Part 23

“I’m going to have a few friends with me to-morrow night,” Szilaghin said, with the peculiar courtesy of a great comedian. “I trust you will do me the honour of joining us.” Coldly he examined Christian, whose nerves grew painfully taut under that glance. He bowed and determined not to go.

Eva was in the room that gave on the balcony, and was posing for the sculptress, Beatrix Vanleer. The latter sat with a block of paper and made sketches. Meantime Eva chatted with several gentlemen. She held out her hand for Christian to kiss, and ignored his questioning gaze.

In her cinnamon dress, with her hair high on her head and a diadem of ivory, she seemed extraordinarily strange to him. Her face had the appearance of delicate enamel. About her chin there was a hostile air. Gentle vibrations about the muscles at her temples seemed to portend an inner storm. But these perceptions were fleeting. What Christian felt about her was primarily a paralyzing coldness.

When Mlle. Vanleer had finished for the day, Eva walked up and down talking to a certain young Princess Helfersdorff. She led her to the balcony, which was bathed in the sunlight, and then into her boudoir, where she liked to be when she read or rested from her exercises. Christian followed the two women, and felt, for the first time in his life, that he was being humiliated. But it did not depress him as profoundly as, an hour ago, the mere thought of such an experience would have done.

The Marquis Tavera joined him. Standing on the threshold of the boudoir, they talked of indifferent things. Christian heard Eva tell the young princess that she expected to go to Hamburg within a week. The North German Lloyd was planning a great festivity on the occasion of the launching of a magnificent ship, and she had been asked to dance. “I’m really delighted at the prospect,” she added cheerfully. “I’m little more than a name to most Germans yet. Now they’ll be able to see me and tell me what I amount to and where I belong.”

The young lady looked at the dancer with enthusiasm. Christian thought: “I must speak to her at once.” In every word of Eva’s he felt an arrow of hostility or scorn aimed at him. He left Tavera, and entered the room. The decisiveness of his movement forced Eva to look at him. She smiled in surprise. A scarcely perceptible shrug marked her astonishment and censure.

Tavera had turned to the princess, and when these two moved toward the door, Eva seemed inclined to follow them. A gesture of Christian, which she saw on glancing back, determined her to wait. Christian closed the door, and Eva’s expression of amazement became intense. But he felt that this was but acting. He slipped into a sudden embarrassment, and could find no words.

Eva walked up and down, touching some object here and there. “Well?” she asked, and looked at him coldly.

“This Szilaghin is an insufferable creature,” Christian murmured, with lowered eyes. “I remember I once saw a mani-coloured marine animal in an aquarium. It was very beautiful and also extremely horrible. I couldn’t get rid of its image. I wanted constantly to go back to it, and yet felt constantly an ugly horror of it.”

“O la, la!” said Eva. Nothing else. And in this soft exclamation there was contempt, impatience, and curiosity. Then she stood before him. “I am not fond of being caged,” she said in a hard voice. “I am not fond of being caught and isolated from my guests to be told trivial things. You must forgive me, but it doesn’t interest me what impression Prince Szilaghin makes on you. Or, to be quite truthful, it interests me no longer.”

Christian looked at her dumbly. It seemed to him that he was being chastised, beaten, and he turned very pale. The feeling of humiliation grew like a fever. “He invited me to his house to-morrow,” he stammered, “and I merely wanted to tell you that I’m not going.”

“You must go,” Eva replied swiftly. “I beg of you to go.” Avoiding the astonished question in his eyes, she added: “Maidanoff will be there. I wish you to see him.”

“For what reason?”

“You are to know what I grasp at, what I do, whither I go. Can you read faces? I dare say not. Nevertheless, come!”

“What have you determined on?” he asked, awkwardly and shyly.

She gave her body a little, impatient shake. “Nothing that was not settled long ago,” she answered, with a glassy coolness in her voice. “Did you think that I would drag on our lovely, wild May into a melancholy November? You might have spared us both your frankness of last night. The dream was over no moment sooner for you than for me. You should have known that. And if you did not know it, you should have feigned that knowledge. A gentleman of faultless taste does not throw down his cards while his partner is preparing to make a last bet. You do not deserve the honourable farewell that I gave you. I should have led you about, chained, like those stupid little beasts who are always whining for permission to ruin themselves for my sake. They call this thing their passion. It is a fire like any other; but I would not use it to kindle a lamp, if I needed light to unlace my shoes.”

She had crossed her arms and laughed softly, and moved toward the door.

“You have misunderstood me,” said Christian overwhelmed. “You misunderstand me wholly.” He raised his hands and barred her way. “Do you not understand? If I had words.... But I love you so! I cannot imagine life without you. And yet (how shall I put it into words?) I feel like a man who owes colossal sums and is constantly dunned and tormented, and does not know wherewith to pay nor whom. Do try to understand! I was hasty, foolish. But I thought that you might help me.”

It was the cry of a soul in need. But Eva did not or would not heed it. She had built of her love a soaring arch. She thought it had fallen, and no abyss seemed deep enough for its ruins to be hurled. She had neither ears now nor eyes. She had decided her fate even now; and though it frightened her, to recede was contrary to her pride and her very blood. A sovereign gesture silenced Christian. “Enough!” she said. “Of all the ugly things between two people, nothing is uglier than an explanation that involves the emotions. I have no understanding for hypochondria, and epilogues bore me. As for your creditors, see that you seek them out and pay them. It is troublesome to keep house with unpaid bills.”

She went from the room.

Christian stood very still. Slowly he lowered his head, and hid his face in his hands.

XXIV

Next day Christian received a telegram from Crammon, in which the latter announced his arrival for the middle of the following week. He gazed meditatively at the slip of paper, and had to reconstruct an image of Crammon from memory, feature by feature. But it escaped him again at once.

At Fyodor Szilaghin’s he found about twenty people. There were eight or ten Russians, including Wiguniewski. Then there were the brothers Maelbeek, young Belgian aristocrats, a French naval captain, Tavera, Bradshaw, the Princess Helfersdorff and her mother (a very common looking person), Beatrix Vanleer, and Sinaide Gamaleja.

Christian arrived a little later than the others, and Szilaghin was half-sitting, half-lying on a _chaise-longue_. A young wolf crouched on his knees, and on the arm of the _chaise-longue_ sat a green parrot. He smiled and excused himself for not arising, pointing to the animals as though they held him fast.

From Wiguniewski’s anecdotes Christian knew of Szilaghin’s fondness for such trickery. At Oxford he had once gone boating alone and at night with an eagle chained to his skiff; at Rome he had once rented a palace, and given a ball to the dregs of the city’s life--beggars, cripples, prostitutes, and pimps. The boastfulness of such things was obvious. But as Christian stood there and saw him with those animals, the impression he received was not only one of frantic high spirits, but also one of despair. A retroactive oppression crept over him.

The lighting of the rooms was strikingly dim and scattered. A thunderstorm was approaching, and the windows were all open on account of the sultry heat; and every flicker of lightning flashed an unexpected brightness into the rooms.

At the invitation of several guests, Sinaide Gamaleja sat down with a lute under a cluster of long-stemmed roses, and began to sing a Russian song. Over her shoulders lay a gold-embroidered shawl, and her hair was held by a band of diamonds. Her figure was fragile. She had broad cheekbones, a wide mouth, and dully-glowing, heavy-lidded eyes.

The greyish-yellow wolf on Szilaghin’s knees raised his head, and blinked sleepily at the singer. The melody had awakened in him a dream of his native steppes. But the parrot stirred too, and, croaking an unintelligible word, he preened himself and displayed the gorgeous plumage of his throat. Szilaghin raised a finger and bade the bird be silent; obediently it hid its beak in the feathers which a breeze lifted. A voluble old Russian kept talking to Szilaghin. The latter overheard him contemptuously, and joined in the singing of the song’s second stanza.

His voice was melodious--a deep, dark baritone. But to Christian there seemed something corrupt in its music, as corrupt as the half-shut, angry, melancholy eyes with their contempt of mankind; as corrupt as the well-chiselled, waxen face, that could pass for eighteen, yet harboured all the experiences of an evil old age; as corrupt as the long, pale, sinuous, nerveless hand or the sweetish, weary, clever smile.

The Maelbeeks, Wiguniewski, the Captain, and Tavera had settled down to a game of baccarat in the adjoining room. In the pauses of the singing, one could hear the click of gold and the tap of the cards on the table. These strange noises excited the parrot; he forgot the command of his master, and uttered a discordant cry. Sinaide Gamaleja threw the animal a furious glance, and for a moment her hand twitched on the strings.

At that moment Szilaghin arose, grasped the bird’s feet with one hand, its head with the other, and twisted the head of the screaming, agonizedly fluttering animal around and around as on an axis. Then he tossed the green, dead thing aside with an expression of disgust, and calmly intoned the third stanza of the song.

A flame of satisfaction appeared in Sinaide Gamaleja’s eyes. The old Russian, who had visited his endless babble on the sculptress, fell suddenly silent. The wolf yawned, and, as though to confirm the fact of his own obedience, snuggled his chin against his master’s arm.

Christian looked down at the dead bird, whose tattered plumage gleamed in the lightning that flashed across the floor like a fantastic emerald. Suddenly the dead animal became to him the seal and symbol of all the corruption, vanity, unveracity, bedizenment, and danger of all he saw and felt. He looked at Szilaghin, at Sinaide, at the chattering dotard, at the gamesters, and turned away. There was an acridness in his throat and a burning in his eyes. He approached the window. The foliage rustled out there, and the thunder pealed. And the question arose within him: Whence does all this evil come? Whence does it come, and why is it so hard to separate oneself from it?

The night, the rain, and the storm drove him forth, lured him out. He ached to lose himself in the darkness, far from men. He was afraid for the first time in his life that he would shed tears. Never, in all his conscious memory, had he wept. His whole body was shaken by an emotional tumult such as he had never known, and he repressed it only by using his utmost energy. Just as he was about to touch the knob of the door, a lackey opened it, and Maidanoff and Eva appeared on the threshold. Christian stood quite still; but every vestige of colour left his face.

A vivid stir went through the company. Szilaghin jumped up to welcome these two. Maidanoff’s weather-beaten leanness contrasted in a striking and sombre fashion with Eva’s flower-like symmetry of form. She wore a garment diaphanous as breathing; it was held to her shoulders by ropes of pearls. Her skin had a faintly golden glow; her throat and arms and bosom pulsed with life.

The vision absorbed Christian. He stared at her. His name was spoken, with other names that were new to Maidanoff; and still he stared at that unfathomable and fatal image. His heart, in its sudden, monstrous loneliness, turned to ice; he felt both wild and stricken with dumbness; the tension of his soul became unendurable. Curious glances sought him out. He failed to move at the proper moment, and the moan that arose from the confusion of his utter grief had made a thing of mockery and scorn of him, before he fled past barren walls and stupid lackeys into the open.

The rain came down in torrents. He did not call his car, but walked along the road.

XXV

After losing twenty-eight thousand francs, the amount that he had gradually borrowed from Mr. Bradshaw and Prince Wiguniewski, Amadeus Voss got up from the gaming table, and staggered into the open. He had a dim notion that he would seek out Christian, to tell him that he would be able to settle the debt within twenty-four hours.

He went to the telegraph office, and sent a message to Christian. Then he stood beneath a chestnut tree in bloom, and muttered: “Brother, brother.”

A woman came along the road, and he joined her. But suddenly he burst out into wild laughter, turned down a side street, and went on alone.

He walked and walked for six endless hours. At two o’clock in the morning he was in Heyst. His brain seemed to have become an insensitive lump, incapable of light or reason.

Masses of dark grey clouds that floated in the sky assumed to him the aspect of women’s bodies. The clouds, which the hot night drove toward the north, were like cloaks over the forms he desired. He felt an obscure yearning for all the love in all the lands in which he had no part.

At the garden-gate of the villa he stopped and stared up at Christian’s windows. They were open and showed light. “Brother,” he muttered again, “brother!” Christian appeared at the window. The sight of him filled Voss with a sudden, overwhelming hatred. “Take care, Wahnschaffe!” he cried.

Christian left the window, and soon appeared at the gate. Amadeus awaited him with clenched fists. But when Christian approached, he turned and fled down the street, and Christian looked after him. Then his steps became slower, and Christian followed.

After Voss had wandered about aimlessly for a time, he felt a torturing thirst. He happened to pass a sailors’ tavern, considered for a moment, and entered. He ordered grog, but did not touch the glass. Five or six men sat at various tables. Three slept; the eyes of the others had a drunken stare. The tavern keeper, an obese fellow with a criminal face, sat behind the bar, and watched this elegantly attired guest, whose face was so pale and so disturbed. He concluded that the late comer was in a mood of despair, and beckoned to the bar-maid, a dark-haired, dirty Walloon, to sit down by him.

Impudently she did so, and started to talk. He did not understand her. She gave a coarse laugh, and put a hand on his knee. Behind her thin and ragged bodice her breasts stirred like animals. She had a primitive, animal odour. He turned dizzy. Then a lust to murder stirred in him.

He drew from his pocket all the money he had left. There were seventy francs--three gold and five silver coins. “The magic numbers,” he muttered, and grew a shade paler, “three and five!”

The Walloon woman turned greedy and caressing eyes upon the coins. The tavern keeper, scenting business, dragged his bulk forward.

“Strip off your clothes, and it’s yours!” said Amadeus Voss.

She looked at him stupidly. The tavern keeper understood German and translated the words. She laughed shrilly, and pointed toward the door. Amadeus shook his head. “No; now; here!” He was stubborn. The girl turned to her employer, and the two consulted in whispers. Her gestures made it evident that she cared little for the presence of the drunken or snoring men. She disappeared behind a brown partition that had once been yellow. The tavern keeper gathered the money on the table, waddled from window to window to see that the red hangings covered all the panes, and then stood guard at the door.

Amadeus sat there as though steeped in seething water. A few minutes passed. Then the Walloon woman appeared from behind the partition. The sailors looked up. One arose and gesticulated; one uttered a wild laugh. The woman stood with lowered eyes--stubborn, careless, rubbing one foot with the other. She was rather fat, quite without charm, and the lines of her body had been destroyed.

But to Amadeus Voss she was like a supernatural vision, and he gazed upon her as though his whole soul was in that gaze. His arms reached out, and his fingers became claws, and his lips twitched. The fishermen and the tavern keeper no longer saw the woman. They saw him. They felt fear. So unwonted was the sight that they did not observe the opening of the door. The tavern keeper’s whistled warning came too late. Christian, who entered, still saw the naked woman as she hurried toward the partition.

He approached Amadeus. But the latter took no notice of him. He stared spell-bound at the spot where the woman had stood.

Christian laid a hand upon his shoulder. Amadeus roused himself from his absorption, turned slow, questioning eyes upon his friend, and strangely uttered with his quivering lips these words: “Est Deus in nobis; agitante calescimus illo.”

Then he broke down, his forehead dropped on the table, and a shudder shook his body.

The tavern keeper muttered morosely.

“Come, Amadeus,” said Christian very quietly.

The drunken fishermen and sailors stared.

Amadeus arose, and groped like a blind man for Christian’s hand.

“Come, Amadeus,” Christian repeated, and his voice seemed to make a deep impression on Voss, for he followed him without hesitation. The tavern keeper and the sailors accompanied them into the street.

The tavern keeper said to the men with him: “Those are what you call gentlemen. Look how they behave! It shows you why the world is ruled so ill.”

“The dawn is breaking,” said one of the fishermen, and pointed to a purple streak in the eastern heaven.

Christian and Amadeus likewise stared at the purple seam of the east, and Amadeus spoke again: “Est Deus in nobis; agitante calescimus illo.”

KAREN ENGELSCHALL

I

On the appointed hour of the appointed day Crammon arrived. He had prepared himself to stay and to be festive; but he was disappointed. Eva and her train were on the point of leaving. Maidanoff had proceeded to Paris, whither Eva was to follow him.

Crammon had been informed of this new friendship of his idol. All other news came to him too, and so he was aware that a quarrel had arisen between Christian and Eva. He was the more astonished to see Christian determined to follow Eva to Hamburg.

They had exchanged but a few words, when the transformation in Christian struck him. He laid his hand on the young man’s shoulder, and asked sympathetically: “Have you nothing to confide?”

He spent the evening with Wiguniewski. “It isn’t possible,” he said; “you’re mistaken. Or else the world is topsy-turvy and I can no longer tell a man from a woman.”

“I had no special liking for Wahnschaffe from the start,” Wiguniewski confessed. “He’s too impenetrable, mysterious, spoiled, cold, and, if you will, too German. Nevertheless I knew from the first that he was the very man for Eva Sorel. You couldn’t see the two together without a sense of delight--the sort of delight that a beautiful composition gives you, or anything that is spiritually fitting and harmonious.”

Crammon nodded. “He has a strange power over women,” he said. “I’ve just had another instance which is the more remarkable as it developed from a mere sight of his picture. At the Ashburnhams’ in Yorkshire, where I’ve been staying, I made the acquaintance of a Viennese girl, a banker’s daughter, rather ugly, to be frank, but with a peculiar little sting and charm and wit of her own. Not a bad figure, though rather--shall we say scanty? Yes. Her name is Johanna Schöntag, though that matters little. I called her nothing but Rumpelstilzkin. That fitted her like a glove. God knows how she got there. Her sister, a russet-haired person who looks as though she’d jumped out of a Rubens, is married to an attaché of some minor legation, Roumanian or Bulgarian or something like that. The big capitalists fit their daughters into society that way. Well, anyhow, this Rumpelstilzkin and I agreed to amuse each other in the murky boredom of Lord and Lady Ashburnham’s house. So one day I showed the girl a miniature of Christian which Gaston Villiers painted for me in Paris. She looked at the picture and her merry face grew grave, absorbed, and she handed it back to me silently. A couple of days later she asked to see it again, and it had the same effect on her. She asked me about the man, and I, of course, became very eloquent, and happened to remark, too, that I expected to meet Christian here. She insisted at once that she must meet him, and that I must plan to have her do so. Remember she’s rather unapproachable as a rule, fastidious, turning up her nose--her worst feature by the way--at things that please most people. The request was unexpected and rather a nuisance. One mustn’t, as you know, bring the wrong people together and land one’s self in difficulties. So I said at once: ‘The Almighty forbid!’ I admonished her gently to change her mind, and painted the danger in its darkest hues. She laughed at me, and asked me whether I’d grown strait-laced; then she at once developed a most cunning plan. She had time enough. She wasn’t expected home till the first of November, which gave her seven weeks. So she would announce her intention of studying the Dutch galleries, the pursuit of culture being always respectable. She had a companion and chaperone, as it was, and her sister, who was broad-minded in such matters, could be taken into her confidence. Her energy and astuteness made me feel weak, and forced me into the conspiracy. Well, she arrived yesterday. She’s at the Hotel de la Plage, a little scared, like a bird that’s dropped out of its nest, a little dissatisfied with herself, vexed by little attacks of morality; and I, for my part, don’t know what to do with her. I bethought me too late that Christian isn’t to be caught by such tricks, and now I’ve got to make it clear to the girl. All this is by the way, prince--a sort of footnote to your discourse, which I did not intend to interrupt.”

Wiguniewski had listened with very slight sympathy. He began again: “These past months, as I’ve said, have given us all an unforgettable experience. We have seen two free personalities achieving a higher form of union than any of the legitimized ones. But suddenly this noble spectacle turns into a shabby farce; and it is his fault. For such a union has its organic and natural close. A man of subtle sensitiveness knows that, and adjusts himself accordingly. Instead of that, he actually lets it get to the point of painful scenes. He seeks meetings that humiliate him and make him absurd. When she is out he waits in her rooms for her return, and endures her passing him by with a careless nod. Once he sat waiting all night and stared into a book. He lets the Rappard woman treat him insolently, and doesn’t seem to mind that the fruits and flowers he sends daily are regularly refused. What is it? What does it mean?”

“It points to some sorrow, and assuredly to a great sorrow for me,” Crammon sighed. “It’s incomprehensible.”