Part 3

You see, I was not what one may call spoiled. Only a year before, when I had been staying for a month with the Dickses at Bedford (Dicks senior is an intimate friend of the senior partner of Daniel Cooper & Co., Ltd., and has an only daughter, besides a fine estate at Bedford), well, I was also shown in by a housemaid, but who treated me as if she were a duchess, which perhaps she was, and who carried the hot water for my use as if she were the Archbishop of Canterbury going to anoint the King. (By the way: God save him and give him victory!)--Now, if I had tipped that Midland goddess with gold, why should I not make friends with plain Fanny on a silver basis?

Fanny kissed my hand and I felt silly. I was not yet used to the shameless way in which Viennese people of the lower class throw themselves on any hand they may think kissable, viz.: capable of kissing back, the kiss of a hand being hard, round, and having a metallic sound when you let it fall.

Anyhow, that two crown piece conquered Fanny. Parents, when reading this, should not feel incensed because of the extravagance of their children. An Austrian crown is worth less than a shilling, and in stating this I do not think only of the Imperial crown.--When, an hour later, I left to take my lesson with old Hammer, my things were in order, and all I could do was heroically to resist my wish to tip Fanny again when I asked her to oil my door, which was creaking badly.

You know that to go out I had to cross the _salon_. As I was halfway through it, the door opposite mine, the one which was leading to Mr. Doblana's room, was suddenly closed. Perhaps my opening the door of my own room had caused a draught, Vienna being always a windy place, and thus the opposite door had been slammed. But instinctively I felt that there was something else. Miss Doblana, who was, may be, not so unwell as it pleased her father to say, had had, no doubt, a fit of curiosity and had watched me. I imagined that, her hair being adorned with hair-curlers (I did not know then that this achievement of Western civilisation had not yet reached oriental Vienna), she had rapidly hidden herself from my attention.

I ought to tell you that this was quite unnecessary. There were plenty of nice girls in Vienna whom I had leisure to look at, but somehow I had no mind for them. Much less for a spinster who, to judge from her father's age, was probably ten years my elder and wore hair-curlers. In fact, I had not been able to forget my fair Comtesse of Salzburg fame; and I lived in an unceasing hope that I might see her again.

* * * * *

A voice to my right calls my name. But there is no-one to my right. And then a shout of laughter resounds to my left. It is Private Pringle, who in civil life is a ventriloquist and enjoys playing such tricks. So do we. To-day he plays beside this the part of a postman, and he has a letter for me. It is from Daniel Cooper and consort. The consort treats me as a naughty boy, because I write so little, and could I not tell her some pretty story about the war? And whether I was careful and avoided these wicked shells?

The pater wants to know whether some music paper would be welcome; I ought to write a good military march, so that English soldiers could at last stop playing Austrian marches.

And both of them tell me that Bean was simply dying with anxiety for me. Bean is Violet Dicks. She hates flower names and prefers to be a vegetable. In war time evidently vegetables have a greater value than flowers, but she had already had this mad idea in peace time, from the very day when her tiny brain awoke to wisdom. And yet, she is in love with me. If she knew that I am writing the story of another girl! No, little Bean, no! Anyhow, not yet--if ever! And so I return to Vienna.

I had made a rule of going every evening to a theatre. The theatres are beautiful, and the performances generally excellent. This evening, the first day of my stay at the Karlsgasse, I went to the _Burg_ theatre to see _Macbeth_. I had arranged with Mr. Doblana that we should meet at a certain café after the performance.

I found him there sitting at a large round table amongst his friends, a dozen or more, who were all actors, or artists, or belonged in some fashion to the theatrical world. One of them was an officer, but seemed nevertheless to belong to the company. They called him "_Herr Graf_." Doblana was sitting to his left and seemed to have kept a place next to himself for me.

I had, on my journey to Vienna, stopped in various towns in Germany, here for a few days, there for a few weeks, and had been introduced to some such companies. But while in Germany women were admitted, actresses mostly, we were only men in Vienna. This may account for the fact that the conversation was generally much more of a serious character. There was but one individual, a Hungarian, who with a loud and discordant voice told funny yarns and tried to attract the general attention. He was a theatrical agent, named Maurus Giulay, and remarkable by the quantity of black hair which grew in his nose instead of on his head, and by the amount of diamonds which adorned his coarse, greasy fingers. His stomach was rather protuberant. So was a roll of fat that protruded beyond the back of his collar. He displeased me intensely, and I took an immediate dislike to him.

Not knowing anybody present I took no part in the conversation. Besides, I was not acquainted with the subjects which were being discussed. So it happened that keeping quiet, from no choice of my own, I overheard a part of the dialogue which just was taking place between Doblana and the _Herr Graf_.... My host was entreating his neighbour not to take a certain matter as lightly as he did.

"After all," he said, "your share is as large as mine, so should your interest be!"

"If it is a question of money," retorted the other, "although I don't owe you anything, you know that you may count on any compensation from me for the ill-luck which has befallen you."

"I know that you are always generous," answered Doblana, "and I thank you from my heart. But it is not a question of money. Think only: the result of a full year's work, and it has been announced to the press..."

"You know that I was always against this announcement."

"I know it and deplore it. For this is the explanation of your indifference now. You had taken a prejudice against the thing. But should it therefore be lost altogether?"

"Well," said the _Herr Graf_ haughtily, "I do not care, and I have heard enough of the whole affair."

Whereupon Mr. Doblana looked very distressed and assumed an air of an even more unspeakable sadness than that which I had noticed when I first had seen him.

At this moment a new guest arrived, evidently a popular knight of this Round Table, for they were all eager to shake hands with him. If he was not King Arthur himself, he was nevertheless something very near to this exalted personage, namely, Vienna's most celebrated actor, Alfred Bischoff.

The table was rather full, however he managed to squeeze himself between Doblana and me. As he did so, he uttered some words of apology. I had not recognized this clean shaven man with his heavy eyelids and deep drawn features, but I recollected at once his incomparable voice. If I am not much of a musician, after all, I have at least good ears, a minor detail for a composer, when you think of Beethoven.

"Mr. Bischoff," I cried, "I have just had one of the greatest experiences one can imagine: your Macbeth. How happy I am to make your acquaintance!"

He looked at me.

"You are an Englishman," he said, which made me think that if all was said my accent must be more pronounced than my vanity would have wished; yet, though vexed, I answered in a meek affirmative.

"Then," he continued, "there is no danger of your being an Anti-Semite and of your withdrawing your admiration once you have heard from Alfred Bischoff himself, that he is neither a bishop, nor even a Christian at all, but a simple Jew named Aaron Cohn."

The _Herr Graf_ distorted his features a little.

"You see," went on the great actor, "our friend Alphons Hector ..." and he nodded at the _Herr Graf_, "smells something like sulphur. After all he would like to have me burned." And he added laughing: "It's in the blood, _Herr Graf_, and it cannot be helped. And to think that you are the best of the lot!"

Mr. Bischoff--for I prefer to call him by this name which he has made so celebrated--turned to me and said:

"You English are a great nation. Freedom is your motto. Freedom in everything--freedom even in religion. A Jew, with you, is as complete a human being as a Christian. You have no Anti-Semitism."

"May I take it," I asked him, "that there is a little gratitude in your masterly interpretation of our Shakespeare?"

"No," replied he, "not in the least. Our art is art for art's sake. And if I succeed in rendering Shakespeare's meaning, it is due to our possessing good translations of his works."

"That may be," I declared, "but then the German tongue is so suitable to translations."

At once he flew up in a rage. And the same man who just had called us a great nation used the most abusive terms against us.

"As if any tongue were unsuitable to translations. But, of course, with you, with mean shopkeepers, with you and your mercenary point of view, how could you have good translations? I have been asked by one of your English firms to translate an English play, a rotten one, of course. 'We usually pay seven and sixpence a thousand words,' they wrote, 'but in consideration of your fame, we would pay anything up to ten shillings a thousand.' As if this could be a decisive factor! As if it were not before all necessary to be inspired by the original! And it has always been like that. A workman's pay for a workman's job, while translating in reality is the most difficult occupation in literature. Do you know who translated _Macbeth_ into German? Wieland, a classic, Voss, a classic, Schiller, a classic, and finally Schlegel and Tieck, two classics, whose translation you have heard this evening. Goethe translated the tragedies of Voltaire and novels by Diderot and Cellini's memoirs. And Schiller translated Virgil and a Greek tragedy, and Racine's _Phaedra_, and French and Italian comedies. Do you think they did it for seven and sixpence a thousand words or even for ten shillings? No! They did it out of enthusiasm, out of the one feeling which creates everything great in art. They thought theirs a holy mission, and thus, amongst other things, they originated the art of translating. For translating is an art with us, while it is pot-boiling with you."

He remained silent for a minute or so.

"Yes," he said then a little more composedly, "we have excellent translations of _Macbeth_, wonderful translations. Yet we do not know how to play it."

"What do you mean?" I asked rather astonished.

"For instance," he replied, "when in the first act the witches say to me:

'All hail, Macbeth! hail to thee, thane of Glamis! All hail, Macbeth! hail to thee, thane of Cawdor! All hail, Macbeth! thou shalt be king hereafter!'

the stage manager this evening made some noise with a gong and destroyed that moment of great impression, into which Banquo is to murmur:

'Good sir, why do you start, and seem to fear Things that do sound so fair?'

Indeed, I had seemed to start, not because of the prophecy, but because of the gong. And Klein who, God knows, is a fine actor, was obliged to speak his words aloud instead of murmuring them. The scene was spoiled. And so it went through the whole evening. The entire tragedy is a tissue of terror, of trembling, of anxious forebodings, of dreadful silence, and it was torn into rags this evening. But the worst of all was the Lady Macbeth."

Poor me! How difficult it seemed to satisfy Mr. Bischoff. I had thought the performance extraordinary. I had been so much impressed by the mysterious way in which the whole thing had been played. At one moment I had not been able to distinguish whether Macbeth had sighed or whether the night wind had howled in the chimney. Everything had seemed to me to be but one soul. When Macbeth after the murder had come and looked at his bloody hands and had muttered:

'This is a sorry sight.'

I had felt as though I had done the deed myself with him. And Lady Macbeth! How dreadful she had been, especially in the dream scene.

"Lady Macbeth!" went on Mr. Bischoff, "of course, it is Goethe who made the great, fatal mistake when he called her a superwitch. Our actresses make a monster of her. I did not feel seduced by our Lady Macbeth this evening. She ought to flatter, to cajole me. She ought to be a beautiful, flexible cat, she ought to be trembling with love and to shudder herself before her awful thoughts and words. And at the end, when she walks in her sleep, I don't want her to come and to declaim. I want her to be ill and feverish and weak, weak as a child, yes, as a child. I want her to say in a childish, soft voice:

'Yet here's a spot.'

and I want her to weep when she says:

'Who would have thought the old man to have so much blood in him?'

I want her to be a broken, ruined woman, and I want you, the spectator, to pity her."

I listened surprised, for what he said seemed true to me.

"Look here, sir," he went on. "You are a composer, or will be one. There has never been a more splendid task for a musician than to write a musical drama on _Macbeth_, to express all that the poet left untold, to show this couple of criminals as poor human beings, to change their poison into tears."

The next day I was quite full of these ideas: they satiated my brain. _Macbeth--Macbeth, an opera_--an opera by Patrick Cooper, an opera with original Scotch tunes, perhaps with bagpipes, an opera with a Lady Macbeth full of charm instead of full of hideousness, an opera with strange mysterious sounds.... For the first time I thought that I was understanding Hammer's extraordinary theory, that there were no harmonies, but only voices....

I think I was a ridiculous youth then. Anyhow, I like myself better in khaki. And, strange to say, the music I hear now, the roar of the guns, has its fearful beauty, too.

I believe the editor will cancel this. Of course it is not easy to write a book in such surroundings. I should like to see you trying to do it. Sometimes I admire myself. But then I have only to think of the man who works at the chemistry treatise, and you ought to see how bashful I can become.

Well, to return to my subject, the day after _Macbeth_ rather resembled its predecessor, for in the morning I was again watched through the partly opened door, and in the evening I went to the opera, where they played _Tannhäuser_. Mr. Doblana had given me a ticket so that I might hear him blowing his part.

On the evening before Mr. Bischoff had been far from enthusiastic about _Macbeth_. I tried to imitate him re _Tannhäuser_. I did not think the performance very extraordinary. Venus ought to have had more charm, and her pink chemise (or was it a dress robe?) did not provide the illusion I was looking for. Tannhäuser was rather elderly and seemed not to have understood the problem of sacred love _versus_ profane love. And he treated Venus as though she had been his "Missus," and Elizabeth as though she had been his "fancy lady"; and yet it was Venus who was the "fancy lady." But the worst was Elizabeth. She was a beautiful, fair wig, large and wavering, with a stately lady in front; the whole had a strong voice, which wavered too. I had always imagined Elizabeth as a young girl with long rich plaits thrown in front of her over her shoulders, a girl, nice and pure and not yet womanly at all. While the one I saw seemed to be an aunt of the Landgrave, and not his niece.

Mr. Doblana and I met again after the performance. But we had only a hasty supper at a restaurant before we went home. For it was already late, and the horn-player had a heavy rehearsal before him which was to begin at ten o'clock next morning.

The house was very quiet when we arrived. Midnight was just striking at the Karl's Church. There was not a sign of life. In the _salon_ a tiny flame of gas was burning. We parted wishing each other a good night; Mr. Doblana extinguished the little gas flame and went into his room, I into mine.

There I lit my chandelier. As I did so I noticed well in evidence on my table an envelope bearing my name. I did not know the writing, which was thin and pointed, a woman's hand. I tore the envelope open. Inside, on a half-sheet of paper, were written the words: "Do not bolt your door this night." There was no signature.

Now, please, darling reader, imagine my feelings.

There I was in a strange house and in a strange town, where I had no feminine acquaintances. (I beg Fanny's pardon, but as I had tipped her but the day before, she did not count.) And there was a female bidding me not to bolt my door.

Imagine further, that I had slept little the night before, the sitting at the café having lasted long, up to the small hours. Imagine that the whole day I had mentally worked hard on _Macbeth_, an opera in five acts by Patrick Cooper. Imagine also that I had heard an expanded, tiring performance of _Tannhäuser_ and that I felt sleepy and little disposed for receiving visits. But fancy also that I was twenty-one and thirsting for adventures; yet that I was clever enough to guess that the lady who wished to see me was that elderly spinster, Miss Doblana, with her curler-pins, a detail which made the adventure less desirable. Think of all that, and then of an idea which occurred to my shrewd brain, namely, that, after all, it was perhaps not Miss Doblana who wanted that nocturnal interview, for in that case she would have to cross her father's room. That, therefore, the mysterious lady was hidden in one of the backrooms whither she must have penetrated with the help of Fanny. That there was but one lady who could have sufficient interest in my whereabouts to have taken the trouble of finding out where I was staying; one, the Comtesse! For as I had told her the name of the hotel where I was going to stay, and as I had left my new address when I departed from the said hotel, nothing was more natural and easy than to find me. But nothing was more unnatural than to call upon me in the middle of the night. No! it was not the Comtesse, It was the daughter of my horn-player.

There was another dilemma. Should I take off my boots? Was it possible to await a lady at such an hour in slippers? I had not much experience in affairs of that sort.

In my despair I used bad language, threw myself into an easy chair and took my Shakespeare. Destiny had made me take it with me when I left Hampstead. Since this morning it had been lying on the table, in case of emergencies. I opened it and started reading _Macbeth_.

Then a funny thing happened. Lady Macbeth was no longer present at the famous banquet, but she presided in the equally famous hall over a competition of Scotch bards, who tried to play Wagner on their bagpipes. As they did not succeed the Landgrave said most rudely: "Go to ... Venus!" whereupon they all disappeared. Lady Macbeth in the same moment became the fair Landgravine Elizabeth, but not the one I had seen at the Opera this evening, for she had two beautiful plaits thrown over her shoulders and falling upon her bosom, exactly as I had wished it, and she was young and uncommonly pretty. She carried a taper which allowed me to see the funniest detail, namely, a certain likeness, to whom do you think, wise reader? To the Comtesse.

Some slight noise made me start, and Shakespeare tumbled down to the floor. Near the door, with a candle in her hand, exactly as Lady Macbeth ought to come in the dream scene, a forlorn child--and exactly dressed as I had wished Elizabeth to be dressed, in a long white gown, with long, rich, fair plaits falling on her bosom--there stood my Comtesse. As she saw me awakening from my dream, she put her left forefinger on her thick, fleshy lips and whispered anxiously:

"Don't talk aloud."

I wanted to take her light, to press, nay! to kiss her hands, but she prevented it.

"I have come," she said, "to ask you, whatever might happen, not to tell my father that you met me at Salzburg."

"I promise that, Miss Doblana...."

You see, clever reader, I had grasped the situation quite as quickly as you, I had realized who the mysterious person was to whom Mr. Doblana was so greatly alike, that it had struck me on my first visit at the Karlsgasse; I had devined that SHE was neither a Comtesse, nor an elderly spinster with hair-curlers, nor Lady Macbeth, nor even the Landgravine as I had wished her, but Miss Doblana, who was apparently not as ill as her father had told me, yet very pale.

"I promise, but why?"

This "Why" was not precisely chivalrous, and you might even call it indiscreet, but Miss Doblana evidently expected the question.

"To-morrow morning," she replied, "my father has a long rehearsal at the opera. He leaves here at a quarter to ten and will not be home before two. I will be in the _salon_ the whole time during his absence. If you wish it I will then tell you all."

It was said in the faintest whisper. Without a sound she opened the door and disappeared. Not even the door creaked. Fanny had done her duty.

But was it Fanny?

IV.

How long have I been writing? I don't know. But there is Sergeant Young coming back.

"You had better get ready," he says, "there is going to be an attack. The Germans are coming over this way."

"Ah!" I answer quietly and begin preparing myself.

"I dare say," goes on the Sergeant, "that the Germans are very Hun-wise. It will be a Hun-pleasant job for them."

When he starts on those puns it is a sign that he is in a good temper.

"If they think that they will get Hun-perturbed into our trenches, they make a Hun-believable mistake. These trenches are Hun-approachable."

But time passes, ten minutes, twenty minutes, and no order comes. You cannot imagine how bored one is during the long hours of waiting between attacks, but the anxiety which precedes the moments of real danger makes up for these weary intervals.

"Have you written something more?" finally asks Charlie.

Silently I offer him the sheets, and he begins to read. Meanwhile I am thinking that I ought to write to dad and tell him that I cannot compose a march in the trenches because of the booming of the guns which will never keep time--and to mamma that nothing was easier than to avoid the shells; she need not know that they cannot always avoid us--and to Bean, that there was no reason for anxiety at all, war being only an exaggerated picnic and casualties some sort of indigestion.

"I say," declares Sergeant Young, who has read the chapter in less time than was necessary, "I say, your Miss Doblana behaves in a rather Hun-maidenly manner. To call in the middle of the night upon a young, Hun-married man, with her hair Hun-done! I am afraid the public will find it Hun-conventional and even Hun-pardonable. Of course, she was in love with the pretty Salzburg officer."

"You jump to conclusions. I do not think that anything in my story may have suggested that."

"In this case, what did you think of her visit?"

"I thought ... that she had been obliged to go across her father's room, and that she would not have done so without some necessity. Her fear had been great, to judge from her wide eyes and her paleness. Would she have undergone any risk if there had been some chance of avoiding it?"

"Of course--if it was Hun-avoidable! And what did you feel?"