The lights were extinguished, the prelude to the third act began. George heard the tired sea-waves surging against the desolate beach and the grievous sighs of a mortally wounded hero were wafted through the blue thin air. Where had he heard this last? Hadn't it been in Munich...? No, it couldn't be so far back. And he suddenly remembered the hour when the sheets of the Tristan music had been spread open before him on a balcony beneath a wooden gable. A sunny path opposite ran to the churchyard between field and forest, while a cross had flashed with its golden light; down in the house a woman he loved had groaned in agony and he had felt sick at heart. And yet this memory, too, had its own melancholy sweetness, like all else that had completely passed. The balcony, the little blue angel between the flowers, the white seat under the pear-tree, where was it all now? He would see the house again once more, once more before he left Vienna.
The curtain rose. The shawm rang out yearningly beneath the pale expanse of an unsympathetic heaven. The wounded hero slumbered in the shade of the linden branches, and by his head watched Kurwenal the faithful. The shawm was silent, the herdsman bent questioningly over the wall and Kurwenal made answer. By Jove, that was a voice of unusual timbre! If we only had a baritone like that, thought George. And many other things, too, which we need! If he were only given the requisite power he felt himself able, in the course of time, to turn the modest theatre at which he worked into a first-class stage. He dreamed of model performances to which people would stream from far and wide. He no longer sat there as an envoy, but as a man to whom it was perhaps vouchsafed to be himself a leader in not too distant days. Further and higher coursed his hopes. Perhaps just a few years—and his own original harmonies would be ringing through a spacious hall of a musical festival, and the audience would be listening as thrilled as the one to-day, while somewhere outside a hollow reality would be flowing impotently past. Impotently? That was the question. Did he know whether it was given him to compel human beings by his art as it had been given to the master to whom they were listening to-day—to triumph over the difficulty, wretchedness and awfulness of everyday life? Impatience and doubt tried to rise out of his soul; but his will and common-sense quickly banished them and he now felt again the pure happiness he always experienced when he heard beautiful music, without thinking of the fact that he often wished himself to do creative work and obtain recognition for doing it.
In moments like this the only relation to his beloved art of which he was conscious was that he was able to understand it with deeper appreciation than any other human being. And he felt that Heinrich had spoken the truth when they had ridden together through a forest damp with the morning dew: it was not creative work—it was simply the atmosphere of his art which was necessary to his existence. He was not one of the damned, like Heinrich, who always felt driven to catch hold of things, to mould them, to preserve them, and who found his world fall to pieces whenever it tried to escape from his creative hand.
Isolde in Brangäne's arms had dropped dead over Tristan's body, the last notes were dying away, the curtain fell. George cast a glance up to the box in the first tier. Else stood by the ledge with her look turned towards him, while James put her dark-red cloak over her shoulders, and it was only now, that after a nod of the head as quick as though she had meant no one to notice it, she turned towards the exit. Remarkable, thought George from a distance: there is a certain ... melancholy romantic something about the way she carries herself, about many of her movements. It is then that she reminds me most of the gipsy girl of Nice, or the strange young person with whom I stood in front of the Titian Venus in Florence.... Did she ever love me? No. And she doesn't love her James either. Who is it then?... Perhaps ... it was really that mad drawing-master in Florence. Or no one at all. Or Heinrich, of all people?...
He met Skelton in the foyer. "Back again?" queried the latter.
"Only for a few days," replied George.
It transpired that Skelton had not really known what George was doing and had thought that he was on a kind of musical tour through the German towns for the purposes of study. He was now more or less surprised to hear that George was here on leave and had been practically commissioned by the manager to inspect the new production of Tristan. "Will this suit you?" said Skelton. "I've got an appointment with Breitner; at the 'Imperial,' the white room."
"Excellent," replied George. "I'm staying there."
Doctor von Breitner was already smoking one of his celebrated big cigars when the two men appeared at his table. "What a surprise!" he exclaimed, when George greeted him. He had heard that George was engaged as conductor in Düsseldorf.
"Detmold," said George, and he thought: "The people here don't bother about me particularly.... But what does it matter?"