Tarr

The new summer heat drew heavy pleasant ghosts out of the ground, like plants disappeared in winter; spectres of energy, bulking the hot air with vigorous dreams. Or they had en...

Otto Kreisler, when he had entered the Café Souchet, had been anxious. His eyes had picked out Soltyk in a delicate flurry. He had been afraid that he might escape him. Soltyk l...

Paris hints of sacrifice.—But here we deal with that large dusty facet known to indulgent and congruous kind. It is in its capacity of delicious inn and majestic Baedeker, where...

One certain thing amongst many uncertainties about the English club, the Bonnington Club, was that it had not yet found itself quite. Its central room (and that was all there wa...

On August the tenth Tarr had an appointment with Anastasya at his studio in Montmartre. They had arranged to dine in Montmartre. It was their seventh meeting. He had just done h...

On the first day of his letter being overdue, a convenient way of counting, Otto rose late, from a maze of shallow dreams, and was soon dressed, wanting to get out of his room.

There was a rush in the passage: the hissing and spitting sounds inseparable from the speaking of the German tongue. Some one was spitting louder than the rest, and squealing du...

A great many of Frederick Tarr’s resolutions came from his conversation. It was a tribunal to which he brought his hesitations. An active and hustling spirit presided over this...

Five days after this, in the morning, Otto Kreisler mounted the steps of the police-station of a small town near the German frontier. He was going to give himself up.

The portmanteau fell under the bed; he crushed into the red bulbous cover. Kreisler never sat on his bed except when going to get into it. For another man it would have replaced...

Otto’s compatriots at the Berne were sober and thoughtful, with discipline in their idleness. Their monthly moneys flowed and ebbed, it was to be supposed, small regular tides f...

Tarr’s character at this time performed repeatedly the following manœuvre: his best energies would, once a farce was started, gradually take over the business from the play depa...

Bertha’s friends looked for her elsewhere, nowadays, than at her rooms. Tarr was always likely to be found there in impolite possession. She made them come as often as she could...

For the first time since his “return” Tarr found no Kreisler at the café. “I wonder what that animal’s up to,” he thought. The _garçon_ told him that Kreisler had not been there...

Tarr had Anastasya in solitary promenade two days after this. He had worked the first stage consummately. He swam with ease beside his big hysterical black swan, seeming to guid...

From his window in the neighbouring boulevard Kreisler’s eye was fixed blankly on a spot thirty feet above the scene of the Hobson-Tarr dialogue. He was shaving himself, one eye...

Tarr left Bertha punctually at seven. She looked very ill. He resolved not to go there any more. He felt upset. Lejeune’s, when he got there, was full of Americans. It was like...

In Paris Ernst Volker had found himself. It seemed especially constructed for him, such a wonderful, large, polite institution. No one looked at him because he was small. For mo...

He picked his way out of the avenue with a reasoning gesticulation of the body; a chicken-like motion of sensible fastidious defence in front of buffonic violence. At the gate h...

Tarr had not gone to England. Kreisler had not been sufficient to accomplish this. He still persisted in his self-indulgent system of easy stages. A bus ride distant, he would b...

Tarr’s idea of leisure recognized no departure from the tragic theme of existence. Pleasure could take no form that did not include Death and corruption—at present Bertha and hu...

People appear with a startling suddenness sometimes out of the fog of Time and Space. Bertha did not visualize Kreisler very readily. She was surprised when she saw him below he...

Destiny has more power over the superstitious. They attract constantly bright fortunes and disasters within their circle. Destiny had laid its trap in the unconscious Kreisler....

Bertha went on turning the bread over in the pan, taking the butter from its paper and dropping it into its dish: rinsing and wiping a knife or two, regulating the gas. Frequent...

Got into the room, he did not seem to know what next to do. So far he had been evidently quite clear as to his purpose. He had been feeling the same necessity as her—he, to see...

Some days later, in the evening, Tarr was to be found in a strange place. Decidedly his hosts could not have explained how he got there. He displayed no consciousness of the ano...

Bertha made her way home in a roundabout fashion to avoid the possibility of meeting any one she knew. The streets were loftily ignorant of her affairs. Thin walls dyked in affa...

The secret of his visits to Bertha and interminable liaison was that he really never had meant to leave her at all, he reflected. He had not meant to leave her altogether. He wa...

Anastasya and he were dining that night in Montmartre as usual. His piece of news hovered over their conversation like a bird hesitating as to the right spot at which to establi...

Back in her rooms, she examined, over her lunch, with stupefaction, the things she had been doing—conversations, appointments, complementary sensations, and all the rest, as she...

Kreisler pocketed Ernst’s hundred marks and made no further attempt on the formerly hospitable income of his friend. Debts began accumulating. Only he found he had grown suddenl...

Nine months previously Kreisler had arrived in Paris at the Gare de Lyon, from Italy. He had left Rome, according to his account, because the Italian creditor is such a bad-temp...

Kreisler’s afternoon encounter with Anastasya and Soltyk had resembled Tarr’s meeting with him and Bertha. Kreisler had seen Anastasya and his new café friend one day from his w...

Tarr had arrived at Bertha’s place about seven in the evening on his first return from Montmartre. He hung about for a little. In ten minutes’ time he had his reward. She came o...

“Good-bye, if you like,” he said at length. “But I see no reason why we should part in this manner. If Kreisler wouldn’t mind”—he looked after him—“we might go for a little walk...

The indignation and flurry subsided; but the child of this eruption remained. The Polish party found the legacy of the uproar as cold as its cause had been hot. Bitzenko inspire...

The sight of Bertha’s twistings and turnings, her undignified rigmarole, had irritated Anastasya. This was why she had brutally announced, as though to cut short all that, that...

Kreisler, on his side, had been only a few paces from his door when he caught sight of Bertha. As his changed route would necessitate a good deal of tiresome circling to bring h...

Imaginative people are easy to convince of the naturalness of anything; and the Russian was the prophet of the necessity of this affair. Stephen was not convinced; but he soon m...

Already before a considerable pile of saucers, representing his evening’s menu of drink, Kreisler sat quite still, his eyes very bright, smiling to himself. Tarr did not at once...

“DEAR BERTHA,—I am writing at the Gare St. Lazare, on my way to England. You have made things much easier for me in one way of course, far more difficult in another. Parenthetic...

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 some...

His nature would probably have sought to fill up the wide, shallow gap left by Ernst and earlier ties either by another Ernst or, more likely, a variety of matter. It would have...

With a little scratching (as the concierge pushed it) with the malignity of a little, quiet, sleek animal, the letter from Germany crept under the door the next morning, and lay...

Suzanne stood at attention before him in the hall of the Mont de Piété. If she had been inexorable before, she was now doubly so beneath the eyes of the veritable officials. The...

He went slowly up the stairs feeling for his key. He arrived at the door without having found it. The door was ajar. At first this seemed natural to him, and he continued the se...

Bertha was still being taken in carefully prepared doses of an hour a day: from half-past four to a quarter to six. Any one else would have found this much of Bertha insupportab...