Chapter IX: Front Matter (9)

Lisa shook her head. "There are things which we understand and yet for which there are no words. When I stood on the plain of Marathon with Katakasianopulos that time, it seemed to me as if I distinctly understood all the pain that was to come upon us, but express it--that I could not have done."

"Ah, dear child," said Countess Betty dejectedly, "that will not help us now."

Marion came and reported once more that in Billy's room everything was quite still.

"Oh dear, oh dear," sighed Countess Betty; she could not calmly sit still, so she rose and went over to see her brother.

Count Hamilcar lay in his room on the sofa; he was keeping his eyes shut, his face was strangely sallow, and the features seemed sharper and more pointed than usual. When his sister came to a stop before him, he opened his eyes and looked at her with a glance which had the indifference of a man who to be sure surveys us, but whose thoughts and dreams are very far from us.

"Still no certainty," said Countess Betty whimperingly. "She admits nobody, saying she wants to sleep."

"Let her sleep," answered the count.

"Yes, but she might let us in," wailed the old lady further, "what is all this? all these affairs? the whole house is whispering. The Professor's family will leave today and carry the story all over the country, and you, Hamilcar, you don't say anything either."

The count raised himself slightly. "No, Betty," he said, "I say nothing, because I know nothing. We cannot prevent others from talking, but we ought not to speak until there is need for it. Let the child sleep, then she shall tell you everything, and then, Betty, I shall say my say too. Will it soon be time for breakfast?"

"Oh, Hamilcar," replied Countess Betty intimidated, "you surely won't come to breakfast, you are so unstrung."

The count laid his finger along his nose and said sharply, "I shall come, and I hope it will be on time as usual. Also I did not hear you sing a hymn: did you not have the accustomed worship?"

"No, we were so excited, you see," the old lady excused herself, but the count was dissatisfied.

"You are wrong, Betty, have your worship as you do every Sunday; but if I may request it, no reference to these happenings in the Bible reading or in the prayer, just ordinary devotions. It is not our fault that something has come in here which does not belong to us, but there is no reason why we should surrender to it: we insist on our way, and that ends it."

Wearily the count leaned back and shut his eyes; his sister looked at him with alarm. "What ails you, Hamilcar?" she asked, "you are so pale."

The count motioned impatiently with his hand. "I shall manage," he said, "circulation and heart-beat simply won't listen to us, and the only trouble is that they are forever meddling with our affairs. There is an error here in the contract that we call our life. But for the rest, it is old age, Betty, just that, and that is after all comprehensible."

Countess Betty softly left the room, and outside she said to Madame Bonnechose, much troubled, "_Chère amie_, my brother requires of us that we have devotions; there is nothing to be done, so please call the chamber-maids and the butler, _ô ma chère, il est terriblement philosophe._"

Life at Kadullen did not surrender; there were devotions, Count Hamilcar appeared at breakfast, pale and weary, but his conversation with the Professor did not falter. They spoke of the yellow race, and, as if even that were not sufficiently remote, of the Bismarck Archipelago. Embarrassed silence burdened the remaining company. Egon's and Moritz's places were vacant, for at the news of Billy's disappearance they had ridden away and were not back yet. Lisa rejected all food, and looked out and away over the heads of the breakfasters with her beautiful eyes. "Today Lisa is altogether in 'Marathon,'" Bob whispered to Erika. Even Mr. Post and Miss Demme wore a serious, even somewhat proudly repellent mien. Mr. Post had said to Miss Demme before breakfast, "It is plain to see that this so-called aristocratic culture cannot hold its ground: there is much that is rotten at the core after all." Whereupon Miss Demme, shaking her short curls, had answered, "There is simply a lack of inward freedom."

After breakfast the professorial family drove away, taking a hasty and over-affectionate farewell. Countess Betty had tears in her eyes.

"I felt," she said later, "as if Billy had died and they had just paid a visit of condolence."

Then came the afternoon hours with the steady brightness of the mid-summer day, with the quiet flaming of the bright colors in the garden-beds, the Sunday lack of happenings, the troubled sitting-together-and-waiting.

"Oh dear, if you only know what you were waiting for," sighed Countess Betty.

But upstairs behind the locked door lay the poor puzzle, and before the door stood Marion, her head leaning against it, her eyes too large for the small yellow face.

Once the quiet was disturbed by the hurrying hoof-beats of a horse; a rider galloped into the courtyard, dismounted and carried a letter in to Count Hamilcar, then rode away again, and once more Sunday stillness rested on the house.

"Now what is this new thing," wailed Countess Betty, "Hamilcar doesn't say anything either; every one sits like a sphinx, guarding his own secret."

And Lisa in her reclining chair said, lost in thought, "Even when they go and leave us they have something that pleads for help, as if they were trying to tell us: help me against myself."

"_Qui? monsieur Boris?_" asked Madame Bonnechose.

"No," replied Lisa, "Katakasianopulos."

"_Ah, ma chère, maintenant il ne s'agit pas de monsieur de Katakasianopulos_," said Madame Bonnechose with vexation.

At last after dinner, when the sun was already shining red above the rim of the forest, the news spread, "Marion is in Billy's room."

Billy had slept very soundly. Now she was lying on her bed, her hands clasped behind her neck, her cheeks reddened, her eyes wonderfully bright. She looked searchingly up at Marion, who stood before her and gazed anxiously at her.

"First of all," said Billy, "don't look at me as if I had died. You have eyes that can look at a person as if he were a spider."

--"Oh Billy, that is only because you are so wonderfully beautiful this minute."

Billy smiled a little: "Oh well, that may be so; sit down and tell your story.--So you found the slip?"

"Yes."

"Of course you took it to Auntie and your mother?"

"Yes."

"What did they say?"

"Mama said, '_la pauvre petite, elle est perdue._'"

"Ah, she said _perdue_. Do go on." Marion was ready to cry. "Why, I don't know; Auntie went in to see your father. Your cousins rode away to look for you, and Moritz said, 'If I only had that Pole in reach of my pistol.' I made camomile tea for Auntie and Mama."

"Marion, Marion," Billy interrupted, "you're not much on story-telling."

"No," said Marion, "you know you are to do the telling."

Billy grew serious: "Oh, I see, that is what they sent you here for; very well. Pull down the shades and sit down by the window and don't look at me." She shut her eyes and her face took on a tortured expression. "I went away in the night, you know; I had to. And it was quite easy. I could not let him go away alone and insulted, I should have died for pity. And then we rode, and it rained and lightened, and finally we couldn't go any farther. We went into a little inn: one of Boris's friends was there, and an old Jew, and a Jewess sat there without moving and looked at me as people sometimes look at us in frightful dreams. Then we ate something and drank champagne, Boris's friend sang and the two men played cards; but that was when it began, everything grew different then, and quite sad, and I didn't understand any more why I was there. I went into the adjoining room and lay down on the bed. Everything smelled of dust and very bad perfume; there were terrible red cushions, a child cried somewhere, and everything was horribly ugly and sad. I never thought anything could be so ugly. Boris came in. He was quite strange too. Here among the barberries he had talked before about being happy and dying, but there, there it sounded awful. And he was angry and went out and I pretended to sleep. Tell me, Marion, could you love and be tragic, or be happy and die, when one of the fat green caterpillars that we are so afraid of falls on top of you and crawls over you and you can't pull it off you and it keeps on crawling over you? See, that is the way everything was there, everything. When all was still and Boris was sleeping, I jumped out of the window and ran and ran."

"Don't you love him any more?" asked a timid voice from the window-niche.

Billy was silent a moment, then she cried passionately, "Marion, don't ask such questions. Yes, probably--of course I shall love him again, here. But I will not talk about it any more, and they are not to torment me. Go, tell them what you like, but for today I wish to be left in peace. Auntie can come and sit beside my bed, but she mustn't ask me anything, or mustn't talk about disagreeable things; she can tell about her youth if she likes."

Billy turned her face to the wall, and Marion stole softly out of the room.

Twilight was already falling when Countess Betty timidly entered her brother's room. Count Hamilcar was sitting on his sofa, somewhat shrunken, and was looking out of the window. "Well, Betty," he said without looking up.

Jules Exter

The old lady stood still before him, supporting herself by her hands on the back of a chair; the pale face of her brother alarmed her, it looked so unapproachably angry, as if he were looking down at something he despised there outside the window.

"Well?" he said again.

"She has told Marion about it," began Countess Betty, and she narrated in a low, faltering voice, with something queerly helpless in it. "The poor child," she finished, "all alone in the night, what she suffered, the wicked fellow! What do you say, Hamilcar?"

"I?" he said, turning toward his sister. His words issued now with extreme clearness, sharp and nasal. "I say, Betty: What sort of beings are we rearing here?--why, they cannot live. Why, we simply cannot intrust to them the thing that we call life. A housemaid who steals out to the stable-boy and lets him seduce her knows what she is after; but what we are bringing up is little intoxicated ghosts that tremble with longing to haunt the outside world and cannot breathe when they get out there. That is what we are rearing, Betty."

"I do not understand you, Hamilcar," said the old lady, who had grown quite pale, "she is a child, she does not know, she will forget, the others will forget, everything will come out all right. God has shielded her."

A faint flush rose into the count's pale face, and a powerful agitation made him a trifle breathless: "Our interesting gentleman has seen to it that she will not forget it, he has seen to it that this ridiculous tragedy will cling to the girl like an ugly sickness. He has deemed it proper to shoot himself yonder in the Jew's tavern--here."

He held out to his sister a piece of paper which he had been holding in his fist all the time, and which he had crumpled into a little round ball. Countess Betty took this little ball; mechanically she unfolded the paper with trembling fingers, smoothed it out, and tried to read. There were a few lines from Ladislas Worsky announcing Boris's death. Inclosed was a little slip on which Boris had written, "To Billy. Then I shall go alone. Boris."

Countess Betty let the paper drop on her knee and looked into space vacantly, almost blankly, and only when the count now burst into an angry laugh did she start up in terrible affright.

"That is a departure for you, eh?" he said, and now he spoke quickly and pantingly: "These are the people that spend their lives in standing like actors before the mirror and practising gestures for their audience. I love--how does that become me? I am unhappy, I die--how does that look, what will the others say to that? Death and life--a question of attire, and a pretty girl that loves us is also simply a part of our toilet, like a gardenia that we put into our button-hole: and we are bringing up our girls to be gardenias for such worthless fops. And then they call it Love; with that word they are fed and made drunk. A pretty estate this love and life and dying have reached, if they have come to be affairs for the nursery and for fops." He broke off, for his agitation took his breath. He leaned back wearily and shut his eyes. Countess Betty wept quietly into her handkerchief. After a pause the count began again in his quiet, slow way, "Do not cry, Betty, I lost my temper, excuse me."

Countess Betty lifted her tear-wet face to him and said beseechingly, "But she must not find it out today."

Count Hamilcar shrugged his shoulders--"Today or tomorrow, that belongs to her and to us once and for all."

Countess Betty rose, dried her eyes, and said, "How pale you are, Hamilcar, you ought to go to bed."

Again the count smiled his restrained, kind smile: "Yes, Betty, I shall go to bed. In all our distress this expedient is always left to us."

Again Billy had slept deeply and soundly. It must have been about midnight when she awoke; she felt rested and wakeful, and was hungry. Throughout the day she had crossly refused all food, now she reflected that she must eat. She resolved to go down to the housekeeper, Miss Runtze, and get something from her. Softly, so as not to waken Marion, she dressed and went down to the lower floor to knock at the housekeeper's door. It took Miss Runtze a long time to understand who was knocking, and when she did she was greatly alarmed. "Oh dear, Countess Billy! what is it? another misfortune? you want something to eat? Yes, yes, that's what comes when you won't eat anything all day."

Scolding softly to herself she preceded Billy into the pantry. There some cold chicken and a little Madeira were found. Billy began to eat ravenously. As she took the glass and sipped the Madeira with puckered lips, she blinked over the brim of the glass at the housekeeper, who stood before her, the large face, heated from sleeping, closely framed by the white night-cap, the corners of the mouth drawn down severely and disapprovingly.

"Well, Runtze, what do you say to all this?" asked Billy.

"I was very sorry for it," answered the housekeeper coldly and formally.

"Why?"

Runtze turned to the wooden frame on which the sausages hung, and began to stroke one of them gently with her hand. "Why, it's this way," she said, "a countess must be like an almond that I have soaked well in hot water and slip out of its skin, beautiful and white."

Billy had once more bent over her chicken-wing. "Oh, that is it," she said as she ate, "but Bonnechose says, _cette pauvre_ Runtze has had her own romance and her own unhappy love-affair."

The corners of the housekeeper's mouth were drawn down still lower and more tartly. "In our station all sorts of things can happen: we love for a while and then again we don't and are at peace. But with our mistresses it is different. If there is a hole in the cover of the old sofa down in my room, I don't care, and some time when I have time I mend it; but the company rooms upstairs must be spick and span, and that's what I look out for every morning."

"I believe he was a miller?" asked Billy in a businesslike tone.

"Yes, a miller."

"Fair-haired?"

"No, red-haired."

Billy, her hunger now appeased, leaned back in her chair. "Oh, red-haired, that's very pretty sometimes, and his face powdered with flour and the red hair with it. But I am done now." She stood up. "I thank you, Runtze, your meal was very good."

"That is the main thing," said the woman, "you are in love, and then again you are not, but you always have to eat."

Billy went out, but she did not feel like going back up to her room, which was so full of terrifying dreams. She walked down the corridor to the outside door which led into the garden. It was the hour at which she had been accustomed to go about of late anyway. Even to herself she seemed ghostly and uncanny. But the garden was delicious, homelike. A bit of a moon and very bright stars were in the sky. The mist had advanced from the meadow into the garden. It was creeping over the patches of turf and the beds. The flowers looked black, standing in the white mists. A very intense joy warmed Billy's heart as she found that this familiar reality had waited here for her and that she once more belonged to all this. She walked along the gravel paths, she passed her hand over the dew-laden tops of the roses and dahlias, she ate some of the currants, she stood under the barberry bushes and breathed in the moist, earthy smell that rose out of the old box there. But as she walked thus, a more powerful agitation came over her. All these spots spoke of Boris; she saw him and felt him again, and longing for him again made her wretched and sick. Slowly she had returned to the house, now she stood before the quietly sleepy garden-facade, saw Boris standing on the porch again, or coming down the garden-paths and looking into the evening sun with his dreamy eyes, and she again heard him speaking in his solemn, singing voice of the pain suffered for the mother-country. How could she go on living without all that? Suddenly it struck her that a kind of noiseless unrest was going through the sleeping house. There was light at Lisa's window, and behind the shades Lisa's shadow moved back and forth. Billy recognized distinctly the figure in the long nightdress, her loose hair hanging down her back. "Why doesn't she sleep," she thought, "why is she walking around?--after all it's my love-affair, not hers." But Aunt Betty's window next door was also lit up. And there was the shadow of Aunt Betty's big nightcap, too, and beside it another big nightcap. How the two nightcaps gently moved toward each other, swaying and quivering. Why weren't they sleeping, all of them? Was it on her account? And there on the other side, light there too, and behind the shades another shadow walking restlessly to and fro. Now the shadow approached the window, the shade was raised, the window opened, and Billy saw her father lean out: his hands tore open the shirt at his breast, and in the scanty moonlight his face seemed quite white, only the open mouth and eyes laying black shadows on it. So he stood there, drinking in the night air greedily and anxiously. Billy retreated behind the box-hedge. She was shivering with fear. Good heavens, what ailed them all! Was it not as if she had died and were now stealing about the house as a spirit, to see how all of them were mourning for her in there. Cautiously keeping to the shadows, she walked over to the avenue of maples. She felt impelled to look up from there at her balcony and the window of her room. On the bench facing her window some one was sitting asleep, his head drooping on his breast. It was Moritz. Billy stood still before him. The good lad, he had sat here and looked up at her window; the thought gave her the feeling of a delicious, warm shelter. Moritz grew restless, opened his eyes, and looked at her.

"Ah, you, Billy," he said, as if he had expected her.

Billy smiled at him. "Have you been sitting here, Moritz, to look up at my window?"

"Yes," answered Moritz crossly.

"That is nice," said Billy. She sat down on the bench beside him and leaned slightly against his arm. "Do you still love me?"

"Yes," said Moritz in the same cross tone, "but why should that matter to you?"

"Oh," said Billy plaintively, "it is very important, for I feel as if I had died, and when a person is very much loved, then ... then I think he comes to life again."

Moritz was silent a moment, and when he began to speak a great agitation made his voice hesitant and awkward. "Oh Billy, if I could help you."

"How can you, Moritz?" answered Billy, and he could hear from her voice that she was weeping. "I--I--am longing so terribly for Boris." The arm against which Billy was leaning trembled slightly; it was as if its muscles tightened.

"That--" hissed Moritz between clenched teeth, "you must not think of him ... how could he do that to you ... he had no right to die ... and not die that way, even if life had been twice as loathsome to him ... a man who loves doesn't do such a thing; that was base."

For a moment it grew quite still. Moritz merely felt the girlish body lean a little more heavily on him. At last Billy began, and it sounded like the faint wail of a child: "Is he dead?"

"What, Billy, you didn't know--"

"Yes I did, I knew it, I feel now that I knew it all the time--and even over there when I came away from him." She was silent a while, and it grew so still that they heard the night-dew trickling through the leaves. Suddenly Billy raised herself, stood before Moritz white and erect, brushed the hair from her forehead, while the moonlight rested on her face, which seemed queerly pale and calm, and said in almost a matter-of-fact tone, "Will you come along, Moritz?"

"Where to, Billy!"

"I _must_ go to him, you can see that; I left him once before. He can't stay there alone in that terrible room. The Jewess is looking at him and the children are standing in the door. No, I will not forsake him again; but alone through the forest again--please, Moritz, come along." She swayed slightly, propped herself on Moritz's shoulder, and then sank down quietly and heavily before him.--

Billy had been sick for a long time. Now it was a sunny September afternoon, and she was for the first time permitted to go out into the garden. On the patch of turf under the pear-tree Billy sat wrapped in shawls, her face haggard and transparently pale, and in her eyes the lazily relishing glance of the convalescent, who likes to let his eyes rest a long time upon objects. On the other grass-plot Lisa was lying in her reclining chair, and Madame Bonnechose sat beside her, knitting a red child's stocking. Countess Betty and Marion never stopped running along between the rows of dahlias to and from the house and the grass-plots. Count Hamilcar was taking his afternoon stroll. He walked slowly down the garden-path, leaning heavily on his cane; from time to time he stopped, sniffed the scent of the ripe fruit, the flowers, and the fading leaves, and put on a stern, angry face, for he was indeed vexed. Here lay these two beautiful creatures now, blighted by life, crumpled up, attacked from ambush. Why? Why this barbarity? Why this waste? He drew up his gray eyebrows discontentedly and blinked out at the fringe of forest which lay far away in a violet haze. Was it not perhaps a misunderstanding, his misunderstanding, this charming culture that he had carefully erected like a fence about himself and his dear ones? Could one learn how to live here? As he passed Lisa, he heard her say in her elegiac fashion,

"I do not believe that Billy can understand a great pain, or that she can enjoy it, for we must be able to enjoy even our pain."

"Enjoy, _ma chère, quelle idée_," said Madame Bonnechose, without looking up from her knitting.

The count passed on and came to a stop before Billy. "Well, how are you?" he asked a little sternly.

Billy flushed. "Thank you, papa, well. I wanted to tell you something."

"Oh, you did." The count sat down on a garden-chair facing his daughter and looked attentively at her.

"I wanted to ask you," began Billy, looking up into the pear-tree, "I wanted to ask you if you have forgiven me."

"Yes, certainly," the count slowly replied, as if he had been given a problem to solve. "When we pardon some one, we wish by doing so to help him get over something he has experienced or done. In this case, of course, that is my liveliest wish."

Billy leaned her head back satisfied, and gently moved it to and fro on her pillow as fever-patients are wont to do. "When we are sick," she said, "time goes faster, I think; what went before the sickness lies so far away. It seems to me as if I had done so much during this time of sickness, and especially I have walked a great deal, always walking, always on the way, and always such wonderfully strange roads. I don't remember much of it all, I only know one thing: I was walking along a yellow country road and ahead of me some one was walking, and somebody ahead of her, and so on; there were many figures, and they were all wearing my brown rain-coat and my muslin dress with the pink carnation figure, in fact they were all Billys, and I knew the point was for me to catch up with the Billy that was ahead of me. That seemed very important to me."

"H'm," remarked the count, "an interesting dream. Those are our mirrored images that become emancipated in our dreams. And now," he smiled at his daughter, "now you think you have caught that other Billy."

Billy still kept looking up at the pear-tree, and gently rocked her head. "Now I am quite happy," she said meditatively, "but perhaps I ought not to be. Lisa says that any one who has a great grief should stand before it like a soldier on guard."

Count Hamilcar angrily thrust out his underlip and said sharply, "To stand before one's follies like a soldier on guard is certainly not commendable."

Billy did not seem to hear him. She still kept on dreamily talking to the little golden-yellow pears that hung over her: "And to be faithless, to be faithless is so terribly villainous."

The count bent forward, lifted his extended index finger in the sunshine, and said slowly and impressively, "My daughter, provision is made that we shall not be faithless, but remain true, to our sad or foolish experiences. They run after us in any case. Perhaps we are continually changing, and that is well. But the score always remains the same. To come back to your remarkable dream, when the one Billy has successfully caught the other Billy, you can be sure that the old Billy gives all the burdens she has had to carry to the new one to take with her. That is and must be so."

"All--for ever," said Billy under her breath, and she looked at her father with a glance of such helpless fear that he dropped his eyes, for a keen compassion caused him almost physical pain.

"Well, well," he rejoined, "when there are as many Billys as you have before you, there cannot fail to be many pleasant things to take along."

"Yes, don't you think lots of good things must still come?" cried Billy. The count looked up in surprise. He saw that Billy had raised her arms and clasped her hands over her head, and she was smiling a wonderfully expectant smile.

"Oh, that's it," he murmured, "why, then, in that case--" He rose, brushed Billy's cheeks hastily with two fingers, and slowly walked back up the garden-path. Not much need for consolation in that quarter. This child was far ahead of him in her faith in life; there was nothing further for him to say. He sat down on the bench at the edge of the meadow, wishing to sun himself. How they loved life, these poor children, and how they trusted it! Yes, and life wants that: to be loved, so as to be cruel. Perhaps a good method, always supposing there is a purpose in it. He gently passed his hand over brow and eyes: if only sympathy were not so exhausting, always to share the lives of others, although--to be sure, three-fourths of our life lies somewhere in the lives of others. If we cannot share that, only one-fourth is left to us, and that is too little for intoxication, that is almost abstemiousness. Oh, very well, abstemiousness generally results in comprehension, only in this case comprehension is not so simple. He squeezed his eyelids together as if wishing to gather into his eyes and crush to powder the flaming gold of the afternoon light. How _was_ that?--he was trying to recall a verse in Homer. His memory left him in the lurch, too: how does it go where Hector's soul is wailing aloud because it must give up its beloved life? He could not recall it. Poor devil, by the way, right out of the midst of his intoxication. One of the great flies now came flying past Count Hamilcar with softly buzzing wings. He went "brrr" with his lips and smiled a really cheerful smile as he watched how this queer bundle of gauzy wings and golden gossamer floated deliriously through the sunshine. "Mad with life," he thought, "if all this only has some object. At any rate there is more chance for meaning than for the lack of it, although--if I am a digit in the great calculation, then to be sure I have a meaning, but that is no reason at all why the result under the black line must have a significance for me." The point was to be a digit in the result under that line. However, thinking exhausted him. Why must we always think?--another prejudice. Let us not think, but breathe. He leaned back and opened his mouth a little. Breathing too might have been made an easier and simpler affair. He was cold, doubtless he would have to walk a little further; he tried to rise, but his legs would not carry him. He stretched out his long arms as if wishing to get an armful of sunshine, and his face assumed a vexed, anxious expression; then he fell back, became quite still, and collapsed, leaning a trifle crookedly over the arm of the bench in that weary movement which the first moment of death brings to man, before its chill severity comes. The sun was already low, bathing the mute figure in ruddy light, a gentle zephyr stirred a gray tuft of hair on the pale temple, and the big fly flew back again with a buzz past the white nose, motionless now. Round about, the ripe fruit fell heavily upon the turf, making the whir of the field-crickets cease for a moment. But yonder under the pear-tree sat Billy, looking into the evening sun with feverishly shining eyes, and still smiling her expectant, longing smile.

THOMAS MANN

* * * * * *

TONIO KRÖGER (1902)

TRANSLATED BY BAYARD QUINCY MORGAN, PH.D.
Assistant Professor of German, University of Wisconsin

The winter sun, only a poor make-believe, hung milky pale behind cloud strata above the cramped city. Wet and draughty were the gable-fringed streets, and now and then there fell a sort of soft hail, not ice and not snow.

School was out. Over the paved yard and from out the barred portal streamed the throngs of the liberated. Big boys dignifiedly held their books tightly under their left armpits, while their right arms rowed them against the wind toward the noon meal; little fellows set off on a merry canter, so that the icy slush spattered, and the traps of Science rattled in their knapsacks of seal leather. But here and there all caps flew off, and a score of reverent eyes did homage to the hat of Odin and the beard of Jove--on some senior teacher striding along with measured step ...

"Is it you at last, Hans?" said Tonio Kröger, who had long been waiting on the drive; and with a smile he stepped up to his friend, who was just coming out of the gate in conversation with other comrades, and who was on the point of going off with them.

"What is it?" asked the latter, looking at Tonio;--"Oh yes, that's so; well, let's take a little walk, then."

Tonio was silent, and his eyes grew sad. Had Hans forgotten, not to think of it again until this minute, that they were going to walk a bit together this noon? And he himself had been looking forward to it almost uninterruptedly since the plan was made.

"Well, so long, fellows," said Hans Hansen to his comrades. "I'm going to take a little walk with Kröger." And they turned to the left, while the others sauntered off to the right.

Hans and Tonio had time to go walking after school, because they both belonged to houses in which dinner was not eaten until four o'clock. Their fathers were great merchants who held public offices and were a power in the city. For many a generation the Hansens had owned the extensive lumber yards down along the river, where mighty steam saws cut up the logs amid buzzing and hissing. And Tonio was Consul Kröger's son, whose grain sacks were carted through the streets day after day, with the broad black trade mark on them; the big ancient house of his ancestors was the most princely of the whole town. The two friends had to take off their caps constantly, because of their many acquaintances, and indeed these fourteen-year-old boys did not always have to bow first.

Both had hung their school-bags over their shoulders, and both were dressed warmly and well; Hans in a short seaman's jacket, over the shoulders and back of which lay the broad blue collar of his sailor suit, Tonio in a gray belted top-coat. Hans wore a Danish sailor's cap with short ribbons, a tuft of his flaxen hair peeping out from under it. He was extraordinarily handsome and well formed, broad of shoulder and narrow of hip, with unshaded, keen, steel-blue eyes. From under Tonio's round fur cap, on the other hand, there looked out of a swarthy face, with very clearly marked southern features, dark and delicately shaded eyes under excessively heavy lids, dreamy and a trifle timid. Mouth and chin were both fashioned with uncommonly soft lines. He walked carelessly and unevenly, whereas Hans's slender legs in their black stockings moved so elastically and rhythmically.

Tonio did not speak. He was grieved. Drawing together his rather slanting eyebrows, and holding his lips pursed for whistling, he looked into space with his head on one side. This attitude and expression were peculiar to him.

Suddenly Hans thrust his arm under that of Tonio with a sidelong glance at him, for he understood quite well what the matter was. And although Tonio persisted in silence during the next few steps, yet he was all at once amazingly softened.

"You know I hadn't forgotten, Tonio," said Hans, looking down at the walk before him, "but I simply thought probably nothing could come of it today, because it's so wet and windy, you know. But that doesn't bother me at all, and I think it's fine that you waited for me in spite of it. I had begun to think you had gone on home, and was vexed ..."

At these words Tonio's entire being began to leap and shout.

"Why, then we'll go over the ramparts now," he said with agitated voice. "Over the Mill Rampart and the Holsten Rampart, and then I'll take you home that way, Hans ... Why no, it doesn't matter if I go home alone then; next time you'll go with me."

At bottom he did not believe very completely in what Hans had said, and he felt distinctly that the latter assigned only half as much importance to this walk as he. But yet he saw that Hans regretted his forgetfulness and was making it a point to conciliate him. And he was far from wishing to impede the conciliation.

The fact was that Tonio loved Hans Hansen and had already suffered much for his sake. He who loves most is the weaker and must suffer--this simple and bitter doctrine of life his fourteen-year-old spirit had already accepted; and he was so constituted that he marked well all such experiences, and as it were jotted them down inwardly, and indeed he had a certain pleasure in them, though to be sure without ordering his conduct accordingly and so deriving practical benefit from them. Furthermore, his nature was such that he deemed such teachings much more important and interesting than the knowledge which was forced upon him in school; during the class hours in the vaulted Gothic school-rooms he applied himself mostly to tasting the sensations of such bits of insight to the lees, and thinking them out in their entirety. This occupation afforded the same kind of satisfaction as when he would walk up and down his room with his violin (for he played the violin), letting the soft tones, as soft as he could produce them, mingle with the plashing of the fountain which rose in a flickering jet under the branches of the old walnut-tree in the garden below.

The fountain, the old walnut, his violin, and far away the sea, the Baltic, whose summer dreams he could listen to in the long vacation--these were the things he loved, with which he encompassed himself, as it were, and among which his inward life ran its course; things whose names may be employed with good effect in verse, and which did actually ring out time and again in the verses which Tonio Kröger occasionally composed.

This fact, that he possessed a note-book with verse of his own in it, had become known through his own fault, and it injured him greatly both with his fellows and his teachers. The son of Consul Kröger thought it on the one hand stupid and base to condemn him for writing verses, and he despised on that account both fellows and teachers, whose bad manners were always repellent to him, and whose personal weaknesses he detected with strange penetration. On the other hand, he himself found it really an improper dissipation to write verse, and so had to agree to some extent with all those who regarded it as a doubtful occupation. But this could not make him give it up.

As he wasted his time at home, was slow and generally inattentive in class hours, and had a bad record with his teachers, he always brought home the most wretched reports; at which his father, a tall, carefully dressed gentleman with meditative blue eyes, who always wore a wild flower in his button-hole, shewed himself both incensed and distressed. But to his mother, his beautiful mother with the black hair, whose name was Consuelo and who was altogether so different from the other ladies of the town, because Tonio's father had once fetched her from clear down at the bottom of the map--to his mother his reports were absolutely immaterial.

Tonio loved his dark, passionate mother, who played the piano and the mandolin so wonderfully, and he was happy that she did not grieve over his doubtful position among men. On the other hand, however, he realized that his father's anger was much more estimable and respectable, and although he was censured by his father, he was at bottom quite in agreement with him, whereas he found the cheerful indifference of his mother a trifle unprincipled. At times his thoughts would run about thus: "It is bad enough that I am as I am, and will not and cannot alter myself, negligent, refractory, and intent on things that nobody else thinks of. At least it is proper that they should seriously chide and punish me for it, and not pass it over with kisses and music. After all, we aren't gipsies in a green wagon, but decent folks, Consul Krögers, the Kröger family" ... And not infrequently he would think: "Well, why am I so peculiar and at outs with everything, at loggerheads with my teachers and a stranger among the boys? Look at them, the good pupils and those of honest mediocrity. They don't think the teachers funny, they write no verses, and they only think what others think and what you can say out loud. How proper they must feel, how satisfied with everything and everybody. That must be nice ... But what ails me, and how will all this end?"

This fashion of scrutinizing himself and his relation to life played an important part in Tonio's love for Hans Hansen. First of all he loved him because he was handsome; but also because he seemed to be his own antipodes and converse in all respects. Hans Hansen was an excellent scholar and at the same time a lively fellow who rode, swam, and played athletic games like a hero and rejoiced in universal popularity. The teachers were devoted to him almost to the point of affection, called him by his Christian name, and advanced him in every way; his comrades were eager for his favor, and on the street ladies and gentlemen would stop him, seize him by the tuft of flaxen hair that peeped out from under his Danish sailor's cap, saying, "Good day, Hans Hansen with your pretty tuft! Are you still _Primus_? Remember me to father and mother, my fine boy ..."

That was Hans Hansen, and ever since Tonio Kröger first knew him he felt a longing as often as he beheld him, an envious longing that dwelt above his breast and burned there. "Oh, if one had such blue eyes," he thought, "and lived such an orderly life and in such happy communion with the whole world as you do! You are always occupied in some decorous and universally respected way. When you have done your tasks for school, you take riding lessons or work with the fret-saw, and even in the long vacation on the seashore your time is taken up with rowing, sailing, and swimming; while I lie lost in idle thought on the sand, staring at the mysteriously changing expressions that flit over the countenance of the sea. And that is why your eyes are so clear. To be like you." ...

He did not make the attempt to be like Hans Hansen, and perhaps he did not even mean this wish very seriously. But he did have an aching desire to be loved by Hans, just as he was, and he sued for that love in his fashion, a slow and intimate, devoted, passive and sorrowful fashion, but a sorrow which can burn more deeply and consumingly than all the swift passionateness one might have expected in view of his foreign appearance.

And he did not sue wholly in vain; for Hans, who by the way respected a certain superiority in Tonio, a skill in speech which enabled him to give utterance to difficult matters, understood quite well that an unusually strong and tender affection was vibrating here, showed himself grateful, and gave Tonio many a happy hour by meeting him half-way--but also many a pang of jealousy and disappointment, the pain of a vain endeavor to find a common spiritual ground. For the remarkable thing was that Tonio, although he envied Hans Hansen for his way of living, constantly tried to bring him around to his own, which he could never do for more than a few minutes, and then only in seeming.

"I've just been reading something wonderful, something splendid," he said. They were walking along, eating fruit tablets from a bag which they had purchased at Iverson's on Mill Street for ten pfennig. "You must read it, Hans, it is _Don Carlos_ by Schiller. I'll lend it to you, if you wish."

"No, no," said Hans Hansen, "never mind, Tonio, that's not my style. I stick to my horse-books, you know. Splendid illustrations in them, I tell you. Sometime I'll show them to you at the house. They are snap-shots, and you see the horses trotting and galloping and jumping, in every position, such as you would never see in life because they move too fast."

"In all positions?" asked Tonio politely. "Yes, that's fine, but as for _Don Carlos_, it is beyond all comprehension. There are passages in it, you'll see, that are so beautiful that it gives you a jerk, as if something had suddenly burst."

"Burst?" asked Hans Hansen. "How do you mean?"

"For example, there is the passage where the king has wept because he has been deceived by the marquis--but the marquis has only deceived him for love of the prince, you understand, for whom he is sacrificing himself. And now the news that the king has wept comes out of his cabinet into the ante-room. 'Wept? The king has wept?' All the courtiers are terribly taken aback, and it just goes through you, for he's an awfully stiff and strict king. But you understand so clearly that he did weep, and I really feel sorrier for him than for the marquis and the prince together. He's always so utterly alone and without love, and now he thinks he has found a friend, and the friend betrays him ..."

Hans Hansen cast a sidelong glance into Tonio's face, and something in that face must surely have won him over to this subject, for he suddenly thrust his arm into Tonio's again and asked,

"Why, how does he betray the king, Tonio?"

Tonio was stirred to action.

"Why, the fact is," he began, "that all letters to Brabant and Flanders ..."

"There comes Erwin Immerthal," said Hans.

Tonio was silent. "If only the earth would swallow him up," he thought, "this Immerthal. Why must he come and disturb us? I only hope he won't go along and talk about his riding lessons the whole hour"--For Erwin Immerthal had riding lessons also. He was the son of a bank director and lived here outside the gate. With his crooked legs and his eyes like slits he came along the avenue to meet them, his school-bag already safe at home.

"Hello, Immerthal," said Hans. "I'm taking a little walk with Kröger."

"I have to go into town," said Immerthal, "on some errands. But I'll walk a piece with you ... Those are fruit tablets, aren't they? Thanks, yes, I'll eat a couple. We take another lesson tomorrow, Hans."--He meant the riding lesson.

"Fine!" said Hans. "You know, I'm going to get the leather spats now, because I got A on my exercise last week."

"I suppose you aren't taking riding lessons yet, Kröger?" asked Immerthal, and his eyes were only a pair of shining slits.

"No," answered Tonio with quite uncertain accent.

"You ought to ask your father, Kröger," remarked Hans Hansen, "to let you take lessons too."

"Ayah," said Tonio both hastily and indifferently. For a moment he had a lump in his throat, because Hans had called him by his surname; and Hans seemed to feel this, for he said in explanation:

"I call you Kröger, because your Christian name is so crazy; excuse me, but I don't like it. Tonio ... that's no name at all. But then it's not your fault, of course not."

"No, I suppose the chief reason why you are named that is because it sounds foreign and is uncommon," said Immerthal, acting as if he wanted to patch things up.

Tonio's mouth quivered. He pulled himself together and said,

"Yes, it is a silly name, and Heaven knows I wish I were named Heinrich or Wilhelm, you can take my word for that. But the reason is that a brother of my mother, for whom I was christened, is named Antonio; for you know my mother came from over there ..."

Then he said no more, and let the other two talk of horses and harness. Hans had taken Immerthal's arm, and was talking with a fluent sympathy which never could have been aroused in him for _Don Carlos_ ... From time to time Tonio felt rising and tickling his nose a desire to weep; and he had difficulty in controlling his chin, which constantly tried to quiver.

Hans did not like his name--what was to be done? His own name was Hans, and Immerthal's was Erwin; very well, those were universally recognized names that no one thought strange. But "Tonio" was something foreign and uncommon. Yes, there was something uncommon about him in every respect, whether he would or no, and he was alone and excluded from regular and ordinary folks, although he was no gipsy in a green wagon, but a son of Consul Kröger, of the Kröger family ... But why did Hans call him Tonio so long as they were alone, if he began to be ashamed of him when a third person came up? At times Hans was close to him, even won over, it seemed. "How does he betray him, Tonio?" he had asked, and taken his arm. But then when Immerthal came, Hans sighed with relief just the same, forsook him, and found no difficulty in reproaching him with his foreign name. How it hurt to have to see through all this!... At bottom, Hans Hansen liked him a little when they were alone together, he knew that. But when a third person came, Hans was ashamed of it and sacrificed him. And he was alone again. He thought of King Philip. The king had wept ...

"For heaven's sake," said Erwin Immerthal, "now I really must be off into town. Good-by, fellows, and thanks for the candy." With that he jumped upon a bench that stood beside the street, ran along it with his crooked legs, and trotted off.

"I like Immerthal," said Hans emphatically. Hans had a spoiled and self-conscious way of making known his likes and antipathies, of distributing them with royal favor, as it were ... And then he went on to speak of the riding lessons, for he was now in that vein. Besides, it was now not far to the Hansens' house; the walk over the ramparts did not take very long. They held their caps tightly, and bowed their heads before the strong damp wind that creaked and groaned in the bare branches of the trees. And Hans Hansen talked, while Tonio interjected no more than a mechanical "Oh" or "Oh yes" from time to time, nor felt any joy that Hans had taken his arm again in the ardor of speech; for that was only a seeming advance, without significance.

Then they forsook the park strip along the ramparts not far from the station, watched a train puff by with clumsy haste, counted the cars to pass the time, and waved to the man who sat perched high on the last car, muffled in furs. And then they came to a stop on the square with the lindens in front of the villa of Hansen the wholesaler, and Hans showed in detail what fun it was to stand on the bottom of the garden gate and swing back and forth until the hinges fairly screeched. But hereupon he took his leave.

"Well, now I must go in," he said. "Good-by, Tonio. Next time I'll go home with you, be sure of that."

"Good-by, Hans," said Tonio, "it was nice to go walking."

The hands they clasped were quite wet and rusty from the garden gate. But when Hans looked into Tonio's eyes, something like penitent reflection came into his handsome face.

"And by the way, I'm going to read _Don Carlos_ pretty soon," he said quickly. "That about the king in his cabinet must be fine." Then he put his school-bag under his arm and ran off through the front yard. Before he disappeared into the house he turned once more and nodded.

And Tonio Kröger went away quite transfigured and on wings. The wind was at his back, but that was not the only reason why he moved away so lightly.