XXII
During the last days of April Christian received a telegram from Eva Sorel. The message read: “From the third to the twentieth of May, Eva Sorel will be at the Hotel Adlon, Berlin, and feels quite sure that Christian Wahnschaffe will meet her there.”
Christian read the message over and over. In his inner and in his outer life all circumstances pointed to an approaching crisis. He knew that this summons would be decisive in its influence upon his fate. Its exact character and the extent of its power he could not predict.
For weeks there had been a restlessness in him that robbed him of sleep during many long hours of the night. On certain days he had called for his motor in order to drive to some near-by city. When the car had covered half the distance, he ordered his chauffeur to turn back.
He had gone to Waldleiningen, and had patted his horses and played with his dogs. But he had suddenly felt like a schoolboy who lies and plays truant, and his pleasure in the animals had gone. At parting he had put his arms about his favourite dog, a magnificent Great Dane, and as he looked into the animal’s eyes it had seemed to Christian, still in his character of a truant, that he wanted to say: “I must first go and pass my examination.” And the dog seemed to answer: “I understand that. You must go.”
Also the slender horse of Denis Lay had said, with a turn of its excessively graceful neck: “I understand that. You must go.”
It was settled that the horse was to run in the races at Baden-Baden, and the Irish jockey was full of confidence. But on the day of his departure Christian was told that the animal had sickened again. He thought: “I have loved it too insistently. Now it wants the caressing hand, and is lonely without it.”
With the coming of spring guests from the cities had appeared almost daily at Christian’s Rest. But he had rarely received any one. A single guest he could not bear at all. If there were two they could address each other and make his silence easier.
One day came Conrad von Westernach and Count Prosper Madruzzi, bringing messages from Crammon. They were on their way to Holland. Christian asked them to dine with him, but he was very laconic. Conrad von Westernach remarked later, in his forthright fashion, to Madruzzi: “That fellow has a damned queer smile. You never know whether he’s a born fool or whether he’s laughing at you.”
“It’s true,” the count agreed; “you never know where you are with him.”