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The Road to the Open

by Arthur Schnitzler · English · Gutenberg #45895 · 766,074 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Road to the Open

Author: Arthur Schnitzler

Translator: Horace Barnett Samuel


        
Release date: June 6, 2014 [eBook #45895]
                Most recently updated: October 24, 2024

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ROAD TO THE OPEN ***
THE ROAD TO THE OPEN

BY

ARTHUR SCHNITZLER


AUTHORISED TRANSLATION

BY HORACE SAMUEL


LONDON: HOWARD LATIMER LIMITED

GREAT QUEEN STREET, KINGSWAY


1913




I


George von Wergenthin sat at table quite alone to-day. His elder
brother Felician had chosen to dine out with friends for the first time
after a longish interval. But George felt no particular inclination
to renew his acquaintance with Ralph Skelton, Count Schönstein or any
of the other young people, whose gossip usually afforded him so much
pleasure; for the time being he did not feel in the mood for any kind
of society.

The servant cleared away and disappeared. George lit a cigarette
and then in accordance with his habit walked up and down the big
three-windowed rather low room, while he wondered how it was that this
very room which had for many weeks seemed to him so gloomy was now
gradually beginning to regain its former air of cheerfulness. He could
not help letting his glance linger on the empty chair at the top end of
the table, over which the September sun was streaming through the open
window in the centre. He felt as though he had seen his father, who
had died two months ago, sit there only an hour back, as he visualised
with great clearness the very slightest mannerisms of the dead man,
even down to his trick of pushing his coffee-cup away, adjusting his
pince-nez or turning over the leaves of a pamphlet.

George thought of one of his last conversations with his father which
had occurred in the late spring before they had moved to the villa
on the Veldeser Lake. George had just then come back from Sicily,
where he had spent April with Grace on a melancholy and somewhat
boring farewell tour before his mistress's final return to America.
He had done no real work for six months or more, and had not even
copied out the plaintive adagio which he had heard in the plashing
of the waves on a windy morning in Palermo as he walked along the
beach. George had played over the theme to his father and improvised
on it with an exaggerated wealth of harmonies which almost swamped
the original melody, and when he had launched into a wildly modulated
variation, his father had smilingly asked him from the other end of
the piano--"Whither away, whither away?" George had felt abashed and
allowed the swell of the notes to subside, and his father had begun a
discussion about his son's future with all his usual affection, but
with rather more than his usual seriousness. This conversation ran
through his mind to-day as though it had been pregnant with presage. He
stood at the window and looked out. The park outside was fairly empty.
An old woman wearing an old-fashioned cloak with glass beads sat on
a seat. A nursemaid walked past holding one child by the hand while
another, a little boy, in a hussar uniform, with a buckled-on sabre
and a pistol in his belt, ran past, looked haughtily round and saluted
a veteran who came down the path smoking. Further down the grounds
were a few people sitting round the kiosk, drinking coffee and reading
the papers. The foliage was still fairly thick, and the park looked
depressed and dusty and altogether far more summer-like than usual for
late September.

George rested his arms on the window-sill, leant forwards and looked at
the sky. He had not left Vienna since his father's death, though he had
had many opportunities of so doing. He could have gone with Felician to
the Schönstein estate; Frau Ehrenberg had written him a charming letter
inviting him to come to Auhof; he could easily have found a companion
for that long-planned cycle-tour through Carinthia and the Tyrol, which
he had not the energy to undertake alone. But he preferred to stay
in Vienna and occupy his time with perusing and putting in order the
old family papers. He found archives which went as far back as his
great-grandfather Anastasius von Wergenthin, who haled from the Rhine
district and had by his marriage with a Fräulein Recco become possessed
of an old castle near Bozen which had been uninhabitable for a long
period. There were also documents dealing with the history of George's
grandfather, a major of artillery who had fallen before Chlum in the
year 1866.

The major's son, the father of Felician and himself, had devoted
himself to scientific studies, principally botany, and had taken at
Innsbruck the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. At the age of twenty-four
he had made the acquaintance of a young girl of an old family of
Austrian officials, who had brought her up to be a singer, more
with a view to rendering her independent of the limited, not to say
impoverished, resources of the household, than because she had any real
vocation. Baron von Wergenthin saw and heard her for the first time at
a concert-performance of the Missa Solemnis and in the following May
she became his wife. Three years later the health of the Baroness began
to fail, and she was ordered South by the doctors. She did not recover
as soon as was anticipated, with the result that the house in Vienna
was given up, and the Baron and his family lived for several years a
kind of hotel-life, as they travelled from one place to another. His
business and studies frequently summoned the Baron to Vienna, but the
sons never left their mother. The family lived in Sicily, Rome, Tunis,
Corfu, Athens, Malta, Merano, the Riviera, and finally in Florence;
never in very great style, but fairly well nevertheless, and without
curtailing their expenditure sufficiently to prevent a substantial part
of the Baron's fortune being gradually eaten up. George was eighteen
when his mother died. Nine years had passed since then, but the memory
of that spring evening was still as vivid as ever, when his father and
brother had happened to be out, and he had stood alone and helpless by
his mother's death-bed, while the talk and laughter of the passers-by
had flowed in with the spring air through the hastily opened windows
with all the jar of its unwelcome noise.

The survivors took their mother's body back to Vienna. The Baron
devoted himself to his studies with new and desperate zeal. He had
formerly enjoyed the reputation of an aristocratic dilettante, but he
now began to be taken quite seriously even in academic circles, and
when he was elected honorary president of the Botanical Society he
owed that distinction to something more than the accident of a noble
name. Felician and George entered themselves as law students. But after
some time their father himself encouraged the boys to abandon their
university studies, and go in for a more general education and one
more in accordance with their musical tendencies. George felt thankful
and relieved at this new departure. But even in this sphere which he
had chosen himself, he was by no means industrious, and he would often
occupy himself for weeks on end with all manner of things that had
nothing at all to do with his musical career.

It was this same trait of dilettantism which made him now go through
the old family documents as seriously as though he were investigating
some important secrets of the past. He spent many hours busying
himself with letters which his parents had exchanged in years gone by,
wistful letters and superficial letters, melancholy letters and placid
letters, which brought back again to life not merely the departed ones
themselves but other men and women half sunk in oblivion. His German
tutor now appeared to him again with his sad pale forehead just as he
used to declaim his Horace to him on their long walks, there floated up
in his mind the wild brown boyish face of Prince Alexander of Macedon
in whose company George had had his first riding lessons in Rome; and
then the Pyramids of Cestius limned as though in a dream with black
lines on a pale blue horizon reared their peaks, just as George had
seen them once in the twilight as he came home from his first ride in
the Campagna. And as he abandoned himself still more to his reverie
there appeared sea-shores, gardens and streets, though he had no
knowledge of the landscape or the town that had furnished them to his
memory; images of human beings swept past him; some of these, whom he
had met casually on some trivial occasion, were very clear, others
again, with whom he might at some time or other have passed many days,
were shadowy and distant.

When George had finished inspecting the old letters and was putting
his own papers in order, he found in an old green case some musical
jottings of his boyhood, whose very existence had so completely
vanished from his memory, that if they had been put before him as the
records of some one else he would not have known the difference. Some
affected him with a kind of pleasant pain, for they seemed to him to
contain promises which he was perhaps never to fulfil. And yet he had
been feeling lately that something had been hatching within him. He saw
his development as a mysterious but definite line which showed the way
from those first promising notes in the green case to quite new ideas,
and this much he knew--the two songs out of the "Westöstliche Divan"
which he had set to music this summer on a sultry afternoon, while
Felician lay in his hammock and his father worked in his armchair on
the cool terrace, could not have been composed by your ordinary person.

George moved back a step from the window as though surprised by an
absolutely unexpected thought. He had never before realised with such
clearness that there had been an absolute break in his life since
his father's death down to to-day. During the whole time he had not
given a single thought to Anna Rosner to whom he had sent the songs
in manuscript. And he felt pleasurably thrilled at the thought that
he could hear her melodious melancholy voice again and accompany her
singing on that somewhat heavy piano, as soon as he wished. And he
remembered the old house in the Paulanergasse, with its low door and
badly lighted stairs which he had not been up more than three or four
times, in the mood in which a man thinks of something which he has
known very long and held very dear.

A slight soughing traversed the leaves in the park outside. Thin clouds
appeared over the spire of the Stephan Tower, which stood directly
opposite the window, on the other side of the park, and over a largish
part of the town. George was faced with a long afternoon without any
engagements. It seemed to him as though all his former friendships
during the two months of mourning had dissolved or broken up. He
thought of the past spring and winter with all their complications
and mad whirl of gaiety, and all kinds of images came back into his
memory--the ride with Frau Marianne in the closed fiacre through
the snow-covered forest. The masked ball at Ehrenberg's with Else's
subtly-naive remarks about "Hedda Gabler" with whom she insisted she
felt a certain affinity, and with Sissy's hasty kiss from under the
black lace of her mask. A mountain expedition in the snow from Edlach
up to the Rax with Count Schönstein and Oskar Ehrenberg, who, though
very far from being a born mountaineer, had jumped at the opportunity
of tacking himself on to two blue-blooded gentlemen. The evening at
Ronacher's with Grace and young Labinski, who had shot himself four
days afterwards either on account of Grace, debts, satiety, or as a
sheer piece of affectation. The strange hot and cold conversation with
Grace in the cemetery in the melting February snow two days after
Labinski's funeral. The evening in the hot lofty fencing-room where
Felician's sword had crossed the dangerous blade of the Italian
master. The walk at night after the Paderewski concert when his father
had spoken to him more intimately than ever before of that long-past
evening on which his dead mother had sung in the Missa Solemnis in the
very hall which they had just come out of. And finally Anna Rosner's
tall quiet figure appeared to him, leaning on the piano, with the score
in her hand, and her smiling blue eyes turned towards the keys, and he
even heard her voice reverberating in his soul.

While he stood like this at the window and looked down at the park
which was gradually becoming animated, he felt a certain consolation
in the fact that he had no close ties with any human being, and that
there were so many people to whom he could attach himself once more
and whose set he could enter again as soon as the fancy took him. He
felt at the same time wonderfully rested and more in the vein for
work and happiness than he had ever been. He was full of great bold
resolutions and joyfully conscious of his youth and independence. He
no doubt felt a certain shame at the thought that at any rate at the
present moment his grief for his dead father was much alleviated; but
he found a relief for this indifference of his in the thought of his
dear father's painless end. He had been walking up and down the garden
chatting with his two sons, had suddenly looked round him as though he
heard voices in the distance, had then looked up towards the sky and
had suddenly dropped down dead on the sward, without a cry of pain or
even a twitching of the lips.

George went back into the room, got ready to go out and left the house.
He intended to walk about for a couple of hours wherever chance might
take him, and in the evening to work again at his quintette, for which
he now felt in the right mood. He crossed the street and went into the
park. The sultriness had passed. The old woman in the cloak still sat
on the seat and stared in front of her. Children were playing on the
sandy playground round the trees. All the chairs round the kiosk were
taken. A clean-shaven gentleman sat in the summer-house whom George
knew by sight and who had impressed him by his likeness to the elder
Grillparzer. By the pond George met a governess with two well-dressed
children and received a flashing glance. When he got out of the Park
into the Ringstrasse he met Willy Eissler who was wearing a long autumn
overcoat with dark stripes and began to speak to him.

"Good afternoon, Baron, so you've come back to Vienna again."

"I've been back a long time," answered George. "I didn't leave Vienna
again after my father's death."

"Yes, yes, quite so.... Allow me, once again...." And Willy shook hands
with George.

"And what have you been doing this summer?" asked George.

"All kinds of things. Played tennis, and painted, rotted about, had
some amusing times and a lot of boring ones...." Willy spoke extremely
quickly, with a deliberate though slight hoarseness, briskly and yet
nonchalantly with a combination of the Hungarian, French, Viennese and
Jewish accents. "Anyway, I came early to-day, just as you see me now,
from Przemysl," he continued.

"Drill?"

"Yes, the last one. I'm sorry to say so. Though I'm nearly an old man,
I've always found it a joke to trot about with my yellow epaulettes,
clanking my spurs, dragging my sabre along, spreading an atmosphere of
impending peril, and being taken by incompetent Lavaters for a noble
count." They walked along by the side of the railing of the Stadtpark.

"Going to Ehrenbergs' by any chance?" asked Willy.

"No, I never thought of it."

"Because this is the way. I say, have you heard, Fräulein Else is
supposed to be engaged?"

"Really?" queried George slowly. "And whom to?"

"Guess, Baron."

"Come, Hofrat Wilt?"

"Great heavens!" cried Willy, "I'm sure it's never entered his head!
Becoming S. Ehrenberg's son-in-law might result in prejudicing his
government career--nowadays."

George went on guessing. "Rittmeister Ladisc?"

"Oh no, Fräulein Else is far too clever to be taken in by him."

George then remembered that Willy had fought a duel with Ladisc a few
years back. Willy felt George's look, twirled somewhat nervously his
blonde moustache which drooped in the Polish fashion and began to speak
quickly and offhandedly.

"The fact that Rittmeister Ladisc and myself once had a difference
cannot prevent me from loyally recognising the fact that he is, and
always has been, a drunken swine. I have an invincible repulsion, which
even blood cannot wash out, against those people who gorge themselves
sick at Jewish houses and then start slanging the Jews as soon as they
get on the door-steps. They ought to be able to wait till they got
to the café. But don't exert yourself any more by guessing. Heinrich
Bermann is the lucky man."

"Impossible," said George.

"Why?" asked Eissler. "It had to be some one sooner or later. Bermann
is no Adonis, I agree, but he's a coming man, and Else's official
ideal of a mixture of gentleman-rider and athlete will never turn up.
Meanwhile she has reached twenty-four, and she must have had enough by
now of Salomon's tactless remarks and Salomon's jokes."

"Salomon?--oh, yes--Ehrenberg."

"You only know him by the initial S? S of course stands for Salomon
... and as for only S standing on the door, that is simply a concession
he made to his family. If he could follow his own fancy he would prefer
to turn up at the parties Madame Ehrenberg gives in a caftan and
side-curls."

"Do you think so? He's not so very strict?"

"Strict?... Really now! It's nothing at all to do with strictness. It
is only cussedness, particularly against his son Oskar with his feudal
ideals."

"Really," said George with a smile, "wasn't Oskar baptised long ago?
Why, he's a reserve officer in the dragoons."

"That's why ... well, I've not been baptised and nevertheless ... yes
... there are always exceptions ... with good will...." He laughed and
went on. "As for Oskar, he would personally prefer to be a Catholic.
But he thought for the time being he would have to pay too dearly for
the pleasure of being able to go to confession. There's sure to be a
provision in the will to take care that Oskar doesn't 'vert over."

They had arrived in front of the Café Imperial. Willy remained
standing. "I've got an appointment here with Demeter Stanzides."

"Please remember me to him."

"Thanks very much. Won't you come in and have an ice?"

"Thanks, I'll prowl about a little more."

"You like solitude?"

"It's hard to give an answer to so general a question," replied George.

"Of course," said Willy, suddenly grew serious and lifted his hat.
"Good afternoon, Baron."

George held out his hand. He felt that Willy was a man who was
continually defending a position though there was no pressing necessity
for him to do so.

"Au revoir," he said with real sincerity. He felt now as he had often
done before, that it was almost extraordinary that Willy should be a
Jew. Why, old Eissler, Willy's father, who composed charming Viennese
waltzes and songs, was a connoisseur and collector, and sometimes a
seller of antiquities, and objets d'art, and had passed in his day
for the most celebrated boxer in Vienna, was, what with his long grey
beard and his monocle, far more like a Hungarian magnate than a Jewish
patriarch. Besides, Willy's own temperament, his deliberate cultivation
of it and his iron will had made him into the deceptive counterpart
of a feudal gentleman bred and born. What, however, distinguished him
from other young people of similar race and ambition was the fact
that he was accustomed to admit his origin, to demand explanation or
satisfaction for every ambiguous smile, and to make merry himself over
all the prejudices and vanities of which he was so often the victim.

George strode along, and Willy's last question echoed in his ears. Did
he love solitude?... He remembered how he had walked about in Palermo
for whole mornings while Grace, following her usual habit, lay in bed
till noon.... Where was she now...? Since she had said goodbye to him
in Naples he had in accordance with their arrangement heard nothing
from her. He thought of the deep blue night which had swept over the
waters when he had travelled alone to Genoa after that farewell, and of
the soft strange fairy-like song of two children who, nestling closely
up against each other and wrapped, the pair of them, in one rug, had
sat on the deck by the side of their sleeping mother.

With a growing sense of well-being he walked on among the people who
passed by him with all the casual nonchalance of a Sunday. Many a glad
glance from a woman's eye met his own, and seemed as though it would
have liked to console him for strolling about alone and with all the
external appearances of mourning on this beautiful holiday afternoon.
And another picture floated up in his mind.--He saw himself on a hilly
sward, after a hot June day, late in the evening. Darkness all around.
Deep below him a clatter of men, laughter and noise, and glittering
fairy-lamps. Quite near, girls' voices came out of the darkness.... He
lit the small pipe which he usually only smoked in the country; the
flare of the vesta showed him two pretty young peasant wenches, still
almost children. He chatted to them. They were frightened because it
was so dark; they nestled up to him. Suddenly a whizz, rockets in the
air, a loud "Ah!" from down below. Bengal lights flaring violet and red
over the invisible lake beneath. The girls rushed down the hill and
vanished. Then it became dark again and he lay alone and looked up into
the darkness which swam down on him in all its sultriness. The night
before the day on which his father died had been one such as this. And
he thought of him for the first time to-day.

He had left the Ringstrasse and taken the direction of the Wieden.
Would the Rosners be at home on such a beautiful day? At all events
the distance was so short that it was worth trying, and at any rate he
fancied going there rather than to Ehrenbergs'. He was not the least
in love with Else, and it was almost a matter of indifference to him
whether or no she were really engaged to Heinrich Bermann. He had
already known her for a long time. She had been eleven, he had been
fourteen when they had played tennis with each other on the Riviera.
In those days she looked like a gipsy girl. Black-blue tresses tossed
round her cheeks and forehead, and she was as boisterous as a boy. Her
brother had already begun to play the lord, and even to-day George
could not help smiling at the recollection of the fifteen-year old boy
appearing on the promenade one day in a light grey coat with white
black-braided gloves and a monocle in his eye. Frau Ehrenberg was then
thirty-four, and had a dignified appearance though her figure was too
large; she was still beautiful, had dim eyes, and was usually very
tired.

George never forgot the day on which her husband, the millionaire
cartridge-manufacturer, had descended on his family and had by the
very fact of his appearance made a speedy end of the Ehrenbergian
aristocracy. George still remembered in his mind's eye how he had
sprung up during the breakfast on the hotel terrace; a small spare
gentleman with a trimmed beard and moustache and Japanese eyes, in
badly-creased white flannels, a dark straw hat with a red-and-white
striped ribbon on his round head and with dusty black shoes. He always
spoke very slowly and in an as it were sarcastic manner even about the
most unimportant matters, and whenever he opened his mouth a secret
anxiety would always lurk beneath the apparent calm of his wife's
face. She tried to revenge herself by making fun of him; but she
could never do anything with his inconsiderate manners. Oskar behaved
whenever he had a chance as though he didn't belong to the family at
all. A somewhat hesitating contempt would play over his features for
that progenitor who was not quite worthy of him, and he would smile
meaningly for sympathy at the young baron. Only Else in those days was
really nice to her father. She was quite glad to hang on his arm on
the promenade and she would often throw her arms round his neck before
every one.

George had seen Else again in Florence a year before his mother's
death. She was then taking drawing lessons from an old grizzled German,
about whom the legend was circulated that he had once been celebrated.
He spread the rumour about himself that when he felt his genius on the
wane he had discarded his former well-known name and had given up his
calling, though what that was he never disclosed. If his own version
was to be believed, his downfall was due to a diabolical female who had
destroyed his most important picture in a fit of jealousy; and then
ended her life by jumping out of the window. This man who had struck
the seventeen-year-old George as a kind of fool and impostor was the
object of Else's first infatuation. She was then fourteen years old,
and had all the wildness and naïveté of childhood. When she stood in
front of the Titian Venus in the Uffizi Gallery her cheeks would flush
with curiosity, yearning and admiration, and vague dreams of future
experiences would play in her eyes. She often came with her mother
to the house which the Wergenthins had hired at Lungarno, and while
Frau Ehrenberg tried in her languid blasé way to amuse the ailing
baroness, Else would stand at the window with George, start precocious
conversations about the art of the Pre-Raphaelites, and smile at her
old childish games. Felician too would come in sometimes, slim and
handsome, cast his cold grey eyes over the objects and people in the
room, murmur a few polite words, sit down by his mother's bedside, and
tenderly stroke and kiss her hand. He would usually soon go away again,
though not without leaving behind, so far as Else was concerned, a very
palpable atmosphere of old-time aristocracy, cold-blooded fascination
and elegant contempt of death. She always had the impression that he
was going to a gaming-table where hundreds of thousands were at stake,
to a duel to the death or to a princess with red hair and a dagger on
her dressing-table. George remembered that he had been somewhat jealous
both of the erratic drawing-master and of his brother. The master was
suddenly dismissed for reasons which were never specified, and soon
afterwards Felician left for Vienna with Baron von Wergenthin. George
now played to the ladies on the piano more frequently than before, both
his own compositions and those of others, and Else would sing from
the score easy songs from Schubert and Schumann in her small, rather
shrill voice. She visited the galleries and churches with her mother
and George; when spring came there were excursion parties up the Hill
Road or to Fiesole, and George and Else exchanged smiling glances
which were eloquent of a deeper understanding than actually existed.
Their relations went on progressing in this somewhat disingenuous
manner, when their acquaintance was renewed and continued in Vienna.
Else seemed pleasurably thrilled all over again by the equable friendly
manner with which George approached her, notwithstanding the fact that
they had not seen each other for some months. She herself, on the other
hand, grew outwardly more self-possessed and mentally more unsettled
with each succeeding year. She had abandoned her artistic aspirations
fairly early, and in the course of time she came to regard herself as
destined to the most varied careers.

She often saw herself in the future as a society woman, an organiser
of battles of flowers, a patroness of great balls, taking part in
aristocratic charity performances; more frequently she would believe
herself called to sit enthroned as a great appreciator in an artistic
salon of painters, musicians and poets. She would then dream again
of a more adventurous life: a sensational marriage with an American
millionaire, the elopement with a violin virtuoso or a Spanish officer,
a diabolical ruination of all the men who came near her. Sometimes
she would think a quiet life in the country by the side of a worthy
landowner the most desirable consummation; and then she would imagine
herself sitting with prematurely grey hair at a simply-laid table in a
circle of numerous children while she stroked the wrinkles out of the
forehead of her grave husband. But George always felt that her love
of comfort, which was deeper than she guessed herself, would save her
from any rash step. She would often confide in George without ever
being quite honest with him; for the wish which she cherished most
frequently and seriously of all was to become his wife. George was well
aware of this, but that was not the only reason why the latest piece
of intelligence about her engagement with Heinrich Bermann struck him
as somewhat incredible--this Bermann was a gaunt clean-shaven man with
gloomy eyes and straight and rather too long hair, who had recently won
a reputation as a writer and whose demeanour and appearance reminded
George, though he could not tell why, of some fanatical Jewish teacher
from the provinces; there was nothing in him which could fascinate Else
particularly or even make a pleasurable appeal.

This impression was no doubt dispelled by subsequent conversation.
George had left the Ehrenbergs' in company with him one evening last
spring, and they had fallen into so thrilling a conversation about
musical matters that they had gone on chatting till three o'clock in
the morning on a seat in the Ringstrasse.

It is strange, thought George, what a lot of things are running through
my mind to-day which I had scarcely thought of at all since they
happened. And he felt as though he had on this autumn evening emerged
out of the grievous dreary obscurity of so many weeks into the light of
day at last.

He was now standing in front of the house in the Paulanergasse where
the Rosners lived. He looked up to the second story. A window was open,
white tulle curtains pinned together in the centre fluttered in the
light breeze.

The Rosners were at home. The housemaid showed George in. Anna was
sitting opposite the door, she held a coffee-cup in her hand and her
eyes were turned towards the newcomer. On her right her father was
reading a paper and smoking a pipe. He was clean-shaven except for a
pair of narrow grizzled whiskers on his cheeks. His thin hair of a
strange greenish-grey hue was parted at the temples in front and looked
like a badly-made wig. His eyes were watery and red-lidded.

The stoutish mother, around whose forehead the memory of fairer years
seemed as it were to hover, looked straight in front of her; her hands
were contemplatively intertwined and rested on the table.

Anna slowly put down her cup, nodded and smiled in silence. The two old
people began to get up when George came in.

"Please, don't trouble, please don't," said George.

Then there was a noise from the wall at the side of the room. Josef,
the son of the house, got up from the sofa on which he had been lying.
"Charmed to see you, Herr Baron," he said in a very deep voice, and
adjusted the turned-up collar of his yellow-check rather shabby lounge
jacket.

"And how have you been all this time, Herr Baron?" inquired the old
man. He remained standing a gaunt and somewhat bowed figure, and
refused to resume his seat until George had sat down. Josef pushed a
chair between his father and sister, Anna held out her hand to the
visitor.

"We haven't seen one another for a long time," she said, and drank some
of her coffee.

"You've been going through a sad time," remarked Frau Rosner
sympathetically.

"Yes," added Herr Rosner. "We were extremely sorry to read of your
great loss--and so far as we knew your father always enjoyed the best
of health."

He spoke very slowly all the time, as if he had still something more
to say, stroking his head several times with his left hand, and nodded
while he listened to the answer.

"Yes, it came very unexpectedly," said George gently, and looked at the
faded dark-red carpet at his feet.

"A sudden death then, so to speak," remarked Herr Rosner and there was
a general silence.

George took a cigarette out of his case and offered one to Josef.

"Much obliged," said Josef as he took the cigarette and bowed while he
clicked his heels together without any apparent reason; while he was
giving the Baron a light he thought the latter was looking at him,
and said apologetically, with an even deeper voice than usual, "Office
jacket."

"Office jacket straight from the office," said Anna simply without
looking at her brother.

"The lady fancies she has the ironic gift," answered Josef merrily, but
his manifest restraint indicated that under other conditions he would
have expressed himself less agreeably.

"Sympathy was universally felt," old Rosner began again. "I read an
obituary in the _Neuen Freie Presse_ on your good father by Herr
Hoffrat Kerner, if I remember rightly; it was highly laudatory. Science
too has suffered a sad loss."

George nodded in embarrassment, and looked at his hands.

Anna began to speak about her past summer-outing. "It was awfully
pretty in Weissenfeld," she said. "The forest was just behind our house
with good level roads, wasn't it, papa? One could walk there for hours
and hours without meeting a soul."

"And did you have a piano out there?" asked George.

"Oh yes."

"An awful affair," observed Herr Rosner, "a thing fit to wake up the
stones and drive men mad."

"It wasn't so bad," said Anna.

"Good enough for the little Graubinger girl," added Frau Rosner.

"The little Graubinger girl, you see, is the daughter of the local
shopkeeper," explained Anna: "and I taught her the elements of
pianoforte, a pretty little girl with long blonde pig-tails."

"Just a favour to the shopkeeper," said Frau Rosner.

"Quite so, but I should like to remind you," supplemented Anna, "that
apart from that I gave real lessons, I mean paid-for ones."

"What, also in Weissenfeld?" asked George.

"Children on a holiday. Anyway, it's a pity, Herr Baron, that you never
paid us a visit in the country. I am sure you would have liked it."

George then remembered for the first time that he had promised Anna
that he would try to pay her a visit some time in the summer on a
cycling tour.

"I am sure the Baron would not have found a place like that really to
his liking," began Herr Rosner.

"Why not?" asked George.

"They don't cater there for the requirements of a spoilt Viennese."

"Oh, I'm not spoilt," said George.

"Weren't you at Auhof either?" Anna turned to George.

"Oh no," he answered quickly. "No, I wasn't there," he added less
sharply. "I was invited though.... Frau Ehrenberg was so kind as to ...
I had various invitations for the summer. But I preferred to stay in
Vienna by myself."

"I am really sorry," said Anna, "not to see anything more of Else. You
know of course that we went to the same boarding-school. Of course it's
a long time ago. I really liked her. A pity that one gets so out of
touch as time goes on."

"How is that?" asked George.

"Well, I suppose the reason is that I'm not particularly keen on the
whole set."

"Nor am I," said Josef, who was blowing rings into the air.... "I
haven't been there for years. Putting it quite frankly ... I've no
idea, Baron, of your views on this question ... I'm not very gone on
Israelites."

Herr Rosner looked up at his son. "My dear Josef, the Baron visits the
house and it will strike him as rather strange...."

"I?" said George courteously. "I'm not at all on intimate terms with
the Ehrenberg family, however much I enjoy talking to the two ladies."
And then he added interrogatively, "But didn't you give singing lessons
to Else last year, Fräulein Anna?"

"Yes. Or rather ... I just accompanied her...."

"I suppose you'll do so again this year?"

"I don't know. She hasn't shown any signs of life, so far."

"Perhaps she's giving it all up."

"You think so? It would be almost better if she did," replied Anna
softly, "for as a matter of fact, it was more like squeaking than
singing. But anyway," and she threw George a look which, as it were,
welcomed him afresh, "the songs you sent me are very nice. Shall I sing
them to you?"

"You've had a look at the things already? That is nice of you."

Anna had got up. She put both her hands on her temples and stroked her
wavy hair gently, as though making it tidy. It was done fairly high,
so that her figure seemed even taller than it actually was. A narrow
golden watch-chain was twined twice round her bare neck, fell down
over her bosom, and vanished in her grey leather belt. With an almost
imperceptible nod of her head she asked George to accompany her.

He got up and said, "If you don't mind...."

"Not at all, not at all, of course not," said Herr Rosner. "Very kind
of you, Baron, to do a little music with my daughter. Very nice, very
nice."

Anna had stepped into the next room. George followed her and left the
door open. The white tulle curtains were pinned together in front
of the open window and fluttered slightly. George sat down at the
cottage-piano and struck a few chords. Meanwhile, Anna knelt down in
front of an old black partly gilded whatnot, and got out the music.
George modulated the first chords of his song. Anna joined in and sang
to George's song the Goethean words,

    Deinem Blick mich zu bequemen,
    Deinem Munde, deiner Brust,
    Deine Stimme zu vernehmen,
    War mir erst' und letzte Lust.

She stood behind him and looked over his shoulder at the music. At
times she bent a little forward, and he then felt the breath of her
lips upon his temples. Her voice was much more beautiful than he
remembered its having ever been before.

They were speaking rather too loudly in the next room. Without stopping
singing Anna shut the door. It had been Josef who had been unable to
control his voice any longer.

"I'll just pop in to the café for a jiffy," he said.

There was no answer. Herr Rosner drummed gently on the table and his
wife nodded with apparent indifference.

"Goodbye then." Josef turned round again at the door and said fairly
resolutely: "Oh, mamma, if you've got a minute to spare by any
chance----"

"I'm listening," said Frau Rosner. "It's not a secret, I suppose."

"No. It's only that I've got a running account with you already."

"Is it necessary to go to the café?" asked old Rosner simply, without
looking up.

"It's not a question of the café. The fact is ... you can take it from
me that I'd prefer myself not to have to borrow from you. But what is a
man to do?"

"A man should work," said old Rosner gently, painfully, and his eyes
reddened. His wife threw a sad and reproachful look at her son.

"Well," said Josef, unbuttoning his office coat, and then buttoning it
up again--"that really is ... for every single gulden-note----"

"Pst," said Frau Rosner with a glance towards the door, which was ajar,
and through which, now that Anna had finished her song, came the
muffled sound of George's piano-playing.

Josef answered his mother's glance with a deprecatory wave of his hand.
"Papa says I ought to work. As though I hadn't already proved that I
can work." He saw two pairs of questioning eyes turned towards him.
"Yes of course I proved it, and if it had only depended on me I'd have
managed to get along all right. But I haven't got the temperament to
put up with things, I'm not the kind to let myself be bullied by any
chief if I happen to come in a quarter of an hour late--or anything
like that."

"We know all about that," interrupted Herr Rosner wearily. "But after
all, as we're already on the subject, you really must start looking
round for something."

"Look round ... good ..." answered Josef. "But no one will persuade
me to go into any business run by a Jew. It would make me the
laughing-stock of all my acquaintances ... of my whole set in fact."

"Your set ..." said Frau Rosner. "What is your set? Café cronies?"

"Well if you don't mind, now that we are on the subject," said
Josef--"it's connected with that gulden-note, too. I've got an
appointment at the café now with young Jalaudek. I'd have preferred to
have told you when the thing had gone quite through ... but I see now
that I'd better show my hand straight away. Well, Jalaudek is the son
of Councillor Jalaudek the celebrated paper-merchant. And old Jalaudek
is well-known as a very influential personage in the party ... very
intimate with the publisher of the _Christliche Volksbote_: his name
is Zelltinkel. And they're looking out on the _Volksbote_ for young
men with good manners--Christians of course, for the advertisement
business. And so I've got an appointment to-day with Jalaudek at
the café, because he promised me his governor would recommend me to
Zelltinkel. That would be ripping ... it would get me out of my mess.
Then it wouldn't be long before I was earning a hundred or a hundred
and fifty gulders a month."

"O dear!" sighed old Rosner.

The bell rang outside.

Rosner looked up.

"That must be young Doctor Stauber," said Frau Rosner and cast an
anxious glance at the door, through which the sound of George's
piano-playing came in even softer tones than before.

"Well, mamma, what's the matter?" said Josef.

Frau Rosner took out her purse and with a sigh gave her son a silver
gulden.

"Much obliged," said Josef and turned to go.

"Josef," cried Herr Rosner, "it's really rather rude--at the very
minute when we have a visitor----"

"Oh thank you, but I mustn't have all the treats."

There was a knock, Doctor Berthold Stauber came in.

"I apologise profusely, Herr Doctor," said Josef, "I'm just going out."

"Not at all," replied Doctor Stauber coldly, and Josef vanished.

Frau Rosner invited the young doctor to sit down. He took a seat on the
ottoman and turned towards the quarter from which the piano-playing
could be heard.

"Baron Wergenthin, the composer. Anna has just been singing," explained
Frau Rosner, somewhat embarrassed. And she started to call her daughter
in.

Doctor Berthold gripped her arm lightly but firmly, and said amiably:
"No, please don't disturb Fräulein Anna, please don't. I'm not in the
least hurry. Besides, this is a farewell visit." The latter words
seemed jerked out of his throat; but Berthold nevertheless smiled
courteously, leant back comfortably in his corner and stroked his short
beard with his right hand.

Frau Rosner looked at him as if she were positively shocked.

"A farewell visit?" Herr Rosner asked. "Has the party allowed you to
take a holiday, Herr Stauber? Parliament has only been assembled a
short time, as one sees in the papers."

"I have resigned my seat," said Berthold.

"What?" exclaimed Herr Rosner.

"Yes, resigned," repeated Berthold, and smiled nervously.

The piano-playing had suddenly stopped, the door which had been ajar
was now opened. George and Anna appeared.

"Oh, Doctor Berthold," said Anna, and held out her hand to the doctor,
who had immediately got up. "Have you been here long? Perhaps you heard
me singing?"

"No, Fräulein, I'm sorry I was too late for that. I only caught a few
notes on the piano."

"Baron Wergenthin," said Anna, as though she were introducing. "But of
course you know each other?"

"Oh yes," answered George, and held out his hand to Berthold.

"The Doctor has come to pay us a farewell visit," said Frau Rosner.

"What?" exclaimed Anna in astonishment.

"I'm going on a journey, you see," said Berthold, and looked Anna in
the face with a serious, impenetrable expression. "I'm giving up my
political career ... or rather," he added jestingly, "I'm interrupting
it for a while."

George leant on the window with his arms crossed over his breast and
looked sideways at Anna. She had sat down and was looking quietly at
Berthold, who was standing up with his hand resting on the back of the
sofa, as though he were going to make a speech.

"And where are you going?" asked Anna.

"Paris. I'm going to work in the Pasteur Institute. I'm going back to
my old love, bacteriology. It's a cleaner life than politics."

It had grown darker. The faces became vague, only Berthold's forehead,
which was directly opposite the window, was still bathed in light.
His brows were twitching. He really has his peculiar kind of beauty,
thought George, who was leaning motionless in the window-niche and felt
himself bathed in a pleasant sense of peace.

The housemaid brought in the burning lamp and hung it over the table.

"But the papers," said Herr Rosner, "have no announcement at all so far
of your resigning your seat, Doctor Stauber."

"That would be premature," answered Berthold. "My colleagues and the
party know my intention all right, but the thing isn't official yet."

"The news is bound to create a great sensation in the circles affected
by it," said Herr Rosner--"particularly after the lively debate the
other day in which you showed such spirit and determination. I suppose
you've read about it, Baron?" He turned to George.

"I must confess," answered George, "that I don't follow the
parliamentary reports as regularly as I really ought to."

"Ought to," repeated Berthold meditatively. "There's no question
of 'ought' about it really, although the session has not been
uninteresting during the last few days--at any rate as a proof of how
low a level a public body can sink to."

"The debate was very heated," said Herr Rosner.

"Heated?... Well, yes, what we call heated here in Austria. People were
inwardly indifferent and outwardly offensive."

"What was it all about then?" inquired George.

"It was the debate arising out of the questions on the Golowski
case.... Therese Golowski."

"Therese Golowski ..." repeated George. "I seem to know the name."

"Of course you know it," said Anna. "You know Therese herself. She was
just leaving the house when you called the last time."

"Oh yes," said George, "one of your friends."

"I wouldn't go so far as to call her a friend; that seems to imply a
certain mental sympathy that doesn't quite exist."

"You certainly don't mean to repudiate Therese," said Doctor Berthold
smiling, but dryly.

"Oh no," answered Anna quickly. "I really never thought of doing that.
I even admire her; as a matter of fact I admire all people who are able
to risk so much for something that doesn't really concern them at all.
And when a young girl does that, a pretty young girl like Therese"--she
was addressing herself to George who was listening attentively--"I am
all the more impressed. You know of course that Therese is one of the
leaders of the Social Democratic Party?"

"And do you know what I took her for?" said George. "For a budding
actress."

"You're quite a judge of character, Herr Baron," said Berthold.

"She really did mean to go on the stage once," corroborated Frau Rosner
coldly.

"But just consider, Frau Rosner," said Berthold. "What young girl
is there with any imagination, especially if she lives in cramped
surroundings into the bargain, who has not at some time or other in her
life at any rate coquetted with such an idea."

"Your forgiving her is good," said Anna, smiling.

It struck Berthold too late that this remark of his had probably
touched a still sensitive spot in Anna's mind. But he continued with
all the greater deliberation. "I assure you, Fräulein Anna, it would be
a great pity if Therese were to go on the stage, for there's no getting
away from the fact that she can still do her party a tremendous lot of
good if she isn't torn away from her career."

"Do you regard that as possible?" asked Anna.

"Certainly," replied Berthold. "Therese is between two dangers, she
will either talk her head off one fine day...."

"Or?" inquired George, who had grown inquisitive.

"Or she'll marry a Baron," finished Berthold curtly.

"I don't quite understand," said George deprecatingly.

"I only said 'Baron' for a joke, of course. Substitute Prince for Baron
and I make my meaning clearer."

"I see ... I can now get some idea of what you mean, Doctor.... But how
did Parliament come to bother about her?"

"Well, it's like this, last year--at the time of the great
coal-strike--Therese Golowski made a speech in some Bohemian hole,
which contained an expression which was alleged to be offensive to
a member of the Imperial family. She was prosecuted and acquitted.
One might perhaps draw the conclusion from this that there was no
particular substance in the prosecution. Anyway the State Prosecutor
gave notice of appeal, there was an order for a new trial, and Therese
was sentenced to two months' imprisonment, which she is now serving,
and as if that wasn't enough the Judge who had discharged her in the
Court of first instance was transferred ... to somewhere on the Russian
frontier, from where no one ever comes back. Well, we put a question
over this business, which in my view was extremely tame. The Minister
answered somewhat disingenuously amid the cheers of the so-called
Constitutional parties. I ventured to reply in possibly somewhat more
drastic terms than members are accustomed to use, and as the benches
on the other side had no facts with which to answer me they tried to
overwhelm me by shouts and abuse. And of course you can imagine what
the strongest argument was, which a certain type of Conservatives used
against my points."

"Well?" queried George.

"Hold your jaw, Jew," answered Berthold with tightly compressed lips.

"Oh," said George with embarrassment, and shook his head.

"Be quiet, Jew! Hold your jaw! Jew! Jew! Shut up!" continued Berthold,
who seemed somewhat to revel in the recollection.

Anna looked straight in front of her. George thought that this was
quite enough. There was a short, painful silence.

"So that was why?" inquired Anna slowly.

"What do you mean?" asked Berthold.

"That's why you're resigning your seat."

Berthold shook his head and smiled. "No, not because of that."

"You are, of course, above such coarse insults, Doctor," said Herr
Rosner.

"I won't go quite so far as that," answered Berthold, "but one always
has to be prepared for things like that all the same. I'm resigning my
seat for a different reason."

"May one ask what it is?" queried George.

Berthold looked at him with an air which was penetrating and yet
distrait. He then answered courteously: "Of course you may. I went
into the buffet after my speech. I met there, among others, one of the
silliest and cheekiest of our democratic popular representatives, who,
as he usually does, had made more row than any one else while I was
speaking ... Jalaudek the paper-merchant. Of course I didn't pay any
attention to him. He was just putting down his empty glass. When he saw
me he smiled, nodded and hailed me as cheerily as though nothing had
taken place at all. 'Hallo, Doctor, won't you have a drink with me?'"

"Incredible!" exclaimed George.

"Incredible?... No, Austrian. Our indignation is as little genuine as
our enthusiasm. The only things genuine with us are our malice and our
hate of talent."

"Well, and what did you answer the man?" asked Anna.

"What did I answer? Nothing, of course."

"And you resigned your seat," added Anna with gentle raillery.

Berthold smiled. But at the same time his eye-brows twitched, as was
his habit when he was painfully or disagreeably affected. It was too
late to tell her that as a matter of fact he had come to ask her for
her advice, as he used to do in the old days. And at any rate he felt
sure of this, he had done wisely in cutting off all retreat as soon
as he entered the room by announcing the resignation of his seat as
an already accomplished fact, and his journey to Paris as directly
imminent. For he now knew for certain that Anna had again escaped him,
perhaps for a long time. He did not believe for a minute that any man
was capable of winning her really and permanently, and it never entered
his head for a minute to be jealous of that elegant young artist who
was standing so quietly by the window with his crossed arms. It had
happened many times before that Anna had fluttered away for a time,
as though fascinated by the magic of an element which was strange to
her. Why only two years ago, when she was thinking seriously of going
on the stage, and had already begun to learn her parts, he had given
her up for a short time as completely lost. Subsequently when she
had been compelled to relinquish her artistic projects, owing to the
unreliability of her voice, she seemed as if she wanted to come back to
him again. But he had deliberately refused to exploit the opportunities
of that period. For he wanted before he made her his wife to have won
some triumph, either in science or in politics, and to have obtained
her genuine admiration. He had been well on the way to it. In the very
seat where she was now sitting as she looked him straight in the face
with those clear but alas! cold eyes, she had looked at the proofs of
his latest medico-philosophical work which bore the title _Preliminary
Observations on the Physiognomical Diagnosis of Diseases_. And then,
when he finally left science for politics, at the time when he made
speeches at election meetings and equipped himself for his new career
by serious studies in history and political economy, she had sincerely
rejoiced in his energy and his versatility.

All this was now over. She had grown to eye more and more severely
those faults of his of which he was quite aware himself, and
particularly his tendency to be swept away by the intoxication of
his own words, with the result that he came to lose more and more of
his self-confidence in his attitude towards her. He was never quite
himself when he spoke to her, or in her presence. He was not satisfied
with himself to-day either. He was conscious, with an irritation which
struck even himself as petty, that he had not given sufficient force to
his encounter with Jalaudek in the buffet, and that he ought to have
made his detestation of politics ring far more plausibly.

"You are probably quite right, Fräulein Anna," he said, "if you
smile at my resigning my seat on account of that silly incident.
A parliamentary life without its share of comedy is an absolute
impossibility. I should have realised it, played up to it and taken
every opportunity of drinking with the fellow who had publicly insulted
me. It would have been convenient, Austrian--and possibly even the most
correct course to have taken." He felt himself in full swing again and
continued with animation. "What it comes to in the end is that there
are two methods of doing anything worth doing in politics. The one
is a magnificent flippancy which looks on the whole of public life
as an amusing game, has no true enthusiasm for anything, and no true
indignation against anything, and which regards the people whose misery
or happiness are ultimately at stake with consummate indifference. I
have not progressed so far, and I don't know that I should ever have
succeeded in doing so. Quite frankly, I have often wished I could have.
The other method is this: to be ready every single minute to sacrifice
one's whole existence, one's life, in the truest sense of the word, for
what one believes to be right----"

Berthold suddenly stopped. His father, old Doctor Stauber, had come in
and been heartily welcomed. He shook hands with George, who had been
introduced to him by Frau Rosner, and looked at him so kindly that
George felt himself immediately drawn towards him. He looked younger
than he was. His long reddish-yellow beard was only streaked by a few
grey hairs, and his smoothly combed long hair fell in thick locks on to
his broad neck. The strikingly high forehead gave a kind of majesty to
the somewhat thick-set figure with its high shoulders. When his eyes
were not making a special point of looking kind or shrewd they seemed
to be resting behind the tired lids as though to gather the energy for
the next look.

"I knew your mother, Herr Baron," he said to George rather gently.

"My mother, Herr Doctor...?"

"You will scarcely remember it, you were only a little boy of three or
four at the time."

"You attended her?" asked George.

"I visited her sometimes as deputy for Professor Duchegg, whose
assistant I was. You used to live then in the Habsburgergasse, in an
old house that has been pulled down long ago. I could describe to you
even to-day the furniture of the room in which I was received by your
father ... whose premature death I deeply regret.... There was a bronze
figure on the secretary, a knight in armour to be sure with a flag, and
a copy of a Vandyck from the Liechtenstein gallery hung on the wall."

"Yes, quite right," said George, amazed at the doctor's good memory.

"But I have interrupted your conversation," continued Doctor Stauber
in that droning slightly melancholy and yet superior tone which was
peculiar to him, and sat down in the corner of the sofa.

"Doctor Berthold has just been telling us, to our great astonishment,"
said Herr Rosner, "that he has decided to resign his seat."

Old Stauber directed a quiet look towards his son, which the latter
answered with equal quietness. George, who had watched this play of the
eyes, had the impression that there prevailed between these two a tacit
understanding which did not need any words.

"Yes," said Doctor Stauber. "I wasn't at all surprised. I've always
felt as though Berthold were never really quite at home in Parliament,
and I am really glad that he has now begun to pine as it were to go
back to his real calling. Yes, yes, your real calling, Berthold," he
repeated, as though to answer his son's furrowed brow. "You have not
prejudiced your future by it, in the least. Nothing makes life so
difficult as our frequent belief in consistency ... and our wasting
our time in being ashamed of a mistake, instead of owning up to it and
simply starting life again on a fresh basis."

Berthold explained that he meant to leave in eight days at the outside.
There would be no point in postponing his journey beyond that time,
it would be possible too that he might not remain in Paris. His
studies might necessitate travelling further afield. Further, he had
decided not to make any farewell visits. He had, he added by way of
explanation, completely given up all association with certain bourgeois
sets, among whom his father had an extensive practice.

"Didn't we meet each other once this winter at Ehrenbergs'?" asked
George with a certain amount of satisfaction.

"That's right," answered Berthold. "We are distantly related to the
Ehrenbergs you know. The Golowski family is curiously enough the
connecting link between us. It would be no good, Herr Baron, if I
were to make any attempt to explain it to you in greater detail. I
should have to take you on a journey through the registry offices and
congregations of Temesvar Tarnopol and similar pleasant localities--and
that you mightn't quite fancy."

"Anyway," added old Doctor Stauber in a resigned tone, "the Baron is
bound to know that all Jews are related to one another."

George smiled amiably. As a matter of fact it rather jarred on his
nerves. There was no necessity at all, in his view, for Doctor Stauber
as well officially to communicate to him his membership of the Jewish
community. He already knew it and bore him no grudge for it. He bore
him no grudge at all for it; but why do they always begin to talk about
it themselves? Wherever he went, he only met Jews who were ashamed of
being Jews, or the type who were proud of it and were frightened of
people thinking they were ashamed of it.

"I had a chat with old Frau Golowski yesterday," continued Doctor
Stauber.

"Poor woman," said Herr Rosner.

"How is she?" asked Anna.

"How is she ... you can imagine ... her daughter in prison, her son a
conscript--he is living in the barracks at the expense of the State ...
just imagine Leo Golowski as a patriot ... and the old man sits in the
café and watches the other people playing chess. He himself can't even
run nowadays to the ten kreuzers for the chess money."

"Therese's imprisonment must soon be over anyway," said Berthold.

"It still lasts another twelve, fourteen days," replied his father....
"Come, Annerl"--he turned towards the young girl--"it would be really
nice of you if you were to show yourself once more in Rembrandtstrasse;
the old lady has taken an almost pathetic fancy to you. I really can't
understand why," he added with a smile, while he looked at Anna almost
tenderly.

She looked straight in front of her and made no answer.

The clock on the wall struck seven. George got up as though he had
simply been waiting for the signal.

"Going so soon, Herr Baron?" said Herr Rosner, getting up.

George requested the company not to disturb themselves, and shook hands
all round.

"It is strange," said old Stauber, "how your voice reminds one of your
poor father."

"Yes, many people have said so," replied George. "I, personally, can't
see any trace of it."

"There isn't a man in the world who knows his own voice," remarked old
Stauber, and it sounded like the beginning of a popular lecture.

But George took his leave. Anna accompanied him, in spite of his slight
remonstrance, into the hall and left the door half open--almost on
purpose, so it struck George. "It's a pity we couldn't go on with our
music any longer," she said.

"I'm sorry too, Fräulein Anna."

"I liked the song to-day even better than the first time, when I had to
accompany myself, only it falls off a bit at the end.... I don't know
how to express myself."

"Oh, I know what you mean, the end is conventional. I felt so too. I
hope soon to be able to bring you something better than that, Fräulein
Anna."

"But don't keep me waiting for it too long."

"I certainly won't. Goodbye, Fräulein Anna." They shook hands with each
other and both smiled.

"Why didn't you come to Weissenfeld?" asked Anna lightly.

"I am really sorry, but just consider, Fräulein Anna, I could scarcely
get in the mood for society of any kind this year, you can quite
appreciate that."

Anna looked at him seriously. "Don't you think," she said, "that
perhaps one might have been some help to you in bearing it?"

"There's a draught, Anna," called out Frau Rosner from inside.

"I'm coming in a minute," answered Anna with a touch of impatience. But
Frau Rosner had already shut the door.

"When can I come back?" asked George.

"Whenever you like. At any rate ... I really ought to give you a
written time-table, so that you may know when I'm at home, but that
wouldn't be much good either. I often go for walks or go shopping in
town or go to picture galleries or exhibitions----"

"We might do that together one day," said George.

"Oh, yes," answered Anna, took her purse out of her pocket and then
took out a tiny note-book.

"What have you got there?" asked George.

Anna smiled and turned over the leaves of a little book. "Just wait....
I meant to go and see the Exhibition of Miniatures in the Royal Library
at eleven on Thursday. If you too are interested in miniatures, we
might meet there."

"Delighted, I'm sure."

"Right you are then, we can then arrange the next time for you to
accompany my singing."

"Done," said George and shook hands with her. It struck him that while
Anna was chatting with him here outside, young Doctor Stauber would
doubtless be getting irritated or offended inside, and he was surprised
that he should be more disturbed by this circumstance than Anna, who
struck him as on the whole a perfectly good-natured person. He freed
his hand from hers, said good-bye and went.

It was quite dark when George got into the streets. He strolled slowly
over the Elizabeth Bridge to the Opera, past the centre of the
town and undisturbed by the hubbub and traffic around him, listened
mentally to the tune of his song. He thought it strange that Anna's
voice which had so pure and sound a tone in a small room, should have
no future whatsoever before it on the stage and concert platform, and
even stranger that Anna scarcely seemed to mind this tragic fact. But
of course he was not quite clear in his mind whether Anna's calmness
really reflected her true character.

He had known her more or less casually for some years, but an evening
in the previous spring had been the first occasion when they had
become rather more intimate. A large party had been got up on that
occasion in the Waldsteingarten. They took their meal in the open air
under the high chestnut-trees, and they all experienced the pleasure,
excitement and fascination of the first warm May evening of the year.
George conjured up in his mind all the people who had come: Frau
Ehrenberg, the organiser of the party, dressed in an intentionally
matronly style, in a dark loose-fitting foulard dress; Hofrat Wilt,
wearing as it were the mask of an English statesman with all the sloppy
aristocracy of his nonchalant demeanour, and his chronic and somewhat
cheap superior manner towards everything and everybody; Frau Oberberger
who looked like a rococo marquise with her grey powdered hair, her
flashing eyes and her beauty spot on her chin; Demeter Stanzides
with his white gleaming teeth and that pale forehead that showed
all the weariness of an old race of heroes; Oskar Ehrenberg dressed
with a smartness that smacked a great deal of the head clerk in a
dressmaking establishment, a great deal of a young music-hall comedian
and something, too, of a young society man; Sissy Wyner who kept
switching her dark laughing eyes from one man to another, as though
she had a merry secret understanding with every single member of the
party; Willy Eissler who related in his hoarse jovial voice all kinds
of jolly anecdotes of his soldier days and Jewish stories as well;
Else Ehrenberg in a white English cloth dress with all the delicate
melancholy of the spring flowing around her, while her _grande dame_
movements combined with her baby-face and delicate figure to invest
her with an almost pathetic grace; Felician, cold and courteous, with
haughty eyes which gazed between the members of the party to the other
tables, and from the other tables beyond into the distance; Sissy's
mother, young, red-cheeked and a positive chatter-box, who wanted to
talk about everything at the same time and to listen to everything at
the same time; Edmund Nürnberger with his piercing eyes and his thin
mouth curving into that smile of contempt (which had almost become
a chronic mask) for that whirligig of life, which he thoroughly saw
through, though to his own amazement he frequently discovered that he
was playing in the game himself; and then finally Heinrich Bermann in a
summer suit that was too loose, with a straw hat that was too cheap and
a tie that was too light, who one moment spoke louder than the others
and at the next moment was more noticeably silent.

Last of all Anna Rosner had appeared, self-possessed and without any
escort, greeted the party with a slight nod and composedly sat down
between Frau Ehrenberg and George. "I have asked her for you," said
Frau Ehrenberg softly to George, who prior to this evening had scarcely
given Anna a single thought. These words, which perhaps only originated
in a stray idea of Frau Ehrenberg's, became true in the course of the
evening. From the moment when the party got up and started on their
merry expedition through the Volksprater George and Anna had remained
together everywhere, in the side-shows and also on the journey home to
town, which for the fun of the thing was done on foot, and surrounded
though they were by all that buzz of jollity and foolishness they had
finished by starting a perfectly rational conversation. A few days
later he called and brought her as he had promised the piano score
of "Eugen Onegin" and some of his songs; on his next visit she sang
these songs over to him as well as many of Schubert's, and he was
very pleased with her voice. Shortly afterwards they said goodbye to
each other for the summer without a single trace of sentimentalism or
tenderness. George had regarded Anna's invitation to Weissenfeld as a
mere piece of politeness, just in the same way as he had thought his
promise to come had been understood; and the atmosphere of to-day's
visit when compared with the innocence of their previous acquaintance
was bound to strike George as extremely strange.

At the Stephansplatz George saw that he was being saluted by some one
standing on the platform of a horse-omnibus. George, who was somewhat
short-sighted, did not immediately recognise the man who was saluting
him.

"It's me," said the gentleman on the platform.

"Oh, Herr Bermann, good evening." George shook hands with him. "Which
way are you going?"

"I'm going into the Prater. I'm going to dine down there. Have you
anything special on, Baron?"

"Nothing at all."

"Well, come along with me then."

George swung himself on to the omnibus, which had just begun to move
on. They told each other cursorily how they had spent the summer.
Heinrich had been in the Salzkammergut and subsequently in Germany,
from which he had only come back a few days ago.

"Oh, in Berlin?" hazarded George.

"No."

"I thought perhaps in connection with a new piece----"

"I haven't written a new piece," interrupted Heinrich somewhat rudely.
"I was in the Taunus and on the Rhine in several places."

"What's he got to do on the Rhine?" thought George, although the topic
did not interest him any further. It struck him that Bermann was
looking in front of him in a manner that was not only absent-minded but
really almost melancholy.

"And how's your work getting on, my dear Baron?" asked Heinrich with
sudden animation, while he drew closer round him the dark grey overcoat
which hung over his shoulders.[1] "Have you finished your quintette?"

"My quintette?" repeated George in astonishment. "Have I spoken to you
about my quintette, then?"

"No, not you, but Fräulein Else told me that you were working at a
quintette."

"I see, Fräulein Else. No, I haven't got much further with it. I didn't
feel quite in the mood, as you can imagine."

"Quite," said Heinrich, and was silent for a while. "And your father
was still so young," he added slowly.

George nodded in silence.

"How is your brother?" asked Heinrich suddenly.

"Quite well, thanks," answered George somewhat coldly.

Heinrich threw his cigarette over the rail and immediately proceeded
to light another. Then he said: "You must be surprised at my inquiring
after your brother when I have scarcely ever spoken to him. But he
interests me. He represents in my view a type which is absolutely
perfect of its kind, and I regard him as one of the happiest men going."

"That may well be," answered George hesitatingly. "But how do you come
to think so seeing that you scarcely know him?"

"In the first place his name is Felician Freiherr von
Wergenthin-Recco," said Heinrich very seriously, and blew the smoke
into the air.

George looked at him with some astonishment.

"Of course your name is Wergenthin-Recco, too," continued Heinrich,
"but only George--and that's not the same by a long way, is it?
Besides, your brother is very handsome. Of course you haven't got at
all a bad appearance. But people whose real point is that they're
handsome have really a much better time of it than others whose real
point is that they're clever. If you are handsome you are handsome
for always, while clever people, or at any rate nine-tenths of them,
spend their life without showing a single trace of talent. Yes, that's
certainly the case. The line of life is clearer so to speak when one
is handsome than when one is a genius. Of course all this could be
expressed far better."

George was disagreeably affected. What's the matter with him? he
thought. Can he perhaps be jealous of Felician ... on account of Else
Ehrenberg?

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.

In this way they came to the end of the Prater where Oskar's carriage
was waiting. Squashed, but none the less good-tempered, they drove to
a wine-restaurant in the town. Oskar ordered champagne in a private
room, George sat down by the piano and improvised the theme that had
occurred to him on the switchback. Amy lounged back in the corner of
the sofa, while Oskar kept whispering things into her ears which made
her laugh. Heinrich had grown silent again and twirled his glass slowly
between his fingers. Suddenly George stopped playing and let his hands
lie on the keys. A feeling of the dreamlike and purposeless character
of existence came over him, as it frequently did when he had drunk
wine. Ages seemed to have passed since he had come down a badly-lighted
staircase in the Paulanergasse, and his walk with Heinrich in the dark
autumn avenue lay far away in the distant past. On the other hand he
suddenly remembered, as vividly as though the whole thing had happened
yesterday, a very young and very depraved individual, with whom he had
spent many years ago a few weeks of that happy-go-lucky life which
Oskar Ehrenberg was now leading with Amy. She had kept him waiting
too long one evening in the street, he had gone away impatiently and
had neither heard nor seen anything of her again. How easy life was
sometimes....

He heard Amy's soft laugh and turned round. His look encountered that
of Oskar, who seemed to be trying to catch his eye over Amy's blonde
head. He felt irritated by that look and deliberately avoided it and
struck a few chords again in a melancholy ballad-style. He felt a
desire to describe all that had happened to him to-day, and looked at
the clock over the door. It was past one. He caught Heinrich's eye and
they both got up. Oskar pointed to Amy, who had gone to sleep on his
shoulder, and intimated by a smile and a shrug of his shoulders that
under such circumstances he could not think of going for the present.
The two others shook hands with him, whispered good-night and slipped
away.

"Do you know what I've done?" said Heinrich. "While you were
improvising so extraordinarily finely on that ghastly piano I tried to
get the real hang of that libretto that I spoke to you about in the
spring."

"Oh, the opera libretto! that _is_ interesting. Won't you tell me?"

Heinrich shook his head. "I should like to, but the unfortunate thing
is, as you've already seen, that it's really not yet finished--like
most of my other so-called plots."

George looked at him interrogatively. "You had a whole lot of things on
hand last spring, when we saw each other last."

"Yes, I have made a lot of notes, but to-day I've done nothing more
than sentences ... no words, no, just letters on white paper. It's just
as if a dead hand had touched everything. I'm frightened the next time
I tackle the thing that it will all fall to pieces like tinder. Yes,
I've been going through a bad time, and who knows if there's a better
one in store for me?"

George was silent. Then he suddenly remembered the notice in the
papers which he had read somewhere or other about Heinrich's father,
the former deputy, Doctor Bermann. He suspected that that might be the
reason. "Your father is ill, isn't he?" he asked.

Heinrich answered without looking at him. "Yes, my father has been in a
mental home since June."

George shook his head sympathetically.

Heinrich continued: "Yes, it's an awful business, even though I
wasn't on very intimate terms with him during the last months it is
indescribably awful, and goes on being so."

"I can quite understand," said George, "not making any headway with
one's work under circumstances like that."

"Yes," answered Heinrich hesitatingly. "But it's not that alone. To be
quite frank that business plays a comparatively subordinate part in my
present mental condition. I don't want to make myself out better than I
am. Better...! Should I be better...!" He gave a short laugh and then
went on speaking. "Look here, yesterday I still thought that it was the
accumulation of every possible misfortune that depressed me so. But
to-day I've had an infallible proof that things of no importance at
all, positively silly things in fact, affect me more deeply than very
real things like my father's illness. Disgusting, isn't it?"

George looked in front of him. Why do I still go on walking with him,
he thought, and why does he take it quite for granted that I should?

Heinrich went on speaking with clenched teeth and unnecessary vehemence
of tone. "I received two letters this afternoon. Two letters, yes ...
one from my mother, who had visited my father yesterday in the home.
This letter contained the news that he is bad--very bad; to come to
the point he won't last much longer"--he gave a deep breath--"and as
you can imagine that involves all kinds of troubles, responsibilities
for my mother and my sister and for myself. But just think of it,
another letter came at the same time as that one; it contained nothing
of importance so to speak--a letter from a person with whom I have been
intimate for two years--and there was a passage in that letter which
struck me as a little suspicious--one isolated passage ... otherwise
the letter was very affectionate and very nice, like all her other
letters ... and now, just imagine, the memory of that one suspicious
passage, which another man wouldn't have noticed at all, has been
haunting me and torturing me the whole day. I've not been thinking
about my father in the lunatic asylum, nor about my mother and sister
who are in despair, but only about that unimportant passage in that
silly letter from a really by no means brilliant female. It eats up all
my strength, it makes me incapable of feeling like a son, like a human
being ... isn't it ghastly?"

George listened coldly. It struck him as strange that this taciturn
melancholy man should suddenly confide in so casual an acquaintance as
himself, and he could not help feeling a painful sense of embarrassment
when confronted with this unexpected revelation. He did not have the
impression either that any particular sympathy for him on Heinrich's
part was the real reason for all these confessions. He rather felt
inclined to put it down to a want of tact, a certain natural lack
of self-control, something which seemed very well described by
the expression "bad breeding," which he had once heard applied to
Heinrich--wasn't it by Hofrat Wilt? They went as far as the Burg gate.
A starless sky lay over the silent town, there was a slight rustle in
the trees of the park, they could hear somewhere or other the noise of
a rolling carriage as it drove away into the distance.

As Heinrich was silent again, George stood still and said in as kind a
tone as he could: "I must now really say good-bye, dear Herr Bermann."

"Oh," exclaimed Heinrich, "I now see that you've come with me quite a
long way--and I've been tactless enough to tell you, or rather myself
in your presence, a lot of things which can't interest you in the
least.... Forgive me!"

"What is there to forgive?" answered George gently. He felt a little
moved by this self-reproach of Heinrich's and held out his hand.

Heinrich took it, said "Good-bye, my dear Baron," and rushed off in a
hurry, as though he had suddenly decided that any further word would be
bound to be importunate.

George looked after him with a mixture of sympathy and repulsion, and
suddenly a free and almost happy mood came over him. He felt young,
devoid of care and destined for the most brilliant future. He rejoiced
at the winter which was coming, there were all kinds of possibilities:
work, amusement, sentiment, while he was absolutely indifferent as to
who it was from whom these joys might come. He lingered a moment by the
Opera-house. If he went home through the Paulanergasse it would not be
appreciably out of his way. He smiled at the memory of the serenades
of his earlier years. Not far from here lay the street where he had
looked up many a night at a window behind whose curtains Marianne had
been accustomed to show herself when her husband had gone to sleep.
This woman who was always playing with dangers in whose seriousness
she herself did not believe had never really been worthy of George....
Another memory more distant than this one was much more gracious. When
he was a boy of seventeen in Florence he had walked to and fro many a
night before the window of a beautiful girl, the first creature of the
other sex who had given her virgin self to him as yet untouched. And
he thought of the hour when he had seen his beloved step on the arm of
her bridegroom up to the altar, where the priest was to consecrate the
marriage, of the look of eternal farewell which she had sent to him
from under her white veil....

He had now arrived at his goal. The lamps were still burning at both
ends of the short street, so that it was quite dark where he stood
opposite the house. The window of Anna's room was open, and the pinned
curtains fluttered lightly in the wind, just as in the afternoon. It
was quite dark below. A soft tenderness began to stir in George's
heart. Of all the beings who had ever refrained from hiding their
inclination for him he thought Anna the best and the purest. She was
also the first who brought the gift of sympathy for his artistic
aspirations. She was certainly more genuine than Marianne, whose tears
would roll over her cheeks whatever he happened to play on the piano;
she was deeper too than Else Ehrenberg, who no doubt only wanted to
confirm herself in the proud consciousness of having been the first
to recognise his talent. And if any person was positively cut out to
counteract his tendency to dilettantism and nonchalance and to keep
him working energetically, profitably and with a conscious object that
person was Anna. He had thought only last winter of looking out for a
post as a conductor or accompanist at some German Opera; at Ehrenbergs'
he had casually spoken of his intentions, which had not been taken very
seriously. Frau Ehrenberg, woman of the world that she was, had given
him the motherly advice rather to undertake a tour through the United
States as a composer and conductor, whereupon Else had cut in, "And an
American heiress shouldn't be sniffed at either." As he remembered this
conversation he was very pleased with the idea of knocking about the
world a bit, he wished to get to know foreign towns and foreign men, to
win love and fame somewhere out in the wide world, and finally came to
the conclusion that his life was slipping away from him on the whole in
far too quiet and monotonous a fashion.

He had long ago left the Paulanergasse, without having taken mentally
any farewell of Anna, and was soon home.

As he stepped into the dining-room he saw a light shining from
Felician's room.

"Good evening, Felician," he cried out.

The door was opened and Felician came out still fully dressed.

The brothers shook hands with each other.

"Only just got home?" said Felician. "I thought you had been asleep
quite a long time." As he spoke he looked past him, as his manner was,
and nodded his head towards the right. "What have you been doing, then?"

"I've been in the Prater," answered George.

"Alone?"

"No, I met people. Oskar Ehrenberg with his girl and Bermann the
author. We shot and went on the switchback. It was quite jolly.... What
have you got in your hand?" he said, interrupting his narrative. "Have
you been out for a walk like that?" he added jestingly.

Felician let the sword which he held in his right hand shine in the
light of the lamp. "I've just taken it down from the wall, I begin
to-morrow again in earnest. The tournament is in the middle of
November, and I want to try what I can do this year against Forestier."

"By Jove!" cried George.

"A piece of cheek, you think, what? But it's still a long time before
the middle of November. And the strange thing is I've got the feeling
as though I had learnt something fresh in the very six weeks of this
summer when I didn't have the thing in my hand at all. It's as though
my arm had got new ideas in the meanwhile. I can't explain it properly."

"I follow what you mean."

Felician held the sword stretched out in front of him and looked at it
affectionately. He then said: "Ralph inquired after you, so did Guido
... a pity you weren't there."

"You spent the whole day with them?"

"Oh no, I remained at home after dinner. You must have gone out
straight away. I've been studying."

"Studying?"

"Yes, I must really do something serious now. I want to pass my
Diplomatic exam, by May at the outside."

"So you've quite made up your mind?"

"Absolutely. There's no point in my remaining on any more in the
Stadthalterei. The longer I stay there the clearer it becomes. Anyway,
the time won't have been wasted. They don't mind at all if one has
spent a year or two in Home Service."

"So you'll probably be leaving Vienna in the autumn."

"Presumably."

"And where will they send you?"

"If one only knew."

George looked in front of him. "So the parting is as near as that?" But
why did it affect him so much all of a sudden?... Why, he himself had
determined to go away, and had quite recently spoken to his brother
about his plans for next year. Was he still as sceptical as ever
of his seriousness? If only they could have a good frank brotherly
heart-to-heart talk as they had had on that evening after their
father's funeral. As a matter of fact, it was only when life revealed
its gloomy side to them that they felt absolutely in touch. Otherwise
there was always this strange constraint between them both. There was
obviously no help for it. They just had to talk more or less discreetly
to each other like fairly intimate friends. And as though resigned to
the situation George went on with his questions. "What did you do in
the evening?"

"I had supper with Guido and an interesting young lady."

"Really?"

"He's in silken dalliance again, you know."

"Who is it, then?"

"Conservatoire, Jewess, violin. But she didn't bring it with her. Not
particularly pretty, but clever. She improves him and he respects her;
he wants her to be baptised. A humorous affair I can tell you. You
would have had quite a good time."

George turned his eyes towards the sword which Felician still held in
his hand. "Would you like to fence a bit?" he asked.

"Why not?" answered Felician and fetched a second foil out of his room.
Meanwhile George had moved the big table in the middle up against the
wall.

"I haven't had a thing in my hand since May," he said as he took hold
of his sword. They took off their coats and crossed blades. George
cried _touché_ the next second.

"Come on," cried George, and thought himself lucky that it was his
brother whom he had to face as he stood in an awkward position with the
slender flashing weapon in his hand.

Felician hit him as often as he wanted to without himself being touched
a single time. He then lowered his sword and said: "You're too tired
to-day, there's no point in it. But you should come more often to the
club. I assure you it's a pity, with your talent."

George was pleased by his brotherly praise. He laid his sword down on
the table, took a deep breath and went to the wide centre window which
was open. "What wonderful air," he said. A lonely lamp was shining from
the park, there was absolute silence.

Felician came up to George, and while the latter leant with both hands
on the sill the elder brother remained upright and swept over street,
park and town with one of his proud quiet glances. They were both
silent for a long time. And they knew they were each thinking of the
same thing: a May night of last spring when they had gone home together
through the park and their father had greeted them with a silent nod of
his head from the very same window by which they were now standing.
And both felt a little shocked at the thought that they had enjoyed the
whole day with such full gusto, without any painful memories of the
beloved man who now lay beneath the ground.

"Well, good-night," said Felician in a softer tone than usual as he
held out his hand to George. He pressed it in silence and each went
into his own room.

George arranged the table lamp, took out some music paper and began to
write. It was not the scherzo which had occurred to him when he had
whizzed through the night with the others under the black tree-tops
a few hours ago; and it was not the melancholy folk-ballad of the
restaurant either; but a quite new _motif_ that swam up slowly and
continuously as though from secret depths. George felt as though he had
to allow some mysterious element to take its course. He wrote down the
melody, which he thought should be sung by an _alto_ voice or played
on the viola, and at the same time a strange accompaniment rang in his
ears, which he knew would never vanish from his memory.

It was four o'clock in the morning when he went to bed with the
calmness of a man to whom nothing evil can ever come in all his life
and for whom neither solitude nor poverty nor death possess any terror.


[1] A special way of wearing a coat affected in Viennese artistic
circles.

[2] A company celebrated for its risqué plays.





II


Frau Ehrenberg sat with her knitting on the green velvet sofa in the
raised bow-window. Opposite her Else was reading a book. The white
head of the marble Isis gleamed from out the far dark part of the
room behind the piano, while a streak of light from the next room
played through the open door over the grey carpet. Else looked up
from her book through the window to the high tops of the trees in
the Schwarzenberg Park which were waving in the autumn wind and said
casually: "We might perhaps ring up George Wergenthin, to know if he's
coming this evening."

Frau Ehrenberg let her knitting fall on her lap. "I don't know," she
said. "You remember what a really charming condolence letter I wrote
him and what a pressing invitation I gave him to come to Auhof. He
didn't come and the coldness of his answer was quite marked. I wouldn't
ring him up."

"One shouldn't treat him like other people," answered Else. "He belongs
to the people whom one has occasionally to remind that one is still
alive. When he has been reminded he is extremely glad."

Frau Ehrenberg went on with her knitting. "It really won't come to
anything," she said quietly.

"It's not meant to come to anything," retorted Else. "I thought you
knew that by this time, mamma. We're good friends, nothing more--and
even that only at intervals; or do you really think that I'm in love
with him, mamma? Yes, when I was a little girl I was, in Nice, when we
played tennis together, but that is long past."

"Well--and Florence?"

"In Florence--I was more in love with Felician."

"And now?" asked Frau Ehrenberg slowly.

"Now ... you're probably thinking of Heinrich Bermann ... but you're
making a mistake, mother."

"I prefer to be making a mistake. But this summer I really quite had
the impression that----"

"I tell you," interrupted Else a little impatiently, "it isn't anything
and never was anything. On one solitary occasion, when we went out
boating on a sultry afternoon, you saw us from your balcony with your
opera-glasses, no doubt--it was only then that it became a little
dangerous. And even supposing we had fallen on each other's neck--which
as a matter of fact we never did--it wouldn't have meant anything. It
was simply a summer flirtation."

"And besides, he's supposed to be involved in a very serious
love-affair," said Frau Ehrenberg.

"You mean ... with that actress, mamma?"

Frau Ehrenberg looked up. "Did he tell you anything about her?"

"Tell...? Not in so many words, but when we went for walks together in
the park or went out in the evening on the lake, why, he practically
spoke of nothing but her--of course without mentioning her name ... and
the better he liked me--men really are such awfully funny people--the
more jealous he became about the other woman.... But if it were only
that? What young man isn't involved in a serious love affair? Do you
think by any chance, mamma, that George Wergenthin is not?"

"In a serious one ... no, that will never happen to him. He's too cold,
too superior for that ... he hasn't got enough temperament."

"That's exactly why," explained Else, airing her knowledge of human
nature. "He'll slip into some whirlpool or other and get taken out of
his depth without his having noticed it, and some fine day he'll get
married ... out of sheer indolence ... to some person or other who'll
probably be absolutely indifferent to him."

"You must have a definite suspicion," said Frau Ehrenberg.

"I have."

"Marianne?"

"Marianne! but that's been over a long time, mamma. And that was never
anything particularly serious, either."

"Well, who is it then?"

"Well whom do you think, mamma?"

"I have no idea."

"It's Anna," said Else curtly.

"Which Anna?"

"Anna Rosner, of course."

"But...."

"You can say 'but' as much as you like--it's a fact."

"Else, you don't seriously think that Anna with her reserved character
could so far forget herself as to----"

"So far forget herself...? Really, mamma, the number of expressions
you keep on using--anyway, I don't think that's quite a case of one's
forgetting oneself."

Frau Ehrenberg smiled, not without a certain pride.

The bell rang outside.

"It's he at last," said Else.

"It might quite as well be Demeter Stanzides," observed Frau Ehrenberg.

"Stanzides was to bring the Prince along sometime," said Else casually.

"Do you think that will come off?" inquired Frau Ehrenberg, letting her
knitting fall into her lap.

"Why shouldn't it come off?" said Else. "They are so intimate."

The door opened. As a matter of fact it was none of the expected
visitors who came in, but Edmund Nürnberger. He was dressed, as
always, with the greatest care, though not after the latest fashion.
His tail coat was a little too short and an emerald pin was stuck in
his voluminous satin tie. He bowed as soon as he had got to the door,
though his demeanour expressed at the same time a certain irony at his
own politeness. "Am I the first?" he inquired. "No one here yet? Not a
Hofrat--nor a count--nor an author--nor a diabolical female?"

"Only a woman who never was one, I'm sorry to say," answered Frau
Ehrenberg as she shook hands with him.

"And one ... who will perhaps become one sometime."

"Oh, I am convinced," said Nürnberger, "that if she only takes it
seriously, Fräulein Else will succeed in that." He stroked his smooth
black somewhat glossy hair slowly with his left hand.

Frau Ehrenberg expressed her regret that their expectation of his
coming to Auhof had not been realised. Had he really spent the whole
summer in Vienna?

"Why do you wonder so much, my dear madam? Whether I am walking up and
down among mountain scenery or by the shore of the sea or in my own
room, it doesn't really matter much in the end."

"But you must have felt quite lonely," said Frau Ehrenberg.

"You certainly realise solitude more clearly when there's no one in
the neighbourhood who shows any desire of talking to you.... But let's
talk of more interesting and promising men than I am. How are all the
numerous friends of your popular family?"

"Friends!" repeated Else. "I should like first to know what you mean by
the word?"

"Well, all the people who say something agreeable to you from whatever
motive, and whom you believe in when they say it."

The door of the bedroom opened, Herr Ehrenberg appeared and greeted
Nürnberger.

"Are you ready packed?" asked Else.

"Packed and ready," answered Ehrenberg, who had on a grey suit that was
far too loose and was biting a fat cigar between his teeth. He turned
to Nürnberger to explain.... "I'm off to-day, just as I am, to Corfu
... for the time being; the season is beginning and the Ehrenberg 'at
homes' make me feel sick."

"No one asks you," replied Frau Ehrenberg gently, "to honour them with
your presence."

"Cute answer, eh," said Ehrenberg, puffing at his cigar. "I don't mind,
of course, staying away from your real 'at homes.' But when I'd like
to dine quietly at home on a Thursday and there's an attaché sitting
in one corner and a hussar in the other, and some one over there is
playing his own compositions and some one else on the sofa is being
funny, while by the window Frau Oberberger is fixing up an assignation
with any one who happens to come along ... well, it really gets on my
nerves. One can stand it once, but not a second time."

"Do you think you'll remain away all the winter?" asked Nürnberger.

"It's possible. I intend, you know, to go further, to Egypt, to Syria,
probably to Palestine as well. Yes, it's perhaps only because one's
getting older, perhaps because one reads so much about Zionism and so
forth, but I can't help it, I should like to see Jerusalem before I
die."

Frau Ehrenberg shrugged her shoulders.

"Those are matters," said Ehrenberg, "which my wife don't
understand--and my children even less so. What do you know about it,
Else? no, you don't know anything either. But when one reads what's
going on in the world it often makes one inclined to think that there's
no other way out for us."

"For us?" repeated Nürnberger. "I've not observed up to the present
that Anti-Semitism has done you any particular harm."

"You mean because I've grown a rich man? Well if I were to tell you
that I don't give any shakes for money, you would, of course, not
believe me, and quite right too. But as sure as you see me here, I
swear to you that I would give half my fortune to see the worst of our
enemies on the gallows."

"I'm only afraid," remarked Nürnberger, "that you would have the wrong
ones hanged."

"There's not much danger," replied Ehrenberg. "Even if you don't catch
the man you're after, the man you do catch is bound to be one of them,
too, right enough."

"This is not the first time, my dear Herr Ehrenberg, that I observe
that your standpoint towards this question is not ideally objective."

Ehrenberg suddenly bit through his cigar and with fingers shaking with
rage put it on the ash-tray. "If any one here's to tell me ... and even
... excuse me ... or perhaps you're baptised...? One can really never
tell nowadays."

"I'm not baptised," replied Nürnberger quietly. "But on the other
hand I am certainly not a Jew either. I've ceased to belong to the
congregation for a long time, for the simple reason that I never felt
myself to be a Jew."

"If some one were to bash in your top hat in the Ringstrasse because,
if you will allow me to say so, you have a somewhat Jewish nose,
you'd realise pretty quick that you were insulted because you were a
Yiddisher fellow. You take my word for it."

"But, papa, how excited you are getting," said Else, and stroked him on
his bald reddish shiny head.

Old Ehrenberg took her hand, stroked it and asked, apparently without
any connection with what he had been saying before: "By-the-bye, shall
I have the pleasure of seeing my son and heir before I leave?"

Frau Ehrenberg answered: "Oskar's bound to be home soon."

Ehrenberg turned to Nürnberger. "You will doubtless be glad to know
that my son Oskar is an Anti-Semite as well."

Frau Ehrenberg sighed gently. "It's a fixed idea of his," she said to
Nürnberger. "He sees Anti-Semites everywhere, even in his own family."

"That is the latest Jewish national disease," said Nürnberger. "I
myself have only succeeded up to the present in making the acquaintance
of one genuine Anti-Semite. I'm afraid I am bound to admit, dear Herr
Ehrenberg, that it was a well-known Zionist leader."

Ehrenberg could only make an eloquent gesture.

Demeter Stanzides and Willy Eissler came in and immediately spread
an atmosphere of vivid brilliancy around them. Demeter wore his
uniform lightly and magnificently, as though it were a fancy costume
rather than a military dress; Willy stood there in a dinner jacket
looking tall and pale and as if he had been keeping late hours, and
then immediately gathered up the reins of the conversation, while
his pleasantly hoarse voice rasped through the air with amiable
imperiousness.

He gave an account of the preparations for an aristocratic theatrical
performance in which he was adviser, producer and actor, just as he had
been last year, and described a meeting of the young lords, where, if
his account was to be believed, every one had behaved as though they
were in a lunatic asylum, and then went on to treat them to a humorous
dialogue between two countesses whose mannerisms he managed to take off
in a most delightful way. Ehrenberg was always very amused by Willy
Eissler. The vague feeling that this Hungarian Jew managed somehow
or other to outwit and make a fool of that whole feudal set, whom
personally he hated so much, filled him with respect for the young man.

Else sat at the little table in the corner with Demeter and made him
tell her about the _Isle of Wight_. "You were there with your friend?"
she inquired, "weren't you, Prince Karl Friedrich?"

"My friend the Prince?... that's not quite right, Fräulein Else. The
Prince has no friends, nor have I. We're neither of us the type to have
friends."

"He must be an interesting man according to all one hears."

"Interesting--I don't know about that. At any rate he's thought over a
lot of things which people in his position are not usually accustomed
to bother their heads about very much. Perhaps he'd have managed to do
all kinds of things too, if he'd been left to himself. Well, who knows,
it was perhaps better for him that they kept a tight hold on him, for
him and for the country too in the long run. One man alone can do
nothing--never in this life. That's why it's best to let matters slide
and get out of things, as he did."

Else looked at him somewhat coldly. "You're so philosophical to-day,
what is it? It seems to me that Willy Eissler has spoilt you."

"Willy spoilt me?"

"Yes, you know you shouldn't associate with such clever people."

"Why not?"

"You should simply be young, shine, live, and then when there's nothing
more to do, do whatever you like ... but without bothering about
yourself and the world."

"You should have told me that before, Fräulein Else; once a man's
started getting clever...."

Else shook her head. "But perhaps in your case it might have been
avoided," she said quite seriously. And then they both had to laugh.

The chandelier was lighted up. George Wergenthin and Heinrich Bermann
had come in. Invited by a smile George sat down by Else's side.

"I knew that you would come," she said disingenuously but warmly as
she pressed his hand; she was more glad than she thought she would have
been that he should sit opposite to her after so long an interval, that
she could see again his proud gracious face and hear again his somewhat
gentle yet warm voice.

Frau Wyner appeared, a little woman with a high colour, jolly and
awkward. Her daughter Sissy was with her. The groups got broken up in
the "general post" of mutual greetings.

"Well, have you composed that song for me yet?" Sissy asked George with
laughing eyes and laughing lips, as she played with one of her gloves
and moved about like a snake in her dark-green shimmering dress.

"A song?" asked George. He really didn't remember.

"Or waltz or something. But you promised me to dedicate something
to me." While she spoke her looks were wandering round. They glowed
into the eyes of Willy, passed caressingly by Demeter and addressed
a sphinx-like question to Heinrich Bermann. It seemed as though
will-o'-the-wisps were dancing through the drawing-room.

Frau Wyner suddenly came up to her daughter. She flushed deeply. "Sissy
is really so silly.... What are you thinking of, Sissy? Baron George
has had more important things to do this year than to compose things
for you."

"Oh not at all," said George politely.

"You buried your father, that's no trifle."

George looked straight in front of him.

But Frau Wyner went on speaking quite unperturbed. "And your father
wasn't old, was he? And such a handsome man.... Is it true that he was
a chemist?"

"No," answered George calmly. "He was President of the Botanical
Society." Heinrich with one arm on the shut piano-top was speaking to
Else.

"So you've been in Germany?" she asked.

"Yes," replied Heinrich. "I've been back a fairly long time, four or
five weeks."

"And when are you going back again?"

"I don't know, perhaps never."

"Come, you don't believe that yourself--what are you working at?" she
added quickly.

"All kinds of things," he answered. "I'm going through a rather
restless time. I sketch out a lot but I finish nothing. I'm very rarely
keen on completing things, obviously I lose all my interest in things
too quickly."

"And people too," added Else.

"Possibly. Only unhappily one's emotions remain attached to people
after one's reason has long ago decided to have nothing more to do
with them. A poet--if you will allow me to use the expression--must
go away from every one who no longer presents any riddle to him ...
particularly from any one whom he loves."

"They say," suggested Else, "that it is just those whom we know least
that we love."

"That's what Nürnberger makes out, but it's not quite right. If it
were really so, my dear Else, then life would probably be much more
beautiful than it is. No, we know those whom we love much better
than we do other people--but we know them with a feeling of shame,
bitterness and with the fear that others may know them as well as
we do. Love means this--being afraid that the faults which we have
discovered in the person we love may be revealed to others. Love means
this--being able to look into the future and curse this very gift....
Love means this--knowing some one so that it smashes one."

Else leant on the piano in her childish lady-like way and listened to
him curiously. How much she liked him in moments like this! She would
have liked to have stroked his hair again consolingly, as she had done
before on the lake when he had been torn by his love for that other
woman, but when he suddenly retired into his shell, coldly and drily,
and looked as though all his fire had been extinguished she felt that
she could never live with him, and she would be bound to run away
after a few weeks ... with a Spanish officer or a violin _virtuoso_.
"It is a good thing," she said somewhat condescendingly, "that you see
something of George Wergenthin. He'll have a sound influence on you. He
is quieter than you are. I don't think that he is so gifted as you are,
and I am sure that he is not so clever."

"What do you know about his gifts?" interrupted Heinrich almost rudely.

George came up and asked Else if they couldn't have the pleasure
to-night of hearing one of her songs. She didn't want to. Besides
she was principally studying opera parts nowadays. That interested
her more. As a matter of fact she was far from having a lyrical
temperament. George asked her jokingly if she didn't have perhaps the
secret intention of going on the stage?

"With my little bit of a voice!" said Else.

Nürnberger was standing near them. "That wouldn't be an obstacle,"
he observed. "Why, I feel quite positive that a modern critic would
soon turn up who would boom you as an important singer for the very
reason that you have no voice, but who would discover some other
gift in you by way of compensation, as, for instance, your gift for
characterisation, just as we have to-day certain painters who have
no sense of colour but only intellect; and celebrated authors who
never have the vaguest ideas but who succeed in discovering the most
unsuitable epithets for every noun they use."

Else noticed that Nürnberger's manner of speaking got on George's
nerves. She turned to him. "I should like to show you something," she
said, and took a few steps towards the music-case.

George followed her.

"Here is a collection of old Italian folksongs. I should like you to
show me the best. I myself don't know enough about it."

"I can't understand," said George gently, "how you can stand any one
like that man Nürnberger near you. He spreads around him an absolute
atmosphere of distrust and malice."

"As I've often told you, George, you're no judge of character. After
all, what do you know about him? He's different from what you think he
is; just ask your friend Heinrich Bermann."

"Oh, I know well enough that he raves about him, too," replied George.

"You're speaking about Nürnberger?" asked Frau Ehrenberg, who had just
joined them.

"George can't stand him," said Else in her casual way.

"Well, you're doing him a great injustice, if that's the case. Have you
ever read anything of his?"

George shook his head.

"Not even his novel which made so great a sensation fifteen or sixteen
years ago? That is really a shame. We've just lent it to Hofrat Wilt.
I tell you he was quite flabbergasted at the way in which the whole of
present-day Austria is anticipated in that book, written all that time
ago."

"Really, is that so?" said George, without conviction.

"You have no idea," continued Frau Ehrenberg, "of the applause with
which Nürnberger was then hailed; one could go so far as to say that
all doors sprang open before him."

"Perhaps he found that enough," observed Else, with an air of
meditative wisdom.

Heinrich was standing by the piano engaged in conversation with
Nürnberger, and was making an effort, as he frequently did, to persuade
him to undertake a new work or to bring out an edition of previous
writings.

Nürnberger would not agree. He was filled with positive horror at
the thought of seeing his name a prey to publicity again, of plunging
again into a literary vortex which seemed to him as repulsive as it was
fatuous. He had no desire to enter the competition. What was the point?
Intriguing cliques that no longer made any attempt at concealment were
at work everywhere. Did there remain a single man of sound talent and
honest aspirations who did not have to face every minute the prospect
of being dragged down into the dirt? Was there a blockhead in the
country who could not boast of having been hailed as a genius in some
rag or other? Had celebrity in these days anything at all to do with
honour, and was being ignored and forgotten worth even a single shrug
of regret? And who could know after all what verdicts would pass as the
correct ones in the future? Were not the fools really the geniuses and
the geniuses really the fools? It would be ridiculous to allow himself
to be tempted to stake his peace of mind and even his self-respect on
a game where even the greatest possible win held out no promise of any
satisfaction.

"None at all?" queried Heinrich. "I'll grant you as much as you like
about fame, wealth, world-wide influence--but for a man, simply because
all these things are of dubious advantage, to relinquish something so
absolutely indubitable as the moments of inner consciousness of one's
own power----"

"Inner consciousness of power? Why don't you say straight away the
happiness of creating?"

"It does exist, Nürnberger."

"It may be so; why, I even think I remember that I felt something
like that myself now and then, a very long time ago ... only, as you
no doubt know, as the years went by I completely lost the faculty of
deceiving myself."

"Perhaps you only think so," replied Heinrich. "Who knows if it is not
that very faculty of self-deception which you have developed more
strongly than any other as the years went by?"

Nürnberger laughed. "Do you know how I feel when I hear you talk like
that? just like a fencing-master feels who gets a thrust in the heart
from one of his own pupils."

"And not even one of his best," said Heinrich.

Herr Ehrenberg suddenly appeared in the doorway, to the astonishment of
his wife, who had presumed that he would be by now on his way to the
station. He led a young lady by the hand. She was dressed simply in
black, and had her hair done extraordinarily high after a fashion that
was now out of date. Her lips were full and red, the eyes in the pale
vivid face had a clear hard gaze.

"Come along," said Ehrenberg with some malice in his small eyes, and
led the visitor straight up to Else, who was chatting with Stanzides.
"I've brought a visitor for you."

Else held out her hand. "But this is nice." She introduced them--"Herr
Demeter Stanzides--Fräulein Therese Golowski."

Therese bowed slightly and let her gaze rest on him for a while with a
little embarrassment as though she were scrutinising a beautiful beast,
then she turned to Else: "If I had known that you had such a lot of
visitors."

"Do you know what she looks like?" said Stanzides softly to George.
"Like a Russian student, don't you think?"

George nodded. "That's about it. I know her. She is a school-friend
of Fräulein Else's, and now she's playing a leading part among
the Socialists. Just think of it! she's just been in prison for
_lèse-majesté_, I believe."

"Yes, I think I've read something about it," replied Demeter. "One
should really get to know a person of that type more intimately. She's
pretty. Her face might be made of ivory."

"And her features show a lot of energy," added George. "Her brother
too is an extraordinary fellow, a pianist and a mathematician, and the
father's supposed to be a ruined Jewish skin-dealer."

"It's really a strange race," observed Demeter.

In the meanwhile Frau Ehrenberg had come up to Therese. She considered
it correct not to show any surprise. "Sit down, Therese," she said.
"And how have you been getting on all this time? Since you've devoted
yourself to political life you don't bother about your old friends any
more."

"Yes, I'm afraid my work gives me very little time to pay private
visits," replied Therese, thrusting out her chin, in a way that made
her face look masculine and almost ugly.

Frau Ehrenberg vacillated as to whether she should or should not make
any reference to the term of imprisonment which Therese had just
served. It was certainly to be borne in mind there was scarcely another
house in Vienna where ladies who had been locked up a short time ago,
were allowed to call.

"And how is your brother?" asked Else.

"He's doing his service this year," answered Therese. "You can imagine
pretty well how he's getting on." And she looked ironically at
Demeter's hussar uniform.

"I suppose he doesn't get much opportunity there for playing the
piano," said Frau Ehrenberg.

"Oh, he's given up all thoughts of being a pianist," replied Therese.
"He's all for politics now." And turning with a smile to Demeter she
added: "Of course you won't give him away, Herr Oberlieutenant?"

Stanzides laughed somewhat awkwardly.

"What do you mean by politics?" asked Herr Ehrenberg. "Does he want to
get into the Cabinet?"

"Not in Austria at any rate," replied Therese. "He is a Zionist, you
know."

"What?" exclaimed Ehrenberg, and his visage beamed.

"That's certainly a subject on which we don't quite agree," added
Therese.

"My dear Therese ..." began Ehrenberg.

"You'll miss your train, my dear," interrupted his wife.

"I'm not going to miss my train, and anyway, another one goes
to-morrow. My dear Therese, this is the only thing I want to say--each
person should find happiness in his own way. But in this case your
brother and not you is the cleverer of you two. Excuse me, I'm perhaps
a layman in politics, but I assure you, Therese, exactly the same thing
will happen to you Jewish Social Democrats as happened to the Jewish
Liberals and German Nationalists."

"How do you mean?" asked Therese haughtily. "In what way will the same
thing happen to us?"

"In what way...? I'll tell you soon enough. Who created the Liberal
movement in Austria?... the Jews. By whom have the Jews been betrayed
and deserted? By the Liberals. Who created the National-German
movement in Austria? the Jews. By whom were the Jews left in the
lurch?... what--left in the lurch!... Spat upon like dogs!... By the
National-Germans, and precisely the same thing will happen in the case
of Socialism and Communism. As soon as you've drawn the chestnuts out
of the fire they'll start driving you away from the table. It always
has been so and always will be so."

"We will wait and see," Therese replied quietly.

George and Demeter looked at each other like two friends marooned
together on a desert island.

Oskar, who had come in during the middle of his father's speech,
compressed his lips and was very embarrassed. But they all felt a kind
of deliverance when Ehrenberg suddenly looked at his watch and took his
leave.

"We certainly shan't agree to-day," he said to Therese.

Therese smiled. "Scarcely. Hope you will enjoy your journey and I want
once more to ... to thank you in the name of...."

"Hush!" said Ehrenberg and vanished.

"What are you thanking papa for?" said Else.

"For a gift of money for which I came to ask him in the most shameless
manner. Apart from him there is not a single rich man in the circle of
my acquaintances. I am not in a position to speak of the purpose for
which it is wanted."

Frau Ehrenberg came up to Bermann and Nürnberger, who were continuing
their conversation over the top of the piano, and said softly: "Of
course you know that she"--then she looked at Therese--"has just been
released from prison."

"I read about it," said Heinrich.

Nürnberger half shut his eyes and cast a glance at the group in the
corner where the three girls were talking to Stanzides and Willy
Eissler and shook his head.

"What cynicism are you suppressing?" said Frau Ehrenberg.

"I was just thinking how easily it might have come about for Fräulein
Else to have languished two months in prison and for Fräulein Therese
to have held receptions in a stylish drawing-room as daughter of the
house."

"Easily come about?"

"Herr Ehrenberg has had good luck, Herr Golowski bad luck.... Perhaps
that is the only difference."

"Look here, now, Nürnberger," said Heinrich, "you're not going to deny
that such a thing as individuality exists in the world.... Else and
Therese are rather different characters you know."

"I think so too," observed Frau Ehrenberg.

Nürnberger shrugged his shoulders. "They are both young girls, quite
gifted, quite pretty ... everything else is more or less of an
accidental appanage, just as it is with most young women--most people,
in fact."

Heinrich shook his head energetically. "No, no," he said, "life is
really not as simple as all that."

"That doesn't make it simpler, my dear Heinrich."

Frau Ehrenberg turned her eyes towards the door and beamed.

Felician had just come in. With all the sureness of a sleep-walker he
walked up to the hostess and kissed her hand. "I have just had the
pleasure of meeting Herr Ehrenberg on the steps; he told me he was
going off to Corfu. It must be awfully beautiful out there."

"You know Corfu?"

"Yes, a memory of my childhood." He greeted Nürnberger and Bermann, and
they all talked about the South for which Bermann longed and in which
Nürnberger did not believe.

George gave his brother a hand-shake which meant a salutation and a
goodbye at the same time. As he unobtrusively disappeared through the
open door of the dining-room he looked round again, noticed Marianne
sitting in the furthest corner of the drawing-room and looking at
him ironically through her lorgnette. This woman had always had the
mysterious gift of suddenly being present without one realising where
she came from. And then a veiled lady came up to him on the steps.
"Don't be in such a hurry, you can surely wait another moment," she
said. "One really shouldn't spoil women so.... I wonder if you'd be
in such a hurry, you know, if you were going to keep an appointment
with me...? But you prefer to be non-committal. Probably because
you're afraid that my husband will shoot you when he comes back from
Stockholm. I mean he's probably got as far as Copenhagen to-day. But
he places absolute confidence in me. And he's quite right too. For I'm
able to swear to you that no one has managed to get any further than a
kiss on my hand.... No, to tell the full truth, on my neck, here. Of
course, you believe, too, that I have had an affair with Stanzides?
No, he wouldn't be at all in my line! I positively loathe handsome men.
I couldn't find anything in your brother Felician either...."

One could form no idea when the veiled lady would leave off speaking,
for it was Frau Oberberger. Similar conduct in other women would
have betokened a specific overture, but that was not so in her case.
In spite of the dubious impression created by her whole manner the
world had never been able to fix her so far with a single lover. She
lived in a strange, but apparently happy, childless marriage. Her
brilliant handsome husband, a geologist by profession, had undertaken
scientific expeditions in days gone by, when, so Hofrat Wilt used to
assert, he had set more store by the good travelling and facilities and
unimpeachable cooking of the districts in question than on their being
actually unexplored. But for some years past he had given up travelling
in favour of lecturing and ladykilling. When he was at home he lived
with his wife in the best _camaraderie_. George had frequently, though
never seriously, considered the possibility of a liaison with Frau
Oberberger. He was even one of those who had kissed her neck, a fact
which she probably did not remember herself. And as she threw back
her veil now George again surrendered himself with pleasure to the
fascination of this face, which though no longer in its first flush
of youth was yet both charming and animated. He wanted to take up the
conversation, but she went on speaking. "Do you know you're very pale?
a nice life you must be leading. What kind of a woman is it who is
responsible for taking you away from me this time?"

Hofrat Wilt, with his usual silent step, suddenly stood by them. With
a casual air of gallantry and superiority he threw them a "Good-day,
beauteous lady, Hullo, Baron," and started to go on.

But Frau Oberberger thought it fitting to inform him first that Baron
George was just going to one of his usual orgies--she then followed
Hofrat up to the second story at the risk, as she remarked, of his
being taken for her ninety-fifth lover if he presented himself at
Ehrenberg's at the same time as she did.

It was seven o'clock before George could settle himself in a fly
and drive to Mariahilf. He felt quite exhausted by the two hours at
Ehrenberg's and he was even more than usually glad at the meeting
with Anna which was before him. Since that morning at the miniature
exhibition they had seen each other nearly every day; in parks,
picture-galleries, at her house. They usually talked about the little
incidents of their life or gossiped about books or music. They did not
often talk of the past, but when they did it was without doubts or
misgivings. For so far as Anna was concerned the adventures from which
George had just come were far from being surrounded with the uncanny
atmosphere of mystery; while George gathered from her own jesting
allusions that she herself had already experienced more than one
infatuation, though that did not cause him to lose the serenity of his
good spirits or even to ask her any further questions.

He had kissed her for the first time eight days ago, in an empty room
in the Liechtentein Gallery, and from that moment Anna had employed the
familiar 'du,' as though a less intimate appellation would have rung
somewhat false. The fly stopped at a street corner. George got out, lit
a cigarette and walked up and down opposite the house out of which Anna
was due to come.

After a few minutes she came out of the door, he rushed across the
street to meet her and kissed her hand ecstatically. Following her
habit, for she was in the habit of reading on her journeys, she carried
a book with her in a pressed leather cover.

"It is quite cool, Anna," said George, took the book out of her hand
and helped her into the jacket which she had been carrying over her arm.

"I was a little bit late you see," she said, "and I was very impatient
to see you. Yes," she added with a smile, "one's temperament will break
out now and again. What do you think of my new dress?" she added as
they walked on.

"It suits you very well."

"They thought at my lesson that I looked like a lady-in-waiting."

"Who thought so?"

"Frau Bittner herself and her two daughters whom I am teaching."

"I should rather say, like an Arch-Duchess."

Anna nodded with satisfaction.

"And now tell me, Anna, all that's happened to you since yesterday."

She began quite seriously: "Twelve o'clock, after I left you at the
door of our house, dinner in the family circle. Rested a little in
the afternoon, and thought about you. Pupils from four to six-thirty,
then read 'Grüner Heinrich,' and the evening paper. Too lazy to go out
again, messed about at home. Supper. The usual domestic scene."

"Your brother?" queried George.

She answered with a "Yes" that ruled out all further questions. "A
little music after supper.... Even tried to sing."

"Were you satisfied?"

"It was quite good enough for me, anyway," she said, and George thought
he detected a slight note of melancholy in her tone. She quickly went
on with her report. "Went to bed at half-past ten, slept well, got up
early at eight ... one can't lie in bed any longer in our house ...
dressed till half-past nine, was about the house till eleven...."

"... Messing about," added George.

"Right. Then went on to Weils, gave the boy a lesson."

"How old is he?" asked George.

"Thirteen," replied Anna.

"Well, after all that is not so young."

"Quite so," said Anna. "But you can set your mind at rest when I inform
you that he loves his Aunt Adele, a sentimental blonde of thirty-three,
and is not thinking for the time being of breaking his troth to her....
Well, to continue the record. Got home at one-thirty, had my meal
alone, thank Heaven! Father already at the office, mamma in a state of
sleep. Rested again from three to four, thought even more about you,
and more seriously too, than yesterday, then went shopping in town,
gloves, safety pins and something for mamma, and then drove on the
tram, reading all the way to Mariahilf, to the two Bittner kiddies....
So now you know all. Satisfied?"

"Except for the boy of thirteen."

"Well, I agree that that might be a bit upsetting. But now we should
like to know if you haven't got even more sinister confessions to make
to me."

They were in a narrow silent street, which seemed quite strange to
George, and Anna took his arm.

"I have just come from Ehrenbergs'," he began.

"Well?" queried Anna. "Did they try very much to inveigle you?"

"No, I can't go so far as that. Of course they seemed a little hurt
that I did not go to Auhof this summer," he added.

"Did dear little Else perform?" Anna asked.

"No; of course I don't know what happened after I left."

"It won't be worth the trouble now," said Anna with exuberant mirth.

"You are wrong, Anna. There are people there for whom it is quite worth
while singing."

"Who?"

"Heinrich Bermann, Willy Eissler, Demeter Stanzides...."

"Oh, Stanzides!" exclaimed Anna. "Now I am really sorry that I wasn't
there too."

"It seems to me," said George, "that that is a true word spoken in
jest."

"Quite so," replied Anna. "I think Demeter is really desperately
handsome."

George was silent for a few seconds and suddenly asked, with more
emotion than he usually manifested: "Is it he then...?"

"What 'he' do you mean?"

"The one you ... loved more than me."

She smiled, nestled closer up to him and answered simply, though a
little ironically: "Am I really supposed to have been fonder of any one
else than of you?"

"You confessed it to me yourself," replied George.

"But I also confess to you that I should love you in time more than I
have loved or ever could love any one else."

"Are you quite sure about that, Anna?"

"Yes, George, I am quite certain of it."

They had now come again into a more lively street and reluctantly let
go of each other's arms.

They remained standing in front of various shops. They discovered a
photographer's show-case by a house-door and were very much amused
by the laboriously-natural poses in which golden and silver wedding
couples, cadets, cooks in their Sunday best and ladies in masked fancy
dress were taken.

George asked again in a lighter tone: "So it was Stanzides?"

"What an idea! I have never spoken a hundred words to him in my life."

They went on walking.

"Leo Golowski, then?" asked George.

She shook her head and smiled. "That was calf-love," she replied. "That
really doesn't count. I should like to know the girl of sixteen who
wouldn't have fallen in love in the country with a handsome youth who
fights a duel with a real Count and then goes about for eight days with
his arm in a sling."

"But he didn't do it on your account, but for his sister's honour, as
it were."

"For Therese's honour? What makes you think that?"

"You told me that the young man had spoken to Therese in the forest
while she was studying '_Emilia Galotti_.'"

"Yes, that is quite true. Anyway, she was quite glad to be spoken to.
The only thing Leo objected to was that the young Count belonged to
a club of young men who really behaved rather cheekily, and I think
showed a touch of Anti-Semitism. So when Therese once went with her
brother for a walk by the lake, and the Count came up and spoke to
Therese as though he had known her for ages, while he mumbled his name
off-handedly, for the benefit of Leo, Leo made a bow and introduced
himself like this: 'Leo Golowski, Cracow Jew.' I don't know exactly
what happened further; there was an exchange of words and the duel took
place next day in the cavalry barracks at Klagenfurt."

"So I am quite right," persisted George humorously. "He did fight for
his sister's honour."

"No, I tell you. I was there when he once discussed the matter with
Therese, and said to her: 'So far as I am concerned you can do whatever
amuses you. You can flirt with any one you like'...."

"Only it's got to be a Jew, I suppose...." added George.

Anna shook her head. "He's really not like that."

"I know," replied George gently. "We have become quite good friends
lately, your Leo and I.

"Why, only yesterday evening we met at the café again and he was really
quite condescending to me. I think he really forgives me my lineage.
Besides, I haven't told you that Therese was at Ehrenbergs', too."
And he described the appearance of the young girl in the Ehrenberg
drawing-room and the impression she had made on Demeter.

Anna smiled with pleasure.

Later on, when they were again walking arm-in-arm in a quieter street,
George began again. "But I still don't know who your great passion was."

Anna was silent and looked straight in front of her.

"Come, Anna, you promised me, didn't you?"

Without looking at him she replied: "If you only had an idea how
strange the whole thing seems to me to-day."

"Why strange?"

"Because the man you're trying to find out was quite an old man."

"Thirty-five," said George jestingly; "isn't that so?"

She shook her head seriously. "He was fifty-eight or sixty."

"And you?" asked George slowly.

"It is two years ago last summer. I was then twenty-one."

George suddenly stood still. "I know now, it was your singing-master.
Wasn't it?"

Anna did not answer.

"So it was he, then?" said George, without being really surprised, for
he was aware that all the celebrated master's pupils fell in love with
him in spite of his grey hairs.

"And did you love him most," asked George, "of all the men you had come
across?"

"Strange, isn't it? but it's a fact all the same."

"Did he know it?"

"I think so."

They had arrived at an open space with a small garden ... that was only
scantily lighted. At the back there towered a church with a reddish
glow. As though drawn to a quieter place they wandered on under dark
softly-waving branches.

"And what actually was there between you, if it is not a rude question?"

Anna was silent, and that moment George felt that everything was
possible--even that Anna should have been that man's mistress. But
underneath the disquiet which he felt at that thought the desire arose
gently and unconsciously to hear his fear confirmed. For if Anna had
already belonged to some one else before she became his, the adventure
could proceed as lightly and irresponsibly as possible.

"I will tell you the whole story," said Anna at last. "It is really not
so awful."

"Well?" asked George, strangely excited.

"Once, after the lesson," Anna began hesitatingly, "he gallantly helped
me into my jacket. And then suddenly he drew me to him, took me in his
arms and kissed me."

"And you...?"

"I ... I was quite intoxicated."

"Intoxicated?..."

"Yes, it was something indescribable. He kissed me on the forehead and
the hair, and then he took my hand and murmured all sorts of things
that I didn't hear properly...."

"And...."

"And then ... then voices came near, he let go my hand and it was all
over."

"All over?"

"Yes, over ... of course it was all over."

"I certainly don't think it such a matter of course. You saw him again,
no doubt."

"Of course, I still went on learning with him."

"And...?"

"I tell you it was over ... absolutely ... as though it had never
happened."

George was surprised that he should feel reassured. "And he never tried
again?" he asked.

"Never. It would have been so ridiculous, and as he was very clever he
knew that quite well himself. It is quite true that up to then I had
been very much in love with him, but after this episode he was nothing
more to me than my old teacher. In some way he seemed even older than
he really was. I don't know if you can really understand what I mean.
It was as though he had spent all the remains of his youth in that
moment."

"I quite understand," said George. He believed her and loved her more
than before. They went into the church. It was almost dark within the
large building. There were only some dim candles burning in front of
a side altar, and opposite, behind the small statue of a saint, there
shone a feeble light. A broad stream of incense flowed between the dome
and the flagstones. The verger was walking, jangling his keys softly.
Motionless figures appeared vaguely on the seats at the back. George
slowly walked forward with Anna and felt like a young husband on his
honeymoon going sight-seeing in a church with his young wife. He said
so to Anna. She only nodded.

"But it would be very much nicer," whispered George, as they stood
nestling close together in front of the chancel, "if we really were
together somewhere abroad...."

She looked at him ecstatically and yet interrogatively: and he was
frightened at his own words. Supposing Anna had taken it as a serious
declaration or as a kind of wooing? Was he not obliged to enlighten her
that he had not meant it in that way?... He remembered the conversation
which they had had a short time ago, when they had gone out hanging on
to one umbrella on a rainy windy day in the direction of Schönbrunn. He
had suggested to her she should drive into the town with him and dine
with him in a private room in some restaurant; she had answered with
that iciness in which her whole being was sometimes frozen: "I don't do
that kind of thing." He had not pressed her further.

And yet a quarter of an hour later she had said to him, apropos no
doubt of a conversation about George's mode of life, but yet with a
smile of many possibilities: "You have no initiative, George." And he
had suddenly felt at that moment as though depths in her soul were
revealing themselves, undreamt-of and dangerous depths, which it would
be a good thing to beware of. He could not help now thinking of this
again. What was passing within her mind?... What did she want and what
was she ready for?... And what did he desire, what did he feel himself?

Life was so incalculable. Was it not perfectly possible that he should
go travelling about the world with her, live with her a period of
happiness and finally part from her just as he had parted from many
another?... Yet when he thought of the end that was inevitably bound to
come, whether death brought it or life itself, he felt a gentle grief
in his heart.... She still remained silent. Did she think again that
he was lacking in initiative?... Or did she think perhaps "I am really
going to succeed, I shall be his wife?..."

He then felt her hand stroke his very gently, with a kind of new
tenderness that did him great good.

"George," she said.

"What is it?" he asked.

"If I were religious," she replied, "I should like to pray for
something now."

"What for?" said George, feeling almost nervous.

"For you to do something, George--something that really counted. For
you to become a genuine artist, a great artist."

He could not help looking at the floor, as though for very shame that
her thoughts had travelled on paths that were so much cleaner than his
own.

A beggar held open the thick green curtain. George gave the man a coin;
they were in the open air. The street lights shone up, the noise of
vehicles and closing shutters suddenly grew near. George felt as if a
fine veil which the twilight of the church had woven around him and
her had now been torn, and in a tone of relief he suggested a little
ride. Anna agreed with alacrity. They got into an open fiacre, had the
top pulled down over them, drove through the streets, then drove round
the Ring, without seeing much of the buildings and gardens, spoke not
a word and nestled closer and closer to each other. They were both
conscious of each other's impatience and their own, and they knew it
was no longer possible to go back.

When they were near Anna's home George said: "What a pity that you have
got to go home now."

She shrugged her shoulders and smiled strangely. The depths, thought
George again, but without fear and almost gaily. Before the vehicle
stopped at the corner they arranged an appointment for the following
morning in the Schwarzenberggarten and then got out. Anna rushed home
and George slowly strolled towards the town.

He considered whether he should go into the café. He did not really
feel keen on it. Bermann would probably stay to supper at the
Ehrenbergs' to-day, one could rarely count on Leo Golowski coming:
and George was not much attracted by the other young people, most of
them Jewish writers, with whom he had recently struck up a casual
acquaintance, even though he had thought many of them not at all
uninteresting. Speaking broadly, he found their tone to each other now
too familiar, now too formal, now too facetious, now too sentimental:
not one of them seemed really free and unembarrassed with the others,
scarcely indeed with himself.

Heinrich too had declared only the other day that he didn't want to
have anything more to do with the whole set, who had become thoroughly
antagonistic to him since his successes. George regarded it as
perfectly possible that Heinrich, with his characteristic vanity
and hypochondria, was scenting enmity and persecution where it was
perhaps merely a case of indifference or antipathy. He for his part
knew that it was not so much friendship that attracted him to the
young author, as the curiosity to get to know a strange man more
intimately. Perhaps also the interest of looking into a world which
up to the present had been more or less foreign to him. For while he
himself had remained somewhat reserved and had specially avoided any
reference to his own relations with women, Heinrich had not only told
him of his distant mistress, for whom he asserted he suffered pangs of
jealousy, but also of a blonde and pretty young person with whom he
had recently got into the habit of spending his evenings--merely to
deaden his feelings as he ironically added; he not only told him of his
life as a student and journalist in Vienna, which did not lie so far
back, but also of his childhood and boyhood in that little provincial
town in Bohemia where he had come into the world thirty years ago.
The half-affectionate and half-disgusted tone, with its mixture of
attachment and detachment, in which Heinrich spoke of his family and
especially of his suffering father, who had been an advocate in that
little town and a member of Parliament for a considerable period,
struck George as strange and at times as almost painful. Why, he seemed
to be even a little proud of the fact that when he was only twenty
years old he had prophesied his blissfully confident parent's fate to
the old man himself, exactly as it had subsequently fulfilled itself.
After a short period of popularity and success the growth of the
Anti-Semitic movement had driven him out of the German Liberal party,
most of his friends had deserted and betrayed him, and a dissipated
'corps' student, who described at public meetings the Tschechs and Jews
as the most dangerous enemies of Germanism, propriety and morality,
while at home he thrashed his wife and had children by his servants,
was his successor in the confidence of the electors and in Parliament.
Heinrich, who had always felt a certain amount of irritation at his
father's phrases, honest though they were, about Pan-Germanism, liberty
and progress, had at first gloated over the spectacle of the old man's
downfall. And it was only when the lawyer who had once been so much in
demand began to lose his practice into the bargain, and the financial
position of the family got worse from day to day, that the son began
to experience a somewhat belated sympathy. He had given up his legal
studies early enough, and had been compelled to come to the help of his
family with his daily journalistic work. His first literary successes
raised no echo in the melancholy household. There were sinister signs
that madness was looming over his father, while now that the latter was
falling into mental darkness his mother, for whom state and fatherland
had ceased to exist, when her husband was not elected to Parliament,
lost her grip of life and of the world. Heinrich's only sister, once a
buxom clever girl, had developed melancholia after an unhappy passion
for a kind of provincial Don Juan, and with morbid perverseness she put
the blame for the family misfortune on the shoulders of her brother,
though she had always got on with him perfectly well in her youth.
Heinrich also told George about other relations whom he remembered in
his early days, and a half-grotesque, half-pathetic series of strict
bigoted old-fashioned Jews and Jewesses swept by George like shadows
from another world. He eventually realised that Heinrich did not feel
himself any homesickness for that small town with its miserable petty
squabbles, or any call to return to the gloomy narrowness of his almost
ruined family, and saw that Heinrich's egoism was at once his salvation
and his deliverance.

It was striking nine from the tower of the Church of St. Michael when
George stood in front of the café. He saw Rapp the critic sitting by a
window not completely covered by the curtain, with a pile of papers in
front of him on the table. He had just taken his glasses off his nose
and was polishing them, and the dull eyes brought a look of absolute
deadness into a face that was usually so alive with clever malice.
Opposite him with gestures that swept over vacancy sat Gleissner the
poet in all the brilliancy of his false elegance, with a colossal black
cravat in which a red stone scintillated. When George, without hearing
their voices, saw the lips of these two men move, while their glances
wandered to and fro, he could scarcely understand how they could stand
sitting opposite each other for a quarter of an hour in that cloud of
hate. It flashed across him at once that this was the atmosphere in
which the life of the whole set played its comedy, and through which
there darted many a redeeming flash of wit and self-analysis.

What had he in common with these people? A kind of horror seized on
him, he turned away and decided to look up his club once again instead
of going into the café, the rooms of which he had not been in for
months past. It was only a few steps away. George was soon walking up
the broad marble staircase, went into the little dining-room with the
light green curtain and was greeted as a long-lost friend by Ralph
Skelton, the attaché of the English Embassy, and Doctor von Breitner.
They talked about the tournament which was going to take place and
about the banquet that was going to be organised in honour of the
foreign fencing-masters; they gossiped about the new operetta at the
Wiedner Theatre where Fräulein Lovan as a bayadère had come on to
the stage almost naked, and about the duel between the manufacturer
Heidenfeld and Lieutenant Novotny, in which the injured husband had
fallen. George had a game of billiards with Skelton after the meal and
won. He felt in better spirits and resolved henceforth to pay more
frequent visits to these airy prettily-furnished rooms frequented by
pleasant well-bred young men with whom one could converse lightly and
pleasantly.

Felician appeared, told his brother that it had been very amusing at
the Ehrenbergs' and that Frau Marianne sent her regards. Breitner, with
one of his celebrated huge cigars in his mouth, joined the brothers,
and began to speak about the hanging of the portraits of some of those
members of the club who had conferred services on it, mentioning
particularly the one of young Labinski who had ended all by suicide
in the previous year. And George could not help thinking of Grace, of
that strange hot-and-cold conversation with her in the cemetery in the
melting February snow and of that wonderful night on the moonlit deck
of the steamer that had brought them both from Palermo to Naples. He
scarcely knew which woman he longed for the most at this particular
moment: for Marianne whom he had deserted, for Grace who had vanished,
or for the fair young creature with whom he had walked about in a dusky
church a few hours ago like a honeymoon couple in a foreign town, and
who had wanted to pray to heaven for him to become a great artist. The
memory stirred a gentler emotion. Was it not almost as though she set
more store by his artistic future than by him himself?... No.... Not
more. She had only just spoken out what had lain slumbering all the
time at the bottom of her soul. It was simply that he forgot as it
were only too frequently that he was an artist. But all that must be
changed. He had begun and prepared so much. Just a little industry and
success was assured. And next year he would go out into the world. He
would soon get a post as conductor and with a sudden leap he would find
himself launched in a profession that brought both money and prestige.
He would get to know new people, a different sky would shine above him
and white unknown arms stretched towards him mysteriously as though
from distant clouds. And while the young people at his side were
weighing very seriously the chances of the champions at the approaching
tournament, George went on dreaming in his corner of a future full of
work, fame and love.

At the same time Anna was lying in her dark room. She was not asleep
and her wide-open eyes were turned towards the ceiling. She had for the
first time in her life the infallible feeling that there was a man in
the world who could do anything he liked with her. Her mind was firmly
made up to take all the happiness or all the sorrow that might lie in
front of her, and she had a gentle hope, more beautiful than all her
dreams of the past, of a serene and abiding happiness.




III


George and Heinrich dismounted from their cycles. The last villas lay
behind them and the broad road with its gradual upward incline led
into the forest. The foliage still hung fairly thickly on the trees,
but every slight puff of wind brought away some leaves which slowly
fluttered down. The shimmer of autumn floated over the yellow-reddish
hills. The road ascended higher past an imposing restaurant garden
approached by a flight of stone steps. Only a few people sat in the
open air, most of them were in the glass verandah, as though they did
not quite trust themselves to the faltering warmth of this late October
day, through which a dangerous and chilly draught kept on penetrating.

George thought of the melancholy memory of the winter evening on which
he and Frau Marianne had paid a visit here, and had had the place to
themselves. He had been bored as he had sat by her side and listened
impatiently to her prattle about yesterday's concert in which Fräulein
Bellini had sung songs; and when he had been obliged to get out of the
carriage in a suburban street on his way back on account of Marianne's
nervousness, he had taken a deep breath of deliverance. A similar
feeling of release, of course, almost invariably came over him whenever
he left a mistress, even after some more or less beautiful hours.
Even when he had left Anna on her doorstep a few days ago, after the
first evening of complete happiness, the first emotion of which he was
conscious was the joy of being alone again. And immediately in its
train, even before the feeling of gratitude and the dim realisation of
a genuine affinity with this gentle creature who enveloped his whole
being with such intimate tenderness had managed to penetrate his soul,
there fluttered through it a wistful dream of voyages over a shimmering
sea, of coasts which approached seductively, of walks along shores
which would vanish again on the next day, of blue distances, freedom
from responsibility and solitude.

The next morning, when the atmosphere of the previous evening, pregnant
as it was with memory and with presage, enveloped him as he woke up,
the journey was of course put off to a later but not so distant though
of course more convenient time. For George knew at this very hour,
though without any touch of horror, that this adventure was predestined
to have an end however sincerely and picturesquely it had begun.
Anna had given herself to him without indicating by a word, a look
or gesture that so far as she was concerned, what was practically a
new chapter in her life was now beginning. And in the same way George
felt quite convinced that the farewell to her, too, would be devoid
of melancholy or of difficulty; a pressure of the hand, a smile and a
quiet "it was very beautiful"; and he felt still easier in his mind
when she came to him at their next meeting with a simple intimate
greeting, quite free from that uneasy tone of nestling sorrow or
accomplished fate which he had heard thrilling in the voice of many
another woman, who had woken up to such a morning, though not for the
first time in her life.

A faintly-defined line of mountains appeared in the distance and then
vanished again as the road mounted through thick-wooded country up to
the heights. Pine-wood and leaf-bearing wood grew peacefully next to
each other, and the foliage of beeches and birch-trees shimmered with
its autumn tints through the quieter tints of the firs. Ramblers could
be seen, some with knapsack, alpine-stock and nailed shoes, as though
equipped for serious mountaineering; now and again cyclists would come
whizzing down the road in a feverish rush. Heinrich told his companion
of a cycle-tour which he had made along the Rhine at the beginning of
September.

"Isn't it strange," said George, "I have knocked about the world a fair
bit, but I do not yet know the district where my ancestors' home was."

"Really?" queried Heinrich, "and you feel no emotion when you hear the
word Rhine spoken?"

George smiled. "After all it is nearly a hundred years since my
great-grandparents left Biebrich."

"Why do you smile, George? It's a much longer time since my ancestors
wandered out of Palestine, and yet many otherwise quite rational people
insist on my heart throbbing with homesickness for that country."

George shook his head irritably. "Why do you always keep bothering
about those people? It will really soon become a positive obsession
with you."

"Oh, you think I mean the Anti-Semites? Not a bit of it. I am not
touchy any more about them, not usually, at any rate. But you just go
and ask our friend Leo what his views are on this question."

"Oh, you mean him, do you? Well, he doesn't take it so literally but
more or less symbolically ... or from the political standpoint," he
added uncertainly.

Heinrich nodded. "Both these ideas are very intimately connected
in brains of that character." He sank into meditation for a while,
thrust his cycle forward with slight impatient spurts and was soon
a few paces in front again. He then began to talk again about his
September tour. He thought of it again with what was almost emotion.
Solitude, change of scene, movement: had he not enjoyed a threefold
happiness? "I can scarcely describe to you," he said, "the feeling
of inner freedom which thrilled through me. Do you know those moods
in which all one's memories near or distant lose, as it were, their
oppressive reality? all the people who have meant anything in one's
life, whether it be grief, care or tenderness, seem to sweep by more
like shadows, or, to put it more precisely, like forms which one has
imagined oneself? And the creations of one's own imagination also come
on the scene, of course, and are certainly quite as vivid as the people
whom one remembers as having been real; and then one gets the most
extraordinary complications between the figures of reality and of one's
imagination. I could describe to you a conversation which took place
between my great-uncle who is a rabbi and the Duke Heliodorus, the
character you know who is the centre of my opera plot--a conversation
which was amusing and profound to a degree which, speaking generally,
neither life nor any opera libretto scarcely ever reaches.... Yes,
such journeys are really wonderful, and so one goes on through towns
which one has never seen before, and perhaps will never see again,
past absolutely unknown faces which speedily vanish again for all
eternity.... Then one whizzes again into the street between the rivers
and the vineyards. Such moods really cleanse the soul. A pity that they
are so rarely vouchsafed to one."

George always felt a certain embarrassment whenever Heinrich became
tragic. "Perhaps we might go on a bit," he said, and they jumped on to
their machines.

A narrow bumpy byroad between the forest and fields soon led them to a
bare unimpressive two-storied house, which they recognised to be an inn
by its brown surly signboard. On the green, which was separated from
the house by the street, stood a large number of tables, many covered
with cloths which had once been white, others with cloths which were
embroidered. Ten or twelve young men who were members of a cycling club
sat at some pushed-back tables. Several of them had taken off their
coats, others with an affectation of smartness wore them with their
sleeves hanging down. Designs in magnificent red and green knitting
blazed on the sky-blue sweaters with their yellow edges.

A chorus rang out to the sky with more power than purity: "Der Gott der
Eisen wachsen liess, der wollte keine Knechte."

Heinrich surveyed the company with a quick glance, half shut his eyes
and said to George with clenched teeth and vehement emphasis: "I don't
know if these youths are staunch, true and courageous, which they
certainly think they are; but there is no doubt that they smell of wool
and perspiration, and so I am all for our sitting down at a reasonable
distance from them."

What _does_ he want? thought George. Would he find it more congenial if
a party of Polish Jews were to sit here and sing psalms?

Both pushed their machines to a distant table and sat down. A waiter
appeared in black evening dress sprinkled with the relics of grease and
vegetables, cleared the table energetically with a dirty napkin, took
their orders and went off.

"Isn't it lamentable," said Heinrich, "that in the immediate outskirts
of Vienna nearly all the inns should be in such a state of neglect? It
makes one positively depressed."

George thought that this exaggerated regret was out of place. "Oh well,
in the country," he said, "you have got to take things as you find
them. It is almost part of the whole thing."

Heinrich would not admit the soundness of this point of view. He began
to develop a plan for the erection of seven hotels on the borders of
the Wienerwald, and was calculating that one would need at the outside
three or four millions, when Leo Golowski suddenly appeared. He was in
_mufti_, which, as was frequently the case with him, was not without
a certain element of bizarreness. He wore to-day, in addition to a
light-grey lounge suit, a blue velvet waistcoat and a yellow silk
cravat with a smooth steel tie-ring. Both the others greeted him with
delight and expressed their astonishment.

Leo sat down by them. "I heard you fixing up your excursion yesterday
evening, and when we were discharged from the barracks at nine o'clock
to-day, I at once thought how nice it would be to have a chat for an
hour or so in the open air with a couple of keen and congenial men.
So I went home, threw myself into mufti and started off." He spoke
in his usual tone, which always fascinated George with its charm and
semi-naïveté, though when he thought of it afterwards it always seemed
to possess a certain touch of irony, of insincerity in fact. He had
a knack of conducting serious conversations with a cut-and-dried
definiteness that really impressed George. He had recently had an
opportunity of listening to discussions in the café between Leo and
Heinrich on questions dealing with the theory of art, especially the
relation between the laws of music and mathematics. Leo thought he
was on the track of the fundamental cause of major and minor keys
affecting the human soul in such different ways. George took pleasure
in following the chain of his acute and lucid analysis, even though he
was instinctively on his guard against the audacious attempt to ascribe
all the magic and mystery of sound to the rule of laws, which were as
inexorable as those in accordance with which the earth and the planets
revolved, and must necessarily spring from the same origin as those
eternal principles. It was only when Heinrich tried to carry Leo's
theories still further, and to apply them for instance to the products
of literary style, that George became impatient and immediately felt
himself tacit ally of Leo who invariably smiled gently at Heinrich's
tangled and fantastic expositions.

The meal was served and the young men ate with appetite; Heinrich
not less than the others, in spite of the fact that he expressed his
opinion of the inferiority of the cooking in the most disparaging
terms, and was inclined to regard the conduct of the proprietor, not
merely as a sign of his personally low mind, but as characteristic of
the decay of Austria in many other spheres. The conversation turned
on the military position of the country, and Leo gave a satirical
description of his comrades and superiors, with which both the others
were very much amused. Much merriment, especially, was occasioned by a
First-Lieutenant who had introduced himself to the volunteer contingent
with the ominous words: "I shan't give you anything to laugh about, I
am a fiend in human form."

While they were still eating a gentleman came up to the table, clicked
his heels together, put his hand to his cycle cap by way of salutation,
addressed them with a facetious "All hail," added a friendly "Hallo"
for the benefit of Leo, and introduced himself to Heinrich. "My name
is Josef Rosner." He then cheerily began the conversation with these
words: "I suppose you gentlemen are also on a cycling expedition...."
As no one answered him he continued: "One must make the best of the
last fine days, the splendid weather won't last much longer."

"Won't you sit down, Herr Rosner?" asked George politely.

"Much obliged but...." He pointed to his party.... "We have only just
started out, we have still got a lot in front of us; going to ride
down to Tull and then via Stockerau to Vienna. Excuse me, gentlemen."
He took a wooden vesta from the table and lighted his cigarette with
dignity.

"What kind of a club are you in then, old chap?" asked Leo, and George
was surprised at the "old chap," till it occurred to him that they had
both known each other from boyhood.

"This is the Sechshauser Cycle Club," replied Josef. In spite of the
fact that no astonishment was expressed, he added: "Of course you are
surprised, gentlemen, at a real Viennese like myself belonging to this
suburban club, but it is only because a great friend of mine is the
captain there. You see that fat chap there, just slipping into his
coat. That is Jalaudek, the son of the town councillor and member of
Parliament."

"Jalaudek ..." repeated Heinrich with obvious loathing in his voice,
and said nothing more.

"Oh yes," said Leo, "that's the man, you know, who in a recent debate
about the popular education board gave this magnificent definition of
science. Didn't you read it?" He turned to the others.

They did not remember.

"'Science,'" quoted Leo, "'Science is what one Jew copies from
another.'"

All laughed. Even Josef, who, however, immediately started explaining:
"He is really not that sort at all--I know him quite well--only he is
so crude in political life ... simply because the opposing parties
scratch each other's eyes out in our beloved Austria. But in ordinary
life he is a very affable gentleman. The boy is much more Radical."

"Is your club Christian Socialist or National German?" asked Leo
courteously.

"Oh, we don't make any distinction. Only of course as things are going
nowadays...." He stopped with sudden embarrassment.

"Come, come," said Leo encouragingly. "It is perfectly obvious that
your club is not tainted by a single Jew. Why, one notices that a mile
off."

Josef thought it was best form to laugh. He then said: "Excuse me, no
politics in the mountains! Anyway, as we are on this topic you are
labouring under a delusion, gentlemen. For instance, we have a man in
the club who is engaged to a Jewish girl. But they are beckoning to me
already. Goodbye, gentlemen; so long, Leo; goodbye, all." He saluted
again and swaggered off.

The others, smiling in spite of themselves, followed him with their
eyes. Then Leo suddenly turned to George and asked: "And how is his
sister getting on with her singing?"

"What?" said George, startled and blushing slightly.

"Therese has been telling me," went on Leo quietly, "that you and Anna
do music together sometimes. Is her voice all right now?"

"Yes," replied George, hesitating, "I believe so; at any rate I
think it is very pleasant, very melodious, especially in the deeper
registers. It is a pity in my view that it is not big enough for larger
rooms."

"Not big enough?" repeated Leo meditatively.

"How would you describe it?"

Leo shrugged his shoulders and looked quietly at George. "It is like
this," he said. "I personally like the voice very much, but even when
Anna had the idea of going on the stage ... to speak quite frankly, I
never thought anything would come of it."

"You probably knew," replied George with deliberate casualness, "that
Fräulein Anna suffers from a peculiar weakness of the vocal chords."

"Yes, of course I knew that, but if she were cut out for an artistic
career, really had it in her, I mean, she would certainly have overcome
that weakness."

"You think so?"

"Yes, I do. That is my decided opinion. That's why I think that
expressions like 'peculiar weakness' or 'her voice is not big enough'
are more or less euphemisms for something more fundamental, more
psychological. It's quite clear that her fate line says nothing about
her being an artist, that's a fact. She was, so to speak, predestined
from the beginning to end her days in respectable domesticity."

Heinrich enthusiastically caught up the theory of the fate line, and
led their thoughts in his own erratic way from the sphere of cleverness
to the sphere of sophistry, and from the sphere of sophistry to the
sphere of the nonsensical.

He then suggested that they should bask for half an hour in the meadow
in the sun. "It will probably not shine so warm again during this year."

The others agreed.

A hundred yards from the inn George and Leo stretched themselves out on
their cloaks. Heinrich sat down on the grass, crossed his arms over his
knees, and looked in front of him. At his feet the sward sloped down to
the forest. Still deeper down rested the villas of Neuwaldegg, buried
in loose foliage. The spire-crosses and dazzling windows of the town
shone out from the bluish-grey clouds, and far away, as though lifted
up by a moving haze, the plain swept away to a gradual darkness.

Pedestrians were walking over the fields towards the inn. Some gave
them a greeting as they passed, and one of them, a slim young man who
led a child by the hand, remarked to Heinrich: "This is a really fine
day, just like May."

Heinrich felt at first his heart go out as it were involuntarily,
as it often did towards casual and unexpected friendliness of this
description. But he immediately pulled himself together, for of course
he realised that the young man was only intoxicated, as it were,
with the mildness of the day and the peace of the landscape; that at
the bottom of his soul he too felt hostile to him, just like all the
others who had strolled past him so harmlessly, and he himself found
difficulty in understanding why the view of these gently sloping hills
and the town merging into twilight should affect him with so sweet a
melancholy, in view of the fact that the men who lived there meant
so little good by him, and meant him even that little but rarely.
The cycling club whizzed along the street which was quite close to
them. The jauntily-worn coats fluttered, the badges gleamed and crude
laughter rang out over the fields.

"Awful people," said Leo casually without changing his place.

Heinrich motioned down below with a vague movement of his head. "And
fellows like that," he said with set teeth, "imagine that they are more
at home here than we are."

"Oh, well," answered Leo quietly, "they aren't so far out in that,
those fellows there."

Heinrich turned scornfully towards him: "Excuse me, Leo, I forgot for a
moment that you yourself wish to count as only here on sufferance."

"I don't wish that for a minute," replied Leo with a smile, "and you
need not misunderstand me so perversely. One really can't bear a grudge
against these people if they regard themselves as the natives and you
and me as the foreigners. After all, it is only the expression of their
healthy instinct for an anthropological fact which is confirmed by
history. Neither Jewish nor Christian sentimentalism can do anything
against that and all the consequences which follow from it." And
turning to George he asked him in a tone which was only too courteous:
"Don't you think so too?"

George reddened and cleared his throat, but had no opportunity of
answering, for Heinrich, on whose forehead two deep furrows now
appeared, immediately began to speak with considerable bitterness.

"My own instinct is at any rate quite as much a rule of conduct for me
as the instinct of Herren Jalaudek Junior and Senior, and that instinct
tells me infallibly that my home is here, just here, and not in some
land which I don't know, the description of which doesn't appeal to
me the least bit and which certain people now want to persuade me is
my fatherland on the strength of the argument that that was the place
from which my ancestors some thousand years ago were scattered into the
world. One might further observe on that point that the ancestors of
the Herren Jalaudek and even of our friend Baron von Wergenthin were
quite as little at home here as mine and yours."

"You mustn't be angry with me," retorted Leo, "but your standpoint in
these matters is really somewhat limited. You are always thinking about
yourself and the really quite irrelevant circumstance ... excuse my
saying irrelevant circumstance, that you are an author who happens to
write in the German language because he was born in a German country,
and happens to write about Austrian people and Austrian conditions
because he lives in Austria. But the primary question is not about you,
or about me either, or even about the few Jewish officials who do not
get promoted, the few Jewish volunteers who do not get made officers,
the Jewish lecturers who either get their Professorship too late or not
at all--those are sheer secondary inconveniences so to speak; we have
to deal, in considering this question, with quite another class of men
whom you know either imperfectly or not at all. We have to deal with
destinies to which, I assure you, my dear Heinrich, that in spite of
your real duty to do so, I am sure you have not yet given sufficient
thorough thought. I am sure you haven't.... Otherwise you wouldn't
be able to discuss all these matters in the superficial and the ...
egoistic way you are now doing."

He then told them of his experiences at the Bâle Zionist Congress in
which he had taken part in the previous year, and where he had obtained
a deeper insight into the character and psychological condition of the
Jewish people than he had ever done before. With these people, whom he
saw at close quarters for the first time, the yearning for Palestine,
he knew it for a fact, was no artificial pose. A genuine feeling was
at work within them, a feeling that had never become extinguished and
was now flaming up afresh under the stress of necessity. No one could
doubt that who had seen, as he had, the holy scorn shine out in their
looks when a speaker exclaimed that they must give up the hope of
Palestine for the time being and content themselves with settlements in
Africa and the Argentine. Why, he had seen old men, not uneducated men
either, no, learned and wise old men, weeping because they must needs
fear that that land of their fathers, which they themselves would never
be able to tread, even in the event of the realisation of the boldest
Zionist plans, would perhaps never be open to their children and their
children's children.

George listened with surprise, and was even somewhat moved.

But Heinrich, who had been walking up and down the field during Leo's
narrative, exclaimed that he regarded Zionism as the worst affliction
that had ever burst upon the Jews, and that Leo's own words had
convinced him of it more profoundly than any previous argument or
experience.

National feeling and religion, those had always been the words which
had embittered him with their wanton, yes malignant, ambiguity.
Fatherland.... Why, that was nothing more than a fiction, a political
idea floating in the air, changeable, intangible. It was only the home,
not the fatherland which had any real significance ... and so the
feeling of home was synonymous with the right to a home. And so far
as religions were concerned, he liked Christian and Jewish mythology
quite as much as Greek and Indian; but as soon as they began to force
their dogmas upon him, he found them all equally intolerable and
repulsive. And he felt himself akin with no one, no, not with any one
in the whole world: with the weeping Jews in Ble as little as with the
bawling Pan-Germans in the Austrian Parliament; with Jewish usurers
as little as with noble robber-knights; with a Zionist bar-keeper as
little as with a Christian Socialist grocer. And least of all would
the consciousness of a persecution which they had all suffered, and
of a hatred whose burden fell upon them all, make him feel linked
to men from whom he felt himself so far distant in temperament. He
did not mind recognising Zionism as a moral principle and a social
movement, if it could honestly be regarded in that light, but the idea
of the foundation of a Jewish state on a religious and national basis
struck him as a nonsensical defiance of the whole spirit of historical
evolution. "And you too, at the bottom of your heart," he explained,
standing still in front of Leo, "you don't think either that this goal
will ever prove attainable; why, you don't even wish it, although
you fancy yourself in your element trying to get there. What is your
home-country, Palestine? A geographical idea. What does the faith of
your father mean to you? A collection of customs which you have now
ceased to observe and some of which seem as ridiculous and in as bad
taste to you, as they do to me."

They went on talking for a long time, now vehemently and almost
offensively, then calmly, and in the honest endeavour to convince each
other. Frequently they were surprised to find themselves holding the
same opinion, only again to lose touch with each other the next moment
in a new contradiction. George, stretched on his cloak, listened to
them. His mind soon took the side of Leo, whose words seemed to thrill
with an ardent pity for the unfortunate members of his race, and who
would turn proudly away from people who would not treat him as their
equal. Soon he felt nearer again in spirit to Heinrich, who treated
with anger and scorn the attempt, as wild as it was short-sighted,
to collect from all the corners of the world the members of a race
whose best men had always merged in the culture of the land of their
adoption, or had at any rate contributed to it, and to send them all
together to a foreign land, a land to which no homesickness called
them. And George gradually appreciated how difficult those same picked
men about whom Heinrich had been speaking, the men who were hatching
in their souls the future of humanity, would find it to come to a
decision. How dazed must be their consciousness of their existence,
their value and their rights, tossed to and fro as they were between
defiance and exhaustion, between the fear of appearing importunate and
their bitter resentment at the demand that they must needs yield to an
insolent majority, between the inner consciousness of being at home
in the country where they lived and worked, and their indignation at
finding themselves persecuted and insulted in that very place. He saw
for the first time the designation Jew, which he himself had often used
flippantly, jestingly and contemptuously, in a quite new and at the
same time melancholy light. There dawned within him some idea of this
people's mysterious destiny, which always expressed itself in every one
who sprang from the race, not less in those who tried to escape from
that origin of theirs, as though it were a disgrace, a pain or a fairy
tale that did not concern them at all, than in those who obstinately
pointed back to it as though to a piece of destiny, an honour or an
historical fact based on an immovable foundation.

And as he lost himself in the contemplation of the two speakers,
and looked at their figures, which stood out in relief against
the reddish-violet sky in sharply-drawn, violently-moving lines,
it occurred to him, and not for the first time, that Heinrich who
insisted on being at home here, resembled both in figure and gesture
some fanatical Jewish preacher, while Leo, who wanted to go back to
Palestine with his people, reminded him in feature and in bearing of
the statue of a Greek youth which he had once seen in the Vatican or
the Naples museum. And he understood again quite well, as his eye
followed with pleasure Leo's lively aristocratic gestures, how Anna
could have experienced a mad fancy for her friend's brother years ago
in that summer by the seaside.

Heinrich and Leo were still standing opposite each other on the
grass, while their conversation became lost in a maze of words. Their
sentences rushed violently against each other, wrestled convulsively,
shot past each other and vanished into nothingness, and George noticed
at some moment or other that he was only listening to the sound of the
speeches, without being able to follow their meaning.

A cool breeze came up from the plain, and George got up from the
sward with a slight shiver. The others, who had almost forgotten his
presence, were thus called back again to actualities, and they decided
to leave. Full daylight still shone over the landscape, but the sun was
couched faint and dark on the long strip of an evening cloud.

"Conversations like this," said Heinrich, as he strapped his cloak
on to his cycle, "always leave me with a sense of dissatisfaction,
which even goes as far as a painful feeling in the neighbourhood of
the stomach. Yes really. They just lead absolutely nowhere. And after
all, what do political views matter to men who don't make politics
their career or their business? Do they exert the slightest influe

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