Chapter VI (1)

When George stepped on to the summer heat of the pavement out of the cool central restaurant where he had been accustomed to take his meals for some weeks, and started on his way to Heinrich's apartment, his mind was made up to start his trip into the mountains within the next few days. Anna was quite prepared for it, and appreciating that the monotonous life of the last few weeks was beginning to make him feel bored and mentally restless had even herself advised him to go away for a few days.

They had returned to Vienna six weeks ago on a rainy evening and George had taken Anna straight from the station to the villa, where Anna's mother and Frau Golowski had been waiting for the overdue travellers for the last two hours in a large but fairly empty room, with a dilapidated yellowish carpet under the dismal light of a hanging lamp. The door on to the garden verandah stood open. Outside the pattering rain fell on to the wooden floor and the warm odour of moist leaves and grass swept in. George inspected the resources of the house by the light of a candle which Frau Golowski carried in front of him, while Anna reclined exhausted in the corner of the large sofa covered with fancy calico and was only able to give tired answers to her mother's questions. George had soon taken leave of Anna with mingled emotion and relief, stepped with her mother into the carriage which was waiting outside, and while they rode over the dripping streets into the town he had given the embarrassed woman a faithful if forced account of the unimportant events of the last days of their trip. He was at home an hour after midnight, refrained from waking up Felician, who was already asleep, and with an undreamt-of joy stretched himself out in his long-lost bed for his first sleep at home after so many nights.

Since then he had gone out into the country to see Anna nearly every day. If he did not feel tempted to make little trips round the summer resorts in the neighbourhood he could easily get to her in an hour on his cycle. But he more frequently took the horse tram and would then walk through the little villages till he came to the low green painted railings behind which stood the modest country house with its three-cornered wooden gable in the small slightly sloping garden. Frequently he would choose a way which ran above the village between garden and fields and would enjoy climbing up the green slope till he came to a seat on the border of the forest, from which he could get a clear view of the straggling little place lying in the tiny valley. He saw from here straight on to the roof beneath which Anna lived, deliberately allowed his gentle longing for the love who was so near him to grow gradually more and more vivid till he hurried down, opened the tiny door and stepped over the gravel straight through the garden towards the house. Frequently, in the more sultry hours of the afternoon, when Anna was still asleep, he would sit in the covered wooden verandah which ran along the back of the house in a comfortable easy-chair covered with embroidered calico, take out of his pocket a book he had brought with him and read. Then Frau Golowski in her neat simple dark dress would step out of the dark inner room and in her gentle somewhat melancholy voice, with a touch of motherly kindness playing around her mouth, would report to him about Anna's health, particularly whether she had had a good appetite and if she had had a proper walk up and down the garden. When she had finished she always had something to see to in the kitchen or about the house and disappeared. Then while George was going on with his reading a fine St. Bernard dog which belonged to people in the neighbourhood would come out, greet George with serious tearful eyes, allow him to stroke her short-haired skin and lie down gratefully at his feet. Later, when a certain stern whistle which the animal knew well rang out, it would get up with all the clumsiness of its condition, seem to apologise by means of a melancholy look for not being able to stay longer and slink away. Children laughed and shouted in the garden next door. Now and again an indiarubber ball came over the wall. A pale nursemaid would then appear at the bottom gate and shyly request to have the ball thrown back again. Finally, when it had grown cooler, Anna's face would show itself at the window that opened on to the verandah, her quiet blue eyes would greet George, and soon she would come out herself in a light house-dress. They would then walk up and down the garden along the faded lilac-bushes and the blooming currant-bushes, usually on the left side, which was bounded by the open meadow, and they would take their rest on the white seat close to the top end of the garden, underneath the pear-tree. It was only when supper was served that Frau Golowski would appear again, shyly take her place at the table and tell them if asked all the news about her family; about Therese, who had now gone on to the staff of a Socialist journal; about Leo, who being less occupied by his military duties than before was enthusiastically pursuing his mathematical studies; and about her husband, who while he looked on with resignation from the corner of a smoky café at the chess battles of the indefatigable players, always saw new vistas of regular employment display themselves only to close again immediately. Frau Rosner only paid an occasional visit and usually went away soon after George's appearance. On one occasion, on a Sunday afternoon, the father had come as well and had a conversation with George about the weather and scenery, just as though they had met by chance at the house of a mutual acquaintance who happened to be ill. It was only to humour her parents that Anna kept herself in complete retirement in the villa. For she herself had grown to lose all consciousness of any false position, feeling just as though she had been George's wedded wife, and when the latter, tired of the monotonous evenings, asked her for permission to bring Heinrich along sometimes she had agreeably surprised him by immediately expressing her agreement.

Heinrich was the only one of George's more intimate friends who still remained in town in these oppressive July days. Felician, who had been as affectionate with his brother since his return home as though the comradeship of their boyhood had been kindled afresh, had just taken his diplomatic examination and was staying with Ralph Skelton on the North Sea. Else Ehrenberg, who had spoken to George once soon after his return by her brother's sick-bed in the sanatorium, had been for a long time at Auhof am See with her mother. Oskar too, whom his unfortunate attempt at suicide had cost his right eye, though it was said to have saved him his lieutenant's commission, had left Vienna with a black shade over his blinded eye. Demeter Stanzides, Willy Eissler, Guido Schönstein, Breitner, all were away, and even Nürnberger, who had declared so solemnly that he did not mean to leave the town this year, had suddenly vanished.

George had visited him before any one else after he came back, to bring him some flowers from his sister's grave in Cadenabbia. He had read Nürnberger's novel on his journey. The scene was laid in a period which was now almost past; the same period, so it seemed to George, as that of which old Doctor Stauber had once spoken to him. Nürnberger had thrown a grim light over that sickly world of lies in which adult men passed for mature, old men for experienced, and people who did not offend against any written law for righteous; in which love of freedom, patriotism and humanitarianism passed _ipso facto_ for virtue, even though they had grown out of the rotten soil of thoughtlessness or cowardice. He had chosen for the hero of his book a sterling and energetic man who, carried away by the hollow phrases of the period, saw things as they were from the height which he had reached and seized with horror at the realization of his own dizzy ascent, precipitated himself into the void out of which he had come. George was considerably astonished that a man who had created this strong and resounding piece of work should subsequently confine himself to casual cynical comments on the progress of the age, and it was only a phrase of Heinrich's to the effect that wrath but not loathing was fated to be fertile that made him understand why Nürnberger's work had been stopped for ever. The lonely hour in the Cadenabbia cemetery on that dark blue late afternoon had made as strange and deep an impression upon George as though he had actually known and appreciated the being by whose grave he stood. It had hurt him that the gold lettering on the grey stone should have grown faint and that the beds of turf should have been overgrown with weeds, and after he had plucked a few yellow-blue pansies for his friend he had gone away with genuine emotion. He had cast a glance from the other side of the cemetery door through the open window of the death-chamber, and saw a female body on a bier between high burning candles, covered with a black pall as far as her lips, while the daylight and candlelight ran into one another over its small waxen face.

Nürnberger had not been unmoved by this sympathetic attention on the part of George and on that day they spoke to each other more intimately than they had ever done before.

The house in which Nürnberger lived was in a narrow gloomy street which led out of the centre of the town and mounted in terraces towards the Danube. It was ancient, narrow and high. Nürnberger's apartment was on the fifth and top storey, which was reached by a staircase with numerous turns. In the low though spacious room into which George stepped out of a dark hall stood old but well-preserved furniture, while an odour of camphor and lavender came insistently out of the alcove in the recess in front of which a pale green curtain had been let down. Portraits of Nürnberger's parents in their youth hung on the wall together with brown engravings of landscapes after the Dutch masters. Numerous old photographs in wooden frames stood on the sideboard. Nürnberger fetched a portrait of his dead sister out of a secretary-drawer where it lay beneath some letters that had been yellowed by time. It showed her as a girl of eighteen in a child's costume which seemed to have a kind of historical atmosphere, holding a ball in her hand, and standing in front of a hedge, behind which there towered a background of cliffs. Nürnberger introduced all these unknown faraway and dead persons to his friend to-day by means of their portraits, and spoke of them in a tone which seemed to make the gulf of time between the then and the now both wider and deeper.

George's glance often swept out over the narrow street towards the grey masonry of ancient houses. He saw small cobwebbed panes with all kinds of household utensils behind them. Flower-pots with miserable plants stood on a window-ledge, while fragments of bottles, broken-up barrels, scraps of paper, mouldy vegetables lay in a gutter between two houses, a battered pipe ran down between all this rubbish and disappeared behind a chimney. Other chimneys were visible to right and left, the back of a yellowish stone gable could be seen, towers reared up towards the pale blue heaven and a light grey spire with a broken stone cupola which George knew very well, appeared unexpectedly near. Automatically his eyes tried to find the quarter where he might be able to fix the position of the house in whose entrance the two stone giants bore on their powerful shoulders the armorial bearings of a vanished stock, and in which his child, which was to come into the world in a few weeks, had been begotten.

George gave an account of his trip. He felt the spirit of this hour so deeply that he would have thought himself petty if he had let the matter rest at half-truths. But Nürnberger had known the story, and in its entirety too, long ago, and when George showed a little astonishment at this he smiled mockingly.

"Don't you still remember," he asked, "that morning when we looked over a summer residence in Grinzing?"

"Of course."

"And don't you remember too that a woman with a little child in her arms took us round the house and garden?"

"Yes."

"Before we went away the child held out its arms towards you, and you looked at it with a certain amount of emotion in your expression."

"And that's what made you conclude that I...."

"Oh well, you know, you're not the man to go in for thrills over the sight of small children, a bit unwashed, too, into the bargain, if they are not linked on to associations of a personal character."

"One must beware of you," said George jestingly, but not without some sense of uneasiness.

The slight irritation, which he always felt again and again at Nürnberger's superior manner, was far from preventing him from cultivating his society more and more. He frequently fetched him from home to go for walks in the streets and parks, and he felt a sense of satisfaction, a sense in fact of personal triumph, when he managed to draw him from the rarefied regions of bitter wisdom into the gentler fields of affectionate intercourse. George's walks with him had become such a pleasant habit that he felt as though his daily life had been impoverished when he found one morning that Nürnberger's apartment was closed. Some days afterwards came a card of apology from Salzburg, which was also signed by a married couple, a manufacturer and his wife, good-natured cheery people, whom George had once got to know slightly through Nürnberger in Graben. According to Heinrich's malicious description the common friend of this married couple had been dragged down the stairs, of course after a desperate resistance, made to sit down in a carriage and been transported to the station more or less like a prisoner. According to Heinrich, too, Nürnberger had several friends of this innocent kind who felt the need of getting the celebrated cynic to let a few drops of his malice trickle into their palatable cup of life, while Nürnberger on his side liked to recuperate in their free-and-easy society from the strain of his acquaintances in literary and psychological circles.

The meeting with Heinrich had meant a disillusionment to George. After the first words of greeting the author had as usual only spoken about himself, and that, too, in tones of the deepest contempt. He had come at last to the conclusion that he did not really possess any talent but only intelligence, though that of course to an enormous degree. The thing about himself that he cursed the most violently was the lack of harmony in the various phases of his character, which as he well knew not only occasioned suffering to himself but to all who came near him. He was heartless and sentimental, flippant and melancholic, sensitive and callous, an impossible companion and yet drawn towards his fellow-beings ... at any rate at times. A person with such characteristics could only justify his existence by producing something immense, and if the masterpiece which he felt obliged to create did not appear on the scene very soon he would feel that as a decent man he would be obliged to shoot himself. But he was not a decent man.... There lay the rub. "Of course you won't shoot yourself," thought George, "principally because you haven't got the pluck to do so." Of course he did not give expression to this thought but on the contrary was very sympathetic. He talked of the moods to which after all every artist is liable, and inquired kindly about the material conditions of Heinrich's life. It soon transpired that he wasn't in such a bad way by any means. He was even leading a life which as it appeared to George was freer from anxiety than it had ever been before. The maintenance of his mother and sisters for the ensuing years had been assured by a small legacy. In spite of all the hostile influences which were at work against him the fame of his name was increasing from day to day. The miserable affair with the actress seemed to be finished once and for all, and a quite new relationship with a young lady which was as free and easy as could possibly be desired, was actually bringing a certain amount of gaiety into his life. Even his work was making good progress. The first act of the opera libretto was as good as ready, and he had made numerous notes for his political comedy. He intended next year to visit the sittings of Parliament and attend meetings, and coquetted with the admittedly childish fantastic plan of posing as a member of the social democratic party, trying to tack himself on to the leaders and getting himself taken on, if he could get the chance, as an active member of some organisation or other, simply so as to get a complete insight into the party machinery. Still, you know, when he had been talking to any one for five minutes on end, why he had got him absolutely. He would find in some casual word, whose significance would completely escape any one else, a kind of whirlwind which tore the veil from off the souls of men. His dream was to prove himself a master of imagination in his opera poem and a master of realism in his comedy, and thus show the world that he was equally at home both in heaven and on earth. At a subsequent meeting George got him to read as much of the first act of the opera as he had finished. He found the verses very singable and asked Heinrich to allow him to take the manuscript to Anna. Anna could not bring herself to fancy much what George read out to her; but he asserted, though without any real conviction, that what she felt was just the very longing for these verses to be set to music, and that that must necessarily strike her as a weakness.

When George came into Heinrich's room to-day the latter was sitting at the big table in the middle of the room, which was covered over with papers and letters. Written papers of all kinds lay about on the piano and on the ottoman. Heinrich still had a sheet of faded yellow paper in his hand when he got up and hailed George with the words, "Well, how goes the country?"

This was the way in which he was accustomed to inquire after Anna's health, a way which George felt afresh every single time to be unduly familiar.

"Quite well, thanks," he replied. "I have just come to ask you if perhaps you would care to come out there with me to-day."

"Oh yes, I should like to very much. The thing is, though, that I am just in the middle of putting various papers in order. I can't come before the evening about seven or so. Will that suit you?"

"Quite," said George. "But I see I am disturbing you," he added as he pointed to the littered table.

"Not at all," replied Heinrich. "I am only tidying up, as I just told you. They're my father's posthumous papers. Those there are letters to him and here are rough notes more or less like a diary, written for the most part during his parliamentary period. Tragic, I tell you! How that man loved his country! And how did they thank him? You've no idea of the refinement with which they drove him out of his party. A complicated network of intrigue, bigotry, brutality.... Thoroughly German, to put the matter in a nutshell."

George felt a sense of antagonism. "And he dares," he thought, "to hold forth about Anti-Semitism. Is he any better? any juster? Does he forget that I am a German myself...?"

Heinrich went on speaking. "But I will give this man a memorial.... He and no other shall be the hero of my political drama. He is the truly tragi-comic central figure which I have always been wanting."

George's antagonism became intensified. He felt a great desire to protect old Bermann against his son. "A tragi-comic figure," he repeated, almost aggressively.

"Yes," retorted Heinrich unhesitatingly, "a Jew who loves his country.... I mean in the way my father did, with a real feeling of solidarity, with real enthusiasm for the dynasty, is without the slightest question a tragi-comic figure. I mean ... he belonged to that Liberalising epoch of the seventies and eighties when even shrewd men were overcome by the catch-words of the age. A man like that to-day would certainly appear merely comic. Yes, even if he had finished up by hanging himself on the first nail he came across I could not regard his fate as anything else."

"It is a mania of yours," replied George. "You really very often give one the impression that you have quite lost the capacity of seeing anything else in the world except the Jewish question, you always see it everywhere. If I were as discourteous as you happen to be at times, I would ... you'll forgive me of course, say that you were suffering from persecution-mania."

"Persecution-mania ..." replied Heinrich dully, as he looked at the wall. "I see, so you call it persecution-mania, that.... Oh well." And then he continued suddenly with clenched teeth: "I say, George, I want to ask you something on your conscience."

"I'm listening."

He placed himself straight in front of George, and with his eyes pierced his forehead. "Do you think there's a single Christian in the world, even taking the noblest, straightest and truest one you like, one single Christian who has not in some moment or other of spite, temper or rage, made at any rate mentally some contemptuous allusion to the Jewishness of even his best friend, his mistress or his wife, if they were Jews or of Jewish descent?" And without waiting for George's answer: "There isn't one, I assure you. You can try another test also if you like. Read for instance the letters of any celebrated and otherwise perfectly shrewd and excellent man and observe the passages which contain hostile and ironic expressions about his contemporaries. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred it simply deals with an individual without taking any account of his descent or creed. In the hundredth case, where the miserable victim has the misfortune to be a Jew, the writer will certainly not forget to mention that fact. That's just how the thing is, I can't help it. What you choose to call persecution-mania, my dear George, is in reality simply an extremely intense consciousness that has been kept continuously awake of a condition in which we Jews happen to find ourselves. And as for talking about persecution-mania, why it would be much more logical to talk about a mania for being hidden, a mania for being left alone, a mania for being safe; which though perhaps a less sensational form of disease is certainly a much more dangerous one for its victims. My father suffered from it, like many others of his generation. He at any rate made such a radical cure that he went mad in the process."

Deep furrows appeared on Heinrich's forehead and he looked again towards the wall, straight past George, who had sat down on the hard black leather ottoman.

"If that's your way of looking at things," replied George, "why, you have no other logical alternative but to join Leo Golowski...."

"And migrate to Palestine with him. Is that what you think? As a matter of symbolical politics or actually--what?" He laughed. "Have I ever said that I want to get away from here? That I would prefer to live anywhere else except here? Above all, have I ever said that I liked living among Jews? So far as I at any rate am concerned that would be a purely objective solution of an essentially subjective problem."

"I really think so also. And that's why, to tell the truth, I understand less than ever what you want, Heinrich. I had the impression last autumn, when you had your tussle with Golowski on the Sophienalp, that you looked at the matter far more hopefully."

"More hopefully?" repeated Heinrich in an injured tone.

"Yes. One felt bound to think then that you believed in the possibility of a gradual assimilation."

Heinrich contemptuously contracted the corners of his mouth. "Assimilation.... A phrase.... Yes, that'll come all right some time or other ... in a very very long time. It won't come at all in the way many want it to--it won't come either in the way many are afraid it will.... Further, it won't be exactly assimilation ... but perhaps something that beats in the heart of that particular word so to speak. Do you know what it will probably look like in the end? That we, we Jews I mean, have been a kind of ferment in the brewing of humanity--yes, perhaps that'll come out in anything from one to two thousand years from now. It is a consolation too. Don't you think so?" He laughed again.

"Who knows," said George reflectively, "if you won't be regarded as right--in a thousand years? But till then?"

"Why, my dear George, there won't be anything in the way of a solution of the question before then. In our time there won't be any solution, that's absolutely positive. No universal solution at any rate. It will rather be a case of a million different solutions. For it's just a question which for the time being every one has got to settle for himself as best he can. Every one must manage to find an escape for himself out of his vexation or out of his despair or out of his loathing, to some place or other where he can breathe again in freedom. Perhaps there are really people who would like to go as far as Jerusalem to find it ... I only fear that many of them, once they arrive at their official goal, would then begin to realise that they had made an utter mistake. I don't think for a minute that migrations like that into the open should be gone in for in parties.... For the roads there do not run through the country outside but through our own selves. Every one's life simply depends on whether or not he finds his mental way out. To do that of course it is necessary to see as clearly as possible into oneself, to throw the searchlight into one's most hidden crannies, to have the courage to be what one naturally is--not to be led into a mistake. Yes, that should be the daily prayer of every decent man: to make no mistake."

Where is he getting to again now? thought George. He is quite as morbid in his way as his father was. And at the same time one can't say that he has been personally through bad times. And he has asserted on one occasion that he felt there was no one with whom he had anything in common. It is not a bit true. He feels he has something in common with all Jews and he stands nearer to the meanest of them than he does to me. While these thoughts were running through his mind his glance fell on a big envelope lying on the table, and he read the following words written on it in large Roman capitals: "Don't forget. Never forget."

Heinrich noticed George's look and took the envelope up in his hand. Three strong grey seals could be seen on its back. He then threw it down again on the table, drooped his underlip contemptuously and said: "I've tidied up that business as well, you know, to-day. There are days like this when one goes in for a great cleaning-up. Other people would have burnt the stuff. What's the point? I shall perhaps read it again with pleasure. The anonymous letters I once told you about are in this envelope, you know."

George was silent. Up to the present Heinrich had vouchsafed no information as to the circumstances under which his relations with the actress had come to an end. Only one passage in his letter to Lugano had hinted at the fact that it had not been without a certain deep-felt horror that he had seen his former mistress again. Almost against his own will the following words came out of George's mouth: "You know, of course, the story of Nürnberger's sister who lies buried in Cadenabbia?"

Heinrich answered in the affirmative. "What makes you think of that?"

"I visited her grave a few days before I came back." He hesitated. Heinrich was looking fixedly at him with a violently interrogative expression which compelled George to go on speaking. "Just think now, isn't it strange? since that time those two persons are always associated together in my memory, though I have never seen one of them and have only caught a glimpse of the other one at the theatre--as you know. I mean Nürnberger's dead sister and ... this actress."

Heinrich grew pale to his very lips. "Are you superstitious?" he asked scornfully, but it sounded as though he were asking himself.

"Not at all," cried George. "Besides, what has superstition to do with this matter?"

"I'll only tell you that everything that has any connection at all with mysticism goes radically against the grain with me. Lots of twaddle is passed off in the world for science, but talking about things which one can't know anything about, things whose very essence is that one can never know anything about them, is in my view the most intolerable twaddle of the whole lot."

"Can she have died, this actress?" thought George.

Suddenly Heinrich took up the envelope again in his hand, and said in that dry tone which he liked to assume at those very moments when he was most deeply harrowed: "Writing out these words here is childish tomfoolery or affectation if you like. I could also have added the words Daudet put before his Sappho: 'To you, my son, when you are twenty years of age....' Too silly, anyway. As though the experiences of one man could be the slightest use to another man. The experiences of one man can often be amusing for another, more often bewildering, but never instructive.... And do you know why it is that both those figures are associated in your brain? I'll tell you why. Simply because in one of my letters I employed the expression 'Ghost' with reference to my former mistress. So that clears up this mysterious embroglio."

"That's not impossible," replied George. From somewhere or other came the indistinct sound of bad piano-playing. George looked out. The sun lay on the yellow wall opposite. Many windows were open. A boy sat at one of them, his arms resting on the window-ledge, and read. From another two young girls looked down into the garden courtyard. The clattering of utensils was audible. George longed for the open air, for his seat on the border of the forest. Before he turned to go it occurred to him to say: "I wanted to tell you, Heinrich, that Anna too liked your verses very much. Have you written any more?"

"Not many."

"It would be nice if you brought along to-day all you have done of the libretto and read it to us." He stood by the piano and struck a couple of chords.

"What's that?" asked Heinrich.

"A theme," replied George "that's just occurred to me for the second act. It is meant to accompany the moment in which the remarkable stranger appears on the ship."

Heinrich shut the window, George sat down and started to go on playing. There was a knock at the door, and Heinrich automatically cried: "Come in."

A young lady came in in a light cloth skirt with a red silk blouse and a white velvet ribbon with a little gold cross round her neck. A Florentine hat trimmed with roses shaded with its broad brim the pale little face from which two big black eyes peered out.

"Good afternoon," said the strange lady in a low voice, which sounded at the same time both defiant and embarrassed. "Excuse me, Herr Bermann, I didn't know that you had visitors," and she looked inquisitively at George, who had at once recognised her.

Heinrich grew paler and puckered his forehead. "I certainly had no idea," he began. He then introduced them and said to the lady: "Won't you sit down?"

"Thanks," she answered curtly and remained standing. "Perhaps I'll come again later."

"Please don't," cut in George. "I am just on the point of running off."

He watched the look of the actress roving round the room and felt a strange pity for her, such as one frequently feels in dreams for dead people who do not know that they have died. He then saw Heinrich's glance rest on this pale little face with inconceivable hardness. He now remembered very clearly seeing her on the stage, with the reddish-blonde hair that fell over her forehead and her roving eyes. "That's not how persons look," he thought, "who are fated to belong only to _one_ man. And to think of Heinrich, who plumes himself so much on his knowledge of character, never having felt that! What did he really want of her? It was vanity which burnt in his soul, nothing more than vanity."

George walked along the street, which was like a dry oven. The walls of the houses threw back into the air the summer heat which they had absorbed. George took the horse-tram to the hills and woods, and breathed more freely when he was in the country. He walked slowly on between the gardens and villas, then passing the churchyard he took a white road with a gradual incline called Sommerhaidenweg, which he regarded as a good omen, and which was used by practically nobody during this late hour of a sunny afternoon. No shade came from the wooded line of heights on his left, only a gentle purring of breezes which had gone to sleep in the leaves. On the right a green incline sloped downwards towards the long stretch of valley where roofs were gleaming between the boughs and tree-tops. Further down vineyards and tilled fields struggled up behind garden fences towards meadows and quarries, over which shrubbery and bushes hung in the glittering sun. The path along which George was accustomed to wander was just a thin straight line often lost among the fields, and his eye sought the place on the border of the forest where his favourite seat was situated: meadows and wooded heights at the end of the valley with fresh vales and hills. George felt himself strangely wedded to this landscape and the thought that his own career and his own will called him abroad often wove farewell moods around his lonely walks even now.

But at the same time a presentiment of a richer life stirred within him. It was as though many things were coming to birth in his soul which he had no right to disturb by anxious reflection; and there was a murmur of the melodies of days to come in the lower depths of his soul, though it was not yet vouchsafed to him to hear them clearly. He had not been idle, either, in drafting out clearly the rough plan of his future. He had written a letter of polite thanks to Detmold, in which he placed himself with reservation at the disposition of the manager for the coming autumn. He had also looked up old Professor Viebiger, explained his plans to him and requested him if the opportunity presented itself to remember his former pupil. But even though contrary to his expectations he failed to find a position in the autumn he was determined to leave Vienna, to retire for the time being to a small town or into the country, and to go on working by himself amid the quietness. He had not clearly worked out how his relations to Anna would shape under these circumstances. He only knew that they must never end. He thought vaguely that he and Anna would visit each other and go on journeys together at some convenient time; subsequently no doubt she would move to the place where he lived and worked. But it struck him as useless to go deeply into these matters before the actual hour arrived, since his own life had been definitely decided at any rate for the coming year.

The Sommerhaidenweg ran into the forest, and George took the broad Villenweg, which crossed the valley at this point and curved downwards. In a few minutes he found himself in the street, at the end of which stood the little villa in which Anna lived. It was close to the forest, near unpretentious yellow bungalows and only raised above their level by its attic and balcony with its triangular wooden gable. He crossed the plot of ground in front of the house where the little blue clay angel welcomed him on its square pedestal in the middle of the lawn between the flower-beds, and went through the narrow passage near which the kitchen lay, and the cool middle room on whose floor the rays of the sun were playing through the dilapidated green Venetian blinds and stepped on to the verandah. He turned towards the left and cast a glance through the open window into Anna's room, which he found empty. He then went into the garden and walking along the lilac and currant-bushes towards the bottom, soon saw Anna some way off, sitting on the white seat under the pear-tree in her loose blue dress. She did not see him coming, but seemed quite plunged in thought. He slowly approached. She still did not look up. He loved her very much at moments like this when she thought she was unobserved and the goodness and peacefulness of her character floated serenely around her clear forehead. The grasshoppers chirruped on the gravel at their feet. Opposite them on the grass the strange St. Bernard dog lay sleeping. It was the animal which first noticed George's arrival as it woke up. It got up and jogged clumsily towards George. Anna now looked up and a happy smile swept over her features. Why am I so seldom here? was the thought which ran through George's mind. Why don't I live out here and work on top on the balcony under the gable, which has a beautiful view on to the Sommerhaidenweg? His forehead had grown damp, for the late afternoon sun was still blazing.

He stood in front of Anna, kissed her on the eyes and mouth and sat down at her side. The animal had slunk after him and stretched itself out at his feet. "How are you, my darling?" he asked, while he put his arm around her neck.

She was very well, as usual, and to-day was a particularly fine day. She had been left quite to herself since the morning, for Frau Golowski had to go to town again to look after her family. It was really not so bad to be so completely alone with oneself. One could sink then into one's dreams undisturbed. They were of course always the same, but they were so sweet that one did not get tired of them. She had let herself dream about her child. How much she loved it to-day, even before it was born! She would never have considered it possible. Did George understand it too?... And as he nodded absent-mindedly she shook her head. No, no ... a man could not understand that, even the very best and kindest man. Why, she could feel the little being already moving, could detect the beating of its tender heart, could feel this new incomprehensible soul breathe within her, just in the same way as she felt the flowering and awakening within her of its fresh young body. And George looked in front of him as though ashamed that she was facing the near future. It was true of course that a being would exist, begotten by himself, like himself and itself destined again to give life to new beings; it was true that within the blessed body of that woman, for which he had ceased for a long time now to feel any desire, there was swelling, according to the eternal laws, a life that only a year ago had been undreamt-of, unwished-for, lost in infinity, but which now was forcing its way up to the light like something predestined from time immemorial; it was true that he knew that he was irresistibly drawn into that forged chain that stretched from primal ancestor to future descendant and which he grasped as it were with both hands ... but he did not feel that this miracle made so potent an appeal to him as it really ought.

And they spoke to-day more seriously than usual about what was to happen after the child's birth. Anna, of course, would keep it with her during the first week, but then they would have to give it to strangers; but at any rate it should live quite near, so that Anna could see it at any time without any difficulty.

"I say, dear," she said quite lightly and suddenly, "will you often come and visit us?"

He looked into her arch smiling face, took both her hands and kissed her. "Dearest, what am I to do? Tell me yourself. You can imagine how hard it will be for me. But what else is there for me to do? I've got to make a beginning. I've already told you we've given notice to leave the apartment," he added hastily, as though that cut off all retreat. "Felician is probably going to Athens. Yes, it would of course be fine if I could take you with me. But I am afraid that isn't possible. There ought above all to be something more or less certain, I mean one ought--ought at least to be certain that I shall remain in the same place for a longish time."

She had listened with quiet seriousness. She then started to speak about her latest idea. He must not believe, she said, that she was thinking of putting the whole burden of responsibility upon him. She was determined as soon as it was feasible to found a music-school. If he left her alone for a long time the school would be here in Vienna. If he soon came to fetch her it would be wherever she and he had their home. And when she was once in an independent position she meant to take and keep her child whether she was his wife or not. She was very far from being ashamed of it, he knew that quite well. She was rather proud ... yes, proud of being a mother.

He took her hands in his and stroked them. It would all come right enough, he said, feeling somewhat depressed. He suddenly saw himself sitting at supper between wife and child, beneath the modest light of a hanging lamp in an extremely simple home. And this family scene of his imagination wafted towards him, as it were, an atmosphere of troubled boredom. Come, it was still too early for that, he was still too young. Was it possible, then, that she was to be the last woman whom he was to embrace? Of course it might come in years, even in months, but not to-day. As for bringing lies and deceit into a well-ordered home, he had a horror of the idea. Yet the thought of rushing away from her to others whom he desired, with the consciousness that he would find Anna again just as he had left her, was at once tempting and reassuring.

The well-known whistle was heard from outside. The dog got up, made George stroke her yellow-spotted back once again and sadly slunk away.

"By Jove," said George, "I had almost forgotten all about it. Heinrich will be here any minute." He told Anna about his visit and did not suppress the fact that he had made the acquaintance of the faithless actress.

"Did she succeed then?" exclaimed Anna, who did not fancy ladies with roving eyes.

"I don't think that she succeeded at all," replied George. "Heinrich was rather annoyed at her turning up, so far as I could see."

"Well, perhaps he'll bring her along too," said Anna jestingly, "then you will have some one to flirt with again, as you did with the regicide at Lugano."

"Upon my word," said George innocently, and then added casually: "But what's the matter with Therese? why doesn't she come to see you any more? Demeter is no longer in Vienna. She would have plenty of time."

"She was here only a few days ago. Why, I told you so. Don't pretend."

"I'd really forgotten it," he answered honestly. "What did she tell you then?"

"All there was to tell. The Demeter affair is over. Her heart is throbbing once more only for the poor and the miserable--until it is called back." And Anna confided Therese's winter plans to him under the seal of a most rigid silence. Disguised as a poor woman she meant to undertake expeditions through shelters, soup- and tea-kitchens, refuges for the homeless and workmen's dwellings, with a view to shedding a light into the most hidden corners for the benefit of the so-called golden heart of Vienna. She seemed quite ready for it and was perhaps a little sanguine of discovering some horrors.

George looked in front of him. He remembered the stylish lady in the white dress who had stood in the sunshine in Lugano in front of the post-office, far from all the cares of the world. "Strange creature," he thought.

"Of course she'll make a book out of it," said Anna. "But mind you don't tell any one, not even your friend Bermann."

"Shouldn't think of it! But I say, Anna, hadn't you better get something ready for this evening?"

She nodded. "Come, take me downstairs. I'll see what there is and consult Marie too ... so far as is possible to do so."

They got up. The shadows had lengthened. The children were making a noise in the next garden. Anna took her lover's arm and walked slowly with him. She told him the newest instances of the fantastic stupidity of the maid.

The idea of my being a husband, thought George, and listened reflectively. When they got to the house he announced his intention of going to meet Heinrich, left Anna and went into the street.

At this precise moment a one-horse carriage jogged up. Heinrich got out and paid the driver. "Hallo!" he said to George, "have you really waited for me after all? It's not so late then?"

"Not at all. You're very punctual. We'll go for a short walk if it suits you."

"Delighted."

They walked on into the forest past the yellow inn with the red terraces.

"It is wonderful here," said Heinrich, "and your villa too looks awfully nice. Why don't you live out here?"

"Yes, it's absurd not to," agreed George without further explanation. Then they were silent for a while.

Heinrich was in a light grey summer suit and carried his cloak over his arm, letting it trail a little behind him. "Did you recognise her again?" he asked suddenly, without looking up.

"Yes," replied George.

"She only came up for one day from her summer engagement. She goes back by train to-night. A surprise attack, so to speak. But it didn't come off." He laughed.

"Why are you so hard?" asked George, and thought of the big envelope with the grey seals and the silly inscription. "There is really no occasion for you to be so. It is only a fluke that she did not get anonymous letters just like you did, Heinrich. And who knows, if you hadn't left her alone for God knows what reasons...."

Heinrich shook his head and looked at George almost as though he pitied him. "Do you mean by any chance that it is my intention to punish her or avenge myself? Or do you think I'm one of those mugs who don't know what to make of the world because something has happened to them which they know has already happened to thousands before them and will happen to thousands after them? Do you think I despise the 'faithless woman' or that I hate her? Not a bit of it. Of course I don't mean to say that I don't at times assume the pose of hatred and contempt, only of course to produce better results upon her. But as a matter of fact I understand all that has happened far too well for me to...." He shrugged his shoulders.

"Well, if you do understand it?..."

"But, my dear friend, understanding a thing is no earthly good at all. Understanding is a game like anything else. A very 'classy' game and a very expensive one. One can spend one's whole soul over it and finish up a poor devil. But understanding hasn't got the least thing in the world to do with our feelings, almost as little as it has to do with our actions. It doesn't protect us from suffering, from revulsion, from ruin. It leads absolutely nowhere. It's a kind of _cul-de-sac_. Understanding always signifies the end."

As they walked slowly and silently up a side path with a moderate incline, each one engrossed in his own thoughts, they emerged out of the woods into open meadowland, which gave a clear view of the valley. They looked out over the town and then further on towards the haze-breathing plain through which the river ran shining; they looked towards the far line of the mountains, over which a thin haze was spreading. Then in the peace of the evening sun they walked on further towards George's favourite seat on the border of the forest. The sun was not visible. George watched the track of the Sommerhaidenweg on the other side of the valley run along the wooded hills; it looked pale and cooled. He then looked down and knew that in the garden at his feet there was a pear-tree, beneath which he had sat a few hours before with some one who was very dear to him, and who carried his child under her bosom, and he felt moved. He felt a slight contempt for the women who were perhaps waiting for him somewhere, but that did not extinguish his desire for them. Summer visitors were walking about down below on the path between the garden and the meadows. A young girl looked up and whispered something to another.

"You are certainly a popular personality in the place here," remarked Heinrich, contracting the corners of his mouth ironically.

"Not that I know of."

"Those pretty girls looked at you with great interest. People always find an inexhaustible source of excitement in other people not being married. Those holiday-makers down there are bound to look upon you as a kind of Don Juan and ... your friend as a seduced maiden who has gone wrong, don't you think so?"

"I don't know," said George, anxious to cut short the conversation.

"And I wonder what I represented," continued Heinrich unperturbed, "to the theatrical people in the little town. Clearly the deceived lover. Consequently an absolutely ridiculous character. And she? Well, one can imagine. Things are awfully simple for lookers-on. But when one gets to close quarters everything looks utterly different. But the question is whether the complexion it has in the distance isn't the right one? Whether one does not persuade oneself into believing a lot of rot, if one's got a part to play in the comedy oneself?"

He might quite as well have stayed at home, thought George. But as he could not send him home, and with the object at any rate of changing the conversation, he asked him quickly: "Do you hear anything from the Ehrenbergs?"

"I had a rather sad letter from Fräulein Else a few days ago," replied Heinrich.

"You correspond with her?"

"No, I don't correspond with her. At any rate I have not yet answered her."

"She is taking the Oskar business much more to heart than she will own," said George. "I spoke to her once in the nursing-home. We remained standing quite a time outside in the passage in front of the white varnished door behind which poor Oskar was lying. At that time they were afraid of the other eye as well. It's really a tragic affair."

"Tragi-comic," corrected Heinrich with hardness.