“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.