IV
George stood by the window. The stone backs of the bearded giants who bore on their powerful arms the battered armorial bearings of a long-past race were arched just beneath him. Straight opposite, out of the darkness of ancient houses the steps crept up to the door of the old grey church which loomed amid the falling flakes of snow as though behind a moving curtain. The light of a street lamp on the square shone palely through the waning daylight. The snowy street beneath, which, though centrally situated, was remote from all bustle, was even quieter than usual on this holiday afternoon, and George felt once more, as indeed he always did when he ascended the broad staircase of the old palace that had been transformed into an apartment house, and stepped into the spacious room with its low-arched ceiling, that he was escaping from his usual world and had entered the other half of his wonderful double life.
He heard a key grating in the door and turned round. Anna came in. George clasped her ecstatically in his arms, and kissed her on the forehead and mouth. Her dark-blue jacket, her broad-rimmed hat, her fur boa were all covered with snow.
"You have been working then," said Anna, as she took off her things and pointed to the table where music paper with writing on it lay close to the green-shaded lamp.
"I have just looked through the quintette, the first movement, there is still a lot to do to it."
"But it will be extraordinarily fine then."
"We'll hope so. Do you come from home, Anna?"
"No, from Bittner's."
"What, to-day, Sunday?"
"Yes, the two girls have got a lot behind-hand through the measles, and that has to be made up. I am very pleased too, for money reasons for one thing."
"Making your fortune!"
"And then one escapes for an hour or two at any rate from the happy home."
"Yes," said George, put Anna's boa over the back of a chair and stroked the fur nervously with his fingers. Anna's remark, in which he could detect a gentle reproach, as it were, a reproach too which he had heard before, gave him an unpleasant feeling. She sat down on the sofa, put her hands on her temples, stroked her dark blonde wavy hair backwards and looked at George with a smile. He stood leaning on the chest of drawers, with both hands in his jacket pocket, and began to tell her of the previous evening, which he had spent with Guido and his violinist. The young lady had, at the Count's wish, been for some weeks taking instruction in the Catholic religion with the confessor of an Arch-duchess; she, on her side, made Guido read Nietzsche and Ibsen. But according to George's account the only result of this course of study which one could report so far was that the Count had developed the habit of nicknaming his Mistress "the Rattenmamsell," after that wonderful character out of Little Eyolf.
Anna had nothing very bright to communicate about her last evening. They had had visitors. "First," Anna told him, "my mother's two cousins, then an office friend of my father's to play tarok. Even Josef was domesticated for once and lay on the sofa from three to five. Then his latest pal, Herr Jalaudek, who paid me quite a lot of attention."
"Really, really."
"He was fascinating. I'll just tell you: a violet cravat with yellow spots which puts yours quite into the shade. He paid me the honour too of suggesting that I should help him in a so-called charity-performance at the 'Wild Man,' for the benefit of the Wahringer Church Building Society."
"Of course you accepted?"
"I excused myself on account of my lack of voice and want of religious feeling."
"So far as the voice is concerned...."
She interrupted him. "No, George," she said lightly, "I have given up that hope at last."
He looked at her and tried to read her glance, but it remained clear and free. The organ from the church sounded softly and dully.
"Right," said George, "I have brought you the ticket for to-morrow's 'Carmen.'"
"Thanks very much," she answered, and took the card. "Are you going too, dear?"
"Yes, I have a box in the third tier, and I have asked Bermann to come. I am taking the music with me, as I did the other day at Lohengrin, and I shall practise conducting again. At the back, of course. You can have no idea what you learn that way. I should like to make a suggestion," he added hesitatingly. "Won't you come and have supper somewhere with me and Bermann after the theatre?"
She was silent.
He continued: "I should really like it if you got to know him better. With all his faults he is an interesting fellow and...."
"I am not a Rattenmamsell," she interrupted sharply, while her face immediately assumed its stiff conventional expression.
George compressed the corners of his mouth. "That doesn't apply to me, my dear child. There are many points of difference between Guido and me. But as you like." He walked up and down the room.
She remained sitting on the ottoman. "So you are going to Ehrenbergs' this evening?" she asked.
"You know I am. I have already refused twice recently, and I couldn't very well do so this time."
"You needn't make any excuses, George, I am invited too."
"Where to?"
"I am going to Ehrenbergs' too."
"Really?" he exclaimed involuntarily.
"Why are you so surprised?" she asked sharply; "it is clear that they don't yet know that I am not fit to be associated with any more."
"My dear Anna, what is the matter with you to-day? Why are you so touchy? Supposing they did know ... do you think that would prevent people from inviting you? Quite the contrary. I am convinced that you would really go up in Frau Ehrenberg's respect."
"And the sweet Else, I suppose, would positively envy me. Don't you think so? Anyway, she wrote me quite a nice letter. Here it is. Won't you read it?" George ran his eye over it, thought its kindness was somewhat deliberate, made no further remark and gave it back to Anna.
"Here is another one too, if it interests you."
"From Doctor Stauber. Indeed? Would he mind if he knew that you gave it to me to read?"
"Why are you so considerate all of a sudden?" and as though to punish him she added, "there are probably a great many things that he would mind."
George read the letter quickly through to himself. Berthold described in his dry way, with an occasional tinge of humour, the progress of his work at the Pasteur Institute, his walks, his excursions and the theatres he had visited, and quite a lot of remarks also of a general character. But in spite of his eight pages the letter did not contain the slightest allusion to either past or future. George asked casually "How long is he staying in Paris?"
"As you see he doesn't write a single word about his return."
"Your friend Therese was recently of opinion that his colleagues in the party would like to have him back again."
"Oh, has she been in the café again?"
"Yes. I spoke to her there two or three days ago. She really amuses me a great deal."
"Really?"
"She starts off, of course, by always being very superior, even with me. Presumably because I am one of those who rot away their life with art and silly things like that, while there are so many more important things to do in the world. But when she warms up a bit it turns out that she is every bit as interested as we ordinary people in all kinds of silly things."
"She easily gets warmed up," said Anna imperturbably.
George walked up and down and went on speaking. "She was really magnificent the other day at the fencing tournament in the Musikverein rooms. By-the-bye, who was the gentleman who was up there in the gallery with her?"
Anna shrugged her shoulders. "I did not have the privilege of being at the tournament, and besides, I don't know all Therese's cavaliers."
"I presume," said George, "it was a comrade, in every sense of the term. At any rate he was very glum and was pretty badly dressed. When Therese clapped Felician's victory he positively collapsed with jealousy."
"What did Therese really tell you about Doctor Berthold?" asked Anna.
"Ho, ho!" said George jestingly, "the lady still appears to be keenly interested."
Anna did not answer.
"Well," reported George, "I can give you the information that they want to make him stand in the autumn for the Landtag. I can quite understand it too, in view of his brilliant gifts as a speaker."
"What do you know about it? Have you ever heard him speak?"
"Of course I have; don't you remember? At your place."
"There is really no occasion for you to make fun of him."
"I assure you I'd no idea of doing so."
"I noticed at once that he struck you at the time as somewhat funny. He and his father, too. Why, you immediately ran away from them."
"Not at all, Anna. You are doing me a great injustice in making such insinuations."
"They may have their weaknesses, both of them, but at any rate they belong to the people whom one can count on. And that is something."
"Have I disputed that, Anna? Upon my word, I have never heard you talk so illogically. What do you want me to do then? Did you want me by any chance to be jealous about that letter?"
"Jealous? that would be the finishing touch. You with your past."
George shrugged his shoulders. Memories swam up in his mind of similar wrangles in the course of previous relationships, memories of those mysterious sudden discords and estrangements which usually simply meant the beginning of the end. Had he really got as far as all that already with his good sensible Anna? He walked up and down the room moodily and almost depressed. At times he threw a fleeting glance towards his love who sat silent in her corner of the sofa, rubbing her hands lightly as though she were cold. The organ rang out more heavily than before in the silence of the room that had suddenly become so melancholy; the voices of singing men became audible and the window-panes rattled softly. George's glance fell on the little Christmas-tree which stood on the sideboard and whose candles had burnt the evening before last for the benefit of Anna and himself. Half-bored, half-nervous, he took a wooden vesta out of his pocket and began to light the little candles one after another.
Then Anna's voice suddenly rang out to him. "There is no one I should prefer to old Doctor Stauber to confide in about anything serious."
George turned coldly towards her and blew out a burning vesta which he still held in his hand. He knew immediately what Anna meant, and felt surprised that he had never given it another thought since their last meeting. He went up to her and took hold of her hand. Now for the first time she looked up. Her expression was impenetrable, her features immobile. "I say, Anna...." He sat down by her side on the ottoman with both her hands in his.
She was silent.
"Why don't you speak?"
She shrugged her shoulders. "There is nothing new to tell you," she explained simply.
"I see," he said slowly. It passed through his mind that her strange sensitiveness to-day was to be regarded as symptomatic of the condition to which she was alluding, and the uneasiness in his soul increased. "But you can't tell definitely for a good time yet," he said in a somewhat cooler tone than he really meant. "And ... even supposing ..." he added with artificial cheerfulness.
"So you would forgive me?" she asked with a smile.
He pressed her to him and suddenly felt quite transported. A vivid and almost pathetic feeling of love flamed up in him for the soft good creature whom he held in his arms, and who could never occasion him, he felt deeply convinced, any serious suffering. "It really wouldn't be so bad," he said cheerily, "you would just leave Vienna for a time, that's all."
"Well, it certainly wouldn't be as simple as you seem all of a sudden to think it would."
"Why not? You can soon find an excuse; besides, whom does it concern? Us two. No one else. But as far as I am concerned. I can get away any day as you know; can stay away too as long as I want to. I have not yet signed any contract for next year," he added with a smile. He then got up to put out the Christmas candles, whose tiny flames had almost burnt down to the end, and went on speaking with increasing liveliness. "It would be positively delightful; just think of it, Anna! We should go away at the end of February or the beginning of March. South, of course, Italy, or perhaps the sea. We would stay at some quiet place where no one knows us, in a beautiful hotel with enormous grounds. And wouldn't one be able to work there, by Jove?"
"So that's why!" she said, as though she suddenly understood him. He laughed, held her more tightly in his arms and she pressed herself against his breast. There was no longer any noise from outside. The last sounds of the organ and the men's voices had died away. The snow curtains swept down in front of the window.... George and Anna were happy as they had never been before.
While they were at peace in the darkness he spoke about his musical plans for the near future, and told her, so far as he was able, about Heinrich's opera plot. The room became filled with shimmering shadows. The clatter of a wedding-feast swept through the fantastic hall of an ancient king. A passionate youth stole in and thrust his dagger into the prince. A dark sentence was pronounced more sinister than death itself. A sluggish ship sailed on a darkling flood towards an unknown goal. At the youth's feet there rested a princess, who had once been the betrothed of a duke. An unknown man approached the shining boat with strange tidings; fools, star-gazers, dancers, courtiers swept past. Anna had listened in silence. When he had finished George was curious to learn what impression the fleeting pictures had made upon her.
"I can't say properly," she replied. "I certainly feel quite puzzled to-day, how you are going to make anything real out of this more or less fantastic stuff."
"Of course you can't realise it yet to-day—particularly after just hearing me describe it.... But you do feel, don't you? the musical atmosphere. I have already noted down a few motifs—and I should be really very glad if Bermann would soon get to work seriously."
"If I were you, George ... may I tell you something?"
"Of course, fire ahead."
"Well, if I were you, I'd first get the quintette really finished. It can't want much doing to it now."
"Not much, and yet ... besides, you mustn't forget that I've started all kinds of other things lately. The two pianoforte pieces, then the orchestra scherzo—I've already got pretty far with that. But it certainly ought to be made part of a symphony."
Anna made no answer. George noticed that her thoughts were roving, and he asked her where she had run away to this time.
"Not so far," she replied; "it only just passed through my mind what a lot of things can happen before the opera is really ready."
"Yes," said George slowly, with a slight trace of embarrassment. "If one could just look into the future."
She sighed quite softly and he pressed her nearer to him, almost as though he pitied her. "Don't worry, my darling, don't worry," he said. "I am here all right, and I always shall be here." He thought he felt what she was thinking; can't he say anything better than that?... anything stronger? anything to take away all my fear—take it away from me for ever? And he asked her disingenuously, as though conscious of running a risk: "What are you thinking of?" And as she was obstinately silent he said once more: "Anna, what are you thinking of?"
"Something very strange," she answered gently.
"What is it?"
"That the house is already built, where it will come into the world—that we have no idea where ... that is what I couldn't help thinking of."
"Thinking of that!" he said, strangely moved. And pressing her to his heart with a love that flamed up afresh, "I will never desert you, you two...."
When the room was lighted again they were in very good spirits, plucked the last forgotten sweets from the branches of the little Christmas-tree and looked forward to their next meeting among people who were absolutely indifferent to them, as though it were quite a jolly adventure, laughed and talked exuberant nonsense.
As soon as Anna had gone away George locked his music manuscript up in a drawer, put out the lamp and opened the window. The snow was falling lightly and thinly. An old man was coming up the steps and his laboured breathing sounded through the still air. Opposite the silent church towered aloft ... George remained awhile standing at the window. He felt almost convinced at this moment that Anna was mistaken in her surmise. He felt almost reassured as there came into his mind that remark of Leo Golowski's that Anna was destined to end her days in respectable middle-class life. Having a child by a lover really could not be part of her fate line. It was not part of his fate line either to carry the burden of serious obligation, to be tied fast from to-day and perhaps for all time to a person of the other sex; to become a father when he was still so young, a father ... the word sank into his soul, oppressive, almost sinister.
He went into the Ehrenbergs' drawing-room at eight o'clock in the evening. He was met by the sound of waltz music. Old Eissler sat at the piano with his long grey beard almost drooping on to the keys. George remained at the entrance in order not to disturb him, and met welcoming glances from every quarter. Old Eissler was playing his celebrated Viennese dances and songs with a soft touch and powerful rhythm, and George enjoyed, as he always did, the sweet crooning melodies.
"Splendid," said Frau Ehrenberg, when the old man got up.
"Keep your big words for great occasions, Leonie," answered Eissler, whose time-honoured privilege it was to call all women and girls by their Christian names. And it seemed to do everybody good to hear themselves spoken to by this handsome old man with his deep ringing voice, in which there quivered frequently, as it were, a sentimental echo of the vivid days of his youth.
George asked him if all his compositions had appeared in print.
"Very few, dear Baron. Unfortunately I can scarcely write a single note."
"It would certainly be an awful pity if these charming melodies were to be absolutely lost."
"Yes, I have often told him that," put in Frau Ehrenberg, "but unfortunately he is one of those men who have never taken themselves quite seriously."
"No, that is a mistake, Leonie. You know how I began my artistic career: I wanted to compose a great opera. Of course I was seventeen years old at the time and madly in love with a great singer."
Frau Oberberger's voice rang out from the table towards the corner: "I am sure it was a chorus girl."
"You are making a mistake, Katerina," answered Eissler. "Chorus girls were never my line. It was, as a matter of fact, a platonic love, like most of the great passions of my life."
"Were you so clumsy?" queried Frau Oberberger.
"I was often that as well," replied Eissler, in his sonorous voice and with dignity. "For as far as I can see I could have had as much luck as a hussar riding-master, but I don't regret having been clumsy."
Frau Ehrenberger nodded appreciatively.
"Then one would not be making a mistake, Herr Eissler," remarked Nürnberger, "if one attributed the chief part in your life to melancholy memories?"
Frau Ehrenberger nodded again. She was delighted whenever any one was witty in her drawing-room.
"Why did you say," she inquired, "that you could have had as much happiness as a hussar riding-master? It is not true for a minute that officers have any particular luck with women, even though my sister-in-law once had an affair with a First-Lieutenant...."
"I don't believe in platonic love," said Sissy, and beamed through the room.
Frau Wyner gave a slight shriek.
"Fräulein Sissy is probably right," said Nürnberger; "at any rate I am convinced that most women take platonic love either as an insult or an excuse."
"There are young girls here," Frau Ehrenberg reminded him gently.
"One sees that already," said Nürnberger, "from the fact of their joining in the conversation."
"All the same, I would like to take the liberty of adding a little anecdote to the chapter of platonic love," said Heinrich.
"But not a Jewish one," put in Else.
"Of course not. A blonde little girl...."
"That proves nothing," interrupted Else.
"Please let him finish his story," remonstrated Frau Ehrenberg.
"Well then, a blonde little girl," began Heinrich again, "once expressed her conviction to me, quite different, you see, from Fräulein Sissy, that platonic love did, as a matter of fact, exist, and do you know what she suggested as a proof of it? giving ... an experience out of her own life. She had, you know, once spent a whole hour in a room with a lieutenant and...."
"That is enough!" cried Frau Ehrenberg nervously.
"And," finished Heinrich, quite unperturbed and in a reassuring voice, "nothing at all happened in that hour."
"So the blonde girl says," added Else.
The door opened. George saw a strange lady enter in a clear blue square-cut dress, pale, simple and dignified. It was only when she smiled that he realised that the lady was Anna Rosner, and he felt something like pride in her.
When he shook hands with his love he felt Else's look turn towards him.
They went into the next room, where the table was laid with a moderate show of festivity. The son of the house was not there. He was at Neuhaus at his father's factory. But Herr Ehrenberg suddenly turned up at the table when the supper was served. He had just come back from his travels, which as a matter of fact had taken him to Palestine. When he was asked by Hofrat Wilt about his experiences he was at first reluctant to let himself go; finally it turned out that he had been disappointed in the scenery, annoyed by the fatigue of the journey, and had practically seen nothing of the Jewish settlements which, according to reliable information, were in process of springing up.
"So we have some ground to hope," remarked Nürnberger, "that we may keep you here even in the event of a Jewish state being founded in the imminent future?"
Ehrenberg answered brusquely: "Did I ever tell you that I intended to emigrate? I am too old for that."
"Really," said Nürnberger, "I didn't know that you had only visited the district for the benefit of Fräulein Else and Herr Oskar."
"I am not going to quarrel with you, my dear Nürnberger. Zionism is really too good to serve as small talk at meals."
"We'll take it for granted," said Hofrat Wilt, "that it is too good, but it is certainly too complicated, if only for the reason that everybody understands something different by it."
"Or wants to understand," added Nürnberger, "as is usually the case with most catchwords, not only in politics either—that's why there is so much twaddle talked in the world."
Heinrich explained that of all human creatures the politician represented in his eyes the most enigmatic phenomenon. "I can understand," he said, "pickpockets, acrobats, bank—directors, hotel—proprietors, kings ... I mean I can manage without any particular trouble to put myself into the souls of all these people. Of course the logical result is that I should only need certain alterations in degree, though no doubt enormous ones, to qualify myself to play in the world the rôle of acrobat, king or bank-director. On the other hand I have an infallible feeling that even if I could raise myself to the nth power I could never become what one calls a politician, a leader of a party, a member, a minister."
Nürnberger smiled at Heinrich's theory of the politician representing a particular type of humanity, inasmuch as it was only one of the superficial and by no means essential attributes of his profession to pose as a special human type, and to hide his greatness or his insignificance, his feats or his idleness behind labels, abstractions and symbols. What the nonentities or charlatans among them represented, why, that was obvious: they were simply business people or swindlers or glib speakers, but the people who really counted, the people who did things—the real geniuses of course, they at the bottom of their souls were simply artists. They too tried to create a work, and one, too, that raised in the sphere of ideas quite as much claim to immortality and permanent value as any other work of art. The only difference was that the material in which they worked was one that was not rigid or relatively stable, like tones or words, but that, like living men, it was in a continual state of flux and movement.
Willy Eissler appeared, apologised to his hostess for being late, sat down between Sissy and Frau Oberberger and greeted his father like a friend long lost. It turned out that though they both lived together they had not seen each other for several days.
Willy was complimented all round on his success in the aristocratic amateur performance where he had played the part of a marquis with the Countess Liebenburg-Rathony in a French one-act play. Frau Oberberger asked him, in a voice sufficiently loud for her neighbours to catch it, where his assignations with the countess took place and if he received her in the same pied-à-terre quarter as his more middle-class flames. The conversation became more lively, dialogues were exchanged and became intertwined all over the room.
But George caught isolated snatches, including part of a conversation between Anna and Heinrich which dealt with Therese Golowski. He noticed at the same time that Anna would occasionally throw a dark inquisitive look at Demeter Stanzides, who had appeared to-night in evening dress with a gardenia in his buttonhole; and though he had no actual consciousness of jealousy he felt strangely affected. He wondered if at this moment she was really thinking that she was perhaps bearing a child by him under her bosom. The idea of "the depths ..." came to him again. She suddenly looked over to him with a smile, as though she were coming home from a journey. He felt an inner sense of relief and appreciated with a slight shock how much he loved her. Then he raised his glass to his lips and drank to her. Else, who up to this time had been chatting with her other neighbour Demeter, now turned to George. With her deliberately casual manner and with a look towards Anna she remarked: "She does look pretty, so womanly. But that's always been her line. Do you still do music together?"
"Frequently," replied George coolly.
"Perhaps I'll ask you to start accompanying me again at the beginning of the new year. I don't know why we have not done so before."
George was silent.
"And how are you getting on"—she threw a look at Heinrich—"with your opera?"
"Nothing is done so far. Who knows if anything will come of it?"
"Of course nothing will come of it."
George smiled. "Why are you so stern with me to-day?"
"I am very angry with you."
"With me! Why?"
"That you always go on giving people occasion to regard you as a dilettante."
This was a home thrust. George actually felt a slight sense of malice against Else, then quickly pulled himself together and answered: "That perhaps is just what I am. And if one isn't a genius it is much better to be an honest dilettante than ... than an artist with a swollen head."
"Nobody wants you to do great things all at once, but all the same one really should not let oneself go in the way you do in both your inner and your outward life."
"I really don't understand you, Else. How can one contend.... Do you know that I am going to Germany in the autumn as a conductor?"
"Your career will be ruined by your not turning up to the rehearsals at ten o'clock sharp."
The taunt was still gnawing at George. "And who called me a dilettante, if I may ask?"
"Who did? Good gracious, why it has already been in the papers."
"Really," said George feeling reassured, for he now remembered that after the concert in which Fräulein Bellini had sung his songs a critic had described him as an aristocratic dilettante. George's friends had explained at the time that the reason for this malicious critique was that he had omitted to call on the gentleman in question, who was notoriously vain. So that was it once again. There were always extrinsic reasons for people criticising one unfavourably, and Else's touchiness to-day, what was it at bottom but sheer jealousy....
The table was cleared. They went into the drawing-room.
George went up to Anna, who was leaning on the piano, and said gently to her: "You do look beautiful, dear."
She nodded with satisfaction.
He then went on to ask: "Did you have a pleasant talk with Heinrich? What did you speak about? Therese, isn't that so?"
She did not answer, and George noticed with surprise that her eyelids suddenly drooped and that she began to totter. "What is the matter?" he asked, frightened.
She did not hear him, and would have fallen down if he had not quickly caught hold of her by the wrists. At the same moment Frau Ehrenberg and Else came up to her.
"Did they notice us?" thought George.
Anna had already opened her eyes again, gave a forced smile and whispered: "Oh, it is nothing. I often stand the heat so badly."
"Come along!" said Frau Ehrenberg in a motherly tone. "Perhaps you will lie down for a moment."
Anna, who seemed dazed, made no answer and the ladies of the house escorted her into an adjoining room.
George looked round. The guests did not seem to have noticed anything. Coffee was handed round. George took a cup and played nervously with his spoon. "So after all," he thought, "she will not finish up in middle-class life." But at the same time he felt as far away from her psychologically, as though the matter had no personal interest for him.
Frau Oberberger came up to him. "Well, what do you really think about platonic love? You are an expert, you know."
He answered absent-mindedly. She went on talking, as was her way, without bothering whether he was listening or answering. Suddenly Else returned. George inquired how Anna was, with polite sympathy.
"I am certain it is not anything serious," said Else and looked him strangely in the face.
Demeter Stanzides came in and asked her to sing.
"Will you accompany me?" She turned to George.
He bowed and sat down at the piano.
"What shall it be?" asked Else.
"Anything you like," replied Wilt, "but nothing modern." After supper he liked to play the reactionary at any rate in artistic matters.
"Right you are," said Else, and gave George a piece of music.
She sang the Das Alte Bild of Hugo Wolf in her small well-trained and somewhat pathetic voice. George played a refined accompaniment, though he felt somewhat distrait. In spite of his efforts he could not help feeling a little annoyed about Anna. After all no one seemed to have really noticed the incident except Frau Ehrenberg and Else.
After all, what did it really come to?... Supposing they did all know?... Whom did it concern? Yes, who bothered about it? Why, they are all listening to Else now, he continued mentally, and appreciating the beauty of this song. Even Frau Oberberger, though she is not a bit musical, is forgetting that she is a woman for a few minutes and her face is quiet and sexless. Even Heinrich is listening spell-bound and perhaps for the moment is neither thinking of his work, nor of the fate of the Jews, nor of his distant mistress. Is perhaps not even giving a single thought to his present mistress, the little blonde girl, to please whom he has recently begun to dress smartly. As a matter of fact he does not look at all bad in evening dress, and his tie is not a ready-made one, such as he usually wears, but is carefully tied.... Who is standing so close behind me? thought George, so that I can feel her breath over my hair.... Perhaps Sissy.... If the world were to be destroyed to-morrow morning it would be Sissy whom I should choose for to-night. Yes, I am sure of it. And there goes Anna with Frau Ehrenberg; it seems I am the only one who notices it, although I have got to attend simultaneously to both my own playing and Else's singing. I welcome her with my eyes. Yes, I welcome you, mother of my child.... How strange life is!...
The song was at an end. The company applauded and asked for more. George played Else's accompaniment to some other songs by Schumann, by Brahms; and finally, by general request, two of his own, which had become distasteful to him personally, since somebody or other had suggested that they were reminiscent of Mendelssohn.
While he was accompanying he felt that he was losing all touch with Else and therefore made a special effort in his playing to win back again her sense of sympathy. He played with exaggerated sensibility, he specifically wooed her and felt that it was in vain. For the first time in his life he was her unhappy lover.
The applause after George's songs was great.
"That was your best period," said Else gently to him while she put the music away, "two or three years ago."
The others made kind remarks to him without going into distinctions about the periods of his artistic development.
Nürnberger declared that he had been most agreeably disillusioned by George's songs. "I will not conceal the fact from you," he remarked, "that going by the views I have frequently heard you express, my dear Baron, I should have imagined them considerably less intelligible."
"Quite charming, really," said Wilt, "all so simple and melodious without bombast or affectation."
"And he is the man," thought George grimly, "who dubbed me a dilettante."
Willy came up to him. "Now you just say, Herr Hofrat, that you can manage to whistle them, and if I know anything about physiognomy the Baron will send two gentlemen to see you in the morning."
"Oh no," said George, pulling himself together and smiling; "fortunately, the songs were written in a period which I have long since got over, so I don't feel wounded by any blame or by any praise."
A servant brought in ices, the groups broke up and Anna stood alone with George by the pianoforte.
He asked her quickly "What does it really mean?"
"I don't know," she replied, and looked at him in astonishment.
"Do you feel quite all right now?"
"Absolutely," she answered.
"And is to-day the first time you have had anything like it?" asked George, somewhat hesitatingly.
She answered: "I had something like it yesterday evening at home. It was a kind of faintness. It lasted some time longer, while we were sitting at supper, but nobody noticed it."
"But why did you tell me nothing about it?"
She shrugged her shoulders lightly.
"I say, Anna dear," he said, and smiled guiltily, "I would like to have a word with you at any rate. Give me a signal when you want to go away. I will clear out a few minutes before you, and will wait by the Schwarzenbergplatz till you come along in a fly. I'll get in and we will go for a little drive. Does that suit you?"
She nodded.
He said: "Good-bye, darling," and went into the smoking-room.
Old Ehrenberg, Nürnberger and Wilt had sat down at a green card-table to play tarok. Old Eissler and his son were sitting opposite each other in two enormous green leather arm-chairs and were utilising the opportunity to have a good chat with one another after all this time. George took a cigarette out of a box, lighted it and looked at the pictures on the wall with particular interest. He saw Willy's name written in pale red letters down below in the corner on the green field in a water-colour painted in the grotesque style, that represented a hurdle race ridden by gentlemen in red hunting-coats. He turned involuntarily to the young man and said: "I never knew that one before."
"It is fairly new," remarked Willy lightly.
"Smart picture, eh?" said old Eissler.
"Oh, something more than that," replied George.
"Yes, I hope to be able to look forward to doing something better than that," said Willy.
"He is going to Africa, lion hunting," explained old Eissler, "with Prince Wangenheim. Felician is also supposed to be of the party, but he has not yet decided."
"Why not?" asked Willy.
"He wants to pass his diplomatic examination in the spring."
"But that could be put off," said Willy; "lions are dying out, but unfortunately one can't say the same thing of professors."
"Book me for a picture, Willy," called out Ehrenberg from the card-table.
"You play the Mæcenas later on, father Ehrenberg?" said Willy. "As I've said, I'll take you two on."[1]
"Raise you," replied Ehrenberg, and continued: "If I can order anything for myself, Willy, please paint me a desert landscape showing Prince Wangenheim being gobbled up by the lions ... but as realistic as possible."
"You are making a mistake about the person, Herr Ehrenberg," said Willy; "the celebrated Anti-Semite you are referring to is the cousin of my Wangenheim."
"For all I care," replied Ehrenberg, "the lions, too, may be making a mistake. Every Anti-Semite, you know, isn't bound to be celebrated."
"You will ruin the party if you don't look out," admonished Nürnberger.
"You should have bought an estate and settled in Palestine," said Hofrat Wilt.
"God save me from that," replied Ehrenberg.
"Well, since he has done that in everything up to the present," said Nürnberger, and put down his hand.
"It seems to me, Nürnberger, that you are reproaching me again for not goin' about peddlin' ole clo'."
"Then you would certainly have the right to complain of Anti-Semitism," said Nürnberger, "for who feels anything of it in Austria except the peddlars ... only they, one might almost say."
"And some people with a sense of self-respect," retorted Ehrenberg. "Twenty-seven ... thirty-one ... thirty-eight.... Well, who's won the game?"
Willy had gone back into the drawing-room again. George sat smoking on the arm of an easy-chair. He suddenly noticed old Eissler's look directed towards him in a strange benevolent manner and felt himself reminded of something without knowing what.
"I had a few words the other day," said the old gentleman, "with your brother Felician at Schönstein's; it is striking how you resemble your poor father, especially to one like me, who knew your father as a young man."
It flashed across George at once what old Eissler's look reminded him of. Old Doctor Stauber's eyes had rested on him at Rosner's with the same fatherly expression.
"These old Jews!" he thought sarcastically, but in a remote corner of his soul he felt somewhat moved. It came into his mind that his father had often gone for morning walks in the Prater with Eissler, for whose knowledge of art he had had a great respect. Old Eissler went on speaking.
"You, George, take after your mother more, I think."
"Many say so. It is very hard to judge, oneself."
"They say your mother had such a beautiful voice."
"Yes, in her early youth. I myself never really heard her sing. Of course she tried now and again. Two or three years before her death a doctor in Meran even advised her to practise singing. The idea was that it should be a good exercise for her lungs, but unfortunately it wasn't much of a success."
Old Eissler nodded and looked in front of him. "I suppose you probably won't be able to remember that my poor wife was in Meran at the same time as your late mother?"
George racked his memory. It had escaped him.
"I once travelled in the same compartment as your father," said old Eissler, "at night time. We were both unable to sleep. He told me a great deal about you two—you and Felician I mean."
"Really...."
"For instance, that when you were a boy you had played one of your own compositions to some Italian virtuoso, and that he had foretold a great future for you."
"Great future.... Great heavens, but it wasn't a virtuoso, Herr Eissler. It was a clergyman, from whom, as a matter of fact, I learned to play the organ."
Eissler continued: "And in the evening, when your mother had gone to bed, you would often improvise for hours on end in the room."
George nodded and sighed quietly. It seemed as though he had had much more talent at that time. "Work!" he thought ardently, "work!..."
He looked up again. "Yes," he said humorously, "that is always the trouble, infant prodigies so seldom come to anything."
"I hear you want to be a conductor, Baron."
"Yes," replied George resolutely, "I am going to Germany next autumn. Perhaps as an accompanist first in the municipal theatre of some little town, just as it comes along."
"But you would not have any objection to a Court theatre?"
"Of course not. What makes you say that, Herr Eissler? if it is not a rude question."
"I know quite well," said Eissler with a smile, as he dropped his monocle, "that you have not sought out my help, but I can quite appreciate on the other hand that you would not mind perhaps being able to get on without the intermediaryship of agents and others of that kind.... I don't mean because of the commissions."
George remained cold. "When one has once decided to take up a theatrical career one knows at the same time all that one's bargaining for."
"Do you know Count Malnitz by any chance?" inquired Eissler, quite unconcerned by George's air of worldly wisdom.
"Malnitz! Do you mean Count Eberhard Malnitz, who had a suite performed a few years ago?"
"Yes, I mean him."
"I don't know him personally, and as for the suite...."
With a wave of the hand Eissler dismissed the composer Malnitz. "He has been manager at Detmold since the beginning of this season," he then said. "That is why I asked you if you knew him. He is a great friend of mine of long standing. He used to live in Vienna. For the last ten or twelve years we have been meeting every year in Carlsbad or Ischl. This year we want to make a little Mediterranean trip at Easter. Will you allow me, my dear Baron, to take an opportunity of mentioning your name to him, and telling him something about your plans to be a conductor?"
George hesitated to answer, and smiled politely.
"Oh please don't regard my suggestion as officious, my dear Baron. If you don't wish it, of course I will sit tight."
"You misunderstand my silence," replied George amiably, but not without hauteur; "but I really don't know...."
"I think a little Court theatre like that," continued Eissler, "is just the right place for you for the beginning. The fact of your belonging to the nobility won't hurt you at all, not even with my friend Malnitz, however much he likes to play the democrat, or even at times the anarchist ... with the exception of bombs, of course; but he is a charming man and really awfully musical.... Even though he isn't exactly a composer."
"Well," replied George, somewhat embarrassed, "if you would have the kindness to speak to him.... I can't afford to let any chance slip. At any rate, I thank you very much."
"Not at all, I don't guarantee success, it is just a chance, like any other."
Frau Oberberger and Sissy came in, escorted by Demeter.
"What interesting conversation are we interrupting?" said Frau Oberberger. "The experienced platonic lover and the inexperienced rake? One should really have been there."
"Don't upset yourself, Katerina," said Eissler, and his voice had again its deep vibrating ring. "One sometimes talks about other things, such as the future of the human race."
Sissy put a cigarette between her lips, allowed George to give her a light and sat down in the corner of the green leather sofa. "You are not bothering about me at all to-day," she began with that English accent of hers which George liked so well. "As though I positively didn't exist. Yes, that's what it is. I am really a more constant nature than you are, am I not?"
"You constant, Sissy?"... He pushed an arm-chair quite near to her. They spoke of the past summer and the one that was coming.
"Last year," said Sissy, "you gave me your word you would come wherever I was, and you didn't do it. This year you must keep your word."
"Are you going into the Isle of Wight again?"
"No, I am going into the mountains this time, to the Tyrol or the Salzkammergut. I will let you know soon. Will you come?"
"But you are bound to have a large following anywhere."
"I won't trouble about any one except you, George."
"Even supposing Willy Eissler happens to stay in your vicinity?"
"Oh," she said, with a wanton smile and put out her cigarette by pressing it violently upon the glass ash-tray.
They went on talking. It was just like one of those conversations they had had so often during the last few years. It began lightly and flippantly, and eventually finished in a blaze of tender lies which were true for just one moment. George was once again fascinated by Sissy.
"I would really prefer to go travelling with you," he whispered quite near her.
She just nodded. Her left arm rested on the broad back of the ottoman. "If one could only do as one wanted," she said, with a look that dreamt of a hundred men.
He bent down over her trembling arm, went on speaking and became intoxicated with his own words. "Somewhere where nobody knows us, where nobody bothers about any one, that is where I should like to be with you, Sissy, many days and nights."
Sissy shuddered. The word "nights" made her shudder with fear.
Anna appeared in the doorway, signalled to George with a look and then disappeared again. He felt an inward sense of reluctance, and yet he felt that this was just the psychological moment to leave Sissy.
In the doorway of the drawing-room he met Heinrich, who accosted him. "If you are going you might tell me, I should like to speak to you."
"Delighted! But I must ... promised to see Fräulein Rosner home, you see. I'll come straight to the café, so till then...."
A few minutes later he was standing on the Schwarzenberg bridge. The sky was full of stars, the streets stretched out wide and silent. George turned up his coat collar, although it was no longer cold, and walked up and down. Will anything come of the Detmold business? he thought. Oh well, if it is not in Detmold it will be in some town or other. At any rate I mean real business now, and a great deal, a great deal will then lie behind me.
He tried to consider the matter quietly. How will it all turn out? We are now at the end of December. We must go away in March—at the latest. We shall be taken for a honeymoon couple. I shall go walking with her arm-in-arm in Rome and Posilippo, in Venice.... There are women who grow very ugly in that condition ... but not she, no, not she.... There was always a certain touch of the mother in her appearance.... She must stay the summer in some quiet neighbourhood where no one knows her ... in the Thuringian Forest perhaps, or by the Rhine.... How strangely she said that to-day. The house in which the child will come into the world is already in existence. Yes.... Somewhere in the distance, or perhaps quite near here, that house is standing.... And people are living there whom we have never seen. How strange.... When will it come into the world? At the end of the summer, about the beginning of September. By that time, too, I am bound to have gone away. How shall I manage it?... And a year from to-day the little creature will be already four months old. It will grow up ... become big. There will be a young man there one fine day, my son, or a young girl; a beautiful little girl of seven, my daughter.... I shall be forty-four then.... When I am sixty-four I can be a grandfather ... perhaps a director of an opera or two and a celebrated composer in spite of Else's prophecies; but one has got to work for that, that is quite true. More than I have done so far. Else is right, I let myself go too much, I must be different ... I shall too. I feel a change taking place within me. Yes, something new is taking place within me also.
A fly came out of the Heugasse, some one bent out of the window. George recognised Anna's face under the white shawl. He was very glad, got in and kissed her hand. They enjoyed their talk, joked a little about the party from which she had just come and found it really ridiculous to spend an evening in so inept a fashion. He held her hands in his and was affected by her presence. He got out in front of her house and rung. He then came to the open door of the carriage and they arranged an appointment for the following day.
"I think we have got a lot to talk about," said Anna.
He simply nodded. The door of the house was open. She got out of the fly, gave George a long look full of emotion and disappeared into the hall.
My love! thought George, with a feeling of happiness and pride. Life lay before him like something serious and mysterious, full of gifts and full of miracles.
When he went into the café, Heinrich was sitting in a window niche. Next to him was a pale young beardless man whom George had casually spoken to several times, in a dinner-jacket with a velvet collar but with a shirt-front of doubtful cleanliness.
When George came in the young man looked up with ardent eyes from a paper that he was holding in his restless and not very well-kept hands.
"Am I disturbing you?" said George.
"Oh, not a bit of it," replied the young man, with a crazy laugh, "the larger the audience the better."
"Herr Winternitz," explained Heinrich, as he shook hands with George, "was just reading me a series of his poems, but we will break off now." Slightly touched by the disappointed expression of the young man George assured him that he would be delighted to hear the poems if he might be permitted to do so.
"It won't last much longer," explained Winternitz gratefully. "It is only a pity that you missed the beginning. I could——"
"What! Does it all hang together?" said Heinrich in astonishment.
"What, didn't you notice?" exclaimed Winternitz, and laughed again crazily.
"I see," said Heinrich. "So it's always the same woman character whom your poems deal with. I thought it was always a different one."
"Of course it is always the same one, but her special characteristic is that she always seems to be a fresh person."
Herr Winternitz read softly but insistently, as though inwardly consumed. It appeared from his series that he had been loved as never a man had been loved before, but also deceived as never a man had been deceived before, a circumstance which was to be attributed to certain metaphysical causes and not at all to any deficiencies in his own personality. He showed himself, however, in his last poem completely freed of his passion, and declared that he was now ready to enjoy all the pleasures, which the world could offer him. This poem had four stanzas; the last verse of every stanza began with a "hei," and it concluded with the exclamation: "Hei, so career I through the world."
George could not help recognising that the recitation had to a certain extent impressed him, and when Winternitz put the book down and looked around him with dilated pupils, George nodded appreciatively and said: "Very beautiful!"
Winternitz looked expectantly at Heinrich, who was silent for a few seconds and finally remarked: "It is fairly interesting on the whole ... but why do you say 'hei,' if it isn't a rude question? Positively, no one will believe it."
"What do you mean?" exclaimed Winternitz.
"Rather ask your own conscience, if you honestly mean that 'hei.' I believe all the rest which you read to me, I mean I believe it in the highest sense of the term, although not a single word is true. I believe you when you tell me that you have been seducing a girl of fifteen, that you have been behaving like a hardened Don Juan, that you have been corrupting the poor creature in the most dreadful way. That she deceived you with ... what was it now?..."
"A clown, of course," exclaimed Winternitz, with a mad laugh.
"That a clown was the man she deceived you with, that on account of that creature you had adventures which grew more and more sinister, that you wanted to kill your mistress and yourself as well, and that finally you get fed up with the whole business and go travelling about the world, or even careering as far as Australia for all I care: yes, I can believe all that, but that you are the kind of man to cry out 'hei,' that, my dear Winternitz, is a rank swindle."
Winternitz defended himself. He swore that this 'hei' had come from his most inward being, or at any rate from a certain element in his most inward being. When Heinrich made further objections, he gradually became more and more reserved, and finally declared that some time or other he hoped to win his way to that inward freedom where he would be allowed to cry out "hei."
"That time will never come," replied Heinrich positively. "You may perhaps get some time to the epic or the dramatic 'hei,' but the lyrical or subjective 'hei' will remain, my dear Winternitz, a closed book to people like you and me for all eternity."
Winternitz promised to alter the last poem, to make a point of continuing his development and to work at his inward purification.
He stood up, a proceeding which caused his starched shirt front to crack and a stud to break, held out his somewhat clammy hand to Heinrich and George, and went off to the literary men's table at the back.
George expressed discreet appreciation of the poems which he had heard.
"I like him the best of the whole set, at any rate personally," said Heinrich. "He at least has the good sense to maintain with me a certain mutual reserve in really intimate matters. Yes, you need not look at me again as though you were catching me in an attack of megalomania, but I can assure you, George, I have had nearly enough of the sort of people" (he swept the further table with a cursory glance) "who have always got an 'ä soi' on their lips."
"What is always on their lips?"
Heinrich smiled. "You must know the story of the Polish Jew who was sitting in a railway compartment with an unknown man and behaved very conventionally—until he realised by some remark of the other's that he was a Jew too, and on the strength of it immediately proceeded to stretch out his legs on the seat opposite with an 'ä soi' of relief."
"Quite good," said George.
"It is more than that," explained Heinrich sternly, "it is deep; like so many other Jewish stories it gives a bird's-eye view into the tragi-comedy of present-day Judaism. It expresses the eternal truth that no Jew has any real respect for his fellow Jew, never. As little as prisoners in a hostile country have any real respect for each other, particularly when they are hopeless. Envy, hate, yes frequently, admiration, even love; all that there can be between them, but never respect, for the play of all their emotional life takes place in an atmosphere of familiarity, so to speak, in which respect cannot help being stifled."
"Do you know what I think?" remarked George. "That you are a more bitter Anti-Semite than most of the Christians I know."
"Do you think so?" he laughed; "but not a real one. Only the man who is really angry at the bottom of his heart at the Jews' good qualities and does everything he can to bring about the further development of their bad ones is a real Anti-Semite. But you are right up to a certain point, but I must finish by confessing that I am also an Anti-Aryan. Every race as such is naturally repulsive, only the individual manages at times to reconcile himself to the repulsive elements in his race by reason of his own personal qualities. But I will not deny that I am particularly sensitive to the faults of Jews. Probably the only reason is that I, like all others—we Jews, I mean—have been systematically educated up to this sensitiveness. We have been egged on from our youth to look upon Jewish peculiarities as particularly grotesque or repulsive, though we have not been so with regard to the equally grotesque and repulsive peculiarities of other people. I will not disguise it—if a Jew shows bad form in my presence, or behaves in a ridiculous manner, I have often so painful a sensation that I should like to sink into the earth. It is like a kind of shame that perhaps is akin to the shame of a brother who sees his sister undressing. Perhaps the whole thing is egoism too. One gets embittered at being always made responsible for other people's faults, and always being made to pay the penalty for every crime, for every lapse from good taste, for every indiscretion for which every Jew is responsible throughout the whole world. That of course easily makes one unjust, but those are touches of nervousness and sensitiveness, nothing more. Then one pulls oneself together again. That cannot be called Anti-Semitism. But there are Jews whom I really hate, hate as Jews. Those are the people who act before others, and often before themselves, as though they did not belong to the rest at all. The men who try to offer themselves to their enemies and despisers in the most cowardly and cringing fashion, and think that in that way they can escape from the eternal curse whose burden is upon them, or from what they feel is equivalent to a curse. There are of course always Jews like that who go about with the consciousness of their extreme personal meanness, and consequently, consciously or unconsciously, would like to make their race responsible. Of course that does not help them the least bit. What has ever helped the Jews? the good ones and the bad ones. I mean, of course," he hastily added, "those who need something in the way of material or moral help." And then he broke off in a deliberately flippant tone: "Yes, my dear George, the situation is somewhat complicated and it is quite natural that every one who is not directly concerned with the question should not be able to understand it properly."
"No, you really should not...."
Heinrich interrupted him quickly. "Yes, I should, my dear George, that is just how it is. You don't understand us, you see. Many perhaps get an inkling, but understand? no. At any rate we understand you much better than you do us. Although you shake your head! Do we not deserve to? We have found it more necessary, you see, to learn to understand you than you did to learn to understand us. This gift of understanding was forced to develop itself in the course of time ... according to the laws of the struggle for existence if you like. Just consider, if one is going to find one's way about in a foreign country, or, as I said before, in an enemy's country, to be ready for all the dangers and ambushes which lurk there, it is obvious that the primary essential is to get to know one's enemies as well as possible—both their good qualities and their bad."
"So you live among enemies? Among foreigners! You would not admit as much to Leo Golowski. I don't agree with him either, not a bit of it. But how strangely inconsistent you are when you——"
Heinrich interrupted him, genuinely pained. "I have already told you the problem is far too complicated to be really solved. To find a subjective solution is almost impossible. A verbal solution even more so. Why, at times one might believe that things are not so bad. Sometimes one really is at home in spite of everything, feels one is as much at home here—yes, even more at home—than any of your so-called natives can ever feel. It is quite clear that the feeling of strangeness is to some extent cured by the consciousness of understanding. Why, it becomes, as it were, steeped in pride, condescension, tenderness; becomes dissolved—sometimes, of course, in sentimentalism, which is again a bad business."
He sat there with deep furrows in his forehead and looked in front of him.
"Does he really understand me better?" thought George, "than I do him, or is it simply another piece of megalomania...?"
Heinrich suddenly started as though emerging from a dream. He looked at his watch. "Half-past two! And my train goes at eight to-morrow."
"What, you are going away?"
"Yes, that is what I wanted to speak to you about so much. I shall have to say goodbye to you for a goodish time, I'm sorry to say. I am going to Prague. I am taking my father away, out of the asylum home to our own house."
"Is he better, then?"
"No, but he is in that stage when he is not dangerous to those near him.... Yes, that came quite quickly too."
"And about when do you think you will be back?"
Heinrich shook his shoulders. "I can't tell to-day, but however the thing develops, I certainly cannot leave my mother and sisters alone now."
George felt a genuine regret at being deprived of Heinrich's society in the near future. "It's possible that you won't find me in Vienna again when you come back. I shall probably go away this spring, you see." And he almost felt a desire to take Heinrich into his confidence.
"I suppose you are travelling south?" asked Heinrich.
"Yes, I think so. To enjoy my freedom once again, just for a few months. Serious life begins next autumn, you see. I am looking out for a position in Germany at some theatre or other."
"Really?"
The waiter came to the table. They paid and went.
They met Rapp and Gleissner together in the doorway. They exchanged a few words of greeting.
"And what have you been doing all this time, Herr Rapp?" asked George courteously.
Rapp took off his pince-nez. "Oh, my melancholy old job all the time. I am engaged in demonstrating the vanity of vanities."
"You might make a change, Rapp," said Heinrich. "Try your luck for once and praise the splendour of splendours."
"What is the point?" said Rapp, and put on his glasses.
"That will prove itself in the course of time. But as a rule rotten work only keeps alive during its good fortune and its fame, and when the world at last realises the swindle, it has either been in the grave for a long time or has taken refuge in its presumable immortality."
They were now in the street and all turned up their coat collars, since it had begun again to snow violently.
Gleissner, who had had his first great dramatic success a few weeks ago, quickly told them that the seventh performance of his work, which had taken place to-day, had also been sold out.
Rapp used that as a peg on which to hang malicious observations on the stupidity of the public. Gleissner answered with gibes at the impotence of the critic when confronted with true genius—and so they walked away through the snow with turned-up collar, quite enveloped in the steaming hate of their old friendship.
"That Rapp has no luck," said Heinrich to George. "He'll never forgive Gleissner for not disappointing him."
"Do you consider him so jealous?"
"I wouldn't go as far as that. Matters are rarely sufficiently simple to be disposed of in a single word. But just think what a fate it is to go about the world in the belief that you carry with you as deep a knowledge of it as Shakespeare had, and to feel at the same time that you aren't able to express as much of it as, for instance, Herr Gleissner, although perhaps one is quite as much good as he is—or even more."
They walked on together for a time in silence. The trees in the Ring were standing motionless with their white branches. It struck three from the tower of the Rathaus. They walked over the empty streets and took the way through the silent park. All around them the continuous fall of snow made everything shine almost brightly.
"By the way, I have not told you the latest news," started Heinrich suddenly, looking in front of him and speaking in a dry tone.
"What is it?"
"That I have been receiving anonymous letters for some time."
"Anonymous letters? What are the contents?"
"Oh, you can guess."
"I see." It was clear to George that it could only be something about the actress. Heinrich had returned in greater anguish than ever from the foreign town, where he had seen his mistress act the part of a depraved creature in a new play, with a truth and realism which he found positively intolerable. George knew that he and she had since then been exchanging letters full of tenderness and scorn, full of anger and forgiveness, full of broken anguish and laboured confidence.
"The delightful messages," explained Heinrich, "have been coming along every morning for eight days. Not very pleasant, I can assure you."
"Good gracious, what do they matter to you? You know yourself anonymous letters never contain the truth."
"On the contrary, my dear George, they always do, but letters like that always contain a kind of higher truth, the great truth of possibilities. Men haven't usually got sufficient imagination to create things out of nothing."
"That is a charming way of looking at things. Where should we all get to, then? It makes things a bit too easy for libellers of all kinds."
"Why do you say libellers? I regard it as highly improbable that there are any libels contained in the anonymous letters which I have been receiving. No doubt exaggerations, embellishments, inaccuracies...."
"Lies."
"No, I am sure they are not lies; some, no doubt, but in a case like this how is one to separate the truth from the lies?"
"There is a very simple way of dealing with that. You go there."
"Me go there?"
"Yes, of course that is what you ought to do. When you are on the spot you are bound to get at once to the real truth."
"It would certainly be possible."
They were walking under arcades on the wet stone. Their voices and steps echoed. George began again. "Instead of going on being demoralised with all this annoyance, I should try and convince myself personally as to how matters stood."
"Yes, that would certainly be the soundest thing to do."
"Well, why don't you do it?"
Heinrich remained stationary and jerked out with clenched teeth: "Tell me, my dear George, have you not really noticed that I am a coward?"
"Nonsense, one doesn't call that being a coward."
"Call it whatever you like. Words never hit things off exactly. The more precisely they pretend to do so the less they really do. I know what I am. I would not go there for anything in the world. To make a fool of myself once more, no, no, no...."
"Well, what will you do?"
Heinrich shook his shoulders as though the matter really did not concern him.
Somewhat irritated, George went on questioning him. "If you will allow me to make a remark, what does the ... lady chiefly concerned have to say?"
"The lady who is chiefly concerned, as you call her, with a wit, which though unconscious is positively infernal, does not know for the time being anything about my getting anonymous letters."
"Have you left off corresponding with her?"
"What an idea! We write daily to each other as we did before. She the most tender and lying letters, I the meanest you can possibly imagine—disingenuous, reserved letters, that torture me to the quick."
"Look here, Heinrich, you are really not a very noble character."
Heinrich laughed out loud. "No, I am not noble. I clearly was not born to be that."
"And when one thinks that after all these are sheer libels——" George for his part had of course no doubt that the anonymous letters contained the truth. In spite of that he was honestly desirous that Heinrich should travel to the actual spot, convince himself, do something definite, box somebody's ears or shoot somebody down. He imagined Felician in a similar position, or Stanzides or Willy Eissler. All of them would have taken it better or in a different way, one for which he certainly could have felt more sympathy. Suddenly the question ran through his brain as to what he would probably do, if Anna were to deceive him. Anna deceive him ... was that really possible? He thought of her look that evening, that dark questioning look which she had sent over to Demeter Stanzides. No, that did not signify anything, he was sure of it, and the old episodes with Leo and the singing-master, they were harmless, almost childish. But he thought of something that was different and perhaps more significant—a strange question which she had put to him the other day when she had stayed unduly late in his company and had had to hurry off home with an excuse. Was he not afraid, she had asked him, to have it on his conscience that he was making her into a liar? It had rung half like a reproach and half like a warning, and if she herself was so little sure of herself could he trust her implicitly? Did he not love her? He ... and did he not deceive her in spite of it, or was ready to do so at any moment, which, after all, came to the same thing?
Only an hour ago, in the fly, when he held her in his arms and kissed her, she had of course no idea that he had other thoughts than for her. And yet at a certain moment, with his lips on hers, he had longed for Sissy. Why should it not happen that Anna should deceive him? After all, it might have already happened ... without his having an idea of it.... But all these ideas had as it were no substance, they swept through his mind, like fantastic almost amusing possibilities. He was standing with Heinrich in front of the closed door in the Floriani Gassi and shook hands with him.
"Well, God bless you," he said; "when we see each other again I hope you will be cured of your doubts."
"And would that be much good?" asked Heinrich. "Can one reassure oneself with certainties in matters of love? The most one can do is to reassure oneself with bad news, for that lasts, but being certain of something good is at the best an intoxication.... Well, goodbye, old chap. I hope we will see each other again in May. Then, whatever happens, I shall come here for a time, and we can talk again about our glorious opera."
"Yes, if I shall be back again in Vienna in May. It may be that I shall not come back before the autumn."
"And then go off again on your new career?"
"It is quite possible that it will turn out like that," and he looked Heinrich in the face with a kind of childlike defiant smile that seemed to say: "I'm not going to tell you."
Heinrich seemed surprised. "Look here, George, perhaps this is the very last time we are standing together in front of this door. Oh, I am far from thrusting myself into your confidence. This somewhat one-sided relationship will no doubt have to go on on its present lines. Well, it doesn't matter."
George looked straight in front of him.
"I hope things go all right," said Heinrich as the door opened, "and drop me a line now and then."
"Certainly," answered George, and suddenly saw Heinrich's eyes resting upon him with an expression of real sympathy which he had never expected. "Certainly ... and you must write to me, too. At any rate give me news of how things are at home and what you are working at. At all events," he added sincerely, "we must continue to keep in touch with each other."
The porter stood there with dishevelled hair and an angry sleepy expression, in a greenish-brown dressing-gown, with slippers on his bare feet.
Heinrich shook hands with George for the last time. "Goodbye, my dear friend," he said, and then in a gentler voice, as he pointed to the porter: "I cannot keep him waiting any longer. You will find no particular difficulty in reading in his noble physiognomy, which is obviously the genuine native article, the names he is calling me to himself at this particular moment. Adieu."
George could not help laughing. Heinrich disappeared. The door clanged and closed.
George did not feel the least bit sleepy and determined to go home on foot. He was in an excited exalted mood. He was envisaging the days which were now bound to come with a peculiar sense of tension. He thought of to-morrow's meeting with Anna, the things they were going to talk over, the journey, the house that already stood somewhere in the world, which his imagination had already roughly pictured like a house out of a box of toys, light-green with a bright red roof and a black chimney. His own form appeared before him like a picture thrown on a white screen by a magic lantern: he saw himself sitting on a balcony in happy solitude, in front of a table strewn with music paper. Branches rocked in front of the railings. A clear sky hung above him, while below at his feet lay the sea, with a dreamy blueness that was quite abnormal.
[1] A reference to the Faro game.