Chapter IV

When next day he went to Gmunden, he was stopped in the street by a lady whom he recognised as one of the two middle-aged disciples of Herr Schulz, to whom he had been presented after the concert. “Have you, Herr von Mackintosh, come to see the Herr Direktor Schulz?” she asked.

Mr. Beck had come to have a quiet view of Gmunden. But he did not deem it polite to say so, and answered, haltingly, “M-yes--I think I have.”

“Splendid! The Herr Direktor is now taking his after-dinner nap, but he will be up for coffee at a quarter past four o’clock and would be delighted to have you take a cup with him.”

“Curse him!” he thought. But at a quarter past four Mr. Beck was at the green, freshly painted gate of a beautiful white villa, trying hard to open the latch from inside, and Herr Schulz, just up from his nap, was coming smilingly down the steps in his pale-yellow boots to Mr. Beck’s assistance. He wore a coloured jersey with a plain back to it, and no coat, so that if you looked at him from behind, his shoulders appeared like gigantic epaulets, and there was something which suggested a fieldmarshal in his colossal bulk. They settled down to coffee in the over-heated glass veranda, the two ladies watching every movement of his brow. “Have you had a good sleep, Herr Direktor?” they inquired in unison.

“Yes.”

There was a pause.

“Yes,” he repeated, “I have had a good sleep.”

“That’s good.”

Herr Schulz sighed. “Creative work is very exhausting. It’s not the same as giving a lecture. It’s work of the spirit and must be spun out of your own soul’s substance, so to speak. That’s what I keep telling the professors here--he, he!” he laughed maliciously.

“Entirely so,” agreed Mr. Beck. Odd: all the time that the other was talking he could see through his pretense and laugh inwardly; yet Mr. Beck’s replies were sincerely respectful.

“I don’t mince words. I tell the professors here straight what I think of them--he, he! They don’t like me.”

“No wonder,” said the guest, instinctively falling into line with the commanding personality of the other.

“At the heat of creative work I can’t write, and so I dictate my thoughts to this lady here. I wish to goodness, Grete,” he turned towards the younger of the ladies, “that you would learn to use a typewriter.” He held out his cup: the lady filled it. “To attempt to read your hand is insufferable. How do you, Herr Doktor Mackintosh, do your work--Ethnology is your subject, I think you told me?--do you use a typewriter?”

“I’ve an Underwood Portable--it’s quite small.”

“H’m. I don’t think I could ever use a small typewriter. I should want something big and solid by way of a typewriter.”

“Yes! Yes!” the two sisters exclaimed ecstatically. “You must have everything big and solid, Herr Direktor, to express your personality.”

“He, he!” he laughed, and turning to the guest--“These ladies are hero-worshippers,” he explained.

“The Herr Direktor is always making fun of us,” they said, and looked at him adoringly.

“Perhaps if you will kindly follow me upstairs it might be of interest to you to see the room where some of the more significant strands of thought occur to me of a morning. Sophie and Grete come in and draw the blinds open for me when I ring. I let the sun shine in my eyes, and as I lie in bed all the morning, I think--God! the wonderful things that come into one’s head at these times. _Ach!_ ... My family are jealous of these ladies because I spend so much time here. But I can’t work at home, with my wife and fourteen children in the house and the telephone going, doors banging. As I said to my wife when I left the house the other day, in protest: ‘It’s not the _fact_ of the door banging that upsets me. No: it’s the brazen thoughtlessness _behind_ the act, the invidious ignorance of the effect of such a bang upon an intellectual worker.’ That’s what drives me away from home to seek my real ‘I’ in solitude amid nature. Here I have peace. The ladies are so kind and thoughtful. It costs me nothing. They are only too glad to have me, and my company, they say, amply compensates them for whatever food I may consume here. Here I feel I can work. The sun shines in my window till I get up for dinner at two o’clock. After dinner I take a little nap on this tiny balcony till about a quarter past four, when I go down to coffee. After coffee--this reminds me--I take a little walk--you must come with me--till suppertime. H’m. We might as well go now.”

They went down the steps, Herr Schulz breathing heavily upon the nape of the visitor’s neck, who, turning round, asked, “Do you do most of your work after supper then?”

“No. I turn in early. Creative work is very exhausting. After supper we have a little game of chess--and then we all turn in.”

“I see. You do your writing in the morning, in bed?”

There was a pause. “I have ideas buzzing in my head for a novel, a play--a philosophical work. But what I lack is the _inner_ freedom. I am upset by the invidious perversity of the people around me, by the perfidious, shameless, iniquitous meanness of mankind!”

Grete met them at the foot of the stairs. “I suppose, Herr von Mackintosh, that you’re an American journalist who has come over to Europe to acquaint himself with the life and works of Herr Direktor Schulz?”

“Well--perhaps--yes--though of course----” mumbled the visitor.

Herr Schulz now stood half turned away from them, with his hands behind his back, brooding.

“I should be glad,” said he, turning back to them suddenly, “if you, Herr Doktor Mackintosh, would acquaint the people of America--for whom, I assure you, I cherish the warmest regard (their achievements in technical knowledge are most valuable, I am sure, and are a significant contribution to mechanical progress)--if you would acquaint them with my writings and works and ... if you would be so kind,” he concluded.

“Gladly.”

“For I must confess that I do not expect much recognition at the hands of my own people--the professors especially. I have even coined a good aphorism about these gentlemen--‘science officials,’ I call them--he, he! They don’t like me. It’s nothing new, of course. There is even the proverb: ‘No man is a hero to his own valet’--I rather meant another proverb: ‘No man is a prophet in his own country.’”

“Pardon me, Herr Direktor, but will you be good enough to acquaint me with the titles of your works.”

Herr Schulz suddenly grew earnest. “There is that--_God Triumphant_--you know that. Or--I beg your pardon--I will send you a copy of it when I get home. Then--then there are one or two little--well, youthful attempts--school essays. Since I left the Bank two years ago I have not been able to do anything at all. I lack the inner freedom.”

“No matter. With us it’s not so much the work as the personality that counts. And that, I can assure you, you have in ample measure. You even, if you will pardon me for saying so, remind me of Henrik Ibsen.”

“Of Björnson,” corrected Herr Schulz. “Ibsen was small--insignificant-looking. But Björnson was a man after my own face and stature--he, he!”

“Yes! Yes!” chimed in the ladies. “The image of Björnson!”

“Though some people say I look rather like an English lord--he, he!”

Mr. Beck had never seen an English lord and did not know what a lord exactly looked like; but he knew he did not look like Herr Direktor Schulz. He gazed at the Director as he stood there with the “epaulets.” He _was_ a great man; there was no doubt about it when you looked at him--six feet and a half high and two full spans between the shoulders!

“I shall now leave the two gentlemen to themselves,” said Grete. “They have doubtless important matters to discuss which are not for a woman’s poor mind.”

“We shall be back for supper, Grete,” rejoined Herr Schulz, “which I trust we shall enjoy the better after our walk.”

“I will do my best that it may come up to your expectation, Herr Direktor.” And the two men went through the garden into the adjacent wood, Herr Schulz breaking off dead branches (an easy enough job, the visitor reflected) as if to bear out the impression that he was, in every respect, a colossus. “You are lucky,” he said. “You’re still young, independent, can do your work without interruption. But I--I try to keep it down, but bitterness--bitterness rises here in my breast against--against people--debts, petty tyrannies--the invidious meanness, the iniquitous perfidy of mankind!” Herr Schulz broke off a dead branch. “If I had some great sorrow, I would rise to the occasion, like a tragic hero--a King Lear, let us say--with credit and glory. But no! These petty, senseless little pinpricks--the telephone ringing while I am composing a lyric, the door slamming away--these pinpricks ... these--these dirty little setbacks....”

Mr. Beck looked sympathetic. “I understand. Even Tartarin de Tarascon used to say: _Des coups d’épee, des coups d’épee, messieurs, mais pas des coups d’épingle!_”

“Don’t know. Haven’t read him.” He stopped, and suddenly, from habit, though no one was about, took off and waved his hat high in the air, as if acknowledging the greeting of somebody behind the trunk of the tree, then put it back on his head. “While I am trying hard to mount Pegasus I am pulled down ignominiously by the breeches, so to speak, because they come to tell me that baby has choked himself with orange pips. My wife has given birth to fourteen children. I ask: “What can a poet do?”

“Exactly. On that ground I am in favour of Eugenics.”

“What!” Herr Schulz broke off a dead branch. “You are in favour of that--that invidious--that--that infamous practice. You----”

“I am. I have a nightmare: over-population.”

Herr Schulz pooh-poohed this statement. “Nonsense! Look,”--his eye was searching forward past the densely growing trees; he pointed to an empty meadow,--“Look: plenty of standing room.”

“I am thinking,” the American pursued, “of the poor women who bear child after child without respite.”

“It’s their business.”

“But surely, Herr Direktor, there is many a wife who does not want any children. What are you to do with such a woman?”

“Fling her out of the window,” was the advice. “No, no, Herr Doktor Mackintosh, it’s no good arguing. My wife has had eleven children by me and three by my predecessor. I have no money. Being honest, I retired a poor man. I am creaking under a burden of debt. But I won’t stop. I will not contradict the will of God. And my old woman knows better than to show signs of unnatural reluctance. She knows her man--he, he!”

“But don’t the children get to be weaklings?”

“Not a bit of it. My youngest boy, who is only two, is the cleverest of the lot. I can talk to him as I do to you. Though naturally,” the Director hastened, “he hasn’t got your knowledge. Ethnology, is your subject, is it not?”

“Quite so.”

“Of course.”

“And your daughters, Herr Direktor?” Mr. Beck thought this might be the chance to ask Herr Schulz for the hand of Irmgard, though, on second thoughts, he resolved that it would be wiser to approach the daughter first.

“My daughters are not quite so clever. But then what can you expect of mere women? Though, Irmgard is awakening. She has vague unfocussed longings....”

“That reminds me,” chimed in the guest. “I have been reading recently the correspondence between Goethe and Schiller. There is a passage where Goethe speaks of Spring: ‘I have an objectless sorrow in Spring....’”

“I too,” said Herr Schulz. “_Ach!_ when I look at the hills and the lakes and the breaking rigour of the sky, I want--I want to go _praying_ through the world!”

“Entirely so,” said the other.

They were returning to the villa, and Grete was waiting for them on the steps. “All’s ready,” she smiled dotingly.