Part 30

George looked through the window and saw roofs, chimneys and weather-beaten pipes, while fairly near was the light-grey tower with the broken stone cupola. The sky opposite was pale and empty. It suddenly occurred to George that Nürnberger had not yet made any inquiry about Anna. What was he probably thinking? Thinking no doubt that George had deserted her, and that she had already consoled herself with another lover. Why did I come to Vienna? he thought desultorily, as though his journey had had no other purpose than to listen to Nürnberger giving him what had now turned out to be a sufficiently pessimistic analysis of life. It struck twelve. George took his leave. Nürnberger accompanied him as far as the door and thanked him for his visit. He inquired earnestly about what George was doing in his new home, about his work and his new acquaintances, as though their previous conversation on the subject had not really counted, and now learned for the first time of the accident which was responsible for George's sudden appointment in the little town.

"Yes, that's just what I always say," he then remarked. "It is not we who make our fate, but some circumstance outside us usually sees to that--some circumstance which we were not in a position to influence in any way, which we never have a chance of bringing into the sphere of our calculations. After all, do you deserve any credit...? I feel justified in putting this question, much as I respect your talent. Nor does old Eissler, whose interest in your affairs you once told me about, deserve any credit either for your being wired to from Detmold and finding your true sphere of work there so quickly. No. An innocent man, some one you don't know, had to die a sudden death to enable you to find that particular place vacant. And what a lot of other things which you were equally unable to influence, and which you were quite unable to foresee, had to come on the scene to enable you to leave Vienna with a light heart--to enable you, in fact, to leave it at all."

George felt hurt. "What do you mean by a light heart?" he asked.

"I mean a lighter heart than you would have had under other circumstances. If the little creature had remained alive who knows whether you...."

"You can take it from me that I would have gone away, even then. And Anna would have taken it quite as much as a matter of course as she does now. Don't you believe me? Why, perhaps I'd have gone with an even lighter heart if that matter had turned out otherwise. Why, it was Anna who persuaded me to accept. I was quite undecided. You have no idea what a good sensible creature Anna is."

"Oh, I don't doubt it at all. According to all you have told me about her from time to time, she certainly seems to have behaved with more dignity in her position than young ladies of her social status are usually accustomed to exhibit on such occasions."

"My dear Herr Nürnberger, the position really wasn't as dreadful as all that."

"Come, don't say that. For however much things may have been made easier by your courtesy and consideration, take it from me that the young lady is bound to have felt frequently during the last months the irregularity of her position. I am sure there isn't a single member of the feminine sex, however daring and advanced may be her views, who doesn't prefer in a case like that to have a ring on her finger. And it's all in favour, too, of your friend's sensible and dignified behaviour that she never allowed you to notice it, and that she took the bitter disillusionment at the end of these nine months, which were certainly not entirely a bed of roses, with calmness and self-possession."

"Disillusionment is rather a mild word. Pain would perhaps be more correct."

"I dare say it was both. But in this case, as in most others, the burning wound of pain heals more quickly than the throbbing piercing wound of disillusionment."

"I don't quite understand."

"Well, my dear George, you don't doubt, do you, that if the little creature had remained alive you two would have married very quickly; why, you'd even be married this very day."

"And you think that now, just because we have no child.... Yes, you seem to be of the opinion that ... that ... it's all over between us. But you are quite wrong, quite wrong, my dear friend."

"My dear George," replied Nürnberger, "both of us would prefer not to speak about the future. Neither you nor I know the place where a strand of our fate is being spun at this very moment. You didn't have the slightest inkling, either, when that conductor was attacked by a stroke, and if I now wish you luck in your future career I don't know whose death I have not conjured down by that very wish."

They took leave of each other on the landing. Nürnberger cried after George from the stairs: "Let me hear from you now and then."

George turned round once more. "And mind you do the same." He only saw Nürnberger's gesture of resigned remonstrance, smiled involuntarily, hurried down the stairs and took a conveyance at the nearest corner.

He pondered over Nürnberger and Bermann on his way to the Golowskis'. What a strange relationship it was between them. A scene which he thought he had seen some time or other in a dream came into George's mind. The two sat opposite each other, each held a mirror in front of the other. The other saw himself in it with the mirror in his hand, and in that mirror the other again with his mirror in his hand, and so on to infinity; but did either of them really know the other, did either of them really know himself? George's mind became dizzy. He then thought of Anna. Was Nürnberger right again? Was it really all over? Could it really ever end? Ever?... Life is long! But were even the ensuing months dangerous? No. That was not to be taken seriously, however it might turn out. Perhaps Micaela.... And in Easter he would be in Vienna again. Then there came the summer, they would be together, and then? Yes, what then? Engagement? Herr Rosner and Frau Rosner's son-in-law, Joseph's brother-in-law! Oh well, what did he care about the family? It was Anna after all who was going to be his wife, that good gentle sensible creature.

The fly stopped in front of an ugly fairly new house, painted yellow, in a wide monotonous street. George told the driver to wait and went into the doorway. The house looked quite dilapidated from inside. Mortar had crumbled away from the walls in many places and the steps were dirty. There was a smell of bad fat coming out of some of the kitchen windows. Two fat Jewesses were talking on the landing of the first storey in a jargon which George found positively intolerable. One of them said to a boy whom she held by the hand: "Moritz, let the gentleman pass."

Why does she say that? thought George, there's plenty of room; she obviously wants to get into conversation with me. As though I could do her any harm or any good! An expression of Heinrich's in a long-past conversation came into his mind: "An enemy's country."

A servant-girl showed him into a room which he immediately recognised as Leo's. Books and papers on the writing-table, the piano open, a Gladstone bag, which was still not completely unpacked, open on the sofa. The door opened the next minute. Leo came in, embraced his visitor and kissed him so quickly on both cheeks that the man who was welcomed with such heartiness had no time to be embarrassed.

"This is nice of you," said Leo, and shook both his hands.

"You can't imagine how glad I was ..." began George.

"I believe you.... But please come in with me. We are having dinner, you know, but it's nearly over."

He took him into the next room. The family was gathered round the table.

"I don't think you know my father yet," observed Leo, and introduced them to each other.

Old Golowski got up, put away the serviette which he had tied round his neck and held out his hand to George. The latter was surprised that the old man should look so completely different from what he had expected. He was not patriarchal, grey-bearded and venerable, but with his clean-shaven face and broad cunning features looked more like an ageing provincial comedian than anything else.

"I am very glad to make your acquaintance, Herr Baron," he said, while one could read in his crafty eyes ... "I know everything."

Therese hastily asked George the conventional questions: when he had come, how long he was staying, how he was; he answered patiently and courteously, and she looked him in the face with animation and curiosity.

Then he asked Leo about his plans for the near future.

"I must first practise the piano industriously, so as not to make a fool of myself before my pupils. People were very nice to me, of course. I had books, as many as I wanted, but they certainly didn't put a piano at my disposition." He turned to Therese. "You should certainly flog that point to death in one of your next speeches. This bad treatment of prisoners awaiting trial must be abolished."

"It was no laughing matter for him this time yesterday," said old Golowski.

"If you think by any chance," said Therese, "that the good luck which happened to come your way will alter my views you are making a violent mistake. On the contrary." And turning to George she continued: "Theoretically, you know, I am absolutely against their having let him out. If you'd simply knocked the fellow down dead, as you would have been quite entitled to do, without this abominable farce of a duel you'd never have been let out, but would have served your five to ten years for a certainty. But since you went in for this ghastly life-and-death gamble which is favoured by the State, because you cringed down to the military point of view you've been pardoned. Am I not right?" She turned again to George.

The latter only nodded and thought of the poor young man whom Leo had shot, who as a matter of fact had had nothing else against the Jews except that he disliked them just as much as most people did after all--and whose real fault had only been that he had tried it on the wrong man.

Leo stroked his sister's hair and said to her: "Look here, if you say publicly in your next speech what you've just said to-day within these four walls you'll really impress me."

"Yes, and you'll impress me," replied Therese, "if you take a ticket to Jerusalem to-morrow with old Ehrenberg."

They got up from the table. Leo invited George to come into his room with him.

"Shall I be disturbing you?" asked Therese. "I too would like to see something of him, you know."

They all three sat in Leo's room and chatted. Leo seemed to be enjoying his regained freedom without either scruples or remorse. George felt strangely affected by this. Therese sat on the sofa in a dark well-fitting dress. To-day was the first occasion on which she resembled the young lady who had drunk Asti under a plane-tree in Lugano, when she was the mistress of a cavalry officer, and who had subsequently kissed some one else. She asked George to play the piano. She had never yet heard him. He sat down, played something from _Tristan_ and then improvised with happy inspiration. Leo expressed his appreciation.

"What a pity that he is not staying," said Therese, as she leaned against the wall and crossed her hands over her high coiffure.

"I am coming back at Easter," replied George, and looked at her.

"But only to disappear again," said Therese.

"That may be," replied George, and the thought that his home was no longer here, that he had no home at all anywhere, and would not have for a long time, suddenly overwhelmed him.

"How would it be," said Leo, "if we went on a tour together in the summer?--you, Bermann and I? I promise you that you won't be bored by theoretical conversation like you were once last autumn ... do you still remember?"

"Oh well," said Therese, stretching herself, "nothing will come of it anyway. Deeds, gentlemen!"

"And what comes of deeds?" asked Leo. "Putting them at the highest, they simply save individual situations for the time being."

"Yes, deeds which you do for yourself," said Therese. "But I only call a real deed what one is capable of doing for others, without any feeling of revenge, without any personal vanity, and if possible anonymously."

At last George had to go. What a lot of things he still had to see to.

"I'll come part of the way with you," said Therese to him.

Leo embraced him again, and said: "It really was nice of you."

Therese disappeared to fetch her hat and jacket. George went into the next room. Old Frau Golowski seemed to have been waiting for him; with a strangely anxious face she came up to him and put an envelope in his hand.

"What is that?"

"The account, Herr Baron. I didn't want to give it to Anna.... It might perhaps have upset her too much."

"Oh yes...." He put the envelope in his pocket and thought that it felt strangely different to any other....

Therese appeared with a little Spanish hat, ready to go out. "Here I am. Goodbye, mamma. Shan't be home for dinner."

She went down the stairs with George and threw him sideways a glance of pleasure.

"Where can I take you?" asked George.

"Just take me along with you. I'll get out somewhere."

They got in, the vehicle went on. She put to him all kinds of questions which he had already answered in the apartment, as though she took it for granted that he was now bound to be more candid with her than before the others. She did not learn anything except that he felt comfortable in his new surroundings and that his work gave him satisfaction. Had his appearance been a great surprise for Anna? No, not at all. He had of course given her notice of it. And was it really true that he meant to come back again at Easter? It was his definite intention....

She seemed surprised. "Do you know that I had almost imagined...."

"What?"

"That we would never see you again!"

He was somewhat moved and made no answer. The thought then ran through his mind: Would it not have been more sensible...? He was sitting quite close to Therese and felt the warmth of her body, as he had done before in Lugano. In what dream of hers might she now be living--in the dark jumbled dream of making humanity happy, or the light gay dream of a new romantic adventure? She kept looking insistently out of the window. He took her hand, without resistance, and put it to his lips.

She suddenly turned round to him and said innocently: "Yes, stop now. I'd better get out here."

He let go her hand and looked at Therese.

"Yes, my dear George. What wouldn't one fall into," she said, "if one didn't"--she gave an ironic smile--"have to sacrifice oneself for humanity? Do you know what I often think?... Perhaps all this is only a flight from myself."

"Why.... Why do you take to flight?"

"Goodbye, George."

The vehicle stopped. Therese got out, a young man stood still and stared at her, she disappeared in the crowd. I don't think she'll finish up on the scaffold, thought George. He drove to his hotel, had his midday meal, lit a cigarette, changed his clothes and went to Ehrenbergs'.

James, Sissy, Willy Eissler and Frau Oberberger were with the ladies of the house in the dining-room taking black coffee. George sat down between Else and Sissy, drank a glass of Benedictine and answered with patience and good humour all the questions which his new activities had provoked. They soon went into the drawing-room, and he now sat for a time in the raised alcove with Frau Oberberger, who looked young again to-day and was particularly anxious to hear more intimate details about George's personal experiences in Detmold. She refused to believe him when he denied having started intrigues with all the singers in the place. Of course she simply regarded theatrical life as nothing but a pretext and opportunity for romantic adventures. Anyway, she always made a point of thinking she detected the most monstrous goings-on in the _coulisses_ behind the curtain, in the dressing-rooms and in the manager's office. When George had no option but to disillusion her, by his report of the simple, respectable, almost philistine life of the members of the opera, and by the description of his own hardworking life, she visibly began to go to pieces, and soon he found himself sitting opposite an aged woman, in whom he recognised the same person as had appeared to him last summer, first in the box of a little white-and-red theatre and later in a now almost forgotten dream. He then went and stood with Sissy near the marble Isis, and each sought to find in the eyes of the other during their harmless chatter a memory of an ardent hour beneath the deep shade of a dark green park in the afternoon. But to-day that memory seemed to them both to be plunged in unfathomable depths.

Then he went and sat next to Else at the little table on which books and photographs were lying. She first addressed to him some conventional questions like all the rest. But suddenly she asked quite unexpectedly and somewhat gently: "How is your child?"

"My child...." He hesitated. "Tell me, Else, why do you ask me...? Is it simply curiosity?"

"You are making a mistake, George," she replied calmly and seriously. "You usually make mistakes about me, as a matter of fact. You take me for quite superficial, or God knows what. Well, there's no point in talking about it any more. Anyway, my asking after the child is not quite so incomprehensible. I should very much like to see it sometime."

"You would like to see it?" He was moved.

"Yes, I even had another idea.... But one which you will probably think quite mad."

"Let's hear it, Else."

"I was thinking, you know, we might take it with us."

"Who, we?"

"James and I."

"To England?"

"Who's told you we're going to England? We are staying here. We've already taken a place in 'Cottage'[3] outside. No one need know that it is your child."

"What a romantic thought!"

"Good gracious, why romantic? Anna can't keep it with her, and you certainly can't. Where could you put it during the rehearsals? In the prompter's box, I suppose?"

George smiled. "You are very kind, Else."

"I'm not kind at all. I only think why should an innocent little creature pay the penalty or suffer for.... Oh well, I mean it can't help it.... After all ... is it a boy?"

"It was a boy." He paused, then he said gently: "It's dead, you know." And he looked in front of him.

"What! Oh, I see ... you want to protect yourself against my officiousness."

"No, Else, how can you?... No, Else, in matters like that one doesn't lie."

"It's true, then? But how did it...?"

"It was still-born."

She looked at the ground. "No? How awful!" She shook her head. "How awful!... And now she's lost everything quite suddenly."

George gave a slight start and was unable to answer. How every one seemed to take it for granted that the Anna affair was finished. And Else did not pity him at all. She had no idea of how the death of the child had shocked him. How could she have an idea either? What did she know of the hour when the garden had lost its colour for him and the heavens their light, because his own beautiful child lay dead within the house?

Frau Ehrenberg joined them. She declared that she was particularly satisfied with George. Anyway, she had never doubted that he would show what he was made of as soon as he once got started in a profession. She was firmly convinced, too, that they would have him here in Vienna as a conductor in three to five years. George pooh-poohed the idea. For the time being he had not thought of coming back to Vienna. He felt that people worked more and with greater seriousness outside in Germany. Here one always ran the danger of losing oneself.

Frau Ehrenberg agreed, and took the opportunity to complain about Heinrich Bermann, who had lapsed into silence as an author and now never showed himself anywhere.

George defended him and felt himself obliged to state positively that Heinrich was more industrious than he had ever been. But Frau Ehrenberg had other examples of the corrupting influence of the Vienna air, particularly Nürnberger, who now seemed to have cut himself completely off from the world. As for what had happened to Oskar ... could that have happened in any other town except Vienna? Did George know, by-the-by, that Oskar was travelling with the Prince of Guastalla? Her tone did not indicate that she regarded that as anything special, but George noticed that she was a little proud of it, and entertained the opinion somewhere at the back of her mind that Oskar had turned out all right after all.

While George was speaking to Frau Ehrenberg he noticed that Else, who had retired with James into the recess, was directing glances towards him--glances full of melancholy and of knowledge, which almost frightened him. He soon took his leave, had a feeling that Else's handshake was inconceivably cold, while those of the others were amiably indifferent, and went.

"How funny it all is," he thought in the vehicle which drove him to Heinrich's. People knew everything before he did. They had known of his _liaison_ with Anna before it had begun, and now they knew that it was over before he did himself. He had half a mind to show them all that they were making a mistake. Of course, in so vital an affair as that one should be very careful not to decide on one's course of action out of considerations of pique. It was a good thing that a few months were now before him in which he could pull himself together and have time for mature reflection. It would be good for Anna, too, particularly good for her, perhaps. Yesterday's walk with her in the rain over the brown wet streets came into his mind again, and struck him as ineffably sad. Alas, for the hours in the arched room into which the strains of the organ opposite had vibrated through the floating curtain of snow--where were they? Yes, where had these hours gone to? And so many other wonderful hours as well! He saw himself and Anna again in his mind's eye, as a young couple on their honeymoon, walking through streets which had the wonderful atmosphere of a strange land; commonplace hotel rooms, where he had only stayed with her for a few days, suddenly presented themselves before him, consecrated as it were by the perfume of memory.... Then his love appeared to him, sitting on a white seat, beneath the heavy branches, with her high forehead girdled with the deceptive presentiment of gentle motherhood. And finally she stood there with a sheet of music in her hand while the white curtain fluttered gently in the wind. And when he realised that it was the same room in which she was now waiting for him, and that not more than a year had gone by since that evening hour in the late summer when she had sung his own songs for the first time to his own accompaniment, he breathed heavily and almost anxiously in his corner.

When he was in Heinrich's room a few minutes afterwards he asked him not to look upon this as a visit. He only wanted to shake hands with him. He would fetch him for a walk to-morrow morning if that suited him.... Yes--the idea occurred to him while he was speaking--for a kind of farewell walk in the Salmansdorf Forest.

Heinrich agreed, but asked him to stay just a few minutes. George asked him jestingly if he had already recovered from his failure of this morning.

Heinrich pointed to the secretary, on which were lying loose sheets covered with large nervous writing. "Do you know what that is? I have taken up _Ägidius_ again, and just before you came I thought of an ending which was more or less feasible. I'll tell you more about it to-morrow if it will interest you."

"By all means. I am quite excited about it. It's a good thing, too, that you have settled down to a definite piece of work again."