Chapter I

It was not that _he_ thought her beautiful; but other people thought so, which made him think of her as such. And when these others came in swarms to wrest the prize from him which he had looked on as his own, he fell in love with her. During his first week in Salzburg, he received a card from Frau von Kranich: “_As you whish to be introduced to interesting people, I would like to bring you on Monday next on the 15 February inst. to Professor Hollmann-Blum where there will be a pretty large party. Please komme to me at a quarter to five o’klock_ P.M. _We will go together or better still, in the tram car. With my kind regards yours truly,--Emmy von Kranich._”

Calling, he beheld in the drawing-room with Frau von Kranich a young girl with clean-cut regularly chiselled features--he remembered later--of a quite extraordinary beauty. After introducing them: “Mr. Mackintosh Beck, of America;--Miss Schulz,” Frau von Kranich suddenly excused herself and went out. There was a pause. “What the devil can I say?” he thought.

“Do you dance a great deal?” He felt this was a happy shot.

“No,” said the girl.

“I notice that you Austrians dance very differently from us, and I have, so as not to feel provincial” (he smiled: the girl did not), “gone in for dancing lessons at Herr Pfleger’s--despite my middle age!” (Again she did not smile.) “I am told, on good authority, that he is better than Herr Loewe.”

“No,” said the girl. “Loewe is better than Pfleger.”

“But I think Herr Pfleger dances better then Herr Loewe,” he proffered tentatively.

The girl smiled a faint smile, as if of compassion for Mr. Beck’s poor understanding. “No,” she said. “Loewe dances better than Pfleger.”

There was an end of it. Mr. Beck was silent. Frau von Kranich came back with an enigmatic look on her face which implied: “Well, have you two young people hit it off?” And Mr. Beck felt sensitive for Fräulein Schulz, for, beside her, he was no longer young. But Frau von Kranich was so old that from the vantage-ground of her years the ages of both Mr. Beck and Fräulein Schulz seemed quantities so small as to appear to have no visible differentiation. She overtly began the matchmaking. “You must take long walks together in the spring as soon as the snow begins to thaw. She must show you round the lakes and up the hills.” Now that Frau von Kranich, who had no illusions about the hearts of young girls, was back, Fräulein Schulz ceased to be assertive and became the shy and diffident young maiden Frau von Kranich must have thought her. When called upon to speak, she blushed and lowered her lashes. They put on their coats. Frau von Kranich, very small and old, and carrying a little pot of flowers in pink tissue-paper, crawled into the tramcar, Mr. Beck after her; and Fräulein Schulz, murmuring “Kiss the hand,” went her way.

“She’s a beautiful girl--he, he,” said Frau von Kranich. The trolley rattled on. “She is a Cindrella who is waiting for the golden coach to halt at her door and for the Prince Charming to alight and offer her the shoe.” And she pierced him searchingly with her sharp watery old eyes, as if considering whether he might conceivably pass off as the desired Prince Charming, and laughed--“He, he, he!”

When they had crawled out of the tram and crawled upstairs into the flat, they made their way into a hall overcrowded by people’s overcoats, and added to the huge stack, with the aid of a bewildered parlour-maid, their own particular contribution. Frau von Kranich crawled towards the festive birthday table heaped with flowers and deposited thereon the pot in the pink tissue-paper.

“Ah! ah! Herr Direktor Schulz!” A tall massive man of sixty-five, with long silver locks, stood in the doorway and now sat down by Frau von Kranich and talked to her, his big hands moving all the while in little gestures. Mr. Beck, amid the hum of conversation, was grateful for such fragments as his ear could catch. “This invidious meanness ... this--this ... mean invidiousness ... this--how shall I say?” Herr Schulz was saying, when Frau von Kranich introduced them. “Sit down,” she said. “He-he-he; you are so tall!”

Mr. Mackintosh Beck _was_ tall. He was not handsome, but he thought he was; and when at home in Philadelphia the shop-girls stared at him behind the counter he thought they were admiring his features. From time to time, when, trying on a new suit at his tailor’s, for example, he beheld his face in the three mirrors simultaneously from all four sides, he would experience a mild shock of revelation. But as a rule he would forget about his looks and go on figuring himself as he should have been instead of as he really was. “You can speak French with Mr. Mackintosh,” Frau von Kranich told Herr Schulz.

“As a matter of fact,” Mr. Beck rejoined, smiling shyly through his horn-rimmed spectacles, “I am here to learn the German language, and I should esteem it a privilege to have the opportunity of exercising my poor knowledge if you have the patience to talk it slowly to me.”

But Frau von Kranich looked as though she had something more important up her sleeve and was not to be deflected from her course. “French,” she said, “is the most wonderful language that I know for telling one _des plaisanteries_. I remember how, while my father was Bavarian Minister at Rome, the French Ambassador and I talked airy nothings for an hour and a half--he, he, he!” And she looked round at Mr. Beck to see if he had noticed it. But Mr. Beck was looking at Herr Schulz and thinking of his daughter. He thought of the last girl he should have married and reflected, with a twinge of melancholy, that it was always girls who were to blame for the deflections in his career. He had wanted to remain at Haverford and prepare for a professorship, then a girl came in sight and he had to think of making money quickly. He left the University and took to banking. Then she left him, he ceased banking and went back to the University. And--strange, he thought--every time he was engaged it always happened that the cause of their estrangement was a male relative, a brother, father or an uncle whom, as a human being, he liked better than the girl. He was just thinking now, as he looked at Herr Direktor Schulz, how really strange it was that he should always like the fathers or the brothers best, when the host came up to him: “You come from Philadelphia? Which University? And what is your particular faculty?”

“Well--my home town is Haverford, but I live in Philadelphia. My university----”

But Professor Hollmann Blum, with a little nod and smile, was already off and round the corner, his coat tails flying in the air, and talking to another guest.

After coffee, the Professor gave a little lecture and passed on pictures of Tut-An-Khaman; after which each of the more learned guests was expected to contribute his intellectual quota.

“I am a lonely soul here,” said Herr Schulz.

“I felt that,” Mr. Beck rejoined, and glanced significantly at Herr Schulz, who looked as if he did not quite take it in; though when later he discoursed again, he turned with deference to the foreigner, and praised America. He spoke haltingly, with little gestures, little pauses, as if fumbling for the right word, and a number of people had gathered round him, but Herr Schulz turned more and more towards Mr. Beck. “When we are alone I should like to develop” (he threw out illuminative little gestures) “before you the whole idea, so to speak.”

“And who is the greatest living writer of the German-speaking world to-day?” presently asked Mr. Beck.

Herr Schulz smiled, a little mischievously. “With my exception” (and Frau Kranich also smiled) “it’s Gerhart Hauptmann.”

“The Herr Direktor is a poet,” she explained.

“Oh?”

“I will present you with a copy of my book when next we have the opportunity of meeting.”

The Professor suddenly bobbed up from round the corner, and turning deferentially towards his host, the Herr Direktor, said: “The Herr Geheimrat will be able to reply to your question, Herr Doktor Mackintosh, with an authority greatly in excess of that which I command.”

“What’s that? What’s that?” asked the Professor, joining them as if for a long stay.

“We were talking of----”

But the Professor, with a nod and a smile, had already dashed off to the table in the other corner of the room and was fussing with a fork over the apricot cake.

Mr. Beck escorted the old lady home. “I like Herr Schulz,” he said.

“He’s very nice to you because you are a new man, a foreigner at that, and listen to him--and that flatters him. While we have all heard it endless times before and are sick and tired of it; and he knows it. But I will bring his daughter, Irmgard Schulz, for you to the Baroness Hauch’s dance on Thursday afternoon. Baroness Hauch has the finest china set in Salzburg.”

“Must I dress?”

“Yes.”

“Dinner-jacket?”

“No--cut-away.”