Chapter VI

The night after, he joined them at the dance in the City Hall. It seemed that the entrance ticket had already been provided for him by the girl. But when, pocket-book in hand, he was about to give her the money, she flared up--“Don’t give it me here!”

And he smarted. When he came up to her in the ball-room he saw that she was red and angry, standing with her brother Hellmuth with the double nose, who was also red and angry. They could not secure an empty table and stood in the drafty doorway, jammed by the crowd. “Will you put this into your pocket?” She handed him her little vanity-bag. The band struck up a _Wienerwalzer_, and he asked her. It didn’t go as well as it should have done, after two lessons. “Beat the time with the right heel,” he remembered Herr Loewe’s injunction. And he _did_ beat it, and with the right heel. Only he could not get it exactly in time, and the left heel came down of itself just as the right one was due, every time. They had only done a few paces. “No, that won’t do,” she said, releasing him.

Two lessons gone for naught! However that may be, he must not miss the chance--perhaps the last--of proposing to her: “Shall I now?”

But she looked angry. Her (father’s) small eyes looked angry, as if at the perfidious meanness, the invidious perversity of mankind. Her sister Elsa’s fiancé, a young man employed at the local circus, was making funny little signs to Irmgard, to amuse her. But she never looked. Mr. Beck gave up talking to her.

“Ah! Mister Captain Mackintosh!” A man whom he had met the night before came up to him and, taking him by the arm, imparted to him that he was looking for a certain Dr. Schmidt. And for an hour Mr. Beck was dragged about all round the rooms and through the vestibule and down the restaurant and up the stairs all round the gallery, in search of the elusive Dr. Schmidt whom he had never seen nor even wished to see. They did not find Dr. Schmidt; and it is to be presumed that Mr. Beck died without seeing him; but he killed, however disagreeably and unprofitably, one hour of his mental agony.

Exhausted, he sat down in the gallery and watched the crowded ball-room heave in whirling couples to the mighty rhythm of the _Danube Waltz_. The big orchestra put a dashing emphasis into the mighty regularly whirling rhythm. “For you the hesitant irregularities of jazz: for us the regular abandon of the _Wienerwalzer_,” these whirling sounds and faces seemed to sing aloft. And behold, a military figure holding in his martial arms a slim fair lady went round and round, tapping the time with his right heel. And there again--an elderly couple: they had placed their hands on each other’s shoulders at arms’ length and went round, the man tapping his heel. A postal official whirled round with his girl, his face all of a smile. These multitudinous couples did not bang into one another as often as one might expect. Like so many spinning-tops, they each turned on their particular axis, just clearing each other, while the music lashed them on into a frenzied passion of regular rhythm. Mr. Beck leaned forward, watching down into the vulgar opulence of the gilded ball-room--stunned, fallen into a trance or reverie. And the conglomeration for some reason recalled to him those crowded frescoes packed with human figures that one sees in Botticelli. Away, away was the postal official. And there, nearing his end of the room, was Irmgard, the beautiful girl!

When at length he returned to the joint table, Irmgard was not there; it seemed as if she avoided him. Mr. Beck caught a sentence which had passed between Elsa and her fiancé: “It’s too late--he won’t come now. Poor Irmgard!” The betrothed young couple took pity on the lonely Mr. Beck and, with the aid of another young couple, got him to join in a complicated dance in which Mr. Beck had to describe elaborate, intricate figures with his tired legs--and felt like a fool. Irmgard, with an angry frown, danced with a pale young man with a pinched look. Mr. Beck paced round alone, pulling out his watch and rehearsing mentally how, in parting, he would thank the betrothed young couple for their kindness to him and hand Irmgard back her vanity-bag, without a word--and go. They talked of wanting to go on to a coffee-house to drink coffee till eight in the morning, by way of doing justice to the Carnival, but Mr. Beck only wanted to get into bed and to calm his poor nerves. The hours dragged. It was four; then it was five--but still the dancing went on. At last he buttonholed the circus man. “I want to go home,” he pleaded wearily.

“No, no! We’re staying on till six. Surely, Herr von Mackintosh, you don’t want to be guilty of ruining our little Carnival party?”

Mr. Beck did not want to ruin anything and as a cultivated man in foreign parts, deemed it only right not to do anything which might cause them, in their own poor light, to think him ill-mannered. So he paced on by himself round and round (he was afraid that if he sat down he might fall asleep), now and then pulling out his watch and yawning into his white-cuffed hand. The clock struck half-past seven. It struck eight o’clock. Somebody was making a collection for the band, and spoke: “If we pay them they’ll play on till nine.” A sleepy waiter looked angrily at Mr. Beck. “All d-ham foolishness!” said he, evidently recognising an American in him. “All d-ham foolishness! The lights are only paid for till half-past eight.” He was falling over from fatigue; his eyes were closing of themselves. He was a tottering figure in the corner. Mr. Beck was still pacing about, waiting eagerly for the Schulz’s to make a start--when suddenly he ran into the circus man. “The ladies have just gone home with their brother Hellmuth and asked me to say good-bye for them.”

“What! They’ve gone?”

He was staggered by the news--his heart all weeping tears. In the large vestibule there was a draught, and as he pressed his way through the crowd, Mr. Mackintosh Beck felt all nasty inside--as if he had just arrived at the Hook of Holland after a particularly vile crossing from Harwich. While waiting for his coat and hat in the icy cloak-room with the doors swinging to and fro, he had a chilly feeling in his bosom, as though some improvident maid had left open all windows and doors and a tremendous draught was sweeping the length and breadth of his inner rooms. When he came out of the City Hall it was morning, and a round white mist stood on the sharp mountain edge, like an enormous balloon. The snow fell in heaps; it seemed as though a new winter spell were beginning. He shivered in his coat and felt a dull ache in the pit of his stomach. As he walked home it was bitterly cold, and a sharp wind blew from across the river. And suddenly it seemed as if the mountains pressed their awful weight upon his chest, stifling his breath, so that he could have screamed in anguish--rapped his heart....

He could feel the vanity-bag in his side-pocket, and thought: “That girl ought to be whipped!” And to be treated like that by a mere _Backfish_! It came over him--the urgent wish to press all of his latent claims to renown upon her. Impudent nincompoop! The tears in his throat rolled back at this rebellious thought. He shaped in his mind the letter he would write to Frau von Kranich: “I return the vanity-bag which---- I am sorry that your good intentions have involved me----” No, that would never do. “Of all the rude girls that I have ever met----” No, no, that might lead to unpleasantness, who knows? Suddenly her brother Hellmuth with the swollen double nose rose before him, threatening. Mr. Beck did not know for a fact whether Hellmuth had been a student and so was a ready hand at sword-duelling. He assumed, nevertheless, that Herr Direktor Schulz, despite his record, had not begrudged his son a university education, seeing how extraordinarily cheap it was on the continent of Europe. He could not remember having seen any sword-cuts on Hellmuth’s face. But he recalled the swollen double nose, which, though no direct indication of unusual ferocity, yet did argue a certain dare-devilry, a love of courting danger--which well might mean danger for Mr. Mackintosh Beck. “Damn!” he thought, “blast the whole bally crew of them!”

He pictured the duel, the rising in the cold early morning--a sword in his vitals--his death. “No,” he thought, “the blooming girl isn’t worth it!”

Suddenly he felt old, too old to take on such risks. He understood that young girls like Irmgard could not love men like himself. He crossed the bridge, and slowly began the ascent to his _pension_. It was still snowing, and the sky looked bleak, solitary, senseless. And he thought: “I am glad; I am glad.”

Going back to his room--all upside down from the erewhile ardour of dressing--he remembered how he had looked forward to both nights and had dressed with particular care. It had seemed to him then that he looked very smart. Now the new dinner-jacket looked loose, the shirt crumpled, the new patent leather shoes cracked. He sat down at the table and saw his face in the glass: it was sallow, haggard--as though he had been travelling for three nights on end without a sleeper. What mental suffering could do! And the powder on the upper lip had melted away and revealed the red patches from the scraping blade. He noticed that whenever he shaved with particular care it always came out worse. His hair was turning very grey--there was a bald patch on the crown. He remembered how ugly he had looked in the glass at the tailor’s--and understood.

And now, with fluttering heart, he opened the vanity-bag--a plain little wallet of pink chiffon--and beheld its contents: a pinch of greased powder, sweet-smelling, in a scrap of crumpled paper. And he thought she never powdered! Two white spotless maiden handkerchiefs with the initial “I” and three little flowers around embroidered in blue silk. In another pocket, a crumpled bit of white paper containing rouge. How touching! And behold! a long hair--Irmgard’s. He took it up between his fingers and pressed it tight, and it seemed to coil, like a snake, as if alive. And in that cruel, treacherous movement also was Irmgard.

But what was this? A photo of a young good-looking student. Another photo--Irmgard and the student. A third photo--Irmgard, Elsa, Hellmuth, and the student. It dawned upon him suddenly how during both nights she had been strangely distracted; he recalled the words and looks that passed between her and her family. He understood: he perfectly understood....

And the whole vanity-bag smelled sweetly--like her sweet seventeen. By a simple flash of intuition into her being, he understood how she had moods and a life independent of his, and that it was right that it was so. In this her first Carnival dance, long since prepared for, she had been disappointed, and not the least disappointed in him, and perhaps also was crying now. And suddenly his sight was blurred. He took off his horn-rimmed spectacles and wiped the glass with his big handkerchief....