And the musicians began to play that provoking, passionate melody, that barbaric music, now dull and suppressed, now loud and screeching, which, ever since it first began to excite his nerves, had pursued Frederick night and day. He thanked heaven that the darkness helped conceal his emotion. It was that hard, convulsive motive conjuring up the demons which had been the beginning of his obsession in the Künstlerhaus in Berlin. Over and again those sounds had lured him and led him on.
What was this strange Ariel's intention with him? At whose bidding was he acting when he assailed his victim with inner storms and almost let him perish in a real storm on the seas? Why did he prick Frederick's flesh with this music? Why did he cast its inseverable hempen cords about his throat and limbs? How was it that after so tremendous an eternal tragedy had been enacted out there on the cosmic solitudes of the ocean, after the waters had unmercifully swallowed so vast a number of men, loving life—how was it that this music had remained untouched and unweakened, that it had here resumed its fantastic devilishness? Frederick felt as if new cords were biting into his flesh and tightening about his throat. Something like the anguish and frenzy of a bull with a lasso about its horns came over him—a bull whom a cruel power will misuse for a senseless, bloody show in the arena. Frederick did not hit about him. He did not run away, and yet he came near doing both. His head, it seemed to him, was wrapped up heavily in thick sail-cloth. He must do something finally to rid himself of that enforced blindness. He must look straight in the face of his grotesque opponent—Prospero or Caliban?
"There is no doubt," Frederick felt, while the music tortured and harrowed him, "that men seek madness, they seek it again and again. They are fond of madness. Was not madness the leader of those men who first made the impossible possible and crossed the ocean, though they were neither fish nor fowl?"
In Skagen in Denmark there is a sight worth seeing. In the dining-room of a small inn there are painted figureheads of foundered vessels saved from the wreckage. The hand of madness has unmistakably touched all those wooden men and women with their painted faces and clothes. They look forward into the distance, where they seem to see something beyond all. Their noses quiver in the air on the scent of gold and foreign spices. In some way or other they have come upon a secret and have lifted their feet from their native land to tread the air and pursue illusions and phantasmagoria and discover new secrets in the trackless salt waste. It was by such that El Dorado was discovered. It was such that have led millions and millions of men to their destruction.
And Ingigerd Hahlström, who shortly before had been his painted Madonna of wood, now became Frederick's ecstatic figurehead. He saw her high above the waves on the prow of a phantom sailing ship, bent forward with open mouth and wide eyes, her yellow hair falling straight down from both sides of her head.
The music ceased, and Ingigerd Hahlström stepped on the stage. She was wearing a long blue evening cloak over her costume.
"Mr. Lilienfeld, I think it is rather stupid to change the name of my number from 'Mara, the Spider's Victim' to 'Oberon's Revenge,'" she said very dryly.
"Miss Hahlström," said the impresario, nervously, "please, for heaven's sake, leave that to me. I know the audiences here. Besides, I have reasons for choosing another title. I want to avoid a damage suit by Webster and Forster. Please begin, Miss Hahlström. We have to hurry." Mr. Lilienfeld clapped his hands and called to the musicians to strike up.
Again those provoking strains, immediately upon which Mara danced in, like a naked elf floating in the air. While flying in wide circles about the flower, as yet unseen, she resembled a fabulous, exotic butterfly in her transparent veil shot with gold. Willy Snyders called her a naiad, Ritter a moth. Franck said nothing, merely keeping his eyes fixed upon the transformed girl.
The moment came when with her eyes closed, like a somnambulist, she sniffed the perfume and began to seek its source. In that seeking, there was both innocence and maddening wantonness. A fine quiver went through her body, like the quiver of a moth in its sultry love-play. At last she smelt of the flower itself, and her sudden rigidity showed that she had perceived the great spider on it.