Part 21

One evening he was dining alone with the countess. Letitia had gone to a concert. The countess had something on her heart, and his suspicions were vigilant. Her ways were mild and she served him the best of everything. She spoke of the change of domicile that had been planned, and said that she and Letitia had not yet been able to agree whether it were better to spend the coming months in Wiesbaden or Berlin. She asked Crammon’s advice. He begged her to permit him not to interfere in the controversy. He had other plans of his own, and no desire to witness a noisy débâcle.

At that the countess began to lament her pecuniary embarrassment and complain of the impatience of her creditors. For the dear child’s sake she had determined to ask him for a considerable loan. She would give him any security he desired, provided her name and person and reputation did not suffice. Nothing, of course, could greatly mitigate the painfulness of having to make such a request. Yet the sense of asking the father of her darling did console her for her suffering.

Her red round cheeks did, in fact, become a shade less rosy, and in her forget-me-not blue eyes shimmered a tear or two.

Crammon laid down his knife and fork. “You misjudge me, countess,” he said with the melancholy of a Tartuffe. “You misjudge me gravely. Never in my life have I loaned out money--neither at interest nor out of friendship. Nothing could move me to change my principle. You probably fancy me well off. That is a most astonishing error, countess. I may give that impression, but you must not draw false inferences. I have had the art of thrift and frugality, that is all. I have been careful in the choice of my associates--men as well as women. If ever I had two invitations, one from the East and one from the West, and the Eastern invitation was issued by an unquestionably wealthier source, my decision was immediate and unhesitating. Thus I was guarded from scruples and regrets. All that I call my own is a little farm in Moravia that yields a most modest revenue--a little grain, a little fruit, and an old ramshackle house in Vienna with a few sticks of worm-eaten furniture, which is guarded for me by two rare pearls of the female sex. No one, countess, I assure you, has ever before made the quaint mistake of asking me for money. No one.”

Sadly the countess leaned her head upon her hand.

“But my conscience would forbid my acquiescence in this case even had I the ability,” Crammon continued morosely. “I would never forgive myself for having been the banker of the follies that are perpetrated here, or the financier of mad extravagance. No, no, countess. Let us talk of more cheerful things.”

He was still up when, at midnight, he heard a tapping at his door. Letitia entered. She sat down beside him, and said to him with a wide-eyed gentle look: “It wasn’t nice of you, Bernard, to treat auntie so cruelly. Neither you nor I can let a thing like that go. Are you stingy? For heaven’s sake, Bernard, don’t tell me that you’re stingy! Look me in the eyes, and tell me if such a thing is possible. My dear, I’d have to disown you!”

She laughed and put her arms about his neck, pulled his hair and kissed the tip of his nose, and was, in a word, so arch and so irresistible that Crammon’s cast-iron principles were fatally shattered. He revoked his refusal and promised to pay Letitia’s debts.

Once again the breath and speech of a woman had power over him. But it was late, and the sweetness was shot with pain. For he was no more the robber but the victim. Ah, it was time to practise modesty and renunciation. No longer did one bite into a juicy pear. No longer did one eat; one was eaten.

Letitia determined to go to Berlin. After some vain refusals, Crammon consented to accompany her.

XXV

In spite of the warmth of the room Johanna sat wrapped in her cloak.

Amadeus Voss told her a story: “I know of a holy priest who lived in France in the seventeenth century and whose name was Louis Gaufridy. In those days the people still believed in magic and witchcraft, and that was well, since it served as an antidote to godless desires. To-day a few chosen spirits believe in magic again, and thus exorcize the evil spirit which is called science. Louis Gaufridy was considered the most devout man of his age. Not even his enemies denied that. In a convent which he served as father confessor, there was a nun who was called Madeleine de la Palud. This woman’s imagination had embraced the Saviour under the aspect of the flesh, and the chronicles say that she had fed her evil desires upon His picture. This fact was written in her troubled looks, and the priest Gaufridy saw the truth and desired to liberate her through the grace of confession. But the demons sealed her lips and hardened her heart. They took possession of her, and the devils Asmodeus and Leviathan spoke through her. She who had hitherto been chaste had unchaste hallucinations, and accused the priest of having bewitched and misused her. Gaufridy was arrested and examined under torture and confronted with Madeleine. He swore by God and all His saints that he was being falsely accused. But the nun, misled by her hallucinations, swore that he was the prince of magicians, that he had misused her during confession, and had poisoned her soul. Before the judges the priest implored Madeleine to give up her delusion and confess the truth; but she was incapable of truth. Beside herself, she cried out that he had pledged himself to the devil in his own blood and that he had forced her to do the same. Thereupon he was cruelly tortured once more, and publicly burned on the Dominican’s Square at Aix.”

Johanna smiled a tormented smile.

“That is the story of Madeleine de la Palud,” said Voss, “the profound story concerning the heavenly and the earthly Eros and the Fata Morgana of the senses. Who was the guilty one? Madeleine, who had blasphemed and defiled the image of the Saviour with fleshly desires, or Gaufridy, who had plunged her into a consciousness of sin by creating in her the division between spirit and flesh? For that he had to suffer, as every one has to suffer. But what I feel, and what our sources indeed hint at, is that he was seized by a mysterious and terrible love for Madeleine de la Palud even when she was thrusting him into the torture chamber, and that this love mitigated for him even the horrors of his fiery death. In every human breast love arises but once and for but one being. All else is misunderstanding, and a sterile attempt to resuscitate what is dead. It leads to falsehood and to torture.”

Johanna smiled a tormented smile.

“I walked with a harlot yesterday,” Voss said suddenly, and stared into space.

Johanna did not stir.

“It is an old horror that draws me toward harlots,” he said in a hollow voice. “Sometimes when I walked the streets penniless, sick with longing, utterly deserted, I gazed after them and envied the men who could go with them. It is an old feeling and springs from a deep source. I cannot get rid of it, least of all now that I err in the darkness and the ground is melting under my feet.”

“You talk and talk,” said Johanna, and arose. “If I had learned to speak I could tell you what you ... do!”

“I suffer in the flesh,” he answered, and his glance burned her.

Twice she walked up and down the room. She hated her own tread, her own perceptions, and her own thoughts. She had so deep a longing for some human touch, some friendly, handsome, kindly word, that she would not admit even to herself how far it might lead her. She only had a dim vision of herself sitting in that rear room in Stolpische Street, waiting for Christian many hours, whole nights, it mattered not how long, but just to wait and to be there at his coming, to smile with her lips though her heart were weeping--she knew that condition so well--without explanation or confessions or complaints, as is the custom among well-bred people who settle their inner difficulties in silence and alone. Just to be there and nothing else, in order that the temperature of her heart might rise by a few degrees.

But to plan or undertake or hope for anything from any source was so criminal, it seemed, and so stupid. An empty thing--like a hungry bird picking at painted grains of wheat.

“You told me the other day that you weren’t able to pay your rent. Permit me to help you out.” She spoke in her frugal, pointed way, and with an angular gesture placed some money on the table. “Do not speak. Just this once, please do not speak.”

He looked at her devouringly, and laughed with a jeer.

She stood very cold and still. He kissed her.

She endured it like one to whose throat a knife is put.

XXVI

When she arrived in Stolpische Street it was seven o’clock in the evening. Christian was not at home, and she waited.

She lit the lamp, sat down beside the table, and did not move. After a while, since the chill of the unheated room penetrated through her cloak and even her frock, she got up and walked up and down. Sometimes she lightly touched the objects on the table--a notebook, or a dusty ink-well. She let down the shades, and saw the silly pictures with which they were adorned.

As on that other occasion she heard the house. It was full of rumours and whispers, and oppressed her fatefully.

Swift, violent knocks at the door resounded. She started and then hastened to open it. A boy stood before her. His condition made her shudder. His clothes were spattered over and over with mud. Here and there, about his knees and on his chest, the mud had caked and formed a thick crust. His head was bare. His coal-black hair, which was also muddy, hung down. His face had an utter bleached whiteness, such as Johanna had never seen upon a human face. No drop of blood seemed left beneath his skin.

Limping a little, he passed by Johanna and entered the room. His movements were mechanical and trance-like. The volitional impulse always far antedated the action it produced.

“I am Michael Hofmann,” he said, and his teeth chattered.

Johanna did not know him and had not heard of him. She thought she must be dealing with a madman. In her fear she did not leave the door. She expected him to attack her at any moment, and listened for some chance step in the hall or yard. She wanted to flee, but she was afraid to move. When the boy came into the circle of the lamplight, a sigh which ended in a broken cry escaped her, so terrible was the expression in his eyes.

He stopped, and looked about him. He was obviously seeking Christian Wahnschaffe; but in the act of gazing he forgot to look, and his glance became a stare. He grasped the back of a chair. Exhaustion seemed to overtake him. When he was about to sit down, he reeled and half-whirled about, and would have fallen but for the support of the back of the chair. Now Johanna saw clearly that he was neither mad nor drunk. He was a human being who had been robbed of strength and speech and almost vision and consciousness by an experience of the supremest horror. Not only his shaking limbs, not only the whiteness of his face betrayed the fact, but the atmosphere that surrounded him.

Gently she closed the door. Hesitatingly she approached the chair upon which he seemed now wedged fast. She dared to ask no question. Gnawing her lip, she suppressed a feeling that welled up hotly within her. She felt herself shrink and become thin and shadowy. She seemed suddenly to have lost the very right to breathe.

Every passing second heightened her unspeakable consternation. Her limbs trembled. She sat down on the other side of the room. The lad had his back turned to her, and she observed that his body began to twitch. She saw it by the creases in his coat and his arms, which were hanging down. It was like an endless convulsion. The helplessness which she felt in the face of this unknown tragedy caused her an almost physical pain, and inspired her with self-disgust and self-contempt. Her soul seemed steeped in blackness, shredded and crushed. While she suffered so, a desire came over her, a defiant and struggling desire, as for something ultimate to lay hold upon in life. It was the desire to see how Christian would take the terrible thing in which he was, to all appearances, implicated. Would he let it slide from him with his old elegant smoothness? Would he let it be shattered against that impenetrability against which all her life and fate had been shattered? Or would he be that other who was frank and changed and had wrought a miracle upon himself and upon all others except herself--who was incapable of faith out of shame and despair and desolation and an inner hurt? But if he was that other and changed man, if he approved himself in this supreme instance, then she need torment herself so cruelly no more. For in that case, what did her little sorrows matter? Then she must be humble, and wait for her summons, though she did not know what it would be.

And she waited, stretching out her slim throat like a thirsty deer.

XXVII

That “no, never, nevermore,” had driven Christian about without another thought. On this day he forgot that Karen was sick unto death.

As he was coming home that night it was raining. Nevertheless there were groups of people in front of the houses. Some uncommon event had brought them out of their rooms.

He had had no umbrella, and was wet to the skin. In the doorway, too, stood people who lived in the house. They whispered excitedly. When they saw him they became silent, stepped aside, and let him pass.

Their faces frightened him. He looked at them. They were silent. Terror fell on his chest like a lump of ice.

He went on. He was about to go up to Karen’s flat, but reconsidered and went toward the court. He wanted to be alone in his room for a while. Several people followed him. Among them was the wife of Gisevius and her son, a young man whose behaviour was marked by the well-defined class-consciousness of the organized worker.

Christian did not even observe that the window of his room was lit. He walked close to the wall; he was so wet. Opening the door, he saw Johanna and the boy. He did not at once recognize Michael, who sat turned aside. He nodded to Johanna in surprise. The tense and glittering look which she turned upon him made him start. He reached the table and recognized Michael Hofmann. He grew pale, and had to hold on to the table’s edge.

The door was still open, and in the dim light of the hall were crowded the five or six people who had followed him. It was not insolence that brought them to the threshold. They had been disquieted by rumours, and thought that he could give them some information.

Christian put his hand in the lad’s shoulder, and asked: “Where have you been, Michael? Where have you come from?”

The boy continued rigid and silent.

“Where is Ruth?” Christian asked, as by a supreme effort.

Michael arose. His eyes were unnaturally wide open. With both arms he made a large, obscure gesture. Horror shook him so that a gurgling sound which arose in his throat was throttled before it reached his lips. Suddenly he swayed and reeled and fell like a log. He lay on the floor.

Christian kneeled down and put his arms about him. He lifted him a little, and gathered the muddy, trembling boy close to him. He bent down his face, and learned an unheard-of thing from the beseeching, horror-stricken glance that sought him as from fathomless depths. Passionately he pressed Michael’s body against his own, which was so wet but no longer aware of its wetness. He pressed the boy to his heart, as though he would open to him his breast as a shelter, and the boy, too, clung to Christian with all his might. The convulsive rigidity relaxed, and from that unbelievably emaciated body there broke forth a sobbing like the moan of a wind of doom.

The boy knew. No one could be so shattered but one who knew.

Then Christian kissed the stony, dirty, tear-stained face.

Johanna saw it, and the timid people at the door saw it also.

INQUISITION

I

Edgar Lorm was accustomed to taking his meals without Judith, so he was not surprised at her absence to-day and sat down alone.

The meal was served: a lobster, breast of veal with salad and three kinds of vegetables, a pheasant with compote, a large boule de Berlin, pineapple and cheese. He drank two glasses of red Bordeaux and a pint of champagne.

He ate this excessively rich meal daily with the appetite of a giant and the philosophical delight of a gourmet. As he was lighting his heavy Havana cigar over his coffee, he heard Judith’s voice. She burst in, perturbed to the utmost.

“What has happened, dear child?” he asked.

“Something frightful,” she gasped, and sank into a chair.

Lorm arose. “But what has happened, my dear?”

She panted. “I haven’t been feeling at all well for several days. I got the doctor to look me over, and he says I’m pregnant.”

A sudden light came into Lorm’s eyes. “I don’t think that’s such a terrible misfortune.” He had difficulty in concealing his surprised delight. “On the contrary, I think it’s a blessed thing. I hardly dared hope for it. Indeed, my dear wife, I don’t know what I wouldn’t give to have it true.”

Judith’s eyes glittered as she replied: “It shall never be--never, never! I shall not remind you of our agreement; I shall not lay the blame on you if this terrible thing has really happened. I can’t believe it yet. It would make me feel bewitched. But you are mistaken if you count on any yielding on my part, any womanly weakness, or any awakening of certain so-called instincts. Never, never! My body shall remain as it is--mine, all mine. I won’t have it lacerated and I won’t share it. It’s the only thing I still call my own. I won’t have a strange creature take possession of it, and I refuse to age by nine years in nine months. And I don’t want some mocking image of you or me to appear. Never, never! The horror of it! Be careful! If you take delight in something I detest so, the horror will extend itself to you!”

Lorm stretched himself a little, and regarded her with amazement. There was nothing for him to say.

She went into her bedroom and locked the door. Lorm gave orders that no visitors were to be admitted. Then he went into the library, and spent the time until eight reading a treatise on the motions of the fixed stars. But often he raised his eyes from the book, for he was preoccupied not so much with the secrets of the heavens as with very mundane and very depressing things. He got up and went to the door of Judith’s room. He listened and knocked, but Judith did not answer. At the end of half an hour he returned and knocked again. She knew his humble way of seeking admission, but she did not answer. The door remained locked.

At the end of each half hour, which he spent in reading about the stars, he returned to the door and knocked. He called her name. He begged her to have some confidence in him and hear what he had to say. He spoke in muffled tones, so as not to arouse the attention of the servants. He asked her not to blame him for his premature delight. He saw his error and deplored it. Only let her listen to him. He promised her gifts--an antique candlestick, a set of Dresden china, a frock made by Worth. In vain. She did not answer.

Three days passed. An oppressive atmosphere rested on the household. Lorm slunk through the rooms like an intimidated guest. He humiliated himself so far as to send Judith a letter by the housekeeper, who took in her meals and who alone had access to her. At night he returned to the door again and again, placed his lips against it, and implored her. There was no stirring of anger in him, no impulse to clench his fist and break down the door. Judith knew that. She was beating her fish.

She knew that she could go any length.

This man had been the idol of a whole nation. He had been spoiled by fame, by the friendship of distinguished people, by the kindness of fate and all the amenities of life. His very whims had been feared; a frown of his had swept all opposition aside. Now he not only endured the maltreatment of this woman whom he had married after long solitariness and hesitation; he accepted insult and humiliation like the just rewards of some guilt. Weary of fame, appreciation, friendship, success, and domination, he seemed to lust after mortification, the reversal of all things, and the very voluptuousness of pain.

Quite late on the third evening he was summoned to the telephone by Wolfgang Wahnschaffe. The breach between Wolfgang and Judith that had followed his first visit forbade his visiting the house.

He begged Lorm for an interview on neutral ground. The occasion, he said, was most pressing. Lorm asked for details. The bitter and excited answer was that the question concerned Christian. Some common proceeding against him, some decision and plan, some protective measures were absolutely necessary. The family must be saved from both danger and inconceivable disgrace.

At this point Lorm interrupted him. “I feel rather sure that my wife will prove quite unapproachable in the matter. And what could I do more than the merest stranger?” Urged anew, he finally promised to meet Wolfgang at luncheon in a restaurant on Potsdamer Street.

He had scarcely hung up the receiver when Judith entered. She had on a négligée of dark-green velvet trimmed with fur. The garment had a long train. Her hair was carefully dressed, a cheerful smile was on her lips, and she stretched out both hands to Lorm.

He was happy, and took her hands and kissed them.

She put her arms about his neck and her lips close to his ear: “Everything is all right. The doctor is a donkey. I did you wrong. Everything is nice now, so be nice!”

“If only you are satisfied,” said Lorm, “nothing else matters.”

She nestled closer to him, and coaxed with eyes and mouth and hands: “How about the antique candlestick, darling, and the frock by Worth? Are you going to get them for me? And am I not to have my set of Dresden china?”