Part 17

“Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth, while the evil days come not, nor the years draw nigh, when thou shalt say, I have no pleasure in them; while the sun, or the light, or the moon, or the stars be not darkened, nor the clouds return after the rain: In the day when the keepers of the house shall tremble, and the strong men shall bow themselves, and the grinders cease because they are few, and those that look out of the windows be darkened, and the doors shall be shut in the streets; when the sound of the grinding is low, and he shall rise up at the voice of the bird, and all the daughters of music shall be brought low; also when they shall be afraid of that which is high, and fears shall be in the way, and the almond tree shall flourish, and the grasshopper shall be a burden and desire shall fail: because man goeth to his long home, and the mourners go about the street: or ever the silver cord be loosed, or the golden bowl be broken, or the pitcher be broken at the fountain, or the wheel broken at the cistern.”...

He stopped. Christian, who had seemed scarcely to listen, had arisen and come nearer to the fire. Now he sat down on the floor, with his legs crossed under him, and gazed with a serene wonder into the flames.

“How beautiful is fire!” he said softly.

Speechlessly Amadeus Voss regarded him. Then he spoke quite suddenly. “Let me go with you, Christian Wahnschaffe.”

Christian did not take his eyes from the fire.

“Let me go with you,” Voss said more insistently. “It is possible that you may need me: it is certain that without you I am lost. Darkness is in me and a demon. You alone break the spell. I do not know why it is thus, but it is. Let me go with you.”

Christian replied: “Very well, Amadeus, you shall stay with me. I want some one to stay with me.”

Amadeus grew pale, and his lips quivered.

Christian said: “How beautiful is fire!”

And Amadeus murmured: “It devours uncleanness and remains clean.”

THE NAKED FEET

I

With her companion, Fräulein Stöhr, the Countess Brainitz travelled about the world.

She had been the guest of an incredibly aged Princess Neukirch at Berchtesgaden. But she grew to be immensely bored, and fled to Venice, Ravenna, and Florence. Armed with a Baedeker, and accompanied by a guide, she “did” the galleries, churches, basilicas, palaces, sarcophagi, and monuments, and her tirelessness reduced Fräulein Stöhr to despair.

She quarrelled with the gondoliers over their fare, with waiters over a tip, with shopkeepers over the price of their wares. She thought every coin a counterfeit, and in her terror of dirt and infection she touched no door-knob or chair, no newspaper and no one’s hand. She washed herself repeatedly, screeched uninterruptedly, and by her appetite struck her companions at the table d’hôte with awe.

With rancour in her heart she left the land of miracles and of petty fraud. She visited her nephews, the brothers Stojenthin, in Berlin. They were charmed at her coming, and borrowed a thousand marks of her over the oysters and champagne. Then she proceeded to Stargard, to be with her sisters Hilde Stojenthin and Else von Febronius.

She was vastly amused at the middle-class ladies in Stargard, who curtsied to her as to a queen. At their teas she lorded it over them from the heights of a sofa covered with dotted calico. She entertained her devoutly attentive audience with stories of the great world. At times these anecdotes were of such a character that the judge’s widow had to administer a warning pinch to the arm of her noble sister.

Frau von Febronius had been ailing since the beginning of winter. Careless exposure on a sleigh drive had brought on an attack of pneumonia. The consequences threatened to be grave. The countess, who not only feared illness for herself but hated it in others, grew restive and talked of leaving.

“When my dear husband saw his end approaching, he sent me to Mentone,” she told Fräulein Stöhr. “Stupid and devoid of understanding as he was--though not more so than most men--in this respect he showed a praiseworthy delicacy of feeling. I was simply not made to bear the sight of suffering. Charity is not among my gifts.”

Fräulein Stöhr assumed a pastoral expression and cast her eyes to heaven. She knew her mistress sufficiently to realize that the anecdote of the dying count and the expedition to Mentone was a product of the imagination. She said: “Man should prepare himself in time for his latter end, Madame.”

The countess was indignant. “My dear Stöhr, spare me your spiritual wisdom! It suits only times of trouble. Pastoral consolations are not to my taste. It is not your proper task to preach truths to me, but to offer me agreeable illusions.”

One evening Frau von Febronius asked to see the countess. The latter went. But terror made her pale. She put on a hat, swathed her face in a veil and her hands in gloves. Sighing she sat down beside her sister’s bed, and carefully measured the distance, so as to be out of reach of the patient’s breath.

Frau von Febronius smiled indulgently. Her illness had smoothed the lines of petty care and sorrow from her face, and, among her white pillows, she looked strikingly like her daughter Letitia. “I’m sorry to trouble you, Marion,” she began, “but I must talk to you. There’s something that weighs on my mind, and I must confide in some one. The fact in question should be told to one who knows me, and should not be buried with me.”

“I beseech you, Elsie, my poor darling, don’t talk of graves and such things,” the countess exclaimed in a whining voice. “My appetite will be gone for a week. If you’ll only fling the medicine bottles out of the window, and tell all quacks to go to the devil, you’ll be well by day after to-morrow. And, for heaven’s sake, don’t make a confession. It reminds one of quite dreadful things.”

But Frau von Febronius went on: “It’s no use, Marion. I must tell you this. The reason I turn to you is because you’ve really been so very good and kind to Letitia, and because Hilde, sensible and faithful as she is, wouldn’t quite understand. Her notions are too conventional.”

In whispers she now related the story of Letitia’s birth. An illness of his earlier years had deprived her husband of the hope of posterity; but he had yearned for a son, a child. This yearning had finally silenced all scruples and all contradictory emotions to such an extent that he had chosen a congenial stranger to continue his race. He had persuaded her, his wife, whom he loved above all things, after a long struggle. Finally she had yielded to his unheard-of demand. But when the child was born, a progressive melancholy had seized upon her husband. It had become incurable, and under its control he had ruined his estate and in the end himself. He had felt nothing of the happiness he had expected. He had, on the contrary, always shown a contemptuous dislike of Letitia, and had avoided her as far as possible.

“It doesn’t surprise me a bit,” the countess remarked. “You were uncommonly naïve to be astonished. A strange child is a strange child, no matter how it got into the nest. But it’s really like a fairy tale. I confess I underestimated you. Such delightful sophistication! And who is the child’s father? Who is responsible for the life of that darling angel? He deserves great credit for his achievement.”

Frau von Febronius mentioned the name. The countess screamed, and leaped up as though she had been stung. “Crammon? Bernard von Crammon?” She clasped her hands in agony. “Is that true? Aren’t you dreaming? Consider, my dear! It must be the fever. Oh, certainly, it’s sheer delirium. Take a little water, I beg of you, and then think carefully, and stop talking nonsense.”

Frau von Febronius gazed at her sister in utter amazement. “Do you know him?” she asked.

The countess’ voice was bitter. “Do I know him? I do. And tell me one more thing: Does this--this--creature know? Has he always known?”

“He knows. Two years ago he saw Letitia at our old home. Since that time he has known. But you act as if he were the fiend incarnate, Marion. Did you have a quarrel with him or what? You always exaggerate so!”

Excitedly the countess walked up and down. “He knows it, the wretch! He has always known it, the rogue! And such dissembling as he has practised! Such hypocrisy! The wretched rogue, I’ll bring it home to him! I’ll seek him out!” She turned to her sister. “Forgive me, Elsie, for letting my temperament run away with me. You are right. His name awakened an anger of some years’ standing. My blood boils, I confess. He may have been a man of honour and a gentleman in his youth. He must have been, or you would never have consented to such an adventure. But I hesitate to say what he is to-day. He is still perfectly discreet; you need have no anxiety on that score. But I assert that even discretion has its limits. Where these are passed, decent people shake their heads, and virtue looks like mere baseness. _Voilà._”

“All that you say is quite dark to me,” Frau von Febronius replied wearily, “and I really haven’t any desire to fathom it. I wanted to tell you this oppressive secret. Keep it to yourself. Never reveal it, except to prevent some misfortune, or to render Letitia a service. I don’t quite see how either purpose will ever be served by a revelation. But it consoles me that one other human being, beside myself and that man, knows the truth.”

The countess gazed thoughtfully at her sister. “Your life wasn’t exactly a gay one, was it, Elsie?”

The sick woman answered: “No, hardly gay.”

During the following days she rallied a little. Then came a relapse that left no room for hope. In the middle of March she died.

By this time the countess was already far away. Her goings and comings were as purposeless as ever. But she nursed a favourite vision now. Some day she would meet Crammon, confront him with her knowledge, avenge herself upon him, challenge him and annihilate him, in a word, enjoy a rich triumph. At times when she was alone, or even in the presence of Miss Stöhr, whom it astonished, she would suddenly wrinkle her childlike forehead, clench her little fists, and her shiny face would turn red as a lobster, and her violet-blue eyes blaze as for battle.

II

It was three o’clock in the morning when Felix Imhof left a party in the Leopoldstrasse, where there had been gaming for high stakes. He had won several thousand marks, and the gold coins clinked in the overcoat pocket into which he had carelessly stuffed them.

He had had a good deal to drink, too. His head was a bit heavy. At his first steps into the fresh air he reeled a little.

Nevertheless he was in no mood to go home. So he wandered into a coffee-house that was frequented by artists. He thought he might still find a few people with whom he could chat and argue. The day he had passed was not yet full enough of life for him. He wanted it brimming.

In the room, which was blue with smoke, there were only two men, the painter Weikhardt, who had recently returned from Paris, and another painter, who looked rather ragged and stared dejectedly at the table.

Felix Imhof joined the two. He ordered cognac and served them, but, to his annoyance, the conversation would not get started. He got up and invited Weikhardt to walk with him. With contemptuous joviality he turned to the other: “Well, you old paint-slinger, your lamp seems about burned out!”

The man didn’t stir. Weikhardt shrugged his shoulders, and said softly: “He has no money for bread and no place to sleep.”

Felix Imhof plunged his hand into his pocket, and threw several gold coins on the table. The painter looked up. Then he gathered the gold. “Hundred and sixty marks,” he said calmly. “Pay you back on the first.”

Imhof laughed resoundingly.

When they were in the street, Weikhardt said good-naturedly: “He believes every word of it. If he didn’t absolutely believe it, he wouldn’t have taken the money. There are still eleven days before the first--time for a world of illusions.”

“It may be that he believes it,” Imhof replied, with an unsteady laugh, “it may be. He even believes that he exists, and yet he’s nothing but a melancholy corpse. O you painters, you painters!” he cried out into the silent night. “You have no feeling for life. Paint life! You’re still sitting by a spinning-wheel, instead of at some mighty wheel of steel, propelled by a force of sixteen thousand horse-power. Paint my age for me, my huge delight in being! Smell, taste, see, and grasp that colossus! Make me feel that great rhythm, create my grandiose dreams. Give me life--my life and its great affirmation!”

Weikhardt said drily: “I have heard that talk before--between midnight and dawn. When the cock crows we all calm down again, and every man pulls the cart to which fate has hitched him.”

Imhof stopped, and somewhat theatrically laid his hand on Weikhardt’s shoulder. He gazed at him with his intensely black, bloodshot eyes. “I give you a commission herewith, Weikhardt,” he said. “You have talent. You’re the only one with a mind above your palette. Paint my portrait. I don’t care what it costs--twenty, fifty thousand. Doesn’t matter. Take your own time--two months, or two years. But show me--me--the innermost me. Take this vulture’s nose, this Hapsburg lip, these gorilla arms and spindle shanks, this coat and this chapeau claque, and drag from it all the animating Idea. To hell with the accidents of my phiz, which looks as though an unskilful potter had bungled it in the making. Render my ambition, my restlessness, my inner tempo and colourfulness, my great hunger and the time-spirit that is in me. But you must hurry; for I am self-consumed. In a few years I shall have burned out. My soul is tinder. Render this process with the divine objectivity of art, and I’ll reward you like a Medici. But I must be able to see the flame, the flaring up, the dying down, the quiver of it! I want to see it, even if to make me see it you have to lash the whole tradition since Raphael and Rubens into rags!”

“You are an audacious person,” Weikhardt said, in his dry way. “But have patience with us, and restrain your admiration for your particular century. I do not let the age overwhelm me to the point of folly. I do not share the reverential awe of speed and machinery that has seized upon many young men like a new form of epilepsy. I haven’t any attitude of adoration toward seven-league boots, express trains, dreadnoughts, and inflated impressionism. I seek my gods elsewhere. I don’t believe I’m the painter you’re looking for. Where were you? You’ve been travelling again?”

“I’m always on some road,” Felix Imhof replied. “It’s a crazy sort of life. Let me tell you how I spent the last five days. Monday night I went to Leipzig. Tuesday morning at nine I had a conference with some literary people in regard to the founding of a new review. Splendid fellows--keen critics and intellectual Jacobins, every one of them. Then I went to an exhibition of majolicas. Bought some charming things. At noon I left for Hamburg. On the train I read two manuscripts and a drama, all by a young genius who’ll startle the world. That evening attended a meeting of the directorate of the East African Development Corporation. Festivities till late that night. Slept two hours, then proceeded to Oldenburg to a reunion of the retired officers of my old regiment. Talked, drank, and even danced, though the party was stag. Six o’clock in the morning rushed to Quackenbruck, a shabby little country town on the moors, where the officers had arranged for a little horse race. My beast was beaten by a head. Drove to the station and took a train for Berlin. Attended to business next morning in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, interviewed agents, witnessed a curious operation in the clinic, made a flying-trip to Johannisthal, where a new aeroplane was tried out; went to the Deutsches Theater that evening, and saw a marvellous performance of ‘Peer Gynt.’ Drank the night away with the actors. Next morning Dresden. Conference with two American friends. Home to-day. Next week won’t be very different, nor the one after that. I ought to sleep more; that’s the only thing.” He waved his thick bamboo cane in air.

“It is enough to frighten any one,” said Weikhardt, who took more comfort in the contrast between his own phlegm and his companion’s excitement. “How about your wife? What does she say to your life? She was pointed out to me recently. She doesn’t look as if she would let herself be pushed aside.”

Imhof stopped again. He stood there, with his legs far apart and his trunk bent forward, and rested on his cane. “My wife!” he said. “What a sound that has! I have a wife. Ah, yes. I give you my word, my dear man, I should have clean forgotten it to-night, if you hadn’t reminded me. It’s not her fault, to be sure. She’s a born Wahnschaffe; that means something! But somehow.... God knows what it is--the damned rush and hurry, I suppose. You’re quite right. She’s not the sort to be neglected or pushed to the wall. She creates her own spaces, and within these”--he described great circles in the air with his cane--“she dwells, cool to her fingertips, tense as a wire of steel. A magnificent character--energetic, but with a strong sense for decorative effects. She’s to be respected, my dear man.”

Weikhardt had no answer ready for this outburst. Its mixture of boasting and irony, cynicism and ecstatic excitement disarmed and wearied him at once. They had reached a side street, which led to the Englischer Garten, and in which stood the painter’s little house. He wanted to say good-night. But Imhof, who seemed still unwilling to be alone, asked: “Are you working at anything?”

Weikhardt hesitated before answering. That was enough to make Imhof accompany him. The sky grew grey with dawn.

Felix Imhof recited softly to himself:

“Where the knights repose, and streaming Banners fold at last their gleaming, Towers rise to the way-farers, And the wanderers seek a spring; And the lovely water-bearers Lift a goblet to the dreaming Shadow of the fleeing king.”

Weikhardt, who would not yield to Imhof in a knowledge or love of the poet Stefan George, continued the quotation in a caressing voice:

“With a smile serene he watches, Yet flits on with shyer seeming, For beneath him fades the height, And he fears all mortal touches, And he almost dreads the light.”

They entered the studio. Weikhardt lit the lamp, and let its glow fall upon a picture that was not quite completed. It was a Descent from the Cross.

“Rather old-fashioned, isn’t it?” Weikhardt asked, with a sly smile. He had grown pale.

Imhof looked. He was a connoisseur through and through. No other had his eye. The painters knew it.

The picture, which reminded one of the visionary power as well as of the brushwork of El Greco, was bizarre in composition, intense in movement, and filled with an ecstatic passion. The forms of an old master, through which the painter had expressed himself, were but an appearance. The vision had been flung upon the canvas with a burning splendour. The figures had nothing old-fashioned about them; there was no _cliché_; they were like clouds, and the clouds like architecture. There were no concrete things. There was a chaos, which drew meaning and order only from the concentrated perceptions of the beholder.

Felix Imhof folded his hands. “To have such power,” he murmured. “Great God, to have the power to project such things!”

Weikhardt lowered his head. He attributed little significance to these words. A few days before he had stood in front of his canvas, and he had imagined that a peasant was standing beside him--an old peasant or any other simple man of the people. And it had seemed to him that this peasant, this humble man, who knew nothing of art, had kneeled down to pray. Not from piety, but because what he saw had in its own character overwhelmed him.

Almost rudely Imhof turned to the painter and said: “The picture is mine. Under all circumstances. Mine. I must have it. Good-night.” With his top hat set at a crazy angle, and his sleepless, dissipated face, he was a vision to frighten one.

At last he went home.

Next day Crammon informed him of his arrival in Munich. He had come because Edgar Lorm was about to give a series of performances there.

III

Christian considered how he could convey money to Amadeus Voss without humiliating him. Since it was agreed that they travel together, it was necessary for Voss to have the proper outfit; and he possessed nothing but what he had on.

Amadeus Voss understood the situation. The social abyss yawned between them. Both men gazed helplessly into it, one on each shore.

In his own heart Voss mocked at the other’s weakness, and at the same time loved him for his noble shame--loved him with that emotional self that had been humiliated, estranged from the world, stamped on and affronted from his youth on. He shuddered at the prospect of sitting in the forester’s house again with perished hopes and empty hands, and letting his soul bleed to death from the wounds of unattainable lures. He brooded, regarding Christian almost with hatred. What will he do? How will he conquer the difficulty?

Time passed. The matter was urgent.

On the last afternoon Christian said: “The hours crawl. Let us play cards.” He took a pack of French cards from a drawer.

“I haven’t touched a card in my life,” Voss said.

“That doesn’t matter,” Christian replied. “All you need do is to tell red from black. I’ll keep the bank. Bet on a colour. If you’ve bet on red and I turn up red, you’ve won. How much will you risk? Let us start with one taler.”

“Very well, here it is,” said Voss, and put the silver coin on the table. Christian shuffled the cards and drew one. It was red.

“Risk your two talers now,” Christian advised. “Novices have luck.”

Voss won the two talers. The betting continued. Once or twice he lost. But finally he had won thirty talers.

“Now you take the bank,” Christian proposed. He was secretly pleased that his ruse was working so well.

He bet ten talers and lost. Then fifteen, then twenty, then thirty, and lost again. He risked a hundred marks, two hundred, five hundred, more and more, and still lost. Voss’s cheeks turned hectic red, then white as chalk: his hands trembled, his teeth rattled. He was seized by a terror that his luck would change, but he was incapable of speech or of asking for an end of the game. The bank notes were piled up in front of him. In half an hour he had won over four thousand marks.

Christian had previously marked the cards in a manner that no inexperienced eye could detect. He knew exactly which colour Voss would find. But the curious thing was that, though he forgot occasionally to watch the markings, Voss still won.

Christian got up. “We’re in a hurry,” he said. “You must get ready for our journey, Amadeus.”

Voss was overwhelmed by the change which had come over his life within a few minutes. If a spark of suspicion glowed in his soul, he turned away from it, and plunged into rich dreams.

The motor took them to Wiesbaden, and there, with Christian’s help, Amadeus bought garments and linen, boots, hats, gloves, cravats, a razor, a manicure set, and a trunk.

At ten o’clock that evening they sat in the sleeper. “Who am I now?” asked Amadeus Voss. He looked about him with a curious and violent glance, and pushed the blond hair from his forehead. “What do I represent now? Give me an office and a title, Christian Wahnschaffe, in order that I may know who I am.”

Christian watched the other’s excitement with quiet eyes. “Why should you think yourself another to-night or changed from yesterday?” he asked in surprise.

IV

Eva Sorel passed through the countries of Europe--a comet leaving radiance in its wake.