Part 15

"Yes, yes, we hope so, though I am afraid that you won't be able to live on your salary at the commencement, and it is very questionable how long your little money will hold out with your mode of life. I tell you candidly, when you mentioned a few moments ago the sum which you were able to leave to your child I had quite a shock."

"Be patient, Felician. In three or five years, when I have my opera finished...." He spoke in an ironical tone.

"Are you really writing an opera, George?"

"I am beginning one shortly."

"Who is doing the libretto for you?"

"Heinrich Bermann. Of course you scowl again."

"My dear George, I have always been very far from lecturing you in any way about the people you associate with. It is quite natural that you with your intellectual tastes should live in a different set and mix with different people to those I do, people whom I should probably find rather less to my taste. But so long as Herr Bermann's libretto is good you have my blessing ... and Herr Bermann, of course, too."

"The libretto is not ready yet, only the scenario."

Felician could not help laughing. "So that's how your opera stands! I only hope the theatre is already built at which you are going to get a post as conductor."

"Come, come," said George, somewhat hurt.

"Forgive me," replied Felician, "I have not really any doubts about your future. I should only like you yourself to do a bit more towards it. I really should be so ... proud, George, if you were to do anything great, and it, I'm sure, only depends on yourself. Willy Eissler, who is a man of genuine musical gifts, told me again only the other day that he thinks more of you than of most of the young composers."

"On the strength of the few songs of mine which he knows? You're a good fellow, Felician, but there is really no need for you to encourage me. I already know what I have got in me, only I must be more industrious, and my going away will do me quite a lot of good. It does one good to get out of one's usual surroundings for a time, like this. And this time it is quite different from last. It is the first time, Felician, that I have had anything to do with a person who is absolutely my equal, who is more ... whom I can treat as a true friend as well, and the consciousness that I am going to have a child, and by her, too, is, in spite of all the accompanying circumstances, rather pleasant."

"I can quite understand that," said Felician, and contemplated George seriously and affectionately.

The clock on the writing-table struck two.

"What, so late already," cried Felician, "and I have got to pack early to-morrow. Well, we can talk over everything at breakfast to-morrow. Well, good-night, George."

"Good-night, Felician. Thank you," he added with emotion.

"What are you thanking me for, George? You really are funny!" They shook hands and then kissed each other, which they had not done for quite a long time, and George resolved to call his child Felician if it was to be a boy, and he rejoiced at the good omen of a name which had so happy a ring.

After his brother's departure George felt as deserted as though he had never had another friend. Living in the great lonely house, where he seemed to be weighed down by a mood like that which had followed the first weeks after his father's death, made him feel depressed.

He regarded the days which still had to elapse before the departure as a transition period, in which it was not worth while starting anything. The hours he spent with his mistress in the room opposite the church became colourless and blank. A psychological change, too, seemed to be now taking place in Anna herself. She was frequently irritable, then taciturn again, almost melancholy, and George was often overcome by so great a sense of _ennui_ when he was with her that he felt quite nervous of the next month in which they would be thrown completely into each other's society. Of course the journey in itself promised change enough, but how would it be in the subsequent months which would have to be spent somewhere in the neighbourhood of Vienna? He must also think about a companion for Anna; but he was still putting off speaking to her about it, when Anna herself came to him with a piece of news which was calculated to remove that difficulty, and at the same time to raise another one, in the simplest way conceivable. Anna had recently, particularly since she had gradually given up her lessons, become more and more intimate with Therese, and had confided everything to her, and so it soon came about that Therese's mother was also in the secret. This lady was much more congenial to Anna than her own mother, who after a slight glimmer of understanding had held aloof, aggrieved and depressed, from her erring daughter.

Frau Golowski not only declared herself ready to live with Anna in the country, but even promised to discover the little house which George had not been able to find, while the young couple were away. However much this willingness suited George's convenience, he found it none the less somewhat painful to be under an obligation to this old woman, who was a stranger to him, and in moments when he was out of temper it struck him as almost grotesque that it should be Leo's mother and Berthold's father, of all people, who should be fated to play so important a part in so momentous an event in Anna's life.

George paid his farewell visit at Ehrenbergs' on a fine May afternoon three days before he went away.

He had only rarely shown himself there since that Christmas celebration and his conversations with Else had remained on the most innocent of footings. She confessed to him, as though to a friend who could not now misunderstand remarks of that character, that she felt more and more unsettled at home. In particular the atmosphere of the house, as George had frequently noticed before, seemed to be permanently overcast by the bad relations between father and son. When Oskar came in at the door with his nonchalant aristocratic swagger and began to talk in his Viennese aristocratic accent, his father would turn scornfully away, or would be unable to suppress allusions to the fact that he could make an end this very day of all that aristocracy by stopping or lowering his so-called allowance, which as a matter of fact was neither more nor less than pocket-money. If, on his side, his father began to talk Yiddish, as he was most fond of doing in front of company, and with obvious malice, Oskar would bite his lips and make a point of leaving the room. So it was only very rarely during the last few months that father and son stayed in Vienna or in Neuhaus at the same time. They both found each other's presence almost intolerable.

When George came in to Ehrenbergs' the room was almost in darkness. The marble Isis gleamed from behind the pianoforte, and the twilight of the late afternoon was falling in the alcove where mother and daughter sat opposite each other. For the first time the appearance of these two women struck George as somewhat strangely pathetic. A vague feeling floated up in his mind that perhaps this was the last time he would see this picture, and Else's smile shone towards him with such sweet melancholy, that he thought for a whole minute: might I not have found my happiness here, after all?

He now sat next to Frau Ehrenberg (who was going on quietly knitting) opposite Else, smoked a cigarette and felt quite at home. He explained that, fascinated by the tempting spring weather, he was starting on his projected journey earlier than he had intended, and that he would probably prolong it until the summer.

"And we are going to Auhof as early as the middle of May this time," said Frau Ehrenberg, "and we certainly count upon seeing you down there this year."

"If you are not elsewhere engaged," added Else with a perfectly straight face.

George promised to come in August, at any rate for some days. The conversation then turned on Felician and Willy, who had started with their party a few days ago from Biskra on their hunting expedition in the desert; on Demeter Stanzides, who announced his immediate intention of resigning from the army and retiring to an estate in Hungary; and finally on Heinrich Bermann of whom no one had had any news for some weeks.

"Who knows if he will ever come back to Vienna at all?" said Else.

"Why shouldn't he? What makes you think that, Fräulein Else?"

"Upon my word, perhaps he'll marry that actress and trot about the world with her."

George shrugged his shoulders ... he didn't know personally of any actress with whom Heinrich was mixed up, and he ventured to express a doubt whether Heinrich would ever marry any one, whether she was a Princess or a circus rider.

"It would be rather a pity if Bermann were to," said Frau Ehrenberg, without taking any notice of George's discretion. "I certainly think that young people take these matters either too lightly or too seriously."

Else followed up the idea: "Yes, it is strange, all you men are either cleverer or much sillier in these matters than in any other, although really it is just in such crucial moments of one's life, that one ought as far as possible to be one's ordinary self."

"My dear Else," said George casually, "once one's passions are set going----"

"Yes, when they are set going," emphasised Frau Ehrenberg.

"Passions!" exclaimed Else. "I believe that like all other great things in the world, they are really something quite rare."

"What do you know, my child?" said Frau Ehrenberg.

"At any rate I've never so far seen anything of that kind in my immediate environment," explained Else.

"Who knows if you would discover it," remarked George, "even though it did come once in a way quite near you? Viewed from outside a flirtation and a life's tragedy may sometimes look quite the same."

"That is certainly not true," said Else. "Passion is something that is bound to betray itself."

"How do you manage to know that, Else?" objected Frau Ehrenberg. "Passions can often conceal themselves deeper than any ordinary trumpery little emotion, for the very reason that there is usually more at stake."

"I think," replied George, "that it is a very personal matter. There are, of course, people who have everything written on their forehead, and others who are impenetrable; being impenetrable is quite as much a talent as anything else."

"It can be trained too, like anything else," said Else.

The conversation stuck for a moment, as is apt to occur when the personal application that lies behind some general observation flashes out only too palpably.

Frau Ehrenberg started a new topic. "Have you been composing anything nice, George?" she asked.

"A few trifles for the piano. My quintette will soon be ready too."

"The quintette is beginning to grow mythical," said Else discontentedly.

"Else!" said her mother.

"Well, it really would be a good thing, if he were to be more industrious."

"You are perhaps right about that," replied George.

"I think artists used to work much more in former days than they do now."

"The great ones," qualified George.

"No, all," persisted Else.

"Perhaps it is a good thing that you are going to travel," said Frau Ehrenberg, "for apparently you've too many distractions here."

"He'll let himself be distracted anywhere," asserted Else sternly. "Even in Iglau, or wherever else he happens to be next year."

"That's why I've never yet thought of your going away," said Frau Ehrenberg and shook her head; "and your brother will be in Sophia or Athens next year and Stanzides in Hungary ... it's really a great pity to think of all the nicest men being scattered like this to the four corners of the world."

"If I were a man," said Else, "I would scatter too."

George smiled. "You're dreaming of a journey round the world in a white yacht, Madeira, Ceylon, San Francisco."

"Oh no, I shouldn't like to be without a profession, but I should probably have been an officer in the merchant service."

"Won't you be kind enough"--Frau Ehrenberg turned to George--"to play us one or two of your new things?"

"Delighted, I'm sure." He got up from the recess and walked towards the window into the darkness of the room. Else got up and turned on the light on top. George opened the piano, sat down and played his ballads.

Else had sat down in an arm-chair and as she sat there, with her arm resting on the side of the chair and her head resting on her arm in the pose of a _grande dame_ and with the melancholy expression of a precocious child, George felt again strangely thrilled by her look. He was not feeling very satisfied with his ballad to-day, and was fully conscious that he was endeavouring to help out its effect by putting too much expression into his playing.

Hofrat Wilt stepped softly into the room and made a sign that they were not to disturb themselves. He then remained standing by the door leaning against the wall, tall, superior, good-natured, with his closely-cropped grey hair, until George ended his performance with some emphatic harmonies. They greeted each other. Wilt congratulated George on being a free man and being now able to travel South. "I'm sorry to say I can't do it," he added, "and all the same one has at times a vague notion that even though one were not to visit one's office for a year on end, not the slightest change would take place in Austria." He talked with his usual irony about his profession and his Fatherland. Frau Ehrenberg retorted that there was not a man who was more patriotic, and took his calling more seriously than he himself. He agreed. But he regarded Austria as an infinitely complicated instrument, which only a master could handle properly, and said that the only reason for its sounding badly so often was that every muddler tried his art upon it. "They'll go on knocking it about," he said dismally, "until all the strings break and the frame too."

When George went Else accompanied him into the empty room. She still had a few words to say to him about his ballads. She had particularly liked the middle movement. It had had such an inner glow. Anyway, she hoped he would have a good time on his journey.

He thanked her.

"So," she said suddenly, when he already had his hat in his hand, "it's really a case now of saying a final farewell to certain dreams."

"What dreams?" he asked in surprise.

"Mine of course, which you are bound to have known about by this time."

George was very astonished. She had never been so specific. He smiled awkwardly and sought for an answer. "Who knows what the future will bring forth?" he said at last lightly.

She puckered her forehead. "Why aren't you at any rate as straight with me as I am with you? I know quite well that you are not travelling alone ... I also know who is going with you ... what is more I know the whole thing. Good gracious, what haven't I known since we have known each other?"

And George heard grief and rage quivering below the surface of her words. And he knew that if he ever did make her his wife, she would make him feel that she had had to wait for him too long. He looked in front of him and maintained a silence that seemed at once guilty and defiant.

Then Else smiled brightly, held out her hand and said once again: "_Bon voyage_."

He pressed her hand as though he were bound to make some apology. She took it away from him, turned round and went back into the room. He still waited for a few seconds standing by the door and then hurried into the street. On the same evening George saw Leo Golowski again in the café, for the first time for many weeks. He knew from Anna that Leo had recently had to put up with a great deal of unpleasantness as a volunteer and that that "fiend in human form" in particular had persecuted him with malice, with real hatred in fact. It occurred to George to-day that Leo had greatly altered during the short time in which he had not seen him. He looked distinctly older.

"I'm very glad to get a chance of seeing you again before I leave," said George and sat down opposite him at the café table.

"You are glad," replied Leo, "that you happened to run across me again, while I positively needed to see you once again, that is the difference." His voice had even a tenderer note than usual. He looked George in the face with a kind, almost fatherly expression.

At this moment George no longer had any doubt that Leo knew everything. He felt as embarrassed for a few seconds as though he were responsible to him, was irritated at his own embarrassment and was grateful to Leo for not appearing to notice it. This evening they talked about practically nothing except music. Leo inquired after the progress of George's work, and it came about during the course of the conversation that George declared himself quite willing to play one of his newest compositions to Leo on the following Sunday afternoon. But when they took leave of each other, George suddenly had the unpleasant feeling of having passed with comparative success a theoretical examination, and of being faced to-morrow with a practical examination. What did this young man, who was so mature for his years, really want of him? Was George to prove to him that his talent entitled him to be Anna's lover or her child's father? He waited for Leo's visit with genuine repugnance. He thought for a minute of refusing to see him. But when Leo appeared with all that innocent sincerity which he so frequently liked to affect, George's mood soon became less harsh. They drank tea and smoked cigarettes and George showed him his library, the pictures which were hanging in the house, the antiquities and the weapons, and the examination feeling vanished. George sat down at the pianoforte, played a few of his earlier pieces and also his latest ones as well as the ballads, which he rendered much better than he had done yesterday at Ehrenbergs', and then some songs, while Leo followed the melody with his fingers, but with sure musical feeling. Eventually he started to play the quintette from the score. He did not succeed and Leo stationed himself at the window with the music and read it attentively.

"One can't really tell at all so far," he said. "A great deal of it indicates a dilettante with a lot of taste, other parts an artist without proper discipline. It's rather in the songs that one feels ... but feels what?... talent ... I don't know. One feels at any rate that you have distinction, real musical distinction."

"Well, that's not so much."

"As a matter of fact it's pretty little, but it doesn't prove anything against you either, since you have worked so little--worked very little and felt little."

"You think ..." George forced a sarcastic laugh.

"Oh, you've probably lived a great deal but felt ... you know what I mean, George?"

"Yes, I can imagine well enough, but you're really making a mistake; why I rather think that I have a certain tendency to sentimentalism, which I ought to combat."

"Yes, that's just it. Sentimentalism, you know, is something which is the direct antithesis to feeling, something by means of which one reassures oneself about one's lack of feeling, one's essential coldness. Sentimentalism is feeling which one has obtained, so to speak, below cost price. I hate sentimentalism."

"Hm, and yet I think that you yourself are not quite free from it."

"I am a Jew, it's a national disease with us. Our respectable members are working to change it into rage or fury. It's a bad habit with the Germans, a kind of emotional slovenliness so to speak."

"So there is an excuse for you, not for us."

"There is no excuse for diseases either if, fully realising what one is doing, one has missed one's opportunity of protecting oneself against them. But we are beginning to babble in aphorism and are consequently only on the way to half or quarter truths. Let's go back to your quintette. I like the theme of the adagio best."

George nodded. "I heard it once in Palermo."

"What," said Leo, "is it supposed to be a Sicilian melody?"

"No, it rippled to me out of the waves of the sea when I went for a walk one morning along the shore. Being alone is particularly good for my work, so is change of scene. That's why I promise myself all kinds of things from my trip." He told him about Heinrich Bermann's opera plot, which he found very stimulating. When Heinrich came back again, Leo was to make him seriously start on the libretto.

"Don't you know yet," said Leo, "his father is dead?"

"Really? When? How do you know?"

"It was in the paper this morning."

They spoke about Heinrich's relationship to the dead man and Leo declared that the world would perhaps get on better if parents would more frequently learn by the experiences of their children instead of asking their children to adapt themselves to their own hoary wisdom. The conversation then turned on the relations between fathers and sons, on true and false kinds of gratefulness, on the dying of people one held dear, on the difference between mourning and grief, on the dangers of memory and the duty of forgetting. George felt that Leo was a very serious thinker, was very solitary and knew how to be so. He felt almost fond of him when the door closed behind him in the late twilight hour and the thought that this man had been Anna's first infatuation did him good.

The remaining days passed more quickly than he anticipated, what with purchases, arrangements and all kinds of preparations. And one evening George and Anna drove after each other to the station in two separate vehicles and jestingly greeted each other in the vestibule with great politeness, as though they had been distant acquaintances who had met by accident.

"My dear Fräulein Rosner, what a fortunate coincidence! are you also going to Munich by any chance?"

"Yes, Herr Baron."

"Hullo, that's excellent! and have you a sleeping-car, my dear Fräulein?"

"Oh yes, Herr Baron, berth number five."

"How strange now, I have number six."

They then walked up and down on the platform. George was in a very good temper, and he was glad that in her English dress, narrow-brimmed travelling hat and blue veil Anna looked like an interesting foreigner. They went the length of the entire train until they came to the engine, which stood outside the station and was sending violent puffs of light-grey steam up to the dark sky. Outside green and red lamps glowed on the track with a faint light. Nervous whistles came from somewhere out of the distance and a train slowly struggled out of the darkness into the station. A red light waved magically to and fro over the ground, seemed to be miles away, stopped and was suddenly quite near. And outside, shining and losing themselves in the invisible, the lines went their way to near and far, into night and morning, into the morrow, into the inscrutable.

Anna climbed into the compartment. George remained standing outside for a while and derived amusement from watching the other travellers, those who were in an excited rush, those who preserved a dignified calm, and those who posed as being calm--and all the various types of people who were seeing their friends off: the depressed, the jolly, the indifferent.