XXII
On his way to Scotland Crammon stopped over for a day in Frankfort. He informed Christian’s mother of his presence, and she begged him with friendly urgency to come to her.
It was the end of June. They had tea on a balcony wreathed in fresh green. Frau Wahnschaffe had ordered no other callers to be admitted. For a while the conversation trickled along indifferently, and there were long pauses. She wanted Crammon to give her some news of Christian, from whom she had not heard since he had left Christian’s Rest. But first, since Crammon was a confidant and a witness in the suit, it was necessary to mention Judith’s divorce and approaching remarriage to Edgar Lorm, and Frau Wahnschaffe’s pride rebelled at touching on things that could, nevertheless, not be silently passed over.
She sought a starting point in vain. Crammon, outwardly smooth, but really in a malicious and woodenly stubborn mood, recognized her difficulty, but would do nothing to help her.
“Why do you stay at a hotel, Herr von Crammon?” she asked. “We have a right to you and it isn’t nice of you to neglect us.”
“Don’t grudge an old tramp his freedom, dear lady,” Crammon answered, “and anyhow it would give me a heartache to have to leave this magic castle after just a day.”
Frau Wahnschaffe nibbled at a biscuit. “Anything is better than a hotel,” she said. “It’s always a bit depressing, and not least so when it’s most luxurious. And it isn’t really nice. You are next door to quite unknown people. And the noises! But, after all, what distinction in life is there left to-day? It’s no longer in fashion.” She sighed. Now she thought she had found the conversational bridge she needed, and gave herself a jolt. “What do you think of Judith?” she said in a dull, even voice. “A lamentable mistake. I thought her marriage to Imhof far from appropriate and regretted it. But this! I can hardly look my acquaintances in the face. I always feared the child’s inordinate ambitions, her utter lack of restraint. Now she throws herself at the head of an actor. And to add to the painful complications, there is her bizarre renunciation of her fortune. Incomprehensible! There’s some secret behind that, Herr von Crammon. Does she realize clearly what it will mean to live on a more or less limited salary? It’s incomprehensible.”
“You need have no anxiety,” Crammon assured her. “Edgar Lorm has a princely income and is a great artist.”
“Ah, artists!” Frau Wahnschaffe interrupted him, with a touch of impatience and a contemptuous gesture. “That means little. One pays them; occasionally one pays them well. But they are uncertain people, always on the knife’s edge. It’s customary now to make a great deal of them, even in our circles. I’ve never understood that. Judith will have to pay terribly for her folly, and Wahnschaffe and I are suffering a bitter disappointment.” She sighed, and looked at Crammon surreptitiously before she asked with apparent indifference, “Did you hear from Christian recently?”
Crammon said that he had not.
“We have been without news of him for two months,” Frau Wahnschaffe added. Another shy glance at Crammon told her that he could not give her the information she sought. He was not sufficiently master of himself at this moment to conceal the cause of his long and secret sorrow.
A peacock proudly passed the balcony, spread the gleaming magnificence of his feathers in the sunlight, and uttered a repulsive cry.
“I’ve been told that he’s travelling with the son of the forester,” said Crammon, and pulled up his eyebrows so high that his face looked like the gargoyle of a mediæval devil. “Where he has gone to, I can only suppose; but I have no right to express such suppositions. I hope our paths will cross. We parted in perfect friendship. It is possible that we shall find each other again on the same basis.”
“I have heard of the forester’s son,” Frau Wahnschaffe murmured. “It’s strange, after all. Is it a very recent friendship?”
“Yes, most recent. I have no explanation to offer. There’s nothing about a forester’s son that should cause one any anxiety in itself; but one should like to know the character of the attraction.”
“Sometimes hideous thoughts come to me,” said Frau Wahnschaffe softly, and the skin about her nose turned grey. Abruptly she bent forward, and in her usually empty eyes there arose so sombre and frightened a glow, that Crammon suddenly changed his entire opinion of this woman’s real nature.
“Herr von Crammon,” she began, in a hoarse and almost croaking voice, “you are Christian’s friend; at least, you caused me to believe so. Then act the part of a friend. Go to him; I expect it of you; don’t delay.”
“I shall do all that is in my power,” Crammon answered. “It was my intention to look him up in any event. First I’m going to Dumbarton for ten days. Then I shall seek him out. I shall certainly find him, and I don’t believe that there is any ground for real anxiety. I still believe that Christian is under the protection of some special deity; but I admit that it’s just as well to see from time to time whether the angel in question is fulfilling his duties properly.”
“You will write me whatever happens,” Frau Wahnschaffe said, and Crammon gave his promise. She nodded to him when he took his leave. The glow in her eyes had died out, and when she was alone she sank into dull brooding.
Crammon spent the evening with acquaintances in the city. He returned to the hotel late, and sat awhile in the lobby, immovable, unapproachable, nourishing his misanthropy on the aspect of the passersby. Then he examined the little directory on which the names of the guests appeared. “What are these people doing here?” he asked himself. “How important that looks: ‘Max Ostertag (retired banker) and wife.’ Why Ostertag of all things? Why Max? Why: and wife?”
Embittered he went up to his room. Embittered and world-weary he wandered up and down the long corridor. In front of each door, both to the right and to the left, stood two pairs of boots—one pair of men’s and one pair of women’s. In this pairing of the boots he saw a boastful and shameless exhibitionism of marital intimacies; for the shape and make of the boots assured him of the legal and officially blameless status of their owners. He seemed to see in those boots a morose evidence of overlong, stale unions, a vulgar breadth of tread caused by the weight of money, a commonness of mind, a self-righteous Pharisaism.
He couldn’t resist the foolish temptation of creating confusion among the boots of these Philistines. He looked about carefully, took a pair of men’s boots, and joined them to a pair of women’s boots at another door. And he continued until the original companionship of the boots was utterly destroyed. Then he went to bed with a pleasant sensation, comparable to that of a writer of farces who has succeeded in creating an improbable and scarcely extricable confusion amid the puppets of his plot.
In the morning he was awakened by the noise of violent and angry disputes in the hall. He raised his head, listened with satisfaction, smiled slothfully, stretched himself, yawned, and enjoyed the quarrelling voices as devoutly as though they were music.