Part 4

They got out at the Praterstern. The great stream of the Sunday crowd was flowing towards them. They went towards the Hauptallee, where there was no longer any crush, and strolled slowly on. It had grown cool. George made remarks about the autumnal atmosphere of the evening, the people sitting in the restaurants, the military bands playing in the kiosks.

At first Heinrich answered offhandedly, and subsequently not at all, and finally seemed scarcely to be paying any attention. George thought this rude. He was almost sorry that he had joined Heinrich, all the more so as he made it an almost invariable practice not to respond straight away to casual invitations. The excuse he gave to himself was that it was simply out of absent-mindedness that he had done it on this occasion. Heinrich was walking close to him or even going a few steps in front, as if he were completely oblivious of George's presence. He still held tightly in both hands the overcoat which was swung round him, wore his dark grey felt hat pressed down over his forehead and looked extremely uncouth. His appearance suddenly began to jar keenly on George's nerves. Heinrich Bermann's previous remarks about Felician now struck him as in bad taste, and as quite devoid of tact, and it occurred to him at the psychological moment that practically all he knew of Heinrich's literary productions had gone against the grain. He had seen two pieces of his: one where the scene was laid in the lower strata of society, among artizans or factory workers, and which finished up with murder and fatal blows; the other a kind of satirical society comedy whose first production had occasioned a scandal and which had soon been taken out of the repertoire of the theatre. Anyway George did not then know the author personally, and had taken no further interest in the whole thing. He only remembered that Felician had thought the piece absolutely ridiculous, and that Count Schönstein had expressed the opinion that if he had anything to do with it pieces written by Jews should only be allowed to be performed by the Buda-Pesth Orpheum Company.[2] But Doctor von Breitner in particular, a baptised Jew with a philosophical mind, had given vent to his indignation that such an adventurer of a young man should have dared to have put a world on to the stage that was obviously closed to him, and which it was consequently impossible for him to know anything about.

While George was remembering all this his irritation at the rude conduct and stubborn silence of his companion rose to a genuine sense of enmity, and quite unconsciously he began to think that all the insults which had been previously directed against Bermann had been in fact justified. He now remembered too that Heinrich had been personally antipathetic to him from the beginning, and that he had indulged in some ironic remark to Frau Ehrenberg about her cleverness in having lost no time in adding that young celebrity to the tame lions in her drawing-room. Else, of course, had immediately taken Heinrich's part, and explained that he was an interesting man, was in many respects positively charming, and had prophesied to George that sooner or later he would become good friends with him. And as a matter of fact George had preserved, as the result of that nocturnal conversation on the seat in the Ringstrasse in the spring of this year, a certain sympathy for Bermann which had survived down to the present evening.

They had passed the last inns some time ago. The white high road ran by their side out into the night on a straight and lonely track between the trees, and the very distant music only reached them in more or less broken snatches.

"But where are you going to?" Heinrich exclaimed suddenly, as though he had been dragged there against his will, and stood still.

"I really can't help it," remarked George simply.

"Excuse me," said Heinrich.

"You were so deep in thought," retorted George coolly.

"I wouldn't quite like to say 'deep.' But it often happens that one loses oneself in one's thoughts like this."

"I know," said George, somewhat reconciled.

"They were expecting you in August at Auhof," said Heinrich suddenly.

"Expected? Frau Ehrenberg was certainly kind enough to invite me, but I never accepted. Did you stay there a fairly long time, Herr Bermann?"

"A fairly long time? No. I was up there a few times, but only for an hour or so."

"I thought you stayed there."

"Not a bit of it. I stayed down at the hotel. I only occasionally went up to Auhof. There was too much noise and bustle there for me.... The house was positively packed with visitors. And I can't stand most of the people who go there."

An open fiacre in which a gentleman and lady were sitting passed by.

"Why, that was Oskar Ehrenberg," said Heinrich.

"And the lady?" queried George, looking towards something bright that gleamed through the darkness.

"Don't know her."

They turned their steps through a dark side-avenue. The conversation stuck again. Finally Heinrich began: "Fräulein Else sang a few of your songs to me at Auhof. I'd heard some of them already too, sung by the Bellini, I think."

"Yes, Bellini sang them last winter at a concert."

"Well, Fräulein Else sang those songs and some others of yours as well."

"Who accompanied her, then?"

"I myself, as well as I could. I must tell you, my dear Baron, that as a matter of fact those songs impressed me even more than when I heard them the first time at the concert, in spite of the fact that Fräulein Else has considerably less voice and technique than Fräulein Bellini. Of course one must take into consideration on the other hand that it was a magnificent summer afternoon when Fräulein Else sang your songs. The window was open, there was a view of the mountains and the deep-blue sky opposite ... but anyway, you came in for a more than sufficient share of the credit."

"Very flattering," said George, who felt pained by Heinrich's sarcastic tone.

"You know," continued Heinrich, speaking as he frequently did with clenched teeth and unnecessary emphasis, "you know it is not generally my habit to invite people whom I happen to see in the street to join me in an omnibus, and I prefer to tell you at once that I regarded it as--what does one say?--a sign of fate when I suddenly caught sight of you on the Stephansplatz."

George listened to him in amazement.

"You perhaps don't remember as well as I do," continued Heinrich, "our last conversation on that seat in the Ringstrasse."

George now remembered for the first time that Heinrich had then made a quite casual allusion to the libretto of an opera on which he was busy, and that he had offered himself as the composer of the music with equal casualness and more as a joke than anything else. He answered with deliberate coldness: "Oh yes, I remember."

"Well, that binds you to nothing," answered Heinrich, even more coldly than the other. "All the less so since, to tell you the truth, I've not given my opera libretto a single thought till that beautiful summer afternoon when Fräulein Else sang your song. Anyway, what do you say to our stopping here?"

The restaurant garden which they entered was fairly empty. Heinrich and George sat down in a little arbour next to the green wooden railing and ordered their dinner.

Heinrich leant back, stretched out his legs, looked with probing almost cynical eyes at George, who maintained an obstinate silence, and said suddenly: "I don't think I am making a mistake if I venture to presume that you've not been exactly keen on the things I have done so far."

"Oh," answered George, blushing a little, "what makes you think that?"

"Well, I know my pieces ... and I know you."

"Me!" queried George, feeling almost insulted.

"Certainly," replied Heinrich in a superior manner. "Besides, I have the same feeling with regard to most men, and I regard this faculty as the only indisputable one I've really got. All my others, I think, are fairly problematical. My so-called art in particular is more or less mediocre, and a good deal too could be said against my character. The only thing which gives me a certain amount of confidence is simply the consciousness of being able to see right into people's souls ... right deep down, every one, rogues and honest people, men, women and children, heathens, Jews and Protestants, yes, even Catholics, aristocrats and Germans, although I have heard that that is supposed to be infinitely difficult, not to say impossible, for people like myself."

George gave a slight start. He knew that Heinrich had been subjected to the most violent personal attacks by the clerical and conservative press, particularly with reference to his last piece. "But what's that got to do with me?" thought George. There was another one of them who had been insulted! It was really absolutely impossible to associate with these people on a neutral footing. He said politely, though coldly, with a semi-conscious recollection of old Herr Rosner's retort to young Dr. Stauber: "I really thought that people like you were above attacks of the kind to which you're obviously alluding."

"Really ... you thought that?" queried Heinrich, in that cold almost repulsive manner which was peculiar to him on many occasions. "Well," he went on more gently, "that is the case sometimes. But unfortunately not always. It doesn't need much to wake up that self-contempt which is always lying dormant within us; and once that takes place there isn't a single rogue or a single scoundrel with whom we don't join forces, and quite sincerely too, in attacking our own selves. Excuse me if I say 'we.'"

"Oh, I've frequently felt something of the same kind myself. Of course I have not yet had the opportunity of being exposed to the public as often as you and in the same way."

"Well, supposing you did ... you would never have to go through quite what I did."

"Why not?" queried George, slightly hurt.

Heinrich looked him sharply in the face. "You are the Baron von Wergenthin-Recco."

"So that's your reason! But you must remember that there are a whole lot of people going about to-day who are prejudiced against one for that very reason--and manage to cast in one's teeth the fact of one's being a baron whenever they get a chance."

"Yes, yes, but I think you will agree with me that being ragged for being a baron is a very different matter than being ragged for being a 'Jew,' although the latter--you'll forgive me of course--may at times denote the better aristocracy. Well, you needn't look at me so pitifully," he added with abrupt rudeness. "I am not always so sensitive. I have other moods in which nothing can affect me in any way nor any person either. Then I feel simply this--what do you all know--what do you know about me...." He stopped, proudly, with a scornful look that seemed to pierce through the foliage of the arbour into the darkness. He then turned his head, looked round and said simply to George in quite a new tone: "Just look, we shall soon be the only ones left."

"It is getting quite cold, too," said George.

"I think we might still stroll a bit through the Prater."

"Charmed."

They got up and went. A fine grey cloud hung over a meadow which they passed.

"The fraud of summer doesn't last after nightfall. It'll soon all be over," said Heinrich in a tone of unmitigated melancholy, while he added, as though to console himself: "Well, one will be able to work."

They came into the Wurstelprater. The sound of music rang out from the restaurants, and some of the exuberant gaiety communicated itself to George. He felt suddenly swung out of the dismalness of an inn garden at autumn time and a somewhat painful conversation into a new world. A tout, in front of a merry-go-round, from which a gigantic hurdy-gurdy sent into the open air the pot-pourri cut of the "Troubadour" with all the effect of some fantastic organ, invited people to take a journey to London, Atzgersdorf and Australia. George remembered again the excursion in the spring with the Ehrenberg party. It was on this narrow seat inside the room that Frau Oberberger had sat with Demeter Stanzides, the lion of the evening, by her side, and had probably told him one of her incredible stories: that her mother had been the mistress of a Russian Grand Prince; that she herself had spent a night with an admirer in the Hallstadt cemetery, of course without anything happening; or that her husband, the celebrated traveller, had made conquests of seventeen women in one week in one harem at Smyrna. It was in this carriage upholstered in red velvet, with Hofrat Wilt as her _vis-à-vis_, that Else had lounged with lady-like grace, just as though she were in a carriage on Derby Day, while she yet managed to show by her manner and demeanour that, if it came to the point, she herself could be quite as childish as other persons of happier and less complex temperaments. Anna Rosner with the reins nonchalantly in her hand, looking dignified, but with a somewhat sly face, rode a white Arab; Sissy rocked about on a black horse that not only turned round in a circle with the other animals and carriages, but swung up and down as well. The boldest eyes imaginable flashed and laughed beneath the audacious _coiffure_ with its gigantic black feather hat, while her white skirt fluttered and flew over her low-cut patent leather shoes and open-work stockings. Sissy's appearance had produced so strange an effect on a couple of strangers that they called out to her a quite unambiguous invitation. There had then ensued a short mysterious interview between Willy, who immediately came on the spot, and the two somewhat embarrassed gentlemen, who first tried to save their faces by lighting fresh cigarettes with deliberate nonchalance and then suddenly vanished in the crowd.

Even the side-show with its "Illusions" and "Illuminated Pictures" had special memories for George. It was here, while Daphne was turning into a tree, that Sissy had whispered into his ear a gentle "remember" and thus called to his memory that masked ball at Ehrenberg's at which she had lifted up her lace veil for a fleeting kiss, though presumably he had not been the only one. Then there was the hut where the whole party had had themselves photographed: the three young girls, Anna, Else and Sissy in the pose of classical goddesses and the men at their feet with ecstatic eyes, so that the whole thing looked like the climax of a transformation scene. And while George was thinking of these little episodes there floated up through his memory the way in which he and Anna had said goodbye to-day, and it seemed full of the most pleasant promise.

A striking number of people stood in front of an open shooting gallery. Now the drummer was hit in the heart and beat quick strokes upon his drum, now the glass ball which was dancing to and fro upon a jet of water broke with a slight click, now a _vivandière_ hastily put her trumpet to her mouth and blew a menacing blast, now a little railway thundered out of a door which had sprung open, whizzed over a flying bridge and was swallowed up by another door.

When the crowd began to thin, George and Heinrich made their way to the front and recognised that the good shots were Oskar Ehrenberg and his lady friend. Oskar was just aiming his gun at an eagle which was moving up and down near the ceiling with outstretched wings, and missed for the first time. He laid his weapon down in indignation, gazed round him, saw the two gentlemen behind him and saluted them.

The young lady with her cheek resting on her gun threw a fleeting glance at the new arrivals, then aimed again with great keenness, and pressed the trigger. The eagle drooped its hit wings and did not move any more.

"Bravo," shouted Oskar.

The lady laid the weapon before her on the table. "That's my little lot," she said to the boy who wanted to load again. "I've won."

"How many shots were there?" asked Oskar.

"Forty," answered the boy, "that's eighty kreuzers." Oskar put his hand into his waistcoat pocket, threw a silver gulden down and received with condescension the thanks of the loading boy. "Allow me," he then said, while he placed both his hands on his hips, moved the top of his body slightly in front and put his left foot forward, "Allow me, Amy, to introduce the gentlemen who witnessed your triumph, Baron Wergenthin, Herr von Bermann ... Fräulein Amelie Reiter."

The gentlemen lifted their hats, Amelie returned the greeting by nodding a few times with her head. She wore a simple foulard dress designed in white, and over it a light cloak of bright yellow bordered with lace and a black but extremely lively hat.

"I know Herr von Bermann already," she said. She turned towards him. "I saw you at the first night of your play last winter, when you came on the stage to bow your acknowledgments. I enjoyed myself very much. Don't think I am saying this as a mere compliment."

Heinrich thanked her sincerely.

They walked on further between side-shows which were growing quieter and quieter, past inn gardens which were gradually becoming empty.

Oskar thrust his right arm through his companion's left and then turned to George. "Why didn't you come to Auhof this year? We were all very sorry."

"Unfortunately I didn't feel much in the mood for society."

"Of course, I can quite understand," said Oskar with all proper seriousness. "I was only there myself for a few weeks. In August I strengthened my tired limbs in the waves of the North Sea; I was in the Isle of Wight, you know."

"That must be very nice," said George. "Who is it that always goes there?"

"You're thinking of the Wyners," replied Oskar. "When they used to live in London they went there regularly, but now they only go there every two or three years."

"But they've kept the Y for Austrian consumption as well," said George with a smile.

Oskar was serious. "Old Herr Wyner," he answered, "honestly earned his right to the Y. He went to England in his thirteenth year, became naturalised there and was made a partner when quite a young man in the great steel manufacturing concern which is still called Black & Wyner."

"At any rate he got his wife from Vienna."

"Yes, and when he died seven or eight years ago she came over here with her two children, but James will never get acclimatised here.... Lord Antinous, you know, that's what Frau Oberberger calls him. He is now back at Cambridge again where strangely enough he is studying Greek scholarship. Demeter was a few days in Ventnor, too."

"Stanzides?" added George.

"Do you know Herr von Stanzides, Herr Baron?" asked Amy.

"Oh yes."

"Then he does really exist?" she exclaimed.

"Yes, but just you listen," said Oskar. "She put a lot of money on him this spring at Freudenau, and won a lot of money, and now she inquires if he really exists."

"What makes you have doubts about Stanzides' existence, Fräulein?" asked George.

"Well, you know, whenever I don't know where he is--Oskar, I mean--it's always a case of 'I've an appointment with Stanzides' or 'I'm riding with Stanzides in the Prater.' Stanzides this and Stanzides that, why it sounds more like an excuse than a name."

"You be quiet now, will you?" said Oskar gently.

"Not only does Stanzides exist," explained George, "but he has the most beautiful black moustache and the most fiery black eyes that are to be found anywhere."

"That's quite possible, but when I saw him he looked more like a jack-in-the-box, yellow jacket, green cap, violet sleeves."

"And she won forty gulden on him," added Oskar facetiously.

"And where are the forty gulden?" sighed Fräulein Amelie.... Then she suddenly stood still and exclaimed: "But I've never yet been on it."

"Well, that can be remedied," said Oskar simply.

The Great Wheel was turning slowly and majestically in front of them with its lighted carriages. The young people passed the turnstile, climbed into an empty compartment and swept upwards.

"Do you know, George, whom I got to know this summer?" said Oskar. "The Prince of Guastalla."

"Which one?" asked George.

"The youngest, of course, Karl Friedrich. He was there incognito. He's very thick with Stanzides, an extraordinary man. You take my word for it," he added softly, "if people like us said one hundredth part of the things the prince says, we'd never get out of prison our whole life long."

"Look, Oskar," cried Amy, "at the tables and the people down there. It looks just like a little box, doesn't it? And that mass of lights over there, far off. I'm sure that's going to Prague, don't you think so, Herr Bermann?"

"Possibly," answered Heinrich, knitting his forehead as he stared through the glass wall out into the night.

When they left the compartment and got out into the open air the Sunday hubbub was subsiding.

"Poor little girl," said Oskar Ehrenberg to George, while Amy went on in front with Heinrich, "she has no idea that this is the last time we are going out together in the Prater."

"But why the last time?" asked George, not feeling particularly interested.

"It's got to be," replied Oskar. "Things like this oughtn't to last longer than a year at the outside. Any way, you might buy your gloves from her after December," he added brightly, though with a certain touch of melancholy. "I am setting her up, you know, in a little business. I more or less owe her that, for I took her away from a fairly safe situation."

"A safe one?"

"Yes, she was engaged, to a case-maker. Did you know that there were such people?"

In the meanwhile Amy and Heinrich were standing in front of a narrow moving staircase that went boldly up to a platform and waited for the others. All agreed that they ought not to leave the Prater before going for a ride on the switchback.

They whizzed through the darkness down and up again in the groaning coach under the black tree-tops; and George managed to discover a grotesque motif in 3/4 time in the heavy rhythmic noise.

While he was going down the moving staircase with the others, he knew that the melody should be introduced by an oboe and clarionet and accompanied by a cello and contra bass. It was clearly a _scherzo_ probably for a symphony.

"If I were a capitalist," expounded Heinrich with emphasis, "I would have a switchback built four miles long to go over fields and hills, through forests and dancing-halls; I would also see that there were surprises on the way." Anyway, he thought that the time had come to develop more elaborately the fantastic element in the Wurstelprater. He himself, he informed them, had a rough idea for a merry-go-round that by means of some marvellous machinery was to revolve spiral-fashion above the ground, winding higher and higher till eventually it reached the top of a kind of tower.

Unfortunately he lacked the necessary technical knowledge to explain it in greater detail. As they went on he invented burlesque figures and groups for the shooting galleries, and finally declared that there was a pressing need for a magnificent Punch and Judy show for which original authors should write pieces at once profound and frivolous.