CHAPTER V
Tarr soon regretted this last anti-climax stage of his adventure. He would have left Kreisler alone in future, but he felt that by frequenting him he could save Bertha from something disagreeable. With disquiet and misgiving every night now he sat in front of his Prussian friend. He watched him gradually imbibing enough spirits to work him up to his pitch of characteristic madness.
“After all, let us hear really what it all means, your Kreisler stunt, and Kreisler?” he said to her four or five days after his reappearance. “Do you know that I act as a dam, or rather a dyke, to his outrageous flood of liquorous spirits every night? Only my insignificant form is between you and destruction, or you and a very unpleasant Kreisler, at any rate.—Have you seen him when he’s drunk?—What, after all, does Kreisler mean? Satisfy my curiosity.”
Bertha shuddered and looked at him with dramatically wide-open eyes, as though there were no answer.
“It’s nothing, Sorbert, nothing,” she said, as though Kreisler were the bubonic plague and she were making light of it.
Yet a protest had to be made. He had rather neglected the coincidence of his arrival and Bertha’s refusal to see Kreisler. He must avoid finding himself manœuvred into appearing the cause. A tranquil and sentimental revenant was the rôle he had chosen. Up to a point he encouraged Bertha to see his boon companion and relax her sudden exclusiveness. He hesitated to carry out thoroughly his part of go-between and reconciler. At length he began to make inquiries. After all, to have to hold back his successor to the favours of a lady, from going and seizing those rights (presumably temporarily denied him), was a strange situation. At any moment now it seemed likely that Kreisler would turn on him. This would simplify matters. Better leave lovers to fight out their own quarrels and not take up the ungrateful rôle of interferer and voluntary policeman. All his retrospective pleasure was being spoilt. But he was committed to remain there for the present. To get over his sensation of dupe, he was more sociable with Kreisler than he felt. The German interpreted this as an hypocrisy. His contempt and suspicion of the peculiar revenant grew.
Bertha was tempted to explain, in as dramatic a manner as possible, the situation to Tarr. But she hesitated always because she thought it would lead to a fight. She was often, as it was, anxious for Tarr.
“Sorbert, I think I’ll go to Germany at once,” she said to him, on the afternoon of his second visit to Renée Lipmann’s.
“Why, because you’re afraid of Kreisler?”
“No, but I think it’s better.”
“But why, all of a sudden?”
“My sister will be home from Berlin, in a day or two⸺”
“And you’d leave me here to ‘mind’ the dog.”
“No.—Don’t see Kreisler any more, Sorbert. Dog is the word indeed! He is mad: ganz verucht!—Promise me, Sorbert”—she took his hand—“not to go to the café any more!”
“Do you want him at your door at twelve to-night?—I feel I may be playing the part of—gooseberry, is it⸺?”
“Don’t, Sorbert. If you only knew!—He was here this morning, hammering for nearly half an hour. But all I ask you is to go to the café no more. There is no need for you to be mixed up in all this. I only am to blame.”
“I wonder what is the real explanation of Kreisler?” Sorbert said, pulled up by what she had said. “Have you known him long—before you knew me, for instance?”
“No, only a week or two—since you went away.”
“I must ask Kreisler. But he seems to have very primitive notions about himself.”
“Don’t bother any more with that man, Sorbert. You don’t do any good. Don’t go to the café to-night!”
“Why to-night?”
“Any night.”
Kreisler certainly was a “new link”—too much. The chief cause of separation had become an element of insidious rapprochement.
He left her silently apprehensive, staring at him mournfully.
So that night, after his second visit to Fräulein Lipmann’s, he did not seek out Kreisler at his usual head-quarters with his first enthusiasm.