Part 22

Eva applauded, and was as delighted as a child. “Doesn’t it make you laugh, Christian?” she asked.

And Christian laughed, not at the follies of the rogue, but because Eva’s laughter was so infectious.

When the curtain had fallen upon the tiny stage, they followed the stream of people from one amusement to another. A little line of followers was formed in their wake; a whispering passed from mouth to mouth and each pointed out Eva to the other. Several young girls seemed especially stubborn in their desire to follow the exquisitely dressed lady. Eva wore a hat adorned with small roses and a cloak of silk as blue as the sea in sunshine.

One of the maidens had gathered a bunch of lilacs, and in front of an inn she gave the flowers to Eva with a dainty courtesy. Eva thanked her, and held the flowers to her face. Five or six of the girls formed a circle about her, and took each others’ hands and danced and trilled a melody of wild delight.

“Now I am caught,” Eva cried merrily to Christian, who had remained outside of the circle and had to endure the mocking glances of the girls.

“Yes, now you are caught,” he answered, and sought to put himself in tune with the mood of the merrymakers.

On the steps of the inn stood a drunken fellow, who watched the scene before him with inexplicable fury. First he exhausted himself in wild abuse, and when no one took notice of him, he seemed overcome by a sort of madness. He picked up a stone from the ground, and hurled it at the group. The girls cried out and dodged. The stone, as large as a man’s fist, narrowly missed the arm of the girl who had presented the flowers, and in its fall hit both of Eva’s feet.

She grew pale and compressed her lips. Several men rushed up to the drunken brute, who staggered into the inn. Christian had also run in that direction; but he turned back, thinking it more important to take care of Eva. The girls surrounded her, sympathized and questioned.

“Can you walk?” he asked. She said yes with a determined little air, but limped when she tried. He caught her up in his arms, and carried her to the car, which was waiting nearby. The girls followed and waved farewell with their kerchiefs. Hoarse cries sounded from the inn.

“Pulcinello grew quite mad,” Eva said. She smiled and suppressed all signs of pain. “It is nothing, darling,” she whispered after a while, “it will pass. Don’t be alarmed.” They drove with racing speed.

Half an hour later she was resting in an armchair in the villa. Christian was kneeling before her, and held her naked feet in his hands.

Susan had been quite terror stricken, when she had whisked off her mistress’s shoes and stockings, and saw to her horror the red bruises made by the stone. She had stammered out contradictory counsels, had summoned the servants, and excitedly cried out for a physician. At last Eva had asked her to be quiet and to leave the room.

“The pain’s almost gone,” said Eva, and nestled her little feet luxuriously into Christian’s cool hands. A maid brought in a ewer of water and linen cloths for cold bandages.

Christian held and regarded those two naked feet, exquisite organs that were comparable to the hands of a great painter or to the wings of a bird that soars far and high. And while he was taking delight in their form, the clearly defined net of muscles, the lyrical loveliness of the curves, the rosy toes with their translucent nails, an inner monitor arose in him and seemed to say: “You are kneeling, Christian, you are kneeling.” Silently, and not without a certain consternation, he had whispered back: “Yes, I am kneeling, and why should I not?” His eyes met Eva’s, and the gleam of delight in hers heightened his inner discomfort.

Eva said: “Your hands are dear physicians, and it is wonderful to have you kneel before me, sweet friend.”

“What is there wonderful about it?” Christian asked hesitantly.

The twilight had fallen. Through the gently waving curtains the evening star shone in.

Eva shook her head. “I love it. That’s all.” Her hair fell open and rippled down her shoulders. “I love it,” she repeated, and laid her hands on his head, pressing it toward her knees. “I love it.”

“But you are kneeling!” Christian heard that voice again. And suddenly he saw a water jug with a broken handle, and a crooked window rimmed with snow, and a single boot crusted with mud, and a rope dangling from a beam, and an oil lamp with a sooty chimney. He saw these lowly, poverty-stricken things.

“Have you kneeled to many as though you adored them?” Eva asked.

He did not answer, but her naked feet grew heavy in his hands. The sensuous perception which they communicated to him through their warmth, their smoothness, their instinctive flexibility vanished suddenly, and gave way to a feeling in which fear and shame and mournfulness were blended. These human organs, these dancing feet, these limbs of the woman he loved, these rarest and most precious things on earth seemed suddenly ugly and repulsive to him, and those lowly and poverty-stricken objects--the jug with the broken handle, the crooked window with its rim of snow, the muddy boot, the dangling rope, the sooty lamp, these suddenly seemed to him beautiful and worthy of reverence.

“Tell me, have you kneeled to many?” he heard Eva’s voice, with its almost frightened tenderness. And it seemed to him that Ivan Becker gave answer in his stead and said: “That you kneeled down before her--that was it, and that alone. All else was hateful and bitter; but that you kneeled down beside her--ah, that was it!”

He breathed deeply, with closed eyes, and became pale. And he relived, more closely and truly than ever, that hour of fate. He felt the breath of Becker’s kiss upon his forehead, and understood its meaning. He understood the feverish transformations of an evil conscience that had caused him to identify himself with that jug, that window, that boot and rope and lamp, only to flee, only to gain time. And he understood now that despite his change from form to form, he had well seen and heard the beggar, the woman, Ivan Michailovitch, the sick, half-naked children, but that his whole soul had gathered itself together in the effort to guard himself against them for but a little while, before they would hurl themselves upon him with all their torment, despair, madness, cruelty, like wild dogs upon a piece of meat.

His respite had come to an end. With an expression of haste and firmness at once he arose. “Let me go, Eva,” he said, “send me away. It is better that you send me away than that I wrench myself loose, nerve by nerve, inch by inch. I cannot stay with you nor live for you.” Yet in this very moment his love for her gathered within him like a storm of flames, and he would have torn the heart from his breast to have unsaid the irrevocable words.

She sprang up swiftly as an arrow. Then she stood very still, with both hands in her hair.

He walked to the window. He saw the whole space of heaven before him, the evening star and the unresting sea. And he knew that it was all illusion, this great peace, this glittering star, this gently phosphorescent deep, that it was but a garment and a painted curtain by which the soul must not let itself be quieted. Behind it were terror and horror and unfathomable pain. He understood, he understood at last.

He understood those thousands and thousands on the shore of the Thames and their sombre silence. He understood the shipman’s daughter, whose violated body had lain on coarse linen. He understood Adda Castillo and her will to destruction. He understood Jean Cardillac’s melancholy seeking for help, and his sorrow over his wife and child. He understood that ancient rake who cried out behind the gates of his cloister: “What shall I do? My Lord and Saviour, what shall I do?” He understood Dietrich, the deaf and dumb lad who had drowned himself, and Becker’s words concerning his dripping coat, and Franz Lothar’s horror at the intertwined bodies of the Hungarian men and maids, and the panting hunger of Amadeus Voss and his saying concerning the silver cord and the pitcher broken at the fountain. He understood the stony grief of the fishermen’s wives, and the opera singer who had twenty francs in his pocket.

He understood. He understood.

“Christian!” Eva cried out in a tone as though she were peering into the darkness.

“The night has come upon us,” Christian said, and trembled.

“Christian!” she cried.

Suddenly he became aware of Amadeus Voss, who emerged out there from among the dark trees, and who seemed to have awaited him, for he made signs to him at the window. With a hasty good-night Christian left the room.

Eva looked after him and did not move.

A little later, forgetting the ache in her feet, she went into her dressing-room, opened her jewel case, took Ignifer out, and regarded the stone long and with brooding seriousness.

Then she put it into her hair, and went to the mirror--cool in body, pale of face, quiet-eyed. She folded her arms, lost in this vision of herself.

XXI

Christian and Amadeus walked across the dam toward Duinbergen.

“I have a confession to make to you, Wahnschaffe,” Amadeus Voss began. “I’ve been gambling, playing roulette, over at Ostende.”

“I’ve heard about it,” said Christian absent-mindedly. “And, of course, you lost?”

“The devil appeared to me,” said Amadeus, in hollow tones.

“How much did you lose?” Christian asked.

“Maybe you think it was some refined modern devil, a hallucination, or a product of the poetic fancy,” Amadeus continued in his breathless and strangely hostile way. “Oh, no, it was a regular, old-fashioned devil with a goat’s beard and great claws. And he spoke to me: ‘Take of their superfluity; clothe your sensitiveness in armour; let them not intimidate you, nor the breath of their insolently beautiful world drive you into the cloudy closets of your torment.’ And with his cunning fingers he guided the little, jumping ball for me. The light of the lamps seemed to cry, the rouge fell from the cheeks of the women, the spittle of poisonous greed ran down the beards of the men. I won, Christian Wahnschaffe, I won! Ten thousand, twelve thousand--I hardly remember how much. The thousand franc notes looked like tatters of a faded flag. There were gleaming halls, stairs, gardens, white tables, champagne coolers, platters of oysters; and I breathed deep and lived and was like a lord. Strange men congratulated me, honoured me with their company, ate with me--experienced people, spick and span and respectable. In the Hotel de la Plage my goat-footed devil finally became transformed into a worthy symbol. He became a spider that had a huge egg between its feet and sucked insatiably.”

“I believe you ought to go to bed and have a long sleep,” said Christian drily. “How much did you lose in the end?”

“I have lost sleep,” Amadeus admitted. “How much I lost? About fourteen thousand. Prince Wiguniewski advanced the money; he thought you’d return it. He’s a very distinguished person, I must say. Not a muscle in his face moves when he’s courteous; nothing betrays the fact that he scents the proletarian in me.”

“I’ll straighten out the affair with him,” said Christian.

“It is not enough, Wahnschaffe,” Amadeus answered, and his voice shook, “it is not enough!”

“Why isn’t it enough?”

“Because I must go on gambling and win the money back. I can’t remain your debtor.”

“You will only increase your indebtedness, Amadeus. But I won’t prevent you, if you’ll make up your mind to name a limit.”

Amadeus laughed hoarsely. “I knew you’d be magnanimous, Christian Wahnschaffe. Plunge the thorn deeper into my wound. Go on!”

“I don’t understand you, Amadeus,” Christian said calmly. “Ask as much money of me as you please. To be sure, I’d prefer to have you ask it for another purpose.”

“How magnanimous again, how magnanimous!” Amadeus jeered. “But suppose that naming a limit is just what I won’t do? Suppose I want to strip off my beggar’s shame and become frankly a robber? Would you cast me off in that case?”

“I don’t know what I should do,” Christian answered. “Perhaps I should try to convince you that you are not acting justly.”

These sober and simple words made a visible impression on Amadeus Voss. He lowered his head and, after a while, he said: “It crushes the heart--that interval between the hopping of the little ball and the decision of the judge. The faded bank notes rustle up, or a round roll of gold is driven up on a shovel. I invented a system. I divided eight letters into groups of three and five. Once I won seventeen hundred with my system, another time three thousand. You mustn’t leave me in the lurch, Wahnschaffe. I have a soul, too. Three and five--that’s my problem. I’ll break the bank. I’ll break the bank thrice--ten times! It is possible, and therefore it can be done. Can three and five withstand a cloudburst of gold? Would Danaë repel Perseus, or would she demand that he bring her first the head of the Gorgon Medusa?”

He fell silent very suddenly. Christian had laid an arm about his shoulder, and this familiar caress was so new and unexpected that Amadeus breathed deep as a child in its sleep. “Think of what has happened, Amadeus,” said Christian. “Do think of the words you said to me: ‘It is possible that you need me; it is certain that without you I am lost.’ Have you forgotten so soon, dear friend?”

Amadeus started. He stood still and grasped Christian’s hands: “For the love of God ... no one has ever spoken to me thus ... no one!”

“You will not forget it then, Amadeus?” Christian said softly.

A weakness overcame Amadeus Voss. He looked about him with unquiet eyes, and saw a low post to which the ships’ hawsers were made fast. He sat down on it, and buried his face in his hands. Then he spoke through his hands: “Look you, dear brother, I am a beaten dog; that and nothing else. I feel as though I had leaned too long against a cold, hard, tinted church wall. The chill has remained in my very marrow, and I struggle because I don’t want that feeling to enslave me. Often I think I should like to love a woman. I cannot live without love; and yet I live on without it, day after day. Always without love! The accursed wall is so cold. I cannot and would not and must not live without love. I am only human, and I must know woman’s love, or I shall freeze to death or be turned to stone or utterly destroyed. Yet I am a Christian, and it is hard for a Christian who bears a certain image in his heart to give himself up to woman. Help me to find a woman, brother, I beseech you.”

Christian looked out upon the dark sea. “How can I help him?” he thought, and felt all the coldness of the world and the confusion of mortal things.

While he stood and reflected he heard from afar across the dunes a cry, first dulled by the distance, then nearer and clearer, and then farther away again. It was such a cry as a man might utter, at his utmost need, in the very face of death. Amadeus Voss also lifted his head to listen. They looked at each other.

“We must go,” said Christian.

They hurried in the direction of the cry, but the dunes and the beach were equally desolate. Thrice again they heard the cry in the same fashion, approaching and receding, but their seeking and listening and hurrying were in vain. When they were about to return Voss said: “It was not human. It came from something in nature. It was a spirit cry. Such things happen oftener than men believe. It summons us somewhere. One of us two has received a summons.”

“It may be,” said Christian, smiling. His sense for reality could accept such an interpretation of things only in jest.

XXII

On his way to Scotland Crammon stopped over for a day in Frankfort. He informed Christian’s mother of his presence, and she begged him with friendly urgency to come to her.

It was the end of June. They had tea on a balcony wreathed in fresh green. Frau Wahnschaffe had ordered no other callers to be admitted. For a while the conversation trickled along indifferently, and there were long pauses. She wanted Crammon to give her some news of Christian, from whom she had not heard since he had left Christian’s Rest. But first, since Crammon was a confidant and a witness in the suit, it was necessary to mention Judith’s divorce and approaching remarriage to Edgar Lorm, and Frau Wahnschaffe’s pride rebelled at touching on things that could, nevertheless, not be silently passed over.

She sought a starting point in vain. Crammon, outwardly smooth, but really in a malicious and woodenly stubborn mood, recognized her difficulty, but would do nothing to help her.

“Why do you stay at a hotel, Herr von Crammon?” she asked. “We have a right to you and it isn’t nice of you to neglect us.”

“Don’t grudge an old tramp his freedom, dear lady,” Crammon answered, “and anyhow it would give me a heartache to have to leave this magic castle after just a day.”

Frau Wahnschaffe nibbled at a biscuit. “Anything is better than a hotel,” she said. “It’s always a bit depressing, and not least so when it’s most luxurious. And it isn’t really nice. You are next door to quite unknown people. And the noises! But, after all, what distinction in life is there left to-day? It’s no longer in fashion.” She sighed. Now she thought she had found the conversational bridge she needed, and gave herself a jolt. “What do you think of Judith?” she said in a dull, even voice. “A lamentable mistake. I thought her marriage to Imhof far from appropriate and regretted it. But this! I can hardly look my acquaintances in the face. I always feared the child’s inordinate ambitions, her utter lack of restraint. Now she throws herself at the head of an actor. And to add to the painful complications, there is her bizarre renunciation of her fortune. Incomprehensible! There’s some secret behind that, Herr von Crammon. Does she realize clearly what it will mean to live on a more or less limited salary? It’s incomprehensible.”

“You need have no anxiety,” Crammon assured her. “Edgar Lorm has a princely income and is a great artist.”

“Ah, artists!” Frau Wahnschaffe interrupted him, with a touch of impatience and a contemptuous gesture. “That means little. One pays them; occasionally one pays them well. But they are uncertain people, always on the knife’s edge. It’s customary now to make a great deal of them, even in our circles. I’ve never understood that. Judith will have to pay terribly for her folly, and Wahnschaffe and I are suffering a bitter disappointment.” She sighed, and looked at Crammon surreptitiously before she asked with apparent indifference, “Did you hear from Christian recently?”

Crammon said that he had not.

“We have been without news of him for two months,” Frau Wahnschaffe added. Another shy glance at Crammon told her that he could not give her the information she sought. He was not sufficiently master of himself at this moment to conceal the cause of his long and secret sorrow.

A peacock proudly passed the balcony, spread the gleaming magnificence of his feathers in the sunlight, and uttered a repulsive cry.

“I’ve been told that he’s travelling with the son of the forester,” said Crammon, and pulled up his eyebrows so high that his face looked like the gargoyle of a mediæval devil. “Where he has gone to, I can only suppose; but I have no right to express such suppositions. I hope our paths will cross. We parted in perfect friendship. It is possible that we shall find each other again on the same basis.”

“I have heard of the forester’s son,” Frau Wahnschaffe murmured. “It’s strange, after all. Is it a very recent friendship?”

“Yes, most recent. I have no explanation to offer. There’s nothing about a forester’s son that should cause one any anxiety in itself; but one should like to know the character of the attraction.”

“Sometimes hideous thoughts come to me,” said Frau Wahnschaffe softly, and the skin about her nose turned grey. Abruptly she bent forward, and in her usually empty eyes there arose so sombre and frightened a glow, that Crammon suddenly changed his entire opinion of this woman’s real nature.

“Herr von Crammon,” she began, in a hoarse and almost croaking voice, “you are Christian’s friend; at least, you caused me to believe so. Then act the part of a friend. Go to him; I expect it of you; don’t delay.”

“I shall do all that is in my power,” Crammon answered. “It was my intention to look him up in any event. First I’m going to Dumbarton for ten days. Then I shall seek him out. I shall certainly find him, and I don’t believe that there is any ground for real anxiety. I still believe that Christian is under the protection of some special deity; but I admit that it’s just as well to see from time to time whether the angel in question is fulfilling his duties properly.”

“You will write me whatever happens,” Frau Wahnschaffe said, and Crammon gave his promise. She nodded to him when he took his leave. The glow in her eyes had died out, and when she was alone she sank into dull brooding.

Crammon spent the evening with acquaintances in the city. He returned to the hotel late, and sat awhile in the lobby, immovable, unapproachable, nourishing his misanthropy on the aspect of the passersby. Then he examined the little directory on which the names of the guests appeared. “What are these people doing here?” he asked himself. “How important that looks: ‘Max Ostertag (retired banker) and wife.’ Why Ostertag of all things? Why Max? Why: and wife?”

Embittered he went up to his room. Embittered and world-weary he wandered up and down the long corridor. In front of each door, both to the right and to the left, stood two pairs of boots--one pair of men’s and one pair of women’s. In this pairing of the boots he saw a boastful and shameless exhibitionism of marital intimacies; for the shape and make of the boots assured him of the legal and officially blameless status of their owners. He seemed to see in those boots a morose evidence of overlong, stale unions, a vulgar breadth of tread caused by the weight of money, a commonness of mind, a self-righteous Pharisaism.

He couldn’t resist the foolish temptation of creating confusion among the boots of these Philistines. He looked about carefully, took a pair of men’s boots, and joined them to a pair of women’s boots at another door. And he continued until the original companionship of the boots was utterly destroyed. Then he went to bed with a pleasant sensation, comparable to that of a writer of farces who has succeeded in creating an improbable and scarcely extricable confusion amid the puppets of his plot.

In the morning he was awakened by the noise of violent and angry disputes in the hall. He raised his head, listened with satisfaction, smiled slothfully, stretched himself, yawned, and enjoyed the quarrelling voices as devoutly as though they were music.

XXIII

When on the day after his nocturnal wandering Christian came to see Eva, he was astonished to find her surrounded by a crowd of Russians, Englishmen, Frenchmen, and Belgians. Until this day she had withdrawn herself from society entirely, or else had received only at hours previously agreed upon between Christian and herself. This unexpected change suddenly made a mere guest of him, and pushed him from the centre to the circumference of the circle.

The conversation turned on the arrival of Count Maidanoff, and there was a general exchange of speculation, both in regard to the duration and the purpose of his visit. A political setting of the stage had been feigned with conscious hypocrisy. There was to be a visit to the king, and ministerial conferences. He had first stopped at the Hotel Lettoral in Knocke, but had soon moved to the large and magnificent Villa Herzynia, which his favourite and friend, Prince Szilaghin, had rented.

Szilaghin appeared soon after Christian. Wiguniewski, obviously under orders, introduced the two men.