Chapter VIII (1)

Frau Golowski came out of the house. George could see her from the top end of the garden as she stepped on to the verandah. He hurried excitedly towards her, but as soon as she saw him in the distance she shook her head.

"Not yet?" asked George.

"The Professor thinks," replied Frau Golowski, "some time before dark."

"Some time before dark," said George and looked at his watch. And now it was only three.

She held out her hand sympathetically and George looked into her kind eyes, which were somewhat tired by her nocturnal vigils. The white transparent curtain in front of Anna's window had just been slightly drawn back. Old Doctor Stauber appeared by the window, threw George a friendly reassuring glance, disappeared again and the curtains were drawn. Frau Rosner was sitting in the large centre room by the round table. George could only see from the verandah the outlines of her figure; her face was quite in the shade. Then a whimpering and then a loud groan forced their way from the room in which Anna lay. George stared up at the window, stood still for a while, then turned round and walked for the hundredth time to-day up the path to the top of the garden. It is clear that she is already too weak to shriek, he thought; and his heart pained him. She had lain in labour for two whole days and two whole nights. The third day was now approaching its end,--and now it was still to last until evening came. On the evening of the first day Doctor Stauber had called in the Professor, who had been there twice yesterday and had remained in the house since noon to-day. While Anna had gone to sleep for a few minutes, and the nurse was watching by her bed, he had walked up and down in the garden with George and had endeavoured to explain to him all the peculiar features of the case. For the time being there was no ground for anxiety. They could hear the child's heart beating quite clearly. The Professor was a still fairly young man with a long blonde beard, and his words trickled gently and kindly like drops of some anodyne drug. He spoke to the sick woman like a child, stroked her over the hair and forehead, caressed her hands and gave her pet names. George had learned from the nurse that this young doctor exhibited the same devotion and same patience at every sick-bed. What a profession! thought George, who had once, during these three bad days, fled to Vienna for a few hours, which enabled a man to have a sound dreamless sleep for six good hours up there in the attic this very night while Anna was writhing in pain.

He walked along by the faded lilac-bushes, tore off leaves, crunched them in his hand and threw them on the ground. A lady in a black-and-white striped morning dress was walking in the next garden on the other side of the low bushes. She looked at George seriously and almost sympathetically. Quite so! thought George. Of course she heard Anna's screams the day before yesterday, yesterday and to-day. The whole place in fact knew of what was happening there; even the young girls in the _outré_ Gothic villa, who had once taken him for the interesting seducer; and there was real humour in the fact that a strange gentleman with a reddish pointed beard, who lived two houses away, should have suddenly greeted him yesterday in the village with respectful understanding.

Remarkable, thought George, how one can make oneself popular with people. But Frau Rosner let it be seen that even though she did not regard George as mainly responsible for the seriousness of the position she certainly regarded him as somewhat callous. He did not bear any grudge for this against the poor good woman. She could not of course have any idea how much he loved Anna. It was not long since he had known it himself. She had not addressed any question to him on that morning of his arrival when George had lifted his head off her lap after a long silent fit of weeping, but he had read in the painful surprise of her eyes that she guessed the truth, and he thought he understood why she did not question him. She must realise how completely she possessed him again, how henceforth he belonged to her more than he had ever done before, and when he told her in the subsequent hours and days of the time which he had spent far away from her, and that now fateful name resounded casually but yet insistently out of the catalogue of the women whom he had met, she smiled, no doubt, in her slightly mocking way, but scarcely differently than when he spoke of Else or Sissy, or the little girls in their blue dresses who had peeped into the music-room when he was playing.

He had been living in the villa for two weeks, had been feeling well and in good form for serious work. He spread out every morning on the little table, where Therese's needlework had lain a short time ago, scores, works on musical theory, musical writing-paper, and occupied himself with solving problems in harmony and counterpoint. He often lay down in the meadow by the edge of the forest and read some favourite book or other, let melodies ring within him, indulged in day-dreams and was quite happy, with the rustling of the trees and the brilliance of the sun. In the afternoon, when Anna was resting, he would read aloud or talk to her. They often talked with affectionate anticipation about the little creature that was soon to come into the world, but never about their own future, whether distant or immediate. But when he sat by her bed, or walked up and down the garden with her arm-in-arm, or sat by her side on the white seat under the pear-tree, where the shining stillness of the late summer day rested above them, he knew they were tied fast to each other for all time, and that even the temporary separation with which they were faced could have no power to affect them in view of the certain feeling that they were all in all to each other.

It was only since the pains had come upon her that she seemed removed from him to a sphere where he could not follow her. Yesterday he had sat by her bed for hours and had held her hand in his. She had been patient, as always, had anxiously inquired if he were quite comfortable in the house, had begged him to work and go for walks as he had done before, since after all he could not help her, and had assured him that since she was suffering she loved him even more. And yet she was not the same, George felt, as she had been during these days. Particularly when she screamed out--as she had this morning in her worst pains--her soul was so far away from him that he felt frightened.

He was near the house again. No noise came from Anna's room, in front of the window of which the curtains moved slightly. Old Doctor Stauber was standing on the verandah. George hastened towards him with a dry throat. "What is it?" he asked hastily.

Doctor Stauber put his hand on his shoulder. "Going on nicely."

A groan came from within, grew louder, grew into a wild frenzied scream. George passed his hand over his damp forehead and said to the doctor with a bitter smile: "Is that what you mean by going on nicely?"

Stauber shrugged his shoulders. "It is written, 'With pain shalt thou....'"

George felt a certain sense of resentment. He had never believed in the God of the childishly pious, who was supposed to reveal himself as the fulfiller of the wishes of wretched men and women, as the avenger and forgiver of miserable human sins. The Nameless One which he felt in the infinite beyond his senses, and transcending all understanding, could only regard prayer and blasphemy as poor words out of a human mouth. Not even when his mother had died, after the senseless martyrdom of her suffering, not even when his father had died, passing away painlessly so far as he could understand, had he presumed to indulge in the belief that his own personal misfortunes in the world's progress signified more than the falling of a leaf. He had not bowed down in cowardly humility to any inscrutable solution of the riddle, nor had he foolishly murmured against an ungracious power of whose decrees he was the personal victim.

To-day he felt for the first time as though somewhere or other in the clouds an incomprehensible game was being played in which his own fortunes were the stakes. The scream within had died away and only groans were audible.

"And the beating of the heart?" asked George.

Doctor Stauber looked at him. "It could still be heard clearly ten minutes ago."

George fought against a dreadful thought which had been hounded up out of the depths of his soul. He was healthy, she was healthy, two strong young people.... Could anything like that be really possible?

Doctor Stauber put his hand on his shoulder again. "Go for a walk," he said. "We'll call you as soon as it's time." And he turned away.

George remained standing on the verandah for another minute. He saw Frau Rosner sitting huddled up in solitary brooding on the sofa near the wall in the large room that was beginning to grow dim in the shade of the late afternoon. He went away, walked round the house and went up the wooden stairs into his attic. He threw himself on the bed and shut his eyes. After a few minutes he got up, walked up and down in the room, but gave up doing so as the floor creaked. He went on to the balcony. The score of _Tristan_ lay open on the table. George looked at the music. It was the prelude to the third act. The music rang in his ears. The sea waves were beating heavily on a cliff shore, and out of the mournful distance rang the sad melody of an English horn. He looked over the pages far away into the silver-white brilliance of the daylight. There was sunshine everywhere--on the roofs, paths, gardens, hills and forests. The sky was spread out in its azure vastness and the smell of the harvest floated up from the depths. How were things with me a year ago? thought George. I was in Vienna, quite alone. I had not an idea. I had sent her a song ... '_Deinem Blick mich zu bequemen_' ... but I scarcely gave her a thought ... and now she lies down there dying.... He gave a violent start. He had meant to say mentally ... "She is lying in labour," and the words "lies dying" had as it were stolen their way on to his lips. But why was he so frightened? How childish! As though there existed presentiments like that! And if there really were danger, and the doctors had to decide, then of course they would have to save the mother. Why, Doctor Stauber had only explained that to him a few days ago. What, after all, is a child that hasn't yet lived? Nothing. He had begotten it at some moment or other without having wished it, without having even thought of the possibility that he might have become a father. How did he know either that in that dark hour of ecstasy, behind closed blinds a few weeks ago he had not ... also become a father without having wished it, without having even thought of the possibility; and perhaps it might have happened without his ever knowing!

He heard voices and looked down; the Professor's coachman had caught hold of the arm of the housemaid, who was only slightly resisting. Perhaps the foundations are being laid here too of a new human life, thought George, and turned away in disgust. Then he went back into his room, carefully filled his cigarette-case out of the box that stood on the table, and it suddenly seemed to him that his excitement was baseless and even childish, and it occurred to him: "My mother, too, once lay like that before I came into the world, just as Anna is doing now. I wonder if my father walked about as nervously as I am doing? I wonder if he would be here now if he were still alive? I wonder if I would have told him at all? I wonder if all this would have happened if he had lived?" He thought of the beautiful serene summer days by the Veldeser Lake. His comfortable room in his father's villa swept up in his memory and in some vague way, almost dreamwise, the bare attic with the creaking floor in which he now found himself seemed to typify his whole present existence in contrast to that former life which had been so free from care and responsibility. He remembered a serious talk about the future which he had had a few days ago with Felician. Immediately after this thought there came into his mind the conversation which he had had with a woman in the country, who had introduced herself with the offer to take charge of the child. She and her husband possessed a small property near the railway, only an hour away from Vienna, and her only daughter had died in the previous year. She had promised that the little one should be well looked after, as well, in fact, as though it were not a stranger's at all, and as George thought of this he suddenly felt as though his heart were standing still. It will be there before dark.... The child.... His child, but a strange woman was waiting somewhere to take it away with her. He was so tired after the excitement of the last few days that his knees hurt him. He remembered having previously felt similar physical sensations, the evening after his "leaving-examination" and the time when he had learnt of Labinski's suicide. How different, how joyful, how full of hope had been his mood three days ago, just before the pains began! He now felt nothing except an unparalleled dejection, while he found the musty smell of the attic more and more unpleasant. He lit a cigarette and stepped on to the balcony again. The warm silent air did him good. The sunshine still lay on the Sommerhaidenweg and a gilded cross shone over the walls from the direction of the churchyard.

He heard a noise beneath him. Steps? Yes, steps and voices too. He left the balcony and the room and rushed down over the creaking wooden staircase. A door opened, steps were hurrying over the floor. The next moment he was on the bottom step opposite Frau Golowski. His heart stood still. He opened his mouth without asking.

"Yes," she nodded, "a boy."

He gripped both her hands and felt, while he was beaming all over, a stream of happiness was running through his soul with a potency and intense warmth that he had never anticipated. He suddenly noticed that Frau Golowski's eyes were not shining as brightly as they certainly ought to have. The stream of happiness within him ebbed back. Something choked his throat. "Well?" he said. Then he added, almost menacingly: "Does it live?"

"It just breathed once.... The Professor hopes...."

George pushed the woman on one side, reached the great centre room in three strides and stood still as though spell-bound. The Professor, in a long white linen apron, held a small creature in his arms and rocked it hurriedly to and fro. George stood still. The Professor nodded to him and went on undisturbed with what he was doing. He was examining the little creature in his arms with scrutinising eyes, he put it on the table, over which a white linen cloth had been spread, made the child's limbs execute violent exercises, rubbed its breast and face, then lifted it high up several times in succession, and George always saw how the child's head drooped heavily on to its breast. Then the doctor put it on to the linen cloth, listened with his ear on its bosom, got up, put one hand on its little body and motioned gently with the other to George to approach.

Involuntarily holding his breath George came quite near him. He looked first at the doctor and then at the little creature which lay on the white linen. It had its eyes quite open, strangely big blue eyes, like those of Anna. The face looked quite different from what George had expected, not wrinkled and ugly like that of an old dwarf, no; it was really a human face, a silent beautiful child-face, and George knew that these features were the image of his own.

The Professor said gently: "I've not heard its heart beat for the last hour."

George nodded. Then he asked hoarsely: "How is she?"

"Quite well, but you mustn't go in yet, Herr Baron."

"No," replied George and shook his head. He stared at the immobile little body with its bluish shimmer and knew that he was standing in front of the corpse of his own child. Nevertheless he looked at the doctor again and asked: "Can nothing more be done?"

He shrugged his shoulders.

George breathed deeply and pointed to the closed bedroom door. "Does she know yet----" He asked the doctor.

"Not yet. Let's be thankful for the time being that it is over. She has gone through a lot, poor girl. I only regret that it should turn out to have been for nothing."

"You expected it, Herr Professor?"

"I feared it since this morning."

"And why ... why?"

The doctor answered softly and gently: "A very exceptional case, as I told you before."

"You told me...?"

"Yes, I tried to explain to you that this possibility ... it was strangled, you see, by the umbilical cord. Scarcely one or two per cent. of births end like that." He was silent.

George gazed at the child. Quite right, the Professor had prepared him in advance only he had not taken it seriously. Frau Rosner was standing by him with helpless eyes. George held out his hand to her and they looked at each other like persons whom the sore stress of circumstances has made companions in misfortune. Then Frau Rosner sank down on a chair by the wall.

The Professor said to George: "I will now go and just have a look at the mother."

"Mother!" repeated George, and gazed at him.

The doctor looked away.

"You will tell her?" asked George.

"No, not at once. Anyway, she will be ready for it. She asked several times in the course of the day if it was still alive. It will not have so dreadful an effect upon her as you fear, Herr Baron ... at any rate during the first hours, the first days. You mustn't forget what she has gone through."

He pressed George's limply-hanging hand and went.

George stood there motionless. He was gazing continually at the little creature, and it seemed to him a picture of undreamt-of beauty. He touched its cheeks, shoulders, arms, hands, fingers. How mysteriously complete it all was! And there it lay, having died without having lived, destined to go from one darkness into another, through a senseless nothingness. There it lay, the sweet tiny body which was ready for life and yet was unable to move. There they shone, those big blue eyes, as though with desire to drink in the light of heaven, and completely blind before they had seen a ray. And there was the small round mouth which was open as though with thirst, but yet could never drink at a mother's breast. There it gazed, that white child-face with its perfect human features, which was never to receive or feel the kiss of a mother, the kiss of a father. How he loved this child! How he loved it, now that it was too late! A choking despair rose within his throat. He could not cry. He looked around him. No one was in the room and it was quite still next door. He had no desire to go into that other room, nor had he any fear. He only felt that it would have been rather senseless. His eye returned to the dead child, and suddenly the poignant question thrilled through him whether it was really bound to be true. Could not every one make a mistake, a physician as much as a layman? He held his open palm before the child's open lips and it was as though something cool was breathed towards him. And then he held both hands over the child's breast and again it seemed as though a light puff were playing over the tiny body. But it felt just the same as in the other place: no breath of life had blown towards him. He now bent down again and his lips touched the child's cool forehead. Something strange, something he scarcely felt tingled through his body to the very tips of his toes. He knew it now; he had lost the game up there in the clouds, his child was dead. Then he slowly lifted his head and turned away. The sight of the garden tempted him into the open. He stepped on to the verandah and saw Doctor Stauber and Frau Rosner sitting on the seat that was propped against the wall--both silent. They looked at him. He turned away as though he did not know them and went into the garden. The shadow of the house fell obliquely over the lawn, there was still sunlight higher up but it was dull and as though without the strength to illumine the air. Why did he want to think of that light which was sun and yet did not shine, that blue in the heights which was heaven and yet did not bless him? What was the point of the silence of this garden, which should console and comfort him, and yet received him to-day as though it were some strange inhospitable place? It gradually occurred to him that just such a twilight had enveloped him in a dream a short time ago with a dreariness of which he had previously had no idea, and had filled his soul with incomprehensible melancholy. What now? he said to himself aloud. He did not seek for any answer, and only knew that something unforeseen and unalterable had happened that must change the face of the world for him for all time. He thought of the day when his father had died. A wild grief had overwhelmed him then; yet he had been able to cry and the world had not suddenly become dark and void. His father had really lived, had once been young, had worked, loved, had children, experienced joys and sorrows. And the mother who had borne him had not suffered in vain. And even if he himself should have to die to-day, however early it might be, he had nevertheless a life behind him, a life full of light and music, happiness and suffering, hope and anxiety, steeped in all the fulness of the world. And even if Anna had passed away to-day, in the hour when she gave life to a new being, she would as it were have fulfilled her lot and her end would have had its terrible but none the less deep significance. But what had happened to his child was senseless, was revolting--a piece of irony from somewhere or other, whither one could send no question and no answer. What was the point of it all? What had been the significance of these past months with all their dreams, their troubles and their hopes? For he knew, all in a flash, that the expectation of the wonderful hour in which his child was to be born had always lain in the depths of his soul every single day, even those which were most matter-of-fact, those which were most vacant, or those which were most wanton. And he felt ashamed, impoverished, miserable.

He stood by the garden fence at the top end and looked towards the edge of the forest, towards his seat on which he had rested so often, and he felt as though forest and field and seat had previously been his possessions, and that he must now surrender them too, like so much else. In a corner of the garden stood a dark grey neglected summer-house with three little window-apertures and a narrow opening for a door. He had always disliked it, and had only gone in once for a few moments. To-day he felt drawn inside. He sat down on the cracked seat and suddenly felt hidden and soothed, as though all that had happened were less true or could in some inconceivable way be undone. Yet this hallucination soon vanished, he left the inhospitable room and stepped into the open.

I must now go back into the house again, he thought with a sense of exhaustion, and could not quite realise that the dead body of his child must be resting in the dark room, which he could see from here stretching behind the verandah like an unfathomable darkness. He walked slowly down the garden. Anna's mother was standing with a gentleman on the verandah. George recognised old Rosner. He stood there in his overcoat, he had laid his hat in front of him on the table. He passed a pocket handkerchief over his forehead and his red-lidded eyes twitched. He went towards George and pressed his hand. "What a pity that it turned out differently," he said, "than we had all hoped and expected!"

George nodded. He then remembered that the old gentleman's heart had not been quite right during the past week and inquired after his health.

"It is kind of you to ask, Herr Baron. I am a little better, only I find going uphill rather troublesome."

George noticed that the glass door that led to the centre room was closed. "Excuse me," he said to old Rosner, strode straight to the door, opened it and quickly closed it behind him. Frau Golowski and Doctor Stauber were standing near the table and speaking to each other. He walked up to them and they suddenly stopped talking.

"Well?" he inquired.

Doctor Stauber said: "We have been speaking about the ... formalities. Frau Golowski will be kind enough to see to all that."

"Thank you," replied George and held out his hand to Frau Golowski.

"All that," he thought. A coffin, a funeral, a notification to the local registry; a son born of Anna Rosner, spinster, died on the same day. Nothing about the father of course. Yes, his part was finished. Only to-day? Had it not been finished the very second when quite by chance he became a father?

He looked at the table. The cloth was spread over the tiny corpse. Oh, how quick! he thought bitterly. Am I never to see it again? I suppose I may be allowed to, once. He drew the cloth a little away from the body and held it high up. He saw a pale child-face which was quite familiar to him, only since then some one had closed the eyes. The old grandfather's clock in the corner ticked. Six o'clock. Scarcely an hour had passed since his child had been born and died: the fact was already as indisputably certain as though it could never have been otherwise.

He felt a light touch on the shoulder.

"She took it quietly," said Doctor Stauber, standing behind him.

George dropped the cloth over the child's face and turned his head towards the side. "She already knows, then...?"

Doctor Stauber nodded. Frau Golowski had turned away.

"Who told her?" asked George.

"It wasn't necessary to tell her," replied Doctor Stauber, "was it?" He turned to Frau Golowski.

The latter explained: "When I went in to her she just looked at me, and then I saw at once that she already knew."

"And what did she say?"

"Nothing--nothing at all. She turned her eyes towards the window and was quite still. She asked where you had gone, Herr Baron, and what you were doing."

George breathed deeply. The door of Anna's room opened. The Professor came out in a black coat. "She is quite quiet," he said to George. "You can go in to her."

"Did she speak to you about it?" asked George.

The Professor shook his head. Then he said: "I am afraid I must go into town now; you'll excuse me, won't you? I hope things will go on all right. I shall be here early to-morrow any way. Good-bye, dear Herr Baron." He pressed his hand sympathetically. "You'll drive in with me, Doctor Stauber, won't you?"

"Yes," said Doctor Stauber, "I only want to say good-bye to Anna." He went.

George turned to the Professor. "May I ask you something?"

"Please do."

"I should very much like to know, Herr Professor, whether this is simply imagination. It seems to me, you know"--and he again lifted up the cloth from the tiny corpse--"as though this child did not look like a new-born one, more beautiful, so to speak. I feel as though the faces of new-born children were bound to be more wrinkled, more like old men. I can't tell you whether I have ever seen one or whether I've only read about it."

"You are quite right," replied the Professor. "It is just in cases of this kind, and also of course when things turn out more fortunately, that the features of the children are not distorted, are frequently, in fact, quite beautiful." He contemplated the little face with professional sympathy, nodded a few times: "Pity, pity" ... let the cloth fall down again, and George knew that he had seen his child's face for the last time. What name would it have had? Felician.... Good-bye, little Felician!

Doctor Stauber came out of the next room and gently closed the door. "Anna is expecting you," he said to George. The latter gave him his hand, shook hands with the Professor again, nodded to Frau Golowski and went into the next room.

The nurse got up from Anna's side and disappeared out of the room. Opposite the door hung a mirror in which George saw an elegant young gentleman who was pale and was smiling. Anna lay in her bed, which stood clear in the middle of the room, with big clear eyes, which looked straight at George.

"What kind of a figure do I cut?" he thought. He pushed the chair close to her bed with some ceremoniousness, sat down, grasped her hand, put it to his forehead and then kissed her fingers long and almost ardently.

Anna was the first to speak. "You were in the garden?" she asked.

"Yes, I was in the garden."

"I saw you come down from the top some time ago."

"You had better not talk, Anna. Don't you feel it a strain?"

"These few words! Oh no. But you can tell me something...."

He was holding her hand in his all the time and looking at her fingers. Then he said: "Do you know that there is a little summer-house at the top end of the garden? Yes, of course you know.... I only mean, we'd never properly realised it."

"I was in there a few times during the first week," said Anna. "I don't like it."

"No, indeed!"

"Have you done any work this morning?" she then asked.

"What an idea, Anna!"

She shook her head quite gently. "And recently you have been getting on so well with it."

He smiled.

She remained serious. "You were in town yesterday?" she asked.

"You know I was."

"Did you find any letters? I mean important ones."

"You should really not talk so much, Anna. I'll tell you everything right enough. Well then, I found no letters of any importance. There was nothing from Detmold either. Anyway, I'll go and see Professor Viebiger one of these days. But we can talk about these things another time, don't you think? And so far as work goes ... I've been having another look at _Tristan_ this morning. I even know it down to the smallest detail. I could trust myself to conduct it to-day, if it came to the point."

She was silent and looked at him.

He remembered the evening when he had sat by her side at the Munich opera, as though enveloped in a transparent veil of the notes he loved so well. But he said nothing about it.

It grew dark. Anna's features began to grow dim. "Are you going to town to-day?" she asked.

He had not thought of doing so. But he now felt as though a kind of relief were beckoning to him. Yes, he would go in. What, after all, could he do out here? But he did not answer at once.

Anna began again: "I think you would perhaps like to speak to your brother."

"Yes, I should like to very much. I suppose you are going to sleep soon?"

"I hope so."

"How tired you must be," he said as he stroked her arm.

"No, it is rather different. I feel so awake ... I can't tell you how awake I feel.... It seems as though I had never been so awake in my whole life. And I know at the same time that I'm going to sleep more deeply than I ever have ... as soon as I've once closed my eyes."

"Yes, of course you will. But may I stay a bit longer with you? I'd really like to go on sitting here till you've fallen asleep."

"No, George, if you are here I can't go to sleep. But just stay a bit longer. It's so nice."

He held her hand all the time and looked out on to the garden, which was now lying in the twilight.

"You weren't very much up at Auhof this year?" said Anna indifferently, as though simply making conversation.

"Oh yes, nearly every day. Didn't I tell you?--I think Else will marry James Wyner and go with him to England."

He knew that she was not thinking of Else but of some one quite different. And he asked himself: Does she perhaps mean ... that that is the reason?

A warm puff blew in from outside. Children's voices rang in. George looked out. He saw the white seat gleaming under the pear-tree and thought of how Anna had waited for him there in her flowing dress, beneath the fruit-laden branches, girdled by the gentle miracle of her motherhood. And he asked himself: "Was it fated then that it must end like this? Or was it after all so fated at the moment when we embraced each other for the first time?" The Professor's remark that one to two per cent. of all births ended like that came into his mind. So it was a fact that since people had started being born one or two in every hundred must perish in this senseless fashion at the very moment when they were brought into the light! And so many must die in their first years, and so many in the flower of their youth, and so many as men. And again a fated number put an end to their own lives, like Labinski. And so many were doomed to fail in their attempt, as in Oskar Ehrenberg's case. Why search for reasons? Some law is at work, incomprehensible and inexorable, which we men cannot struggle against. Who is entitled to complain? why should I be the victim? If it doesn't happen to one, it will happen to another ... whether innocent or guilty like he was. One to two per cent. get hit, that is heavenly justice. The children who were laughing in the garden opposite, they were allowed to live. Allowed? No, they _must_ live, even as his own child had had to die, after the first breath it drew, doomed to travel from one darkness into another, through a senseless nothingness.

It was twilight outside and it was almost night in the room. Anna lay still and motionless. Her hand did not move in George's, but when George got up he saw that her eyes were open. He bent down, hesitated a moment, then put his arm round her neck and kissed her on her lips, which were hot and dry and did not answer his touch. Then he went. In the next room the hanging lamp was alight over the table on which the dead child had lain some while back. The green tablecloth was now spread out as though nothing had happened. The door of Frau Golowski's room was open. The light of a candle shone in, and George knew that his child was sleeping in there, its first and last sleep.

Frau Golowski and Frau Rosner sat next to each other on the sofa by the wall, dumb, and as though huddled together. George went up to them. "Has Herr Rosner gone already?" He turned to Frau Rosner.

"Yes, he rode into the town with the doctors," she answered, and looked at him questioningly.

"She is quiet." George answered her look. "I think she will sleep soundly."

"Won't you take something?" asked Frau Golowski. "You haven't since one o'clock had...."

"No thanks, I'm going into town now. I want to speak to my brother. I am also expecting important letters. I'll be here again early to-morrow." He took his leave, went up to his attic, fetched the _Tristan_ score from the balcony into the room, took his stick and overcoat, lit a cigarette and left the house. As soon as he was in the street he felt freer. An awful upheaval lay behind him. It had ended unhappily, but at any rate it had ended. And Anna was bound to be all right. Of course with mothers as well there was the fated percentage. But it was clear that the possibility of an unfortunate issue was according to the law of probabilities necessarily much less than if the child had remained alive.

He walked through the straggling village with swift strides, tried not to think of anything and looked with forced attention at every single house by which he passed. They were all mean, most of them positively dreary and squalid. Behind them little gardens sloped up to vineyards, cultivated fields and meadows in the evening mist. In an almost empty inn garden a few musicians were sitting by a long table, playing a melancholy waltz on violins, guitars and a concertina. Later on he passed more presentable houses, and he looked in through open windows into decently lighted rooms in which there were tables laid for dinner. He eventually took his seat in a cheerful inn garden, as far away as possible from the other not very numerous customers. He took his meal and soon felt a salutary fatigue come over him. On the tram he almost dozed off in his corner. It was only when the conveyance was driving through more lively streets that he thoroughly woke up and remembered what had happened, with an agonising but arid precision. He got out and walked home through the moist sultriness of the Stadtpark. Felician was not at home. He found a telegram lying on his secretary. It was from Detmold and ran as follows: "We request you kindly to inform us if you can possibly come to us within the next three days. This offer is to be considered for the time being as binding on neither party; travelling expenses paid in any event.--Faithfully, Manager of the Hoftheater." Next to it lay the red form for the answer.

George was in a state of nervous tension. What should he answer now? The telegram clearly indicated that there was a vacancy for the post of conductor. Should he ask for a postponement? After eight days it would be quite easy to go there for an interview and then come back at once. He found thinking about it a strain. At any rate the matter could wait till to-morrow, and if that was too late then there would be no essential change in the position after all. He would always be welcomed as a special visitor, he knew that already. It was perhaps better not to bind himself ... to go on working at his training somewhere, without yet taking obligations or responsibilities upon himself, and then to be ready and equipped for the following year. But what paltry considerations these were, when compared with the terrible event of his life which had occurred to-day! He took up the malachite paper-weight and put it on the telegram. What now...? he asked himself. Go to the club and rout out Felician? Yet that was not quite the place to tell him about the matter. It would really be best to stay at home and wait for him. It was in fact a little tempting to undress at once and lie down. But he certainly would not be able to sleep. So he came to think of tidying up his papers a little once again. He opened the drawer in his secretary, sorted bills and letters and made notes in his note-book. The noise of the street came in through the open windows as though from a distance. He thought of how he had read the letters of his dead parents in the same place in the previous summer after his father's death, and how the same noise of the town and the same perfume from the park had streamed in to him just like to-day. The year that had elapsed since then seemed in his tired mind to extend into eternities, then contracted again into a short span of time, and something kept whispering in his soul: What for ... what for? His child was dead. It would be buried in the churchyard by the Sommerhaidenweg. It would rest there in consecrated ground, from the toilsome journey which it was fated to take from one darkness into another through a senseless nothingness. It would lie under a little cross, as though it had lived and suffered a whole human life.... As though it had lived! It had really lived from the moment when its heart had already begun to beat in its mother's body. No, even earlier.... It had belonged to the realm of the living from the very moment when its mother's body had received it. And George thought of how many children of men and women were fated to perish even earlier than his own child, how many, wished and unwished, were fated to die in the first days of their life without their own mothers even having an idea. And while he dozed with shut eyes, half asleep and half awake, in front of his secretary, he saw nothing but shining crosses standing up on tiny mounds, as though it were a toy cemetery and a reddish yellow toy sun were shining over it. But suddenly the image represented the Cadenabbia cemetery. George was sitting like a little boy on the stone wall which surrounded it, and suddenly turned his gaze down towards the lake. And then there rode in a very long narrow boat, beneath dull yellow sails, with a green shawl on her shoulders, a woman, sitting motionless on the rowing bench, a woman whose face he tried to recognise with vague and almost painful efforts.

The bell rang. George got up. What was it? Oh, of course, there was no one there to open. The servant had been discharged since the first day of the month, and the porter's wife, who now looked after the brothers, was not in the apartment at this hour. George went into the hall and opened the door. Heinrich Bermann was standing in the hall.

"I saw a light in your room from down below," he said. "It was a good idea my first going past your house. I was going, as a matter of fact, to drive out to your place in the country."

Is his manner really so excited? thought George, or do I only think it is? He asked him to come in and sit down.

"Thanks, thanks, I prefer to walk up and down. No, don't light the high lamp. The table lamp's quite enough.... Anyway--how are you getting on out there?"

"A child was born this morning," replied George quietly. "But unfortunately it was dead."

"Still-born?"

"I don't know if one can say that," replied George with a bitter smile; "for it is supposed to have drawn one breath according to the doctor. The pains lasted for three days on end. It was ghastly. Now it's all over."

"Dead! I'm very sorry--I really am." He held out his hand to George.

"It was a boy," said George, "and strangely enough, very beautiful. Quite different from what new-born children usually look like." He then told him, too, how he had stayed quite a time in an inhospitable summer-house which he had never gone into before, and the strange way in which the lighting of the country had suddenly altered. "It was a light," said George, "that places in one's dreams sometimes have. Quite indefinite ... like twilight ... but rather mournful." While he said this, he knew that he would have described the whole matter quite differently to Felician.

Heinrich sat in the corner of the ottoman and let the other speak. He then began: "It is strange. All this affects me very much, of course, and yet ... it calms me at the same time."

"Calms you?"

"Yes. As though certain things which I unhappily had to fear had suddenly grown less probable."

"What kind of things?"

Without listening to him Heinrich went on speaking with set teeth. "Or is it only because I am in the presence of another man's grief? Or is it because I am somewhere else, in a strange flat? That would be quite possible. Haven't you noticed that even one's own death strikes one as something highly improbable, when one is travelling for instance; frequently in fact when one is out for a walk. Man is subject to incomprehensible illusions like that."

Heinrich turned round after a few seconds, as though he had regained his self-control, but remained standing by the window with both hands resting on the sill behind him, and said laconically in a hard voice: "There's the possibility, you see, of the girl whose acquaintance you casually made the other day at my place having committed suicide. Please don't look so startled. As you know, many of her letters hinted that she would do it."

"Well?" said George.

Heinrich lifted his hand deprecatingly. "I never took it seriously at all. But I got a letter this morning which, I don't quite know how to express it, had an uncanny ring of truth about it. As a matter of fact there is nothing in it which she hasn't already written to me ten or twenty times over; but the tone ... the tone.... To come to the point, I am as good as convinced that it has happened this time. Perhaps at this very minute!" He stopped and stared in front of him.

"No, Heinrich." George stepped up to him and put his hand on his shoulder. "No!" he added, more firmly, "I don't believe it at all. I spoke to her a few weeks ago. You know about that. And then she certainly did not give me the impression ... I also saw her playing comedy.... If you had seen her acting in that impudent farce, you wouldn't believe it either, Heinrich. She only wants to revenge herself on you for your cruelty. Unconsciously, perhaps. Probably she has convinced herself on many occasions that she cannot go on living, but the fact that she has stuck it out till to-day.... Of course, if she had done it at once...."

Heinrich shook his head impatiently. "Just listen, George. I telegraphed to the Summer Theatre. I inquired if she were still there, suggesting that it was a question of a new part for her, rehearsal of a new piece of mine, or something like that. I have been waiting at home ... till now ... but there is no answer. If I don't get one, or not a satisfactory one, I'll certainly go there."

"Yes, but why didn't you simply ask if she...."

"If she has killed herself? One doesn't want to make oneself ridiculous, George. I might have asked for news on that point every other day or so, of course.... It would certainly have had a kind of grotesque humour right enough."

"Look here now--you don't believe it yourself?"

"I'll go home now to see if there's a telegram there. Good-bye, George. Forgive me. I couldn't stand it any more at home, you see.... I am really sorry to have bothered you with my own affairs at a time like this. Once more, I ask you to forgive me."

"You had no idea.... And even if you had known.... In my case, it's quite--a finished chapter, so to speak. In my case, there is unfortunately nothing more to do."

He looked excitedly out of the window, over the tops of the trees, towards the red spires and roofs which towered up out of the faint red light of the evening town. Then he said: "I'll come with you, Heinrich. I can't start anything at home. I mean.... If you don't mind my society."

"Mind!... My dear George!..." He pressed his hand.

They went. At first they walked along the park in silence. George remembered his walk with Heinrich through the Prater Allee last autumn, and immediately after that he remembered the May evening when Anna Rosner had appeared in the Waldsteingarten later than the others, and Frau Ehrenberg had whispered to him, "I have asked her specially for you." Yes, for him. If it had not been for that evening Anna would never have become his mistress, and none of all the events which lay heavy on him to-day would ever have happened. Was there some law at work in this? Of course! So many children had to come into the world every year, and a certain number of those out of wedlock, and good Frau Ehrenberg had imagined that inviting Fräulein Anna Rosner for Baron von Wergenthin had been a matter of her own personal fancy.

"Is Anna quite out of danger?" asked Heinrich.

"I hope so," replied George. Then he spoke about the pain which she had suffered, her patience, and her goodness. He felt the need of describing her as a perfect angel, as though he could thereby atone a little for the wrong he had done her.

Heinrich nodded. "She really seems to be one of the few women who are made to be mothers. It isn't true, you know, that there are many of that kind. Having children--that's what they're all there for; but being mothers! And to think of her, of all people, having to suffer like that! I really never had an idea that anything like that could happen."

George shrugged his shoulders. Then he said: "I had been expecting to see you out there again. I think you even made some promise to that effect when you dined with us and Therese a week ago."

"Oh yes. Didn't we squabble dreadfully, Therese and I? It got even more violent on the way home. Really quite funny. We walked, you know, right into the town. The people who met us are absolutely bound to have taken us for a couple of lovers, we quarrelled so dreadfully."

"And who won in the end?"