stomach. As he walked home it was bitterly cold, and a sharp wind +blew from across the river. And suddenly it seemed as if the mountains +pressed their awful weight upon his chest, stifling his breath, so that +he could have screamed in anguish—rapped his heart....</p> + +<p>He could feel the vanity-bag in his side-pocket, and thought: “That girl +ought to be whipped!” And to be treated like that by a mere <i>Backfish</i>! +It came over him—the urgent wish to press all of his latent claims to +renown upon her. Impudent nincompoop! The tears in his throat rolled +back at this rebellious thought. He shaped in his mind the letter he +would write to Frau von Kranich: “I return the vanity-bag which—— I am +sorry that your good intentions have involved me——” No, that would +never do. “Of all the rude girls that I have ever met——” No, no, that +might lead to unpleasantness, who knows? Suddenly her brother Hellmuth +with the swollen double nose rose before him, threatening. Mr. Beck did +not know for a<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_58">{58}</a></span> fact whether Hellmuth had been a student and so was a +ready hand at sword-duelling. He assumed, nevertheless, that Herr +Direktor Schulz, despite his record, had not begrudged his son a +university education, seeing how extraordinarily cheap it was on the +continent of Europe. He could not remember having seen any sword-cuts on +Hellmuth’s face. But he recalled the swollen double nose, which, though +no direct indication of unusual ferocity, yet did argue a certain +dare-devilry, a love of courting danger—which well might mean danger +for Mr. Mackintosh Beck. “Damn!” he thought, “blast the whole bally crew +of them!”</p> + +<p>He pictured the duel, the rising in the cold early morning—a sword in +his vitals—his death. “No,” he thought, “the blooming girl isn’t worth +it!”</p> + +<p>Suddenly he felt old, too old to take on such risks. He understood that +young girls like Irmgard could not love men like himself. He crossed the +bridge, and slowly began the ascent to his <i>pension</i>. It was still +snow<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_59">{59}</a></span>ing, and the sky looked bleak, solitary, senseless. And he thought: +“I am glad; I am glad.”</p> + +<p>Going back to his room—all upside down from the erewhile ardour of +dressing—he remembered how he had looked forward to both nights and had +dressed with particular care. It had seemed to him then that he looked +very smart. Now the new dinner-jacket looked loose, the shirt crumpled, +the new patent leather shoes cracked. He sat down at the table and saw +his face in the glass: it was sallow, haggard—as though he had been +travelling for three nights on end without a sleeper. What mental +suffering could do! And the powder on the upper lip had melted away and +revealed the red patches from the scraping blade. He noticed that +whenever he shaved with particular care it always came out worse. His +hair was turning very grey—there was a bald patch on the crown. He +remembered how ugly he had looked in the glass at the tailor’s—and +understood.</p> + +<p>And now, with fluttering heart, he opened<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_60">{60}</a></span> the vanity-bag—a plain +little wallet of pink chiffon—and beheld its contents: a pinch of +greased powder, sweet-smelling, in a scrap of crumpled paper. And he +thought she never powdered! Two white spotless maiden handkerchiefs with +the initial “I” and three little flowers around embroidered in blue +silk. In another pocket, a crumpled bit of white paper containing rouge. +How touching! And behold! a long hair—Irmgard’s. He took it up between +his fingers and pressed it tight, and it seemed to coil, like a snake, +as if alive. And in that cruel, treacherous movement also was Irmgard.</p> + +<p>But what was this? A photo of a young good-looking student. Another +photo—Irmgard and the student. A third photo—Irmgard, Elsa, Hellmuth, +and the student. It dawned upon him suddenly how during both nights she +had been strangely distracted; he recalled the words and looks that +passed between her and her family. He understood: he perfectly +understood....</p> + +<p>And the whole vanity-bag smelled sweetly<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_61">{61}</a></span>—like her sweet seventeen. By +a simple flash of intuition into her being, he understood how she had +moods and a life independent of his, and that it was right that it was +so. In this her first Carnival dance, long since prepared for, she had +been disappointed, and not the least disappointed in him, and perhaps +also was crying now. And suddenly his sight was blurred. He took off his +horn-rimmed spectacles and wiped the glass with his big handkerchief....</p> + +<h3>VII</h3> + +<p class="nind"><span class="smcap">Next</span> 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<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_62">{62}</a></span> 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 con<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_63">{63}</a></span>quered these insidious +thoughts. He held fast to his chair and spoke:</p> + +<p>“My head is bloody, but unbowed.”</p> + +<p>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 <i>The God Triumphant</i>, +unread, into the river. He was pacing the platform, muttering through +his teeth—</p> + +<div class="poetry"> +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">“It matters not how straight the gate,<br></span> +<span class="i1">How charged with punishment the scroll;<br></span> +<span class="i1">I am the master of my fate,<br></span> +<span class="i1">I am the captain of my soul,”<br></span> +</div></div> +</div> + +<p class="nind">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. “<i>Ach!</i> how incredibly +glad I am to have caught you!”</p> + +<p>“Now he’ll begin throwing the girl at me<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_64">{64}</a></span> 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 <i>praying</i> 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 mo<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_65">{65}</a></span>ment—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 <i>behind</i> the act—or rather this sheer thoughtlessness +and inattentiveness, this—this invidious meanness and perversity latent +in mankind that stabs me. I said: <i>Herr Doktor</i> 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?”</p> + +<p>“At first to Vienna. Then to Venice, Florence, Rome, Paris, London, and +so home <i>via</i> New York.”</p> + +<p>Herr Schulz looked at him, and down at his<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_66">{66}</a></span> 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>“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.”</p> + +<p>Mr. Beck stood speechless, thinking hard<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_67">{67}</a></span> what he could say. “Your book +was wonderful,” he said at length.</p> + +<p>“It was very well received.”</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>“<i>She</i> 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.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_68">{68}</a><br><a id="page_69">{69}</a></span></p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_70">{70}</a><br><a id="page_71">{71}</a></span></p> +<h2><a id="THE_BIG_DRUM">THE BIG DRUM</a></h2> + +<p class="nind"><span class="smcap">The</span> brass band played <i>Im Köpfle zwei Augle</i>, and it seemed to her that +the souls of these men were like notes of this music, crying for +something elusive, for something in vain. To blare forth one’s love on a +brass trumpet! An earnest of one’s high endeavour fallen short through +the inadequate matter of brass; but withal in these abortive notes one +felt the presence of the heights the instrument would reach, alas, if it +but could!</p> + +<p>It touched her to the heart. She would have liked her Otto to play the +trumpet instead of the big drum. It seemed more romantic. Otto was not a +bit romantic. He was a soldier all right, but he looked more like a man +who had started life as a shoemaker’s apprentice, had grown old, and was +still a shoemaker’s apprentice. The band played<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_72">{72}</a></span> well—a compact +synthetic body—but Otto was a forlorn figure who watched the +proceedings with sustained and patient interest and was suffered by +them, every now and then, to raise his drumstick and to give a solitary, +judicious “Bang!” And he—a tall gaunt man—seemed as though he were +ashamed of his small part. And as she watched him she felt a pang of +pity for herself: wedded to him, she would be forgotten, while life, +indifferent, strode by; and no one in the world would care whether she +had her share of happiness before she died. And the music brought this +out acutely, as if along the hard stone-paved indifference of life it +dragged, dragged on excruciating its living bleeding soul. It spoke of +loneliness, of laughter, of the pathos, pity and futility of life.</p> + +<p>She watched them. The bayonets at their side. The military badges of +rank. The hard discipline. And the music seemed to say, “Stop! What are +you doing? Why are you doing this?” And thoughts flowed into her mind. +Of soldiers dreaming on a Sunday<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_73">{73}</a></span> afternoon. A fierce old corporal, of +whom everyone was afraid, talking to her of children and of daisies. +Soldiers who, too, had dreams in long waves—of what? she did not +know—but not this. And the men who stood up and blew the brass trumpets +seemed to say, and the shining trumpets themselves seemed to say: “We +were not born for the Army; we were born for something better—though +Heaven only knows what it is!”</p> + +<p>That was so. Undeniably so. Yet she wished it were otherwise. It helped +to make allowances for Otto. Whatever else he lacked, it made her think +at least he had a soul. But to be wedded for life to the big drum! She +did not fancy the idea. It didn’t seem a proper career. But Otto showed +no sign of <i>wanting</i> to “get on”—even in the orchestra. The most +exasperating thing about it all was that Otto showed no sign of even +<i>trying</i>! She had asked him if he would not, in time, “move on” and take +over—say, the double-bass. He did not seem to think it either feasible +or necessary. Or <i>necessary</i>! He had been with the big<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_74">{74}</a></span> drum for close +on twelve years. “It’s a good drum,” he had said. And that was all.</p> + +<p>There was no ... “go” in him. That was it: no go. It was no use denying +it. As she watched him—gaunt and spectacled—she wished Otto were more +of a man and less of an old maid. The conductor, a boozer with a fat red +face full of pimples, some dead and dried up, others still flourishing, +was a gallant—every inch a man. He had the elasticity and suppleness +and military alertness of the continental military man. She could not +tell his rank from the stripes on his sleeves, but thought he must be a +major. His heels were high and tipped with indiarubber, and so were +straight and smart, but his trousers lacked the footstrap to keep them +in position—poor dilapidated Austrian Army! How low it had sunk! +Nevertheless they were tight and narrow and showed off the major’s +calves to advantage. He wore a pince-nez, but a rimless kind, through +which gazed a pair of not altogether innocent eyes. But a man and a +leader of men. While Otto had no rubber on his<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_75">{75}</a></span> heels. His heels looked +eaten away. He wore a pair of spectacles through which he peered from +afar at his neighbour’s music-stand, and at the appointed time—not +one-tenth of a second too late or to early—down came the drumstick with +the long-awaited “Bang!” So incidental, so contemptible was Otto’s part +that, in addition to handling the drum, he had to turn the pages for the +man who played the cymbals. It seemed to her humiliating. It was very +wrong that Otto had no music-stand of his own.</p> + +<p>He smiled shyly, and she turned away, annoyed. The little modiste walked +on, meeting the stream of people who promenaded the path surrounding the +bandstand; a man on high heels, three girls with a pinched look, a +famous Tyrolese basso with a long ruddy beard, a <i>jeune premier</i> with +whiskers and hair like a wig, whose look appeared to imply: “Here am I.” +Innsbruck looked morose that Sunday morning, and the military band in +the park executed music that was tattered, gross, a little common, yet +compelling, even like the<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_76">{76}</a></span> daily fare of life. Oh, why were there no +heroes? Of course she would have loved to be dominated. That’s what men +were for. She was a womanly woman. From Vienna. Exalted, brimming over +with life. These men of the Tyrol! And as for Otto? Why, she could have +only waved her hand!</p> + +<p>She began to wonder whether she had not really better break it off with +him. If men would but realise how little was required from them. Only an +outward gesture of romance: a touch sufficed, the rest would be supplied +by woman’s powerful imagination. Not even so much. A mere abstention +from the cruder forms of clumsiness, a surface effort to conceal one’s +feeblest worst. A mere semblance of mastery, a glimpse of a will. In +short, anything at all that would provide the least excuse for loving +him as she so wished to do. A minute she stood, thinking. “A minimum. +Hardly as much.” There passed along the man on high heels, the three +girls with the pinched look, the Tyrolese basso with the long ruddy +beard, the <i>jeune premier</i> with whiskers<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_77">{77}</a></span> and hair like a wig, whose +look seemed to say, “Here am I”; then again the man on high heels, the +three girls with the pinched look, the Tyrolese singer, and again the +“jeune premier” whose look implied, “Here am I.” They walked round and +round as if the park were a cage and there was nothing to do but walk +round—with heads bent, lifeless, sullenly resolute. And again there +came along the man on high heels. “The minimum of a minimum....”</p> + +<p>The music resumed. She consulted her programme. Item 7. Potpourri from +the operette <i>Die Fledermaus</i> by Johann Strauss. She returned to the +stand, prepared to give her fiancé another chance. Otto’s part, as +before, was contemptible, more contemptible than before. He was +inactive. He smiled shyly. She coloured. And, looking at him, she knew. +She knew it was no use, her love could not bridge the chasm. He was +despised by the rest of the band. A stick-in-the-mud. Not a man. A poor +fish. Not for her....</p> + +<p>The potpourri, as if suddenly turning the<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_78">{78}</a></span> corner, broke out into a +resounding march, and behold, the big drum now led the way. Bang! bang! +bang! bang! Clearly he whacked, never once missing the chance; and the +man with the cymbals, as if one heart and brain operated their limbs, +clashed the cymbals in astounding unison, the big drum pounding away, +pounding away, without cease or respite. And the trumpeters smiled, as +who might say: “Good old big drum! You have come into your own at last!” +Bang! bang! bang! bang! The big drum had got loud and excited. And all +the people standing around looked as though a great joy had come into +their lives; and if they had not been a little shy of each other they +would have set out and marched in step with the music, taken up any +cause and, if only because the music implied that all men were brothers, +gone forth if need be and butchered another body of brothers, to the +tearing, gladdening strains of the march, (since it is not known from +what rational cause men could have marched to the war). And if in the +park of the neighbouring town<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_79">{79}</a></span> there were just such a band with just +such a drum which played this same music, the people of the neighbouring +town would have marched to this music and exterminated this town. The +conductor, like a driver who, having urged his horse over the hill, +leans back and leaves the rest to the horse, conceded the enterprise to +the drummer, as if the hard, intricate work were now over and he was +taking it easy; his baton moved perfunctorily in the wake of the drum, +he looked round and acknowledged the greetings of friends with gay, +informal salutes of the left hand, his bland smile freely admitting to +all that it was no longer himself but the drum which led them to +victory. Or rather, the hard fight had already been won and these, +behold, were the happy results! Bang! bang! bang! bang! Strangers passed +smiles of intimate recognition, old men nodded reminiscently, small boys +gazed with rapt eyes, women looked sweet and bright-eyed, ready to +oblige with a kiss; while the big drum, conscious of his<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_80">{80}</a></span> splendid +initiative, pounded away without cease or respite.</p> + +<p>“Wonderful! Beautiful!” said the public surrounding them. And thought:</p> + +<p>“Noise is a good thing.”</p> + +<p>The band had described the first circle and was repeating it with added +gusto and deliberation. The drum and the cymbals were pounding, pounding +their due through the wholly inadequate blazing of brass. But these did +not mind: “Every dog has his day”—and they followed the lead of the +drum. He led them. He—Otto! Her Otto was leading them. God! Merciful +Virgin! What had she done to deserve such happiness? Otto!... And she +had doubted him, thought there was no “go” in him. No <i>go</i>! She burnt +red with shame at the mere thought of it. He was all “go.” And didn’t he +make them go, too, the whole lot of them? How he led them! Puffing, the +sweat streaming down their purple faces, they blazed away till their +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_81">{81}</a></span>cheeks seemed ready to burst, but Otto out-drummed them—annihilated +their efforts. He—Otto! O, God! Watching him, people could hardly keep +still. But that none of them stirred and all of them wanted to, added +piquancy to the illusion of motion. They stood rooted—while the drum +carried on for them: Bang! bang! bang! bang!</p> + +<p>“Marvelous!” sighed the public around them.</p> + +<p>Her Otto—cock of the walk! She could scarcely believe her eyes. +Standing in front of the crowd, only a few paces from his side and +raising herself on her toes ever so gently in rhythm with the music, so +that by the very tininess of her movements she seemed to be sending +added impetus into the band, as if, indeed, she were pressing with her +little feet some invisible pump, she scanned his face with tenderness, +in dumb adoration. And Otto at the drum must have felt it, for, at this +turn, he put new life into his thundering whacks: <i>Bang! bang! bang! +bang!</i> he toiled, and the conductor, as if divining what was<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_82">{82}</a></span> afoot, at +that moment accelerated the pace of the march.</p> + +<p>“Bravo, bravo!” said the people surrounding them.</p> + +<p>There was no doubt about it. This was Art. The unerring precision. The +wonderful touch. Otto!... Otto, as never before, whacked the big drum, +whacked it in excitement, in a frenzy, in transcending exaltation. +Thundering bangs! And now she knew—what she couldn’t have dreamed—she +knew it by his face. Otto was a hero. A leader of men. Something +fluttered in her breast, as though a bird had flown in, ready to fly +out.</p> + +<p>“Now it’s all over,” thought the people, “and we are going home to +lunch.” And everyone smiled and felt very happy and gay. A sort of +prolonged accelerated thundering of the big drum, and then one +tremendous BANG!</p> + +<p>The thing was over. The conductor raised a bent hand to the peak of his +cap, acknowledging the applause. The bird in her fluttered more wildly +than ever. She wanted to<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_83">{83}</a></span> cry out, but her throat would not obey. She +clutched at her heaving breast with trembling fingers. “My love,” she +thought. “My king! My captain<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_84">{84}</a><br><a id="page_85">{85}</a></span>!—--”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_86">{86}</a><br><a id="page_87">{87}</a></span></p> +<h2><a id="A_BAD_END">A BAD END</a></h2> + +<div class="poetry"> +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i3">“Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord; and that<br></span> +<span class="i0">means that it is not the Lord Chief Justice’s.”<br></span> +<span class="i15">—<i>Bernard Shaw.</i><br></span> +</div></div> +</div> + +<p class="nind"><span class="smcap">It</span> all began by their talking of love and hate, as they set out on a +Sunday afternoon excursion to the moors. Mr. Proudfoot advocated love +and forgiveness; Weaver maintained his faith in a good man’s hate. And +Proudfoot hated Weaver and could not forgive him because Weaver would +not love and forgive. On the way to the tramcar terminus Mr. Proudfoot +called in at the grocer’s (it was Sunday, but the shop was +surreptitiously open, and Betty, the twelve-year-old girl of the grocer, +was reading assiduously a three-penny novelette, entitled—he strained +forward to look—<i>Only a Mill Girl</i>). Having bought his usual +cigarettes, “Get away with you!” rejoined Mr. Proudfoot, continuing the +argument.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_88">{88}</a></span></p> + +<p>“Undoubtedly!” said Weaver stubbornly. He envied the other his command +of the pen, but doubted if the author knew “life” as well as he, Weaver, +knew it. “<i>I</i> could give you material enough to fill a dozen novels if +you asked me,” he would say, and tell him of a thirty-stone man eating +enough for three; of a hangman in the neighbourhood who in his off-duty +hours was an innkeeper. “I want you to meet him. A character for you. +Bites off the heads of live rats if a customer will stand beer all +round.” Mr. Weaver was a dentist. There was something provocative about +all the dentists of Mr. Proudfoot’s experience. They all pretended to +ambitions outside their profession. They had all wished to be writers, +artists, poets, composers or statesmen, and now handled their surgical +tools, extracted teeth, with a kind of embittered “<i>Tant pis!</i>” The very +first day on which Mr. Proudfoot had called on Mr. Weaver in Gilbert +Street, Pedlar-with-Thresham, and inquired if it hurt to have a tooth +out, Weaver had said, “No. A second, and it’s out,” and holding it +between<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_89">{89}</a></span> his pincers (while his client rinsed his mouth with warm water +and spat out blood), the dentist was already discoursing: “Now I’ve been +reading about this Einstein fellow, you know, and I’ve me own ideas +about this ’ere relativity business, if you know what I mean. I look at +meself in the glass—and am satisfied with meself, metaphorically, don’t +you know. But it does not follow, cosmically speaking like, that I +present the same satisfactory appearance. In the same way, following the +deductions of my—he, he—rather cynical philosophy, you’ll think, +flies, I say, may be as trivial and at the same time as important units +in the cosmos as ourselves, and in the end their souls go back to the +world-soul from which they sprang. Open your mouth.”</p> + +<p>“Is there a world-soul?”</p> + +<p>“<i>Undoubtedly!</i>” A rotund little body, smartly arrayed, Mr. Weaver went +on: “This afternoon was a bit slack. Lately I haven’t been feeling very +well. And middle age is upon me. I thought of my past achievements. I +had a look at my old medals—the one I got<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_90">{90}</a></span> as a lad for swimming a +race, and that other one for cycling, don’t you know, and those other +two for amateur boxing. My mother, aye, she was proud of ’em! There.” He +sprinkled them out of a tin box on to his palm. “And I thought—how +shall I say?—it didn’t somehow seem as if it was ‘enough,’ if you know +what I mean. Come, open your mouth.”</p> + +<p>“You’re a cheerful old pessimist, aren’t you?” said Mr. Proudfoot, and +opened his mouth.</p> + +<p>“A cheerful pessimist? That’s what I call a contradiction in terms.”</p> + +<p>Mr. Proudfoot smiled, and thought (because he could not speak) that +Weaver was rather like a man who, having grasped with difficulty the +four simple rules of arithmetic, is bewildered at being told that he can +waive them utterly in Algebra. He was fond of using difficult words +unnecessarily, and would trot out a <i>cliché</i> on the slightest pretext. +Mr. Proudfoot might say that he preferred horses to motor-cars, only to +hear Weaver ejaculate: “A horse! a horse! my kingdom for a horse!<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_91">{91}</a></span>” Or +Mr. Proudfoot might say that he had served in the cavalry during the +War, for Weaver to remark, with lingering relish, “<i>Cavalleria +Rusticana</i>.” Or Mr. Proudfoot, perhaps in reference to the heavy rain, +had only to let fall the word “deluge” for Weaver to comment: “<i>Après +nous le déluge</i>, what?” looking at him with a self-complacent smile, to +see if he had noticed his culture. “I had a Frenchy here as an assistant +once, but had to kick him out: his gift of the gab was too much for me. +But I’ve picked up things, and I think I’ve got the hang of the lingo +all right, what?” But they had at once become friends, and in the +evening Weaver would invite him to his house, push out his wife—a thin +complacent woman with a long aquiline nose which Weaver thought +aristocratic, and whose contribution to any conversation did not extend +beyond the invariable affirmative: “That’s right.” “Out you go,” he +would say, “we’re an old bachelor party to-night.—Now then,” rubbing +his hands. “Now for it! I’ve been<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_92">{92}</a></span> reading about this ’ere fellow +Spinoza, you know....”</p> + +<p>And so on till after midnight. Mr. Proudfoot remembered these nights +afterwards: Weaver, tottering slightly after the beer, coming out into +the open and standing hatless in the middle of the street and saying (in +reply to Mr. Proudfoot desirous of making a professional appointment +with him on the morrow), “Any day, old chap! any day!”</p> + +<p>Arguing, they had reached the tramcar terminus and boarded the train +which was to take them on their picnic out on to the moors. The world +seemed transfigured that wet but happy afternoon. It seemed to Mr. +Proudfoot that everything certainly was for the best in this best of all +possible worlds. The tramcars were running smoothly and efficiently. The +gay, handsome conductor performed his duty as if it were a pleasure. The +policeman looked well fed, well paid, well satisfied. Even the rain fell +satisfactorily from a dull but sober sky, and everybody was duly +provided either with raincoat or umbrella—all<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_93">{93}</a></span> was undoubtedly just as +it should be. The world was well oiled and ran smoothly; everything was +a wheel turning round easily on its axle, and God the Mechanic walked +about his machinery and was well pleased.</p> + +<p>And Mr. Proudfoot stood at once right inside and outside this +astonishing world. He had a pointed beard, long hands, and shy manners. +His name was said to have been “Proud-bottom.” There is a theory that an +ancestor of his applied for royal permission to annul the unpalatable +name, and the Sovereign had been graciously pleased to amend the +“bottom” to “foot.” Now Weaver had felt from the first that Mr. +Proudfoot was “different.” And he was right. Mr. Proudfoot was an author +of standing. And as for his being immortal, who can tell? He wrote +private letters with an eye to their post-humous publication, keeping a +copy of each, in case his friends should lose or mislay them. He was a +student of the old giants of literature, and he walked in their wake. He +did not throw away his old sponge, for example, recalling that Goeth<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_94">{94}</a></span>e’s +was on exhibition at his famous house in Weimar, and accordingly gave +his own to his sister to put away. As for the critics, whenever Mr. +Proudfoot published a new book, they wrote: “Very suggestive ... never a +dull page ... the interest sustained to the end. Nevertheless, one +wishes that the author would break new ground, express life from a new +angle....” But if he did leap over the fence and explore new tracks, “Go +back, go back,” they wrote in the newspapers, “get you back to the +simple delights of your earlier books and we will listen to you till the +crack of doom....” Mr. Proudfoot had arrived four months earlier in +Pedlar-with-Thresham. And why, in God’s name? you will ask. And indeed +it would be difficult to imagine why anyone should arrive there, if he +were not cursed by having to be there from the beginning. At the last +General Election a local magnate in welcoming the Liberal candidate to +Pedlar-with-Thresham from the dais raised outside the town hall, +exclaimed with patriotic<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_95">{95}</a></span> emotion: “In Pedlar-with-Thresham we spin well +and vote well!”</p> + +<p>“Aye—and starve well!” came a voice from the audience.</p> + +<p>Such a place was Pedlar-with-Thresham. Mr. Proudfoot went there to get +“local colour” for a Lancashire novel he was then writing. Nor was this +the only reason. He had read in the newspapers of the low deathrate of +Pedlar-with-Thresham and so, as he was afraid of dying young, he went to +live there.</p> + +<p>The sun had come out as the two men walked up on to the moors, arguing +heatedly, till Weaver, still maintaining his belief in hate, suggested +good-naturedly, “Let’s sit down here and have a go at what we’ve brought +with us, what? Open that basket. Come on, look out what you’re doing! +See, you can’t handle your tools properly. Oh my! Watch me. That reminds +me. I once captained a working men’s football team up North, and had to +take the blighters to <span class="pagenum"><a id="page_96">{96}</a></span>London, where they were being entertained—mighty +lavishly too! They were the scum of the earth—no idea how to hold a +tool or to behave in decent society. So I said to them, ‘Look here, you +old blokes, watch me in everything, do just as I do, follow me, see? and +you’ll be all right.’ And I took the serviette—or what you fellows +would call the table-napkin, I s’pose—placed it carefully on me seat +and sat down on it. And they all—the whole blinkin’ crew of ’em—got +up, you know, placed their serviettes on their seats carefully and sat +down on ’em. Makes me roar even now when I think of it. Have another +beer. Look here, old chap, shall we run up and see the hangman I told +you about who bites off the heads of live rats—eh? He has his inn down +the road further up on the moors. Good material for you, what?”</p> + +<p>“I wouldn’t go near one.”</p> + +<p>“Why? he’s a necessary institution.”</p> + +<p>“I question that. If it is impossible to prevent homicidal maniacs from +killing their fellows, then by all means let them forfeit their<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_97">{97}</a></span> lives +painlessly at the hands of a doctor. So much mercy is shown to mad +dogs.”</p> + +<p>“You need a hangman to frighten folk with.”</p> + +<p>“Get away with you!”</p> + +<p>“Undoubtedly!” said Weaver passionately.</p> + +<p>“Nonsense. It’s suffering to no purpose.”</p> + +<p>“It contributes in a way to the experience of the world-soul,” said +Weaver philosophically.</p> + +<p>“Damn your world-soul! Damn your fanatical readiness to sacrifice real +suffering units for the sake of God knows what misty and unfeeling +generalities. You’ll burn human beings in furnaces as sacrifices for +what-not tin gods. You’ll plunge into war for what-not shaky +nationalist, imperialist, religious ideals. This fanatical <i>laisser +faire</i>, this hapless surrender of the only vital feeling +thing—individual human life—for an abstraction! It’s just here that +you let in Beelzebub, in the name of what-not vague and void +resplendence!”</p> + +<p>“But there are compensations. Think of the pleasure a condemned man +enjoys in knowing<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_98">{98}</a></span> that the entire world is talking of him. They enjoy +the vanity of it, without a doubt.”</p> + +<p>“Get away with you!”</p> + +<p>“<i>Undoubtedly!</i>” said Weaver, with tremendous emphasis, as he was wont +to do when feeling his opponent to be full of scepticism and doubt.</p> + +<p>“When I say you are a fool, Weaver, I really don’t mean to insult you: I +merely wish to illustrate the word.”</p> + +<p>“When I am landing you one on the chin, I do so entirely without malice. +There,” he said.</p> + +<p>Proudfoot blinked. “You are right. I congratulate you on admirably +illustrating the incommensurable qualities of our respective weapons of +offence. Still, allow me to doubt the amount of a condemned man’s +enjoyment. An ex-warder told me once how out of ninety-eight executions +he had witnessed there was not one case when the victim did not either +collapse or was dragged fighting and screaming to the gallows. And the +women, they cry and kick their heels as they are carried there.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_99">{99}</a></span> But the +Press prints the official version that the prisoner ‘walked firmly to +the scaffold’ and that it was all over in less than twenty-five +seconds.”</p> + +<p>“Still, I am in favour of hanging,” Weaver said, thoughtfully.</p> + +<p>“No man has any right to be in favour of something the full horror of +which he is, through his own defective imagination, incapable of +realising.”</p> + +<p>“Abolish capital punishment, and nobody’s life will be safe.”</p> + +<p>“Stupidity,” said Mr. Proudfoot, “is in itself a hollow term: it is +people like yourself who lend it meaning. Nobody’s life will be safe!” +he mimicked derisively.</p> + +<p>“Undoubtedly!”</p> + +<p>“This is what they said of sheep-stealing at the time. ‘Abolish the +death penalty for stealing sheep, and not a sheep will be left in this +fair England of ours!’ And all those little boys and girls who, in Queen +Victoria’s golden reign, were hanged for stealing a spoon. ‘Abolish +hanging,’ the people said,<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_100">{100}</a></span> ‘and there will not be left a single silver +spoon in England.’ Oh, my God! I’m ashamed of humanity.... Little boys +and girls ... in the condemned cell ... dragged out in the morning and +hanged ... in Victoria’s complacent time—when Englishmen were ‘good.’”</p> + +<p>“Serve ’em right, the brats! Teach ’em a lesson! We had a case +recently——”</p> + +<p>“Devil!” he said. “Devil!” Mr. Proudfoot clutched the stick in his +shaking fist—he was not to blame that the other end of it shook at a +far greater tangent—and thus shaking it at one end touched Weaver’s +neck with the other. Even as he did so he had a feeling that he had +overstepped the mark, and he was about to crave his friend’s +pardon—when he saw that he had indeed overstepped it. Weaver leaned +back and turned his face to his friend as who might say, “Hello, old +chap, what’s up?” But the singular thing was that Weaver remained +sitting there with just the same astonished look in his face. Only blood +was now trickling<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_101">{101}</a></span> from the corner of his mouth down his new light-grey +suit.</p> + +<p>  </p> + +<p>Proudfoot remembered how distinctly his senses registered the details of +subsequent events. As he walked home one little boy out of a group of +little boys and girls asked him for a cigarette card. He said he hadn’t +any and passed along, but the little boy ran after him and shouted, +“Give me a cigarette card!”</p> + +<p>“<i>Haven’t got any!</i>” he bellowed in reply.</p> + +<p>And the little boy, frightened, began to cry softly.</p> + +<p>“You shouldn’t ask like that,” he was consoled by his little sisters. +“You should ask properly.”</p> + +<p>And suddenly Mr. Proudfoot felt that he was not the man to bellow now.</p> + +<p>The tramcar was nearly empty. He would have preferred to have it full. A +fat old woman was holding forth to the conductor, who punctuated her +flowing narrative with periodical “Aye—aye”’s: “’Ad a real good time. +Forty of us went to Blackpool in a<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_102">{102}</a></span> sharry. It cost us ten bob a ’ead. +Ee! but we did ’ave a fine h’outing. An’ such a dinner! We started wi’ +lamb and green peas and fresh potatoes; after that we ’ed potato-pie, +an’ ’alf a chicken for each one of us, and pop to drink. After dinner we +went for a picnic and took us tea wi’ us. Eh, <i>’twas</i> a treat! We ’ad +three fine tongues all cut up an’ ready like and plenty o’ bread an’ +butter. But th’ pity was as I was off me h’appetite an’ couldn’t manage +me share. When we was coming w’home we called at a pub or two, as we was +very dry. Ee! but it <i>was</i> a fine outing!”</p> + +<p>Wasn’t life wonderful!</p> + +<p>And suddenly Proudfoot remembered.</p> + +<p>As he went down a narrow lane, a little girl said to a smaller one who +had fallen on a stone, “Now ye’ve made a ’ole in yer leg.” And he felt +that, in other circumstances, he might have smiled. Passing the +grocer’s, where Betty was still reading <i>Only a Mill Girl</i>, he wondered +whether he should go in as if nothing had occurred and buy his usual +packet of cigarettes. Or better not be seen. One less<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_103">{103}</a></span> witness at court. +What had he better do? Now he was back in Pedlar-with-Thresham, and +passing the familiar brass plate with “Gilbert French, Solicitor,” he +wondered whether he should go in, remembering the pun he used to make +that Gilbert was a French solicitor. He somehow wished he was. He wished +he himself were away in France. But they would extradite him on a +warrant. Oh, God! was there really no escape?</p> + +<p>Then things moved very quickly. He went home. The sun was still shining. +His father was sitting in the garden which gave upon the street. The two +men lived silently beside each other. They had never had much to say to +each other. The father, when the boy first showed signs of an +independent mind and temper and of wanting to adopt an unconventional +career, warned him solemnly: “You’ll come to a bad end, young +feller-me-lad!” Now the old man was very old: so old that his +thoughts—let alone his body—stirred with difficulty. He sat all day +long in the sun and at intervals would make remarks such as:<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_104">{104}</a></span> “Aye, she +is a strong wench she is,” or “Aye, he is a big man he is that.” Then he +would sit very still, staring ahead with his watery old eyes, munching +with his empty loose mouth. Suddenly he would fall asleep, his mouth +hanging wide open. One day when he would thus fall asleep they would +nail him up in a coffin and drive him at great speed to the graveyard, +and put him into a wet black hole and cover him up altogether with +earth, and plant a great heavy stone on the top of him—and then come +home and take tea.</p> + +<p>“Just as well,” Proudfoot reflected. “Just as well now.”</p> + +<p>The sun had gone; it was just beginning to drizzle. His father turned +in. He sat by him and stared into the fire, waiting for the police to +come and arrest him. They did not come, and unable to bear the suspense +any longer he went out in order to give himself up at the police +station. It was beginning to get dark and chilly out-of-doors; the +polluted rain fell out of a soot-infested sky; and close to the door his +courage failed him and he went away<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_105">{105}</a></span> again. What could he do? Where +could he go? It seemed all one. Mrs. Weaver knew that they had gone out +together and even knew the place. Was it really possible that such a +thing had befallen him? If it had befallen another man, if he had read +about it in the papers, it would seem natural enough; but that it should +have befallen <i>him</i>! It seemed impossible. The uncanny thing was that +the others would not know how impossible it seemed to him and would +require an intelligent account of it from him. Tired of walking, +frustration on all sides staring him in the face, he turned home and was +arrested by the two policemen who were already waiting for him.</p> + +<p>The court next morning had no hesitation in charging him with wilful +murder, and, in charge of two men, he was taken to Liverpool, where a +grand jury brought in a true bill against him, and he was taken away to +await trial at the Assizes. Here the matter was put elaborately before a +grand jury, and he listened, bedraggled and bewildered, to his hein<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_106">{106}</a></span>ous +deed being recounted in the hearing of the public and ably handled by +the learned advocates; and he had a sense of clumsy unreality, as he had +had when attending the performance of his plays or reading in a printed +notice the reviewer’s brief narration of the plot of his own novel. All +this, attributed to him, did not seem his, was not of his own making. +But he was hopeful: there was time enough for despair later on. He +watched the prosecution unbend itself. A sly old fox counsel for the +Crown. He put it to them that the circumstances were most suspicious. +Prisoner had decoyed his victim into a lonely wood away up on the moors. +The wound witnessed that the blow had been inflicted with a blunt and +heavy weapon. Prisoner confessed as much. What more proof was needed of +his murderous intent? Mr. Proudfoot’s faith was in his counsel, as once +upon a time when he visited the races it had been in his jockey. He had +a reputation for an unbroken record of acquittals to sustain. He would +fight for them both to the last breath. And the judge seemed<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_107">{107}</a></span> a +gentleman. Mr. Proudfoot had the same feeling of confidence in that +presiding wigged figure as in the umpire when, as a boy, he took part in +a lawn tennis tournament. But what was strange and uncanny was the +smooth procedure of it: the deference and kindness shown to him on all +sides. He was afraid that with that suave politeness, that unfailing +legal gloss, in those beautifully modulated Oxford accents, they might +bring him theoretically to within an inch of death, and then get the +common churl to carry out the messy business.</p> + +<p>The judge was really nice—and so witty. Mr. Proudfoot smiled +good-naturedly at his remarks. He would have laughed, too, but that +might seem uncanny, irresponsible; might be considered as bravado on his +part; might even strike the judge as bordering on contempt of court. But +the judge must know that Mr. Proudfoot was an author and critic of +standing and might be flattered if he saw that his witticisms were +appreciated by the critic even at a trying time. The judge was detached +by virtue of his training. He pictured him as an<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_108">{108}</a></span> elderly cultured +bachelor who had an ancient library and tender nieces who adored him. +Mr. Proudfoot and the judge would get on very well together. It was the +jurymen he was afraid of. God only knew in what wise the particular +machinery in their skulls manipulated thought. Counsel for the Crown was +a little ratty, to say the least of it. He would ask incriminating +questions: Who killed him? The devil killed him. He did not kill him. As +if he, Joseph Proudfoot, would ever do such a thing. He had merely +shaken his stick at him: the devil had operated the other end of it. But +if he had now told them that it was the devil who had killed Weaver, the +jury, being of the type who prided themselves on not being born +yesterday, would all the sooner come to a conclusion of his guilt. But +murder him, he didn’t—because murder had indeed never crossed his mind. +But counsel for the Crown thought otherwise. He could see no trace of +provocation to manslaughter, in the absence of which he saw murder, the +possibility of self-defence<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_109">{109}</a></span> not even being mentioned by the other side. +And he suggested Mr. Proudfoot had murdered his friend for money.</p> + +<p>“I suggest,” he said, “that you murdered him for his money and took it.”</p> + +<p>“I repudiate your suggestion,” Mr. Proudfoot said, very pale.</p> + +<p>Counsel for the defence was stipulating for manslaughter under +provocation, the provocation being Weaver’s inhuman attitude to those +poor children who, in Victoria’s crass time, had been suffered by a +callous public to forfeit their young lives at the hands of the hangman, +a dastardly crime which Weaver had offensively condoned; and this +general attitude to juvenile capital punishment raised a tremendous +controversy between the two sides, involving the merits of capital +punishment as a whole, the defence representing it as a barbarous relic +of a bygone age still lingering among us, and to which indeed his client +may fall a ready victim if the jury did not do their duty by him; till +the judge, resenting such round-about intimidation of the jury, said +that<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_110">{110}</a></span> they were not here to debate whether the death penalty was right +or wrong in principle, but that the question which the jury had to keep +before them was whether prisoner had murdered Weaver or killed him under +justifiable provocation, in which latter case it might be said it was +manslaughter. Whereupon counsel for the defence respectfully submitted +to his lordship that the degree of provocation would seem to be +intimately bound up with his client’s sensitive and +all-too-human—perhaps over-sensitive, but he would hesitate to call it +over-human—attitude to a practice which to-day all right-thinking +people (“Hear, hear!” from the audience, the judge interrupting to say +that at the repetition of outside comments he would clear the +court)—yes, he repeated it advisedly, all right-thinking people could +but recall with a shudder of horror and disgust; and the learned judge +(the point at issue having crystallised itself by now) allowed the +argument to stand, limiting it strictly to the merits of the death +penalty as applied to children for stealing silver spoons at a +particular<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_111">{111}</a></span> period in social history. Prosecuting counsel, in his turn, +submitted that if there was any provocation at all, even of a kind that +some people—though he himself was far from doing so—might find, if not +a ground, at least an extenuating circumstance for taking the life of +another human being, they had only the prisoner’s word for it. It was a +matter of credulity. He repeated the assertion of the learned counsel +for the defence in a faintly ironic tone, and added that he would ask +the jury to please declare the prisoner innocent of murder—if they +could honestly believe it. (He implied by a shade of sarcasm, if they +were really simple enough to believe such a wild thing.) Mr. Proudfoot +cast a quick glance at the jury. Two jurymen, looking singularly like +Messrs. Asquith and Lloyd George, he thought, mingled their locks in +contemptuous mirth. They seemed men with “no nonsense about them,” men +who would ask, “Do you see any green in my eye?” men who were prone to +believe that “there is no smoke without fire,” men who had sent saints<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_112">{112}</a></span> +to the stake; men of whom Mr. Proudfoot all of a sudden had become +immoderately afraid. If they could believe such a thing, the prosecution +argued, there was an end of it and he had nothing further to say. But if +they did not, indeed <i>could</i> not believe it, and there was no +provocation, he said (suddenly jumping one peg), then, he submitted, it +was murder pure and simple.</p> + +<p>The proceedings made a web of rather illiberal quibbles, difficult for +any but a trained mind to unravel, but through all the crude, inaccurate +and intellectually dishonest cross-examinations there ran two threads: +the black thread of the prosecution and the white thread of the defence, +which the jury hoped the judge would disentangle for them in his +summing-up. Unable to sustain the charge that prisoner had taken any of +the victim’s money (though producing witnesses to show that Proudfoot +was in financial embarrassment), prosecuting counsel modified it to +saying that he <i>would</i> have taken it, but in the horror of the crime +itself forgot the object of the crime.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_113">{113}</a></span> The defence thereon came forward +with a challenge to the prosecution either to substantiate the charge or +to withdraw it—a challenge which the prosecution met with a subversive +question: Indeed what other rational cause could have prompted prisoner +to commit the murder? A question retorted to by the defence with the +suggestion that the absence of all rational motive precisely pointed to +the view that apparently it was not murder, but manslaughter under some +sharp and instantaneous provocation, which tallied with his client’s +story. But prosecuting counsel knew his jurymen, and questioning whether +the expression of a contradictory opinion on some event in history could +be described as provocation, and questioning further whether prisoner +could be believed to tell the truth, he wound up his case with a +pseudo-generous invitation to the jury to exercise their credulity, if +they possessed enough of it, in believing the case for the defence. +Again Mr. Proudfoot glanced at the jury: hard-faced business men all, +“with no nonsense about them,” and one<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_114">{114}</a></span> meagre “emancipated” woman who +looked as though she would not lag behind the men. “My God, my God, why +hast Thou forsaken me?”</p> + +<p>He stared in front of him. Now they seemed very near, and now they +seemed very far, as if he were looking at them through the other end of +a pair of binocular glasses. He started from his trance: Good God! he +was actually in court, being tried, in fact, for his life!</p> + +<p>He found the final speech for the defence inadequate. These lawyers were +all so suave and satisfied with one another: his man, while fighting for +his life, seemed so mindful of the prosecution, so gentlemanly, so aware +of his opponent’s high character and diverse gifts that Mr. Proudfoot +felt his barrister might easily betray him to his foe out of gracious +deference and general drawing-room politeness. So on the declaration of +a war, the signal for the indiscriminate butchery all round of human +flesh, ambassadors who had demanded the return of their credentials +will<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_115">{115}</a></span> cordially shake hands with the immaculate kid-gloved Foreign +Secretary, before departing to the country with which the realm is “in a +state of war.” “This,” said Sir Frederick, laying down his brief, +“concludes the case for the defence.”</p> + +<p>And now he felt there was only God between him and his doom.</p> + +<p>Among men, who was his friend? Not the judge, you would think any more, +if you followed the hostile tone of his summing-up: the arguments +themselves were far too intricate for any layman not specially versed in +legal ways to follow. And Proudfoot wondered which of all his friends he +would want to help him in his present plight; and he thought that of all +men he wanted the good, fat, cheery, smiling Weaver. And a laugh broke +from his mouth and tears came to his eyes as he remembered that all the +present trouble hinged on Weaver.</p> + +<p>There was a moment during the judge’s summing-up when something in +Proudfoot protested. What right had they to sit in<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_116">{116}</a></span> judgment on him? “I +have understanding as well as you. I am not inferior to you. Yea, who +knoweth not such things as these?” That ridiculous wigged figure, immune +from insult, sitting aloft impersonating the divine justice. He felt +like telling it, “You old cuckoo, you wouldn’t be sitting there if it +weren’t that you are only half a man.”</p> + +<p>The jury retired. How very long! It seemed as though they would never +come to a unanimous decision. He had hopes of disagreement, +procrastination, a new trial. But at last they came back, headed by the +foreman. He heard the clerk’s fateful question. He heard the answering +“Guilty.” There was no recommendation for mercy. Before he could take it +in he saw the “black cap” on the judge’s wig. “ ... hanged by the neck +until you are dead....” The judge and all of them seemed very far off in +the electric light, as if at the far end of a long hall. He could not +believe it, he did not believe it. Absurd! They were wanting to despatch +him, to liquidate his existence: whereas he was the world<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_117">{117}</a></span> spirit +itself, the world spirit that descends into each living creature whole +and unsplit: as if each creature only mattered by itself and no other +creature. To be told that you are to be killed is therefore like being +told that the end of the world has come: impossible to fathom. They must +be under some error. They had forgotten that he was the world spirit +incapable of being quenched by a judge of that kind. The judge’s slender +hand moving up, the clerk removed the piece of black cloth from his +lordship’s wig. It seemed that all was over. The judge was thanking the +jury for the commendable manner in which they had carried out their +duties and was absolving them from further service for the next fifteen +years. He felt the warder’s hand on his shoulder; they led him down to +the cells; afterwards out into a taxi, the two warders inside with him. +He looked out of the window as they were wafted down busy streets; past +door porters at picture palaces who looked like major-generals; then +through shabbier streets. He still looked out. An auctioneer<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_118">{118}</a></span> was +holding forth with gusto outside his shop, talking vociferously but +apparently to himself.</p> + +<p>Then the bath at the prison. The kindness of the warders. It was like a +working men’s hotel. He could smile—and there was plenty of time—two +weeks yet or more. He now lived in the hope that the High Court of +Criminal Appeal would revoke the sentence. But the day came, and the +Lord Chief Justice gave it out as his opinion that he could find no +fault with the proceedings at the trial, and, speaking <i>ex cathedra</i>, +added some mordant comments of his own upon the class of novelists now +generally perverting the public. The friend who brought this news to him +consoled him with the lame remark that it was better to be hanged once +than to be imprisoned for a period of twenty years. After all, hanging +was more merciful.</p> + +<p>“If it is,” exclaimed Mr. Proudfoot, feeling chilly at his friend’s +taking his death so philosophically, “if it is, and they are so +solicitous as to what is better for me, why don’t they let<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_119">{119}</a></span> me make my +choice? I know what I would choose.”</p> + +<p>“What?”</p> + +<p>“Life imprisonment, of course. I am locked up, but I can still think, my +thoughts can still roam, my mind is still free and unfettered.”</p> + +<p>“That is the cowardly choice, not the good choice.”</p> + +<p>“I am only human,” said Proudfoot—and faltered.</p> + +<p>There came a time, after the High Court had dismissed his appeal, when +he felt quite light and cheery in the confident anticipation of the Home +Secretary’s intervention. He thought of the Home Secretary as a man with +a soft grey moustache and kind eyes. But just as he had feared the suave +punctilio of the trial, he began to fear the sensitive, kindhearted men, +who, wincing in their sensibilities, would turn aside and leave it to +the other men to deal with the raw places. He read of the Home Secretary +going off for his customary week-end; he learnt of his solicitor +travelling to him with a batch of signatures, and<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_120">{120}</a></span> coming back, +ambiguous in the extreme, only saying that the Home Secretary’s decision +would be duly published after his return to London from his week-end +holiday. Then he saw it in the morning papers. The Home Secretary could +see no ground for advising his Majesty to intervene with the normal +course of the sentence, and the papers further stated that the sheriff +had arranged for the execution to take place on the 22nd of this month, +and that on the morning of the 21st Hanbury, the executioner, would +travel to Liverpool to put up the gallows.</p> + +<p>And then he asked—it was a desperate afterthought—that they should let +him finish his new novel. It was all but ready; he only asked two weeks’ +respite. Secretly he hoped that it might be found so good that all the +writers and critics in the world and the Great British (Reading) Public +would see to it that he was granted life. It was an application truly +without precedent. But there was nothing lost by trying. There was still +time, and his solicitor got busy. The petition was drawn<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_121">{121}</a></span> up and had +appended to it a long list of signatures from all the leading lights in +letters, music, art and science, some from the dramatic stage, and not a +few illustrious foreigners from France and Italy, even one from Poland +and Czecho-Slovakia. A German writer’s name was intentionally omitted +from the list, as it was feared that a certain daily paper would be sure +to cry out that opinion in this country was being dictated from Berlin, +and that the convalescent mind of our post-war public might echo the +cry, and the Government would find it difficult to grant the +application.</p> + +<p>However, the respite was granted. It was his first success after a long +series of reverses. He had another two weeks clear to finish his book +in. Some newspapers, of the howling kind, duly howled against it. “What +Can Murders Teach Us?” was the headline of a certain Sunday paper. “Why, +to murder,” he could almost hear the responding voice of certain +readers. “Writers are worse than some other folk,” he could just hear +them saying it<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_122">{122}</a></span> in Pedlar-with-Thresham. “Aye, they are a bad lot.” And +Mrs. Weaver answering, “That’s right.”</p> + +<p>He remembered how she had sat in court, saying in reply to a question +put to her by counsel, “That’s right,” and never once looked up at him.</p> + +<p>The book was got out with all haste. Three days before the execution it +was published, and his publisher sent him the first batch of reviews. +The stimulus given to it by his impending execution was tremendous. His +publisher recognised it as an invaluable advertisement and rose to the +occasion. For the first time in his life Mr. Proudfoot was a rich man, +and he made generous provisions for his father, for the few years that +he could yet be expected to survive. But the integrity of the British +reviewer is proverbial. The mere fact of Proudfoot’s impending death +could not influence their critical opinion of his work one way or +another. One critic wrote: “This book, while quite pleasant and +readable, is in no way remarkable.” And another critic, ig<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_123">{123}</a></span>norant, it +would seem, of the fate involved, pleaded: “Go back, get you back to +your former style, and we shall listen to you till the crack of doom.” +He <i>had</i> gone back; he had deliberately gone back on the advice of that +same critic, and in any case there was no looking forward now. But still +another critic wrote: “One would wish the author had begun to break new +ground, express life from a new angle....” The Great British Public was +silent as the grave.</p> + +<p>The last hope had gone, and the last full day of his remaining life was +beginning to unfold itself. The warders, like old friends, played cards +with him all day to take off his mind from the event. In the little +intervals he wondered whether Hanbury who was to hang him on the morrow +was not perchance the man who bit off the heads of live rats whom he and +Weaver should have visited that fatal Sunday. Weaver had not disclosed +his name. But there were few hangmen, he knew, and this might very well +be the man in question.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_124">{124}</a></span> “Where does Hanbury, the hangman, come from?” +he inquired from the warder.</p> + +<p>“Up Manchester way.”</p> + +<p>It <i>was</i> the man!</p> + +<p>What emotions, what a multitude of moods he experienced in those few +brief hours. Till twelve he was sprightly and not very nervous. The +hangman, peeping at him through the observation hole, to decide what +“drop” to give him, saw him pacing up and down in the cell, puffing +calmly at a cigarette. But as, at midnight, the prison clock boomed out +the hours, he got agitated, threw away the cigarette and began counting +the remaining hours on his fingers. He tried to think of the noble souls +who went before him:—of Anton Chehov, who, after gravely saying to the +doctor who had been called to him during the night, “I am dying,” +drinking the glass of champagne prescribed to him to the bottom and +remarking, with a smile, to his wife, “It’s a long while since I have +had champagne,” turning over on one side, and presently being quiet for +ever;—of Goethe asking that the window<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_125">{125}</a></span> might be opened to admit of +more air and more light, and the faithful Eckermann coming to look at +him, lying dead. “And I turned aside,” he records, “to give a free run +to my tears.” And with a shudder he recalled that <i>his</i> body would fall +into lime to be instantly consumed like a foul thing. He must go not +knowing why he lived, and nobody in those bleak immensities would know +or care: no father, no mother, no love in the world would intervene on +his behalf; not even memory would be left him to recall his single spell +of life, as if he never had been, as if indeed he was never meant to +matter. There was but to “curse God and die.”</p> + +<p>And suddenly his soul stirred within him, as if it had wings. “It’s the +end here,” he thought. “But it’s not the end there.” Weaver believed in +the world-soul—which meant that in a while he and Weaver would be one. +It was night, but he could not sleep. Perhaps now, all over the world, +there were people who could not sleep on his account and lay thinking of +him. As by imponderable wire<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_126">{126}</a></span>less waves he, alone in the dark cell with +the gallows adjoining, felt himself linked to all compassionate souls; +and to them he sent greetings—his desperate greetings.... At last he +slept.</p> + +<p>His sleep was troubled. He dreamt he had shrunk back from the pale gate +of death, a bleak coldness in his chest and limbs, and was going past a +park where there were children playing and people lounging wearily after +their strenuous day’s work. And he thought that the trivialities of +living were manna compared with death. But by the faces of the people +who came out of the park he knew that they, not realising it, could not +enjoy the gift of life. He walked on, and suddenly found himself in a +beautiful, totally unfamiliar part of the town, the existence of which +he had not even suspected. And he told himself how he would come home +and tell his father of it. He woke—and there was nothing to tell but +that he had dreamt it. And at once an incredible coldness invaded his +heart.</p> + +<p>Besides, it was cold in the cell. Our cour<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_127">{127}</a></span>age is at its lowest ebb in +the early morning: it is wicked to hang people at dawn, he reflected. +The warder came in. “Get up. Here is your suit.” His old suit that knew +him in different circumstances. No collar to-day. “I’ll go and fetch you +yer breakfast now.”</p> + +<p>Perhaps at the last minute the Home Secretary might ...? He remembered +seeing a film where also at the last moment, also the Home Secretary.... +How cold. They wouldn’t tell his father. Or would they? The warder +brought in a tray with some cocoa and porridge and an apple. He could +not eat. He nibbled at the apple, and the savoury juice reminded him of +some utopian land of fruit and flowers, like Italy, which he had never +known. And he thought that when they had done their worst, and he was +left in peace, perhaps in dreamland he would fly to such a land.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_128">{128}</a></span></p> + +<p>He looked strangely at the warder. “Is it very bad? Does it ... hurt?” +he asked uneasily.</p> + +<p>“No. A second—and it’s all over. Like having yer tooth out—no more. +All over in a wink.”</p> + +<p>The chaplain, a young man, was more confused than he—and more +miserable. “Perhaps some spiritual consolation?” he stammered.</p> + +<p>“I don’t understand,” said Mr. Proudfoot. “The indivisible universe +speaks and lives only through each separate creature, as if no other +creature existed at all. But it is the same indivisible universe which +so expresses itself. And they—absurd—they want to do away with +me—that means with the universe.”</p> + +<p>“Perhaps a last communion....”</p> + +<p>“Why?”</p> + +<p>“Or a confession? After all, you’ve killed a human being.”</p> + +<p>He thought of Weaver, and would have felt sorry for him if he did not +feel so overwhelmingly sorry for himself. If they’d let him off now he’d +put back what he had taken, put back into the spiritual cosmos what he’d +taken<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_129">{129}</a></span> from it. If they would leave it to him, he’d see that humanity +did not lose.</p> + +<p>He was brave, resigned. But a quarter of an hour before time, suddenly +he felt he wanted to live, love, breathe in through these nostrils the +fresh air of, not this, but other, future mornings, when <i>he</i> would be +no more.... He remembered a windy day when the big chestnuts swayed and +lashed their branches like drunken things, and nuts and sticks fell off +like missiles aimed at passers-by. A little boy had turned round to his +mother, hiding his eyes from the dust and the wind in the folds of her +skirt. This had moved him then somehow. And now an intolerable thought +obsessed him that, when, in a few minutes from now, he would be buried +in a pool of lime, he would feel the wind no more. And he thought that +if this life he was leaving was the only life in a bleak universe, then +he could not face the anguish of leaving it. But if there was another +life, he wanted to hide his face in the lap of his Maker, hide from the +missiles that fell all about him and<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_130">{130}</a></span> hurt him, weep on His breast, and +be quiet for ever....</p> + +<p>But perhaps—two minutes yet—perhaps the Home Secretary ...? And before +he could realise it the hangman stood in the cell. Was this it? Was it +this? Was <i>this</i>, then, what he had to come to? Could mother but have +known! But the warder, who up to this had been like a friend and +confidant, suddenly began to shout at the executioner, “Come on, you +there, get a move on and get about it quick!” (as though anxious to get +the nasty job over). And Mr. Proudfoot felt almost as though his friend +the warder had betrayed him to that other man. That other man had a +soft, drooping, yellow moustache and glassy eyes, and seemed slow and +good-natured. You wouldn’t think by the mild look of him that he bit off +the heads of live rats. Somehow Mr. Proudfoot wanted to claim +acquaintance: to tell him about Weaver: that Weaver and himself were +about to call on him that fatal Sunday: if they had called he would not +now be here. But the man with his assistants and<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_131">{131}</a></span> the warder were +resolutely coming up to him as if they were intent on making a swift end +of him, the governor, the chaplain and the doctor looking on. Yes, yes, +he would die—if they would leave him alone, or do it—handsomely. He +killed Weaver—however inadvertently, he killed him, and he would +forfeit his life, on his word of honour he would. But not so—— The +hangman and his assistant were trying to pinion him; and suddenly he put +up a fight for his life. What right had they? All nonsense apart, what +right? A glimpse of the jurymen all back in their homes, and at +breakfast, flashed through his brain. What right? Where he got the +strength from he did not know, but the prison bell was already tolling +for the soul departing, and its last stroke had boomed its melancholy +message across the yard into the streets, but Mr. Proudfoot was still +alive and struggling desperately with the executioner and three warders, +who only knew that they had to despatch him: he should have been +liquidated ten minutes ago: there was no document to ac<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_132">{132}</a></span>count for his +unwarranted existence after 8 a.m. They were shocked: it was improper in +the extreme. “Don’t! Oh!” He wanted to tell them—if they would only +stop to listen—he wanted to tell them that—yes—he was a soul, a +universe with things in it which had nothing to do with that devil in +him they were intent on destroying. It was unjust. A whole universe. +“Stop! Think: what are you doing?... <i>No!</i>” he cried, struggling in +their grip and realising that nothing save his poor physical exertion +now stood between him and their grim determination to do away with him. +“No! You <i>mustn’t</i>!” he pleaded, his soul filled with a sickening animal +fear. But they dragged him on without respite, the chaplain leading the +way, reading words from the Bible. And if—he thought—there was a God +in heaven, why did He stand aside? What God was He to stand aside? “No! +No!... <i>Oh!</i> ...” But they were dragging him on none the less, dragging +him on to his doom. Swiftly he looked at each of them, for a spark of +compassion. But they were all men who<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_133">{133}</a></span> valued their duty before +everything else. He was in the open. And suddenly a wave of awe came +over him, standing as he did on the brink of eternity or extinction: so +that the hangman at his neck seemed like a friend who was assisting at a +parting, and those others, too, seemed as if they’d come to see him off +at the railway station as he was about to step into the train on his +awful journey; and he clung to them with fraternal, desperate farewell. +But they only looked as though they had no time for that, but wanted to +get the nasty business, long overdue, over at last. It seemed minutes +before he toed the chalk line on the drop—when suddenly he fell, it +seemed minutes, he expected it with drawn breath, the pulling up—when +<i>snap!</i> it came!</p> + +<p>And all was darkness.</p> + +<p>  </p> + +<p>The great harbour was awakening in the cold fog. From the terminus a +tramcar set off half empty. The conductor strode inside and began +collecting the fare. Then newspapers<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_134">{134}</a></span> appeared on the street corners, +and posters announced in red and black letters:</p> + +<p class="c"> +“<span class="smcap">Special Edition.</span><br> +“<span class="smcap">Proudfoot Executed.</span>”<br> +</p> + +<p class="nind">They were eagerly snapped up by busy hurrying people, who stopped and +read:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>“Proudfoot had a quiet night and is believed to have been greatly +relieved at the end by confessing his crime to the chaplain. The +condemned man breakfasted lightly and walked with a firm step to +the scaffold. From the moment of prisoner leaving his cell to the +execution of the sentence there barely elapsed twenty-five +seconds.”</p></div> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_135">{135}</a></span></p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_136">{136}</a><br><a id="page_137">{137}</a></span></p> +<h2><a id="IN_THE_WOOD">IN THE WOOD</a></h2> + +<p class="nind"><span class="smcap">Lieutenant Barahmeiev</span>, late of the Hussars, was making amorous advances +to his landlord’s wife, a Jewish lady of about thirty. “Your lips are +saying No! No! No! whereas your eyes are saying Yes! Yes! Yes!”</p> + +<p>Vera Solomonovna looked at him with her golden eyes and shook her +handsome head and said to him,</p> + +<p>“Boris Nikolàech, you’re thirty-eight, and you have no more sense than a +boy of twelve.”</p> + +<p>Lieutenant Barahmeiev looked more self-confident than ever. It was a +fixed idea with him that no woman could refuse his amorous advances, and +that no landlord really meant him, seriously, to pay his rent. To +whatever women said in proof of their refusal, to whatever landlords +said in confirmation of their claims, Lieutenant Barahmeiev had a +simple<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_138">{138}</a></span> answer. He called it “bluff.” Some English words like “bluff” +and “gentleman” have passed into the Russian tongue in the original. He +wasn’t born yesterday, he said.</p> + +<p>And fully confident of the result, the Russian officer continued, “Why +this pretence, this hypocritical reluctance? Why not be frank about it? +To-night,” he whispered. “In my room....”</p> + +<p>“Go to the devil!” she said, but her eyes seemed to say, “Go on +talking.”</p> + +<p>“You say ‘Go to the devil!’ But what do you mean? I know what you mean. +Wasn’t born yesterday. Why not be honest about it?”</p> + +<p>Odessa had been changing hands from Bolshevik to anti-Bolshevik in turn; +but the habit of love-making persists through such irrelevancies as wars +and revolutions. Life in the flat of Finkelstein, where Lieutenant +Barahmeiev occupied a bedroom, went on essentially as it had gone on +before the war. I liked my hosts. She, a woman of considerable beauty, +greedy for admiration. He, a successful broker, tall, handsome, +prepossessing,<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_139">{139}</a></span> inordinately proud of being a Jew and always selling +foreign currencies to his guests at table. I liked the free and easy +manner in the household, the total absence of suspicion on the part of +Finkelstein as regards his handsome wife. No doubt he also had no small +opinion of himself, and thought that as compared with the Lieutenant he +was the better specimen of male all round. And I think that perhaps he +was.</p> + +<p>At lunch he was saying to Lieutenant Barahmeiev, “Yes, Boris Nikolàech, +you Christians like to run us down. You say that we are swindlers, and +‘Never trust a Jew.’ But the fact is that we Jews can trust each other, +but I am dashed if we are often given an opportunity to trust a +Christian. Take yourself. You call yourself a ‘paying guest.’ But what +right have you to the adjective? If it comes to that, what right have +you to the noun? Have I asked you to come and stay with us, and +overlooking that point, is it a usual thing for guests to stay +indefinitely? But your conscience doesn’t seem to trouble<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_140">{140}</a></span> you a bit. +You eat and sleep, and there! you even seem to have designs on my wife. +Ah, you’re a funny fellow, Boris Nikolàech, but, at any rate, it’s some +good to us that you are an officer; it will keep them from commandeering +our flat while you are here. But what was I saying? Ah, yes, does any +one want to buy Romanov roubles? Or I can sell you francs.”</p> + +<p>But the Lieutenant went on talking to the hostess. “What I can’t get +over is this utter want of frankness in you, Vera Solomonovna. Your +soul, your eyes cry out, ‘Take me! I am yours!’ whereas your lying lips +pretend to say, ‘Go to the devil.’ Bluff! All bluff, all bluff!”</p> + +<p>She turned to her husband and looking at her guest with compassion, +said:</p> + +<p>“What <i>can</i> I do with him, Lyova? He doesn’t understand. He <i>can’t</i>. He +really thinks he’s irresistible to women. I’ve never seen anything so +brazen in my life. To be quite frank, Boris Nikolàech, you’re not the<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_141">{141}</a></span> +least bit attractive. I wonder who put that idea into your head?”</p> + +<p>“Vera Solomonovna,” he implored her, “be frank for once. You know you +are in love with me; why all this hypocritical nonsense about my being +‘not the least bit attractive’? Why all this bluff? I wasn’t born +yesterday!”</p> + +<p>“In matters of love you’re a school boy.”</p> + +<p>“Yes, when I was a school boy I had the innocence to take a woman’s No +for No. But now, I need hardly say, I believe it no longer.”</p> + +<p>“You wise old man then,” she said ironically, rising.</p> + +<p>We followed her into the drawing-room. The window panes were blurred +with rain. The sea, the sky, was one grey mass, doleful and monotonous. +Below, in the street, one could see the shining hoods of passing cabs; +the muffled sound of hoofs reached our windows. In the indoor twilight +of the flat one felt at rest, one’s limbs were seized with languor. +Finkelstein and his stock-exchange associates retired to his study to +play cards.</p> + +<p>“The rain reminds me, Vera Solomonovna,<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_142">{142}</a></span>” said the Lieutenant, “of an +incident in my youth. The woman—oh, she had the self-same psychology, +if I may say so, as yourself, and in the end, and in the end ... +complete capitulation.”</p> + +<p>“I am tired of you,” said she, looking languorous rather than tired.</p> + +<p>“Vera Solomonovna,” he said, bending over her; then in a whisper: “Don’t +forget to-night ... my room.”</p> + +<p>She shook her head.</p> + +<p>“How blatantly deceitful women really are,” he said. “You shake your +head. Why? Why, when I know——”</p> + +<p>She flushed. “This is really getting idiotic!”</p> + +<p>“Ha! ha! ha! That is exactly what Zina used to say: ‘idiotic.’ I was +going to tell you about Zina when you interrupted me. This was a long +time ago—let me see—yes, twenty-one years ago, to be exact. I was +seventeen then. I was a cadet at the X—— Military School and I was +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_143">{143}</a></span>spending the summer vacation with my aunt at S——, a sea side resort +some twenty miles from Petersburg. It was an evening in early June, and +we were sitting on the open balcony of the pavilion at the local tennis +club. We were discussing something—literature I think, and then, quite +relevantly, we switched off on to love. There was this Zina I am telling +you about, a beautifully developed girl of twenty-five, who was quite +vehement in her denunciation of everything relating to the attraction +between the sexes, and as she spoke it was urged upon her that for a +person with her views the convent was the only proper place. It was a +lovely night, but we sat there and exchanged inanities. Gradually some +of us dispersed.</p> + +<p>“I was standing by a street stall, buying cigarettes, when I noticed +Zina coming up. She bought herself some chocolate. We sauntered away +from the stall together.”</p> + +<p>“Where are you going?” I asked her.</p> + +<p>“Nowhere in particular.”</p> + +<p>We went along the big road leading to the sea. Our shoulders touched +occasionally as we stumbled over the uneven ground.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_144">{144}</a></span></p> + +<p>“They’re so absurd with their revolting sentimentality,” I said.</p> + +<p>“Why talk about them? Look at the clouds,” she said. “How they chase +each other. We couldn’t keep pace with them if we ran. And the moon! +Gone—and out again!”</p> + +<p>We made our way together along a narrow lane. The wooden <i>datchas</i> had +been left behind.</p> + +<p>“Is this ‘The Alley of Kisses’?”</p> + +<p>“No, this is ‘The Alley of Sighs.’”</p> + +<p>We went on.</p> + +<p>“The moon again!”</p> + +<p>“Yes.”</p> + +<p>“This is ‘The Alley of Kisses,’” she said, as we turned to our left. +Beyond I could hear the sound of the sea.</p> + +<p>“Let us sit down here.”</p> + +<p>It was an old bench considerably disfigured by a penknife; it bore +initials, monograms and names of lovers probably who had sat there in +former times.</p> + +<p>“So this is ‘The Alley of Kisses,’” I re<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_145">{145}</a></span>peated. One seizes with +gratitude on such openings.</p> + +<p>“Yes.” She looked at me strangely. “And the fools at the tennis club +talking rubbish!”</p> + +<p>“Yes.”</p> + +<p>“The sea and the air! and—as I was saying—this ‘Alley of Kisses.’ Can +you feel it?”</p> + +<p>I moved closer to her. “May I kiss you?” I said.</p> + +<p>“Why do you ask?” she whispered.</p> + +<p>“What?” said I. (I am slightly deaf, as you know.)</p> + +<p>She waited, and I, being timid, added, “After all, we are ‘allies’ in a +sort of way....”</p> + +<p>She repeated softly: “Why do you ask?”</p> + +<p>She had soft, warm lips; I held my breath back; it was long before I +released it; and I wasn’t thinking of the night. “My hand——”</p> + +<p>Vera Solomonovna became fidgety with excitement. “Lyova! Lyova!” she +cried out; and when Finkelstein appeared, she said, “Come here, all of +you. Boris Nikolàech is telling of a romantic episode from his life.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_146">{146}</a></span> +It’s most attractive, I assure you, most <i>piquant</i>.”</p> + +<p>Finkelstein and his stock-exchange associates, abandoning their game of +cards, sauntered into the drawing-room, and, still smoking, sank into +chairs and stretched out their legs, ready to listen.</p> + +<p>“Well, go on,” said Vera Solomonovna.</p> + +<p>“My hand, I think I said, was round her waist——”</p> + +<p>“Whose waist?” said Finkelstein.</p> + +<p>“Zina’s,” explained his wife.</p> + +<p>“Who’s Zina, anyhow?”</p> + +<p>“Oh, well, it doesn’t matter. Go on, Boris Nikolàech.”</p> + +<p>“My hand was round her waist. She pressed it to her bosom. I looked +round. There was not a soul around, not a sound abroad but for the waves +that broke on the sea shore. Dark clouds ran swiftly across the sky.</p> + +<p>“Let us go there,” she said, pointing to the wood. We made our way +across the shrub<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_147">{147}</a></span>bery. I held her in my arms; she began to breathe in a +queer, panting way.</p> + +<p>“What is it?” I asked ignorantly.</p> + +<p>“It’s ... good,” she whispered.</p> + +<p>The moon showed between the tall trees; in a few yards’ distance the sea +roared before us. Then a big, heavy drop of rain fell on my face—it was +warm; and then another.</p> + +<p>I sat on the moss, dazed, completely overtaken by the wonder of it all. +Suddenly, I heard the rustle of her movements; she had disappeared +behind a bush.</p> + +<p>“What are you doing?”</p> + +<p>There was no answer. I was rather shy about it all, for I was only +seventeen. “Don’t!”</p> + +<p>She stood behind a shrub and I could hear the rustle of the twigs, the +rustle of silk linen, the hollow sound of press-studs. “Don’t,” I said.</p> + +<p>“Yes,” she whispered.</p> + +<p>“But why? Why?” I said confusedly. “I don’t want to.”</p> + +<p>Unveiled, she stood behind me. The big<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_148">{148}</a></span> pale moon looked down upon her, +but she didn’t mind it. The dark blue wood leered from behind at her; +and the roaring sea rushed to her—and receded, rushed and receded. Drop +after drop, at long interval, the soft warm rain fell from the dark +gathering clouds. “I want, I want you to remember me,” she said softly, +“<i>always</i>, and now you can’t forget ... that the first woman you have +ever seen like that ... was <i>me</i>.” Then she crouched to the ground. She +began to sob and laugh at the same time. “What am I doing? Oh, I’m mad, +mad.... I couldn’t help it. I’ve been reading—all day long I’ve been +reading ... such a wicked book. It was awful, unbearable. These silly +people on the veranda talked such nonsense, but it wouldn’t have really +mattered what they’d said; I would’ve disagreed with them all the same. +I couldn’t bear it any longer. And then I felt I wanted—I wanted to do +as she, the woman in the book, had done to him. Besides,” she added, +“you really are rather attractive, are<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_149">{149}</a></span>n’t you? Oh, do you think it’s +going to rain properly? It didn’t in the book.”</p> + +<p>The Lieutenant ceased.</p> + +<p>“Well?” we said. “Go on.”</p> + +<p>“That’s all,” said the Lieutenant.</p> + +<p>“But what happened afterwards?” asked Vera Solomonovna.</p> + +<p>“Nothing happened.”</p> + +<p>“But <i>how</i>?” she said in a tone as though she had been wronged.</p> + +<p>“Well, that’s all there is to tell.”</p> + +<p>“But—it’s no proper story even.”</p> + +<p>“I can’t help that,” he answered almost angrily. “This is what happened, +and this is where it ended. I can’t falsify the facts to suit your +taste. We don’t, my dear Vera Solomonovna, live our lives to provide +plots for stories.”</p> + +<p>“Well, I <i>am</i> disappointed in you, Boris Nikolàech. Really! To begin so +well, so fascinatingly, and then, suddenly, to break off ... so +shamelessly! Well, really, you’re just like a boy of twelve. You have no +sense of proportion, Boris Nikolàech. None what<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_150">{150}</a></span>ever! The whole thing, +as it stands, is silly....”</p> + +<p>“You are a hopeless washout!” Finkelstein was teasing him. “Miss your +opportunity like that! My goodness! And call yourself a Don Juan at +that!”</p> + +<p>“If that’s the end of it,” said Vera Solomonovna, “there was no need to +tell the story. You had no business to begin, Boris Nikolàech. It’s +simply disappointing.”</p> + +<p>“Well,” said Lieutenant Barahmeiev, who seemed hurt, “if it comes to +disappointment, I think I have been disappointed more than anyone.”</p> + +<p>“The more fool you,” said Finkelstein.</p> + +<p>“Nothing to do with me. Didn’t I tell you it was raining?”</p> + +<p>“Raining?”</p> + +<p>“Pouring! It came on suddenly, burst upon us through the sky. A flood. +The revenge of heaven on us.”</p> + +<p>“But what’s the point of your story, anyhow?” asked Finkelstein.</p> + +<p>“The point?”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_151">{151}</a></span></p> + +<p>“Yes, the moral? Why have you been telling it?”</p> + +<p>“Oh, well, I told it to Vera Solomonovna by way of illustrating the +psychology of women, because, like Zina, she affects derision of human +passion, calls my amorous advances ‘idiotic’; but just you wait and +before the day is up—— There you are!”</p> + +<p>Vera Solomonovna rose and left the room in protest.</p> + +<p>“There,” said Finkelstein, “you’ve disgusted Vera.”</p> + +<p>“Disgusted her! Ha! ha! Don’t you believe it. Bluff! my dear fellow. All +bluff. You don’t know women.”</p> + +<p>“You’re a funny fellow, Boris Nikolàech. One can’t say you’re altogether +stupid, but there are things you simply cannot understand. Impossible to +penetrate yon marble brow of yours; it’s just like throwing a rubber +ball at a stone wall: jumps back at you every time. And you don’t know +women. To take my wife, for instance. She’s had enough of<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_152">{152}</a></span> you already; +she’s gone back to her bedroom in disgust.”</p> + +<p>“To <i>her</i> bedroom?” questioned the Lieutenant in a derisive tone of +voice.</p> + +<p>“You don’t expect her to go to yours, do you!”</p> + +<p>“Why.... Oh, well, really, my dear fellow, I can see that you don’t know +women—although you’ve got a wife. Believe me, I know a thing or two +about them. Wasn’t born yesterday. Disgusted! Ha, ha, ha! You wait till +I finish my cigarette and retire to my bedroom. You may be sure +she’s——”</p> + +<p>“Boris Nikolàech,” said Finkelstein, looking at him tranquilly through +the smoke from his cigar, “you are an optimist.”</p> + +<p>And, looking dignified and prepossessing, he sauntered over to his study +where his stock-exchange associates were already waiting for him to +resume their game of cards.</p> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_153">{153}</a></span></p> +<p>“Just a moment ...” muttered the Lieutenant, “ ...finish my +cigarette....”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_154">{154}</a><br><a id="page_155">{155}</a></span></p> +<h2><a id="TRISTAN_UND_ISOLDE">TRISTAN UND ISOLDE</a></h2> + +<p class="nind"><span class="smcap">He</span> met her at one of those numerous little dancing clubs of Vienna which +assemble regularly once a week at a particular café, where the +facilities for introduction are only equalled by the ease of admission. +When he asked where they could meet again, she told him, smiling +sweetly, where to call her up next day, and he noticed that, besides +having beautiful grey eyes with lashes like black needles and luxuriant +black hair, she had an even, gapless semi-circle of white teeth and, at +the corners of her mouth, the foreshadowing of a moustache in after +years. “And what name?”</p> + +<p>“Ask for Fräulein Isolde.”</p> + +<p>“Isolde! How romantic! Will you dance?”</p> + +<p>“I do not dance.” She smiled divinely.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_156">{156}</a></span></p> + +<p>“Well, it’s a relief, if anything. I am tired of jazz music, tired of +having to prance about every night on my flat feet on the dubious chance +of meeting a nice girl.”</p> + +<p>“I like,” she said, “to sit at home with a book.”</p> + +<p>“I can’t tell you how glad, how—”</p> + +<p>“Are you fond of Art?”</p> + +<p>“Love it!”</p> + +<p>“I will take you to the Art-Historical Museum.”</p> + +<p>“Good?”</p> + +<p>She closed the eyes with the long lashes and nodded rapidly in response. +Her brows twitched. And he loved her.</p> + +<p>Next day they met at a café in the Ring. She turned up three-quarters of +an hour after the appointed time in a black coat, black hat, and a black +frock buttoned to the neck. With dark abundant locks and pale powdered +face she sat, mysterious, smoking innumerable cigarettes. And only +asked, “What is it like in America?”</p> + +<p>“Very nice,” he said.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_157">{157}</a></span></p> + +<p>“Are you studying here?”</p> + +<p>He nodded. She smoked on.</p> + +<p>A dingy pox-marked poet came in and sat down beside them and opened the +portfolio he carried stuffed with his writings. She laid a tender hand +on his shoulder, scanning the while the pages of a story. “Yes,” she +commended. “You have hit it off all right.”</p> + +<p>They motored to the castle of Schönbrunn and sat in a summer-house by +the water, romantically, and walked in the park. He took her arm +tenderly. She was sad. “Why?” he asked.</p> + +<p>“Memories.” They walked on in silence. “We shouldn’t have come here,” he +said. She pressed his arm in mute recognition. He helped her into the +motor. “You’re so kind and tender to me. I am not used to it,” she said. +He kissed her hand in dumb adoration. “I woke up this morning and +smiled. I wondered why I was smiling, and then remembered I had met a +nice man.”</p> + +<p>“When I leave Vienna you must come abroad with me,” he said jestingly.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_158">{158}</a></span></p> + +<p>“It’s not out of the question,” she answered seriously.</p> + +<p>He talked glibly about the dearth of intellectual satisfactions. “You’re +so different from other girls. Your nature is artistic.”</p> + +<p>“I will show you round the gallery,” she said.</p> + +<p>When they went—“This is a picture over which I wept,” she told him.</p> + +<p>“This is not bad,” he said, stopping at a Rembrandt.</p> + +<p>“Yes, he has hit it off.” Her eyes filled.</p> + +<p>“What is it?”</p> + +<p>“We used to come here, Hans and I.”</p> + +<p>“And where is he now?”</p> + +<p>“Dead.”</p> + +<p>“Long?”</p> + +<p>“Nine months. We had been engaged three years. And then, suddenly, he +died—for no reason—of a mere cold. So young—twenty-two.”</p> + +<p>“But you too are so young, you have your life to live.”</p> + +<p>“It’s all in the past.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_159">{159}</a></span></p> + +<p>“No, no! And you’re so beautiful.”</p> + +<p>“I will show you my big picture.”</p> + +<p>He waited in the motor while she ran upstairs to the apartment to fetch +it.</p> + +<p>“Wonderful!” he commented.</p> + +<p>“Now I must rush back, father is waiting. And you can have the picture +of me till we meet again to-morrow.”</p> + +<p>But she stepped inside and they went for another ride with the picture. +“Where to?” asked the man.</p> + +<p>“Round and round,” she said. She crossed her legs, the skirt slipping up +above her knees, and lit a cigarette. And suddenly he leaned over to her +and kissed her on the mouth.</p> + +<p>“Tut-tut-tut—You mustn’t kiss. Wait till I kiss you.”</p> + +<p>“I <i>have</i> waited,” he answered, “and I’m still waiting, and, by God! I +can’t wait any longer” (with the taxi-meter piling up, he thought, +piling up all the time while we wait, and the chauffeur the only one to +gain by it.)</p> + +<p>“This is the Prater,” she said.</p> + +<p>“Where to?” asked the taxi-man.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_160">{160}</a></span></p> + +<p>“Round and round,” he said dismally.</p> + +<p>She burst out laughing. “You said this so funnily!” She gave him a +furtive kiss on the lips. “What is your name?”</p> + +<p>“I have a silly name. I’m called Ebenezer.”</p> + +<p>“It is—rather silly.”</p> + +<p>“Well, you needn’t call me by it. You can invent another name for me.”</p> + +<p>She considered. “Peter,” she said.</p> + +<p>“All right—Peter.”</p> + +<p>When she fell ill he sent her flowers, and every day she sent a +message—that she was a little better, or a little worse. Then she came +again to the café. “Beautiful, beautiful flowers! I was breathless when +I saw them. And so much!”</p> + +<p>He buried his face in her hands, “Beautiful girl ... beautiful flowers. +Wonderful when I think: I’ve been seeking, all these months, all these +years I’ve been seeking, and now I have found.”</p> + +<p>“I too. For nine months I was alone. Now when I come to the café, the +waiter says con<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_161">{161}</a></span>fidentially: ‘The gentleman is already here.’ One feels +one has somebody.”</p> + +<p>“While you were ill, when I used to come here by myself, the waitress +looked at me with sad eyes, as if she thought you’d left me or we had +broken it off. I notice we’ve become privileged guests and are treated +accordingly.”</p> + +<p>She smiled—so sweetly and intimately, and, watching him, laughed. He +looked up from his cup. “I must laugh,” she said, “at the way you +scratch the last drop of sugar out of the cup.” He laughed too. She was +delightful. “I’ve just come back from Adolf’s bedside,” she remarked.</p> + +<p>“And who is Adolf?”</p> + +<p>“My fiancé.”</p> + +<p>“This is new to me.”</p> + +<p>“At least he thinks he is my fiancé.”</p> + +<p>“And you don’t think so.”</p> + +<p>“No.”</p> + +<p>“This is a relief.”</p> + +<p>“He is dying now.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_162">{162}</a></span></p> + +<p>“Oh—is he?” And secretly he thought: This is a relief. “What does he +do?”</p> + +<p>“He is a doctor—venereal and skin diseases. But he is very tender and +aesthetic and plays the piano wonderfully—Schumann and Chopin. He says +he will let me live as I like and love whom I like, that he will never +touch me, and only wants to be allowed to marry me and to live by my +side.”</p> + +<p>When they came out of the café, it was a sunny afternoon. “Come, I’ll +show you where I live,” he said, and they made their way to Am Hof—the +old-fashioned square of Vienna where he had rooms. She took off her hat +and used his comb and sat down at his writing-table. “It must be nice to +live like that. If I were you I would give myself up to my work, and +never tie myself up with any woman.”</p> + +<p>“How you understand me! Other women are so conventional and +self-seeking. But you—you are so delightfully free and easy, so unusual +and romantic!”</p> + +<p>She sat in his chair, and suddenly sleep<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_163">{163}</a></span> overcame her. “I want to lie +down.” She lay down on his bed, and he sat down beside her. “I feel like +a faithful old dog sitting at your feet and seeing that you come to no +harm.” She gave him her hand, which he pressed to his lips. He looked at +her legs in the glossy silk stockings, the seductive shoe. Warm, +yielding curves, unexplored mysteries. And he said, “After all this +seeking, to feel you have found ... at last. It’s not—no, not your +face; it’s....” He was gently pressing her knee; she made an involuntary +attempt to disengage it. “ ... your soul,” he said—and she left it. +“I’m content: I really need nothing. Not by a word would I suggest or +precipitate the moment.... Not till you yourself ... an offering, a +priceless gift.” She pressed his hand to her heart. “Not even then. I’m +content, I need nothing.” She touched his brow silently with her lips.</p> + +<p>“Yes?” he asked, suddenly crushing her in his arms. “Yes?”</p> + +<p>She closed her eyes with the lashes like<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_164">{164}</a></span> black needles, nodding rapidly +several times. “Pull down the blinds.”</p> + +<p>“Oh, I am grateful! Tristan and Isolde.... <i>Nacht der Liebe</i>....” He was +whistling.</p> + +<p>“Is the door locked?”</p> + +<p>“I’ll lock it for you—do anything for you.” Of sheer relief, he felt +like cracking cheap jokes.</p> + +<p>“What is the time?”</p> + +<p>“It’s four o’clock in the afternoon—the time people here take their 5 +o’clock tea.” The yellow blinds drew to and fro in the breeze. Outside +in the sunny square the women were selling oranges and flowers. Upstairs +somebody began playing the piano. “This is Schumann,” she said. “Adolf +plays this.” The blinds still swayed gently, gently, and they could feel +the breeze on their burning cheeks. She knitted her brows. “What are you +thinking?” he asked.</p> + +<p>“Adolf is waiting for me. I’ve neglected supper for father.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_165">{165}</a></span></p> + +<p>He turned on the switch. “No, no, I am ashamed of the light.”</p> + +<p>It was black night when they went out. Stepping into the taxicab at the +door, she gave her address. “You shouldn’t have told him where you live +before that old caretaker woman. You never can tell.”</p> + +<p>“I take full responsibility for what I do and I am prepared to face the +consequences of my acts, and I have nothing to be ashamed of,” she said. +He remembered the prudish cowardly attitude of his own forget-me-not +eyed sisters, his mother, his maidenly aunts. “You wonderful girl!” he +exclaimed. He felt grateful, so that he did not even mind how much he +had to pay for the taxi. She scanned his face and his figure, and he +instantly looked at his gloves. “They are filthy, I know.”</p> + +<p>“Give them to me, I will wash them for you.”</p> + +<p>“No, no, why should you?”</p> + +<p>“The maid will wash them.”</p> + +<p>“Very well, then.”</p> + +<p>The taxicab pulled up at her house door.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_166">{166}</a></span> “Just see me upstairs. It’s so +dark.” She took hold of his arm and with a sure quick step ran up the +stairs, while he fumbled uncertainly with his feet. She gave him a kiss +in the dark, which missed the mark, handed him the house door key, +begged him for the sake of love not to make a noise—and was gone. He +felt his way carefully by the chalk walk, dirtying his coat and +hands—and presently lost himself. For an hour he fumbled about in the +dark, groping his way down the steps time without end, only to find +himself at the end of each attempt in the coal cellar. Now I’ve made a +noise, he thought, the caretaker will come out, call the police and have +me arrested. I’m a lost man. When, having given up all hope, suddenly he +saw a shimmering of light, then a new turning, the real stairs—and he +was saved. The Votive Church as he went home seemed made of lace: the +tall twin towers, like a prayer, strained heavenward in the blue night. +He sat down on a bench and thought of her.</p> + +<p>He was more than usually courteous to the<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_167">{167}</a></span> old caretaker woman. “A +pretty girl, I call her,” she said, opening the heavy outer door for +him, while he paid the customary “lockout money.” “Is she your bride?”</p> + +<p>He nodded.</p> + +<p>“Ah, well, young men have luck. But I’m not one to let the cat out of +the bag.”</p> + +<p>He fumbled in his pockets.</p> + +<p>“Thank you.—I am known to be discreet. Baron Waldmeyer who lived here +nine months ago also used to bring his bride up to his rooms, regularly +three times a week you might say. A pretty girl she was, too, Lina +Holz—you know the chemist’s daughter across the way. The white house +opposite. That’s right. Never a word to anybody. God beware! They were +very satisfied with me. ‘Frau Krampf,’ he used to say to me, ‘I can rely +on you.’”</p> + +<p>Next day they were hurrying in the train into the country. “I too am +glad we’re friends,” she said. “My family is nothing to me. Mother died +when I was fourteen. She was so small I used to take her on my lap.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_168">{168}</a></span> My +sister married rich, but she can’t do anything decently. She is such a +snob—hides the fact that we are Jews. She will give father a new +suit—or rather says she will—and all so haughtily, you know, so +condescendingly, will talk so much about it and in the long run won’t +buy him anything and will even borrow money from him in the end. She +gives me things occasionally, or rather says she will and doesn’t. But +that which is inside one she doesn’t know.”</p> + +<p>“Quite so.”</p> + +<p>Yet he had discovered that Isolde, despite her intellectual pretensions, +was as fond of cabarets and dancing halls as any other child of +pleasure-loving Vienna. And she was not content with going to one +cabaret during a night, but from the one immediately wanted to go on to +another, and from that to a third—in all respects similar to the first.</p> + +<p>“I’m different,” she said. “Already as a child we had no points of +contact. My sister would go out on the Korso to be stared at by men, +while I sought my friends among writers<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_169">{169}</a></span> and artists, or went off by +myself to the Opera and tried to find my real ‘I’ in the <i>Walküre</i>, the +<i>Ring</i>, the <i>Meistersinger</i>, in <i>Tristan und Isolde</i>.”</p> + +<p>“Very becoming for one named Isolde! If one didn’t know you were above +such cheap romanticism, one would almost suspect you gave yourself that +name.”</p> + +<p>She laughed faintly.</p> + +<p>“Why—<i>did</i> you?”</p> + +<p>She closed her eyes and nodded rapidly.</p> + +<p>“How clever of you!” He kissed her hand.</p> + +<p>“My real name is Rebecca.”</p> + +<p>“Let’s forget that it is. We’ll go to the Opera together—to <i>Tristan</i>. +A good performance here, isn’t it?”</p> + +<p>She closed her eyes and nodded rapidly, significantly. “I’ll bring the +complete musical score. I have the entire <i>partitura</i> and we can follow +it.”</p> + +<p>“By God! we’ll follow it!” said he, though he was quite unable to read +music.</p> + +<p>At the Opera, all the liveried attendants<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_170">{170}</a></span> seemed to know her. “Ah, +Fräulein Isolde, it’s good to see you again!”</p> + +<p>“It’s the first time that I am here since (her eyes filled)—his death.” +And she ushered him upstairs through drafty corridors with the air of a +proprietress showing a visitor round the premises. “Here Hans and I used +to sit. Or, when we had little money, we stood over there or sat on the +steps.”</p> + +<p>“A fine Opera House.”</p> + +<p>“Yes, this is my temple.”</p> + +<p>She carried an enormous book—the complete musical score of the piece, +and they sat down and he read the biographical note, while the orchestra +enclosure gradually filled and the executants began tuning up their +instruments.</p> + +<p>“Because I have never known love in real life I want now to realise it +in music.” Thus Wagner one day wrote to Liszt. “I have jotted down in my +head a <i>Tristan und Isolde</i>, the simplest but the most full-blooded of +musical conceptions: with the black flag which flies<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_171">{171}</a></span> at the end I then +want to cover myself and to—die.”</p> + +<p>There was a meagre trickling of applause: the conductor threaded his way +to his seat, passed his hand over the page under the green-shaded lamp, +raised the <i>bâton</i>, and began. They sat close together, the Prelude with +its high-stepping, long-striding sinuous tentacles groping after new +resting-places, far out of reach, yet working out its salvation surely +and steadily, swelling and widening, till—the conductor shaking his +locks and his fists—the brass blared its compelling response; and, in a +tide of regaining tranquillity, the Prelude gradually evened itself out +to the level at which it began, and the curtains parted, revealing the +ship. She followed the score with a preoccupied air, now and then +nodding her head with that significant look of critical recognition; but +when he asked for the place they were at she never could find it and +began turning the pages backward and forward, six at a time and in vain. +And when, in the second act, King Marke’s hunting horns died<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_172">{172}</a></span> away and +the cast-down torch went out, to a heart-sinking, intolerably dulcet +cadence, and the night was all astir, and Tristan staggered to Isolde, +and the great theatre plunged into the most passionately voluptuous +music that has ever been, then they pressed each other’s fingers more +tightly and their nerves throbbed in unison—until King Marke, returning +at a moment least desired from the hunt, surprised the twain. In this +passionate music, more truly voluptuous than the grosser senses of man +can divine, there lies concealed a certain pledge: a foretaste, maybe, +of a reality awaiting us, or one we needs must forego, wrenched from a +far world by a genius, for us to partake of before we go under.</p> + +<p>In the interval he read more of the biography. Wagner, while working on +<i>Siegfried</i>, wrote to a friend: “My musical sensibility already sways +far beyond it—thither where my mood belongs: into the realm of +melancholy.” It was his love for Mathilde Wesendonck—a love of denial +for both—which determined the work. “That I have written<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_173">{173}</a></span> Tristan I +thank you out of my deepest soul into all eternity.” Thus he writes to +her three years after completion. It has been said that the musical +drama is unreal because the love in it is the artificial outcome of the +love potion given to Tristan and Isolde during the voyage instead of the +death drink they bargained for. But the potion, of course, is a symbol. +Love was latent in them, but could not face the light of day: it is the +belief in the certainty of their death held for them in the cup which +works the love miracle. Only in death can they give each other. But of +that “realm of stilled longings” they had been cheated. He was +there—<i>Der öde Tag!</i> And now the third and last act—the empty sea, the +hollow day, the dreary convalescence, with the black flag already flying +over their destinies. They sat and listened to the sundown glow now +sensible in the familiar bars of this greatest of love-tragedies—as it +had always been.</p> + +<p>The measured strains of the <i>Liebestod</i> had grown quicker and more +passionate; Isolde,<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_174">{174}</a></span> wrenching her hands, was racing along with the +orchestra which, at this turn, was taking the melody from her, easily, +in rapidly rising voluptuous strains, climbing, slipping, climbing anew, +rapidly, rapidly, to a climax, now, now.... The conductor, forgetting +his quasi-reticent attitude, rose in his seat and with a sweep of his +stick commanding one hundred and twenty-six instruments, drowned her top +notes in a mighty volume of rapturous sound. But she did not mind. Nor +did any one mind. On that plane of emotion one does not mind: one felt +one wanted to go home, cover oneself with the black flag—and die....</p> + +<p>They made their way past the drafty swinging doors into the lighted +streets and stood a while in the crowded Opernring, Peter taking her +arm. He was elated. He tried to whistle bits he remembered, but she +stopped him with a frown. In the café she seemed moody and irritable. +“<i>Must</i> you always scratch the cup out?”</p> + +<p>“I feel I am wasting my life if I don’t.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_175">{175}</a></span></p> + +<p>“Why don’t you lick it out with your tongue?”</p> + +<p>“What is the matter?”</p> + +<p>“I must talk to you very seriously.”</p> + +<p>“Well?”</p> + +<p>“Another day—to-morrow.”</p> + +<p>He would have died of anxiety if he had to wait till to-morrow. +“To-night or not at all.”</p> + +<p>“About our—relation. I want to have it out with you. I don’t want you +to be merely playing with me and then, when it suits you, drop me.” They +were going down the teeming Kärntnerstrasse and bent their way into the +Graben, walking up the famous Korso. “Here is father’s jeweller’s shop.”</p> + +<p>“What’s all this nonsense?” he asked peremptorily.</p> + +<p>“Father’s been bullying me. No money to give me. Business going to ruin. +No one buying jewelry nowadays. ‘<i>Ein Skandal!</i> You’re twenty-two and I, +a man of eighty-six, have to go on supporting you!’ and so on, and so +forth. My brother-in-law sits and talks to my father and tells him I +ought to get mar<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_176">{176}</a></span>ried. And father curses me: ‘Again you’ve been out all +night. A good bride and no mistake, Adolf sitting and waiting for you +here all the evening!’ Of course, he is right in a way. But I never +promised definitely to Adolf. I tell him, ‘Adolf, I value your feeling +for me, and if no one better crops up I will marry you in the end.’ So +he sits in our drawing-room all evening after leaving the venereal +disease hospital, waiting for me and playing Chopin.”</p> + +<p>Peter thought of what he might say, but couldn’t say much. “Damn him!” +he said.</p> + +<p>“And I mean—I don’t want to be playing ducks and drakes with Adolf, who +is a man of fine feeling—”</p> + +<p>“But hasn’t he died? He was going to.”</p> + +<p>“He wasn’t a bit. He only put himself to bed so as to get me to come and +sit at his bedside and hold his hand. And what I mean is, a man has a +love affair, then another, a third, a fourth, and is only looked up to, +even by women. But a girl has to think.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_177">{177}</a></span></p> + +<p>“Is there—is there—well, you know what I mean?”</p> + +<p>“No, there isn’t. All the same—”</p> + +<p>“But why say it like that?”</p> + +<p>“You should have thought of saying it yourself. I waited long enough.”</p> + +<p>“But why in the world did you make out you were +unconventional—romantic—God knows what—unlike other women? Why did +you?”</p> + +<p>“I thought you expected it.”</p> + +<p>Damned shameless lie, he thought; and said aloud:</p> + +<p>“This would not appear to correspond with the facts. Secretly you were +out for marriage from the start and only pretended—don’t I see it +now!—but all the time you were on the hunt for a husband.”</p> + +<p>“You needn’t flatter yourself. I’m good-looking enough to marry any time +I want to. And such birds as you I can find on every bush.”</p> + +<p>“Thank you.”</p> + +<p>They had reached her house. “Well, am I<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_178">{178}</a></span> to ring you up to-morrow as +usual?” Her voice was not friendly.</p> + +<p>“As usual,” he said, and thought: As per usual, business as usual. But +the irony of using such decrepit war slang would be lost on her. That +was the worst of it all: they hadn’t really many points of contact. And +making the most of the few they had, he pressed forward to kiss her.</p> + +<p>“No.”</p> + +<p>He shrugged his shoulders, raised his hat and went. He went by the +familiar Kolowatring that he had paced no end of times before—in other, +happier days. How far away they seemed now!</p> + +<p>Next day at two she did not call him up. At three she had not called him +up. By five his anxiety had reached seething point. She would not call +him up. She would never call him up. He was lost—damned. In all Vienna +he could not find a place for himself. He sat and waited, hoping, +doubting. And then, together with her friends, she came, as if not +noticing him, and was about to sit down<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_179">{179}</a></span> at a table, when he went after +her and spoke. She turned round, abashed. “You are deadly pale,” he +said. “Are you frightened, or what?”</p> + +<p>“No. But I didn’t expect to meet you here.”</p> + +<p>“And I waited—five hours. God, how I suffered!”</p> + +<p>She looked round at him to see if it was true. His face was haggard. She +was not unkind to him, yet took little notice of him, only now and then, +after the performance of an item turning to him with a—“Quite good, +wasn’t it?”</p> + +<p>“Very good!” He was happy—come what might—for the abating of his +erewhile suffering. He begged for an appointment next day and obtained +one, and they lunched together at a freshly painted table of the +restaurant in the Volksgarten. The foliage was breaking out and +everywhere along the Ring the cafés were putting out their little +“gardens.” He glanced at her legs in the flesh-coloured stockings. How +romantically realis<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_180">{180}</a></span>tic—as if straight from Maupassant! he thought. And +took her hand. She withdrew it. He took it again. “Don’t touch me.”</p> + +<p>“Why not?”</p> + +<p>“I can’t.”</p> + +<p>He remembered a cabaret singer in Vienna who sang in a feeble hoarse +voice: “I can’t, I can’t, I’m weak on the chest,” and then immediately +after in a voice that would put brass trumpets to shame, a voice so +powerful that it made the window panes rattle—“I CAN’T, I CAN’T, I’M +WEAK ON THE CHEST!!!” And he asked, “What do you mean ‘I can’t’? You’re +not weak on the chest?”</p> + +<p>She did not laugh. “Something has broken within me—and I don’t know if +it can ever be put right.”</p> + +<p>“Then we must set about mending it.”</p> + +<p>“There is a gulf, the bridge has been broken. I can never come back. I +can’t help it. I’ve lost all feeling for you.”</p> + +<p>“But, my darling, we’re mending it, aren’t we?”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_181">{181}</a></span></p> + +<p>“It can never be mended.”</p> + +<p>How charmingly she walked, with feet a little outward and swaying +slightly from the hips. There was something of the awkward school girl +about her. Would she ever come back?</p> + +<p>But one day, as the scent of jasmine hovered in the air and he gently +passed his hand over her own and said, “My love, come back to me,” she +closed her eyes with the lashes like black needles and nodded rapidly.</p> + +<p>The bridge was mended.</p> + +<p>His emotion of gratitude ran to kissing. “Can’t you sit still?” she +admonished him.</p> + +<p>“But you are mine. Don’t you want to be?”</p> + +<p>“Not in that way.” <i>Her</i> love ran to emotion.</p> + +<p>“In that way. Or I feel I am wasting my time.”</p> + +<p>“Ach!” she waived him aside like a fly. Then angrily, wearily: “Pull +down the blinds!” She began to unhook her high collar at the neck. “Is +the door locked at least?”</p> + +<p>He smiled reassuringly. “I’ve taken requi<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_182">{182}</a></span>site steps against the +possibility of King Marke appearing when he is least wanted.”</p> + +<p>He held her in his arms, and sang: “You Tristan, I Isolde, no more +Tristan!...”</p> + +<p>“Shut up!”</p> + +<p>“There is little poetry in you.”</p> + +<p>“And you are a beast.”</p> + +<p>“Thank you.” And looking at her, drinking her in with his eyes, he +thought, “Poor Richard Wagner! Who had never known such love as this!”</p> + +<p>He thought so. He thought so a long time, when she attracted his +attention. “What do you want to do?”</p> + +<p>“Go home.”</p> + +<p>“No-o.”</p> + +<p>“No-o!” she mimicked him angrily. “You’re like that—never enough of a +good thing—lick the sugar out of the bottom of the cup when there’s +nothing left.”</p> + +<p>“Ha-ha!”</p> + +<p>“Nothing to laugh at.”</p> + +<p>He sang: “<i>Der öde Tag!</i>”</p> + +<p>He went to the adjoining room. When he<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_183">{183}</a></span> returned she had her coat on and +was powdering her face before the mirror. As they were leaving, “Put the +light out,” she said. At the café she read the paper and hardly spoke to +him. He looked at his associate in sin. Her face was still beautiful. +Sin sat lightly upon her. He remembered afterward how they sat in the +taxicab—how it rained outside. She only said, “Oh, yes, I’ve still got +your gloves. You will get them to-morrow.” At the gate she gave him her +hand, looked into his eyes, very kindly, he noticed, and said—“Peter, +farewell.”</p> + +<p>“Good-bye. Matches!” he cried after her.</p> + +<p>“Don’t want any.”</p> + +<p>Walking home, he remembered her words and the strangeness of the +“farewell” dawned upon him. Returning, he found a note on the table +which he had not perceived as they went out. On the back of a slip +“Rimless Stockings. Best Quality” he read: “We shall never see each +other again. I <i>cannot</i>. Isolde.”</p> + +<p>And then came a letter.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_184">{184}</a></span></p> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>“Peter, I have not much to tell you, but I have the feeling that +you are still waiting for something. Somehow a cleft has arisen +between us, which can never be bridged. Is it the fulfilment in us, +was this giving one’s self also the end? I do not know, but it may +well be so.</p> + +<p>“In me there is no mourning, not a shimmer of disappointment, no +reproach either for you or for me. And now I know why so long I +could not find any words for you.</p> + +<p>“And so farewell, Peter, I wish you the best of luck in all the +coming years.</p> + +<p class="r"> +“<span class="smcap">Isolde.</span>”<br> +</p></div> + +<p>It was Easter. He strolled about by himself. When he perceived a black +hat and flesh-coloured stockings, he invariably thought it was she. And +the town was setting itself for the spring; the gardens, the freshly +painted tables and chairs beckoned invitingly. He remembered how he had +felt lost and damned when she had not telephoned to him one day, and now +felt doubly lost—doubly damned. What sort of thing was life? What sort +of creature was man? Daunted by tiny reverses, already squirming like a +worm at a woma<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_185">{185}</a></span>n’s feet. There he was, just like Adolf, he who had been +so sure of himself, supplicating for mercy, begging her for a morsel of +bread. He strolled all alone about the town, waited at her gate, sat in +the garden where (he remembered her telling him, though it had scarcely +interested him at the time) she had played as a child. There were rows +of seats lined with mothers and nurses. A little boy in the park was +kicking a ball. A nice little fellow, he thought, but he’ll probably +grow up to be a blackguard. Suddenly he saw her sitting with her +friends. A hot pang shot through his heart. She spoke to him pleasantly +but dispassionately. “How are you, Peter? How is life treating you?”</p> + +<p>“Rottenly.”</p> + +<p>When he had a chance to speak to her alone he supplicated for an +interview.</p> + +<p>“Child, it’s no use,” she said wearily.</p> + +<p>“Yes, yes, a quarter of an hour—eye to eye—to discuss matters—to talk +things over.”</p> + +<p>“All right then, to-night at 8.30.”</p> + +<p>When they did meet—at 9.30—he found<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_186">{186}</a></span> that he had nothing to discuss, +nothing to talk over. He only wanted her, craved for her physical beauty +with all the strength of his physical being. She knew a subtler passion +that hovered in her breast and was more like music, that went out in +long curves and found no resting-places. And to her he had been part of +that elusive dream. “Forgive me, Isolde, but really it’s your fault. You +put it all so clumsily. Marriage. Yes. Even so, what can I do now?”</p> + +<p>At the word marriage her eyes lit up and a smile played on her face.</p> + +<p>“What can I say now? I can’t say: Isolde, marry me. I perfectly +understand you can’t say—your pride won’t allow you to say, yes.”</p> + +<p>“I’ll go back to my memories. I knew I should have to be alone. I will +never have another like Hans.”</p> + +<p>“I know it’s the bitter lot of those to follow him to fare badly by +comparison. Alas! no live virtue stands the ghost of a chance at the +side of retrospective illusion.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_187">{187}</a></span></p> + +<p>She looked at him sharply. “The comparison does not arise. I didn’t +<i>love</i> you.”</p> + +<p>“But then why, may I ask—yes, precisely, why—?”</p> + +<p>“Because I thought you expected it.”</p> + +<p>“Look here. Listen. I want to tell you something.”</p> + +<p>“Better hold your tongue.”</p> + +<p>“I expect—” it was a desperate step—“yes, I expect you to marry me.”</p> + +<p>Her face lit up at the word. She played with the idea. “I don’t +deny”—she puffed at a cigarette—“that it would have certain immediate +advantages. Father was carrying on again this morning. ‘<i>Ein Skandal!</i> +I, an old man with one foot in the grave, have to keep you.’ ‘What do +you want me to do?’ I cried at last. ‘You never taught me a thing. All +the shops and offices are reducing their staff. Do you want me to go on +the streets?’ He slapped my face. I went to my room and cried. Later he +came to me. He was sorry. ‘I’d like to see you settled before I close my +eyes.’ He’d be glad, and I’d be glad to make<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_188">{188}</a></span> him happy. Let me see, I’d +have a little money if I married—not much, still a trifle.”</p> + +<p>“Who from?”</p> + +<p>“My brother-in-law promised. Then there are silver things—knives and +forks, solid silver—not much, but still something.”</p> + +<p><i>Der öde Tag!</i></p> + +<p>“Father might be prevailed upon to give something from his shop. Then +furniture—a bedstead—two chairs. My sister has taken the mattress, +though it didn’t belong to her. My mother left it to me.”</p> + +<p>The vulgarity of it—things—cupboards—carpets—meddling relations. How +dismal was our human fate! He felt that one had but to set one’s ship +towards romance, to realise how fruitless were one’s hopes and how soon +frustrated! She thought of her father, of the end of squalor and deceit, +the joy of her brother-in-law, her own home, children, wealth. “But—” +she scarcely meant it—“but I can’t. It’s not honest towards you for me +to accept a solution for reasons of convenience only.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_189">{189}</a></span></p> + +<p>“So you can’t?” He was almost relieved.</p> + +<p>“I can’t.”</p> + +<p>All the misery and anguish of his loneliness, his intolerable loneliness +dawned upon him. He had spent a week without her. He knew what it was +like. “Come, it really looks as though you didn’t want to make me happy +for my own sake!”</p> + +<p>“Well, if you are sure that it will make you happy.”</p> + +<p>He was not sure. (He was sure of the contrary.) He drank his cup to the +bottom and then took the spoon and licked off the sugar, while she +watched him critically. And he thought: She won’t let me drink my coffee +as I like. She won’t let me do anything as I like. I’m a lost man.</p> + +<p>She said, “We must look at it sensibly. We both will have our +advantages. You will be proud of showing me to your people and friends, +while I shall be doing things for you at home.” He looked at her: she +was too small and when she walked she waddled like a duck. Indeed, what +would his sisters think<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_190">{190}</a></span> of it? He pictured her at forty, at fifty, +sixty and seventy, while he pictured himself all the while at +twenty-five. She complained a good deal of her father, but if the old +man found fault with her it was, of course, with good cause. “I’ll mend +this for you,” she would say—and never did. “I must visit Hans’s grave +to-morrow”—but she went to a dance instead. He recalled that she had +not yet returned his gloves—after keeping them two months!</p> + +<p>“But why are you looking so wretchedly sad? I’ve not accepted you yet.”</p> + +<p>“Not a bit.” He imagined his arrival with his dark bride in the United +States, their appearing before his proud “one hundred per cent. +American” mother, the astonishment of his slim forget-me-not eyed +sisters, the curve of their raised brows.</p> + +<p>“If I married—” and she looked at him out of the corner of the eye to +see how he took it, “we’d have separate bedrooms.”</p> + +<p>He smiled faintly. It was past a joke.</p> + +<p>“Cheer up. You look as though somebody<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_191">{191}</a></span> has done you out of your money. +I can see it won’t do. You’re so cold, so calculating, so concentrated +on yourself. I am sure I could never marry you. I was merely joking.”</p> + +<p>“No joke, I meant it. It’s settled—you’re my bride now and I’m your +blooming bridegroom.”</p> + +<p>“Your first experience?”</p> + +<p>“Yes. I feel like a fool.”</p> + +<p>“Thank you,” she smiled. “It’s my second.” She looked at her hands. “May +I keep Hans’s ring?”</p> + +<p>“Yes,” he said gloomily. Hans. Fritz. Grete. Nauseating relations. +They’ll want to congratulate him, see the ring, touch it, maybe—all the +dark Jewish brood, dentists, skin-disease doctors, stock-exchange +frequenters. A nosing father—perhaps suggesting purchasing the +engagement ring at his own shop, offering a wedding ring “cheap” in +advance, or questioning the value of it if bought elsewhere—belittling +the outlay—pooh-poohing expense. It was unbearable.</p> + +<p>“Do your people speak German?”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_192">{192}</a></span></p> + +<p>He shook his head abjectly.</p> + +<p>“Then you must teach me English.”</p> + +<p>“I’ll try.” He pictured her dumbness, her being tied to him night and +day, his mother and sisters asking her easy simple questions: +“How—do—you—like—America?” and her asking back: “Please?” every +time. A bewildered aunt of his struggling with a dictionary to make +herself understood. Isolde smiling propitiatorily at his mother, trying +to curry favour with her, to appear the tender wife; and he the heavy +father to their common children.</p> + +<p>“You needn’t look so unhappy. I haven’t accepted you yet.”</p> + +<p>“It’s one o’clock, the café’s closing,” he said peremptorily, and called +to the waiter: “Herr Ober! Zalen!—Yes or no?”</p> + +<p>She did not answer, but smiled shyly. He took an empty cigarette box, +unscrewed his fountain-pen, and wrote:</p> + +<p>“?”</p> + +<p>She took the fountain-pen from him and wrote:</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_193">{193}</a></span></p> + +<p>“!”</p> + +<p>He quibbled: “Is that an affirmative or perhaps an equally determined +negative?”</p> + +<p>She did not answer. He helped her on with her coat and while he was +putting on his own, slowly, pensively she was collecting her things into +the bag: the powder-puff, the lip stick, the remaining cigarettes. He +watched her eagerly. If she took the cigarette box with his “?” and her +“!” it meant—he knew what it meant. It meant that in after years she +would be saying: “On this empty cigarette box my husband once proposed +marriage to me.” She would say it, a grey-haired gouty old woman, with a +deep black moustache and a beard, lying in bed with one complaint or +another, in a bonnet, her teeth in the glass at her side. She would say +it to their children, little hairy black Jews creeping about everywhere: +to her children’s children; and all those long years he’d be tied to +her. Her gaze lingered on the cigarette box, and her thoughts, from this +chance <i>memento</i> of a romantic proposal swayed to that which it meant, +her new life in<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_194">{194}</a></span> America, her newly-gained freedom, the long-awaited +salvation. But she noticed his searching critical look and did not take +the <i>memento</i>.</p> + +<p>“Yes or no, for the last time?”</p> + +<p>They were moving to the door into the street, where the rain was +beginning to dribble, and stood still on the pavement.</p> + +<p>She shook her head, and he made a movement to go. She wanted to say +something to hold him back. “Here are your—your gloves, Peter.” And +tears seemed to come to her eyes.</p> + +<p>He took them as a sign, pressed her hand and went his way hurriedly. At +the corner a gust of wind blew the rain against his face and tried for +his hat. He did not know what he had done, why he had done it, or what +had been done to him. He only knew he wanted to go home, cover himself +with the black flag—and die.</p> + +<hr class="full"> +<div style='text-align:center'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 77496 ***</div> +</body> +</html> diff --git a/77496-h/images/colophon.png b/77496-h/images/colophon.png Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..cd96283 --- /dev/null +++ b/77496-h/images/colophon.png diff --git a/77496-h/images/cover.jpg b/77496-h/images/cover.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..6fae789 --- /dev/null +++ b/77496-h/images/cover.jpg diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6c72794 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This book, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. 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