Part 20

The artist of _The World_ had with a few strokes dashed off a young man, the replica of a million others of his kind, descending into a life-boat on a rope ladder from the top deck of a half-submerged steamer and carrying on his back a young lady wearing nothing but a shift.

"Did you really do it?" asked Peter Schmidt.

"I don't think so," said Frederick. "I must admit the details of the accident are not very clear in my mind any more." Frederick stood still, turned pale, and tried to recollect. "I don't know," he said, "what is most fearful about such an event, the things that really occurred, or the fact that one gradually digests it and forgets it." Still standing in the middle of the path, he continued: "What strikes a man hardest is the absurdity of it, the stupid senselessness of it, the superlative brutality. We know nature's brutality in theory; but to be able to live, we must forget it in its real extent, in its gruesome actuality. The most enlightened modern man somehow and somewhere in his soul still believes in something like an all-beneficent God. But such an experience gives that 'somehow' and 'somewhere' an unmerciful drubbing with iron fists. And I have come from the sinking of the _Roland_ with a spot in my soul deaf and dumb and numb. It has not awakened to life yet. The brutalisation is so extreme that while it is still fresh in one's mind, one would as soon express belief in God or man or the future of humanity or in a Utopia, or anything else of the sort, as give utterance to something that one knows to be a vile deception. What is the sense of our sentimentalising over man's dignity, his divine destiny, when such fearful, inane injustice is wrought upon innocent persons and cannot be undone?"

Frederick turned very pale. He was seized by a violent attack of nausea. His lids opened wide, his eyes popped with a curious expression of horror. He trembled slightly, and in some alarm clutched impetuously at his friend's arm. His brain reeled dully as he felt the ground beneath his feet beginning to heave.

"I have never had anything like this before," he said. "I think the accident has left me with something."

Peter Schmidt led his friend to a bench, which fortunately happened to be close by. He saw it was a nervous attack. Frederick's hands turned numb, cold sweat broke out on his body, and he suddenly fell over in a faint. When he awoke, it took some time for him to recognise his surroundings. He said things meant for somebody else. He thought he saw his wife, then his children, and then his father in full uniform. When he regained complete consciousness, he implored his friend to keep the incident a secret. Peter Schmidt promised he would.

"My opinion is," he said, "that your over-wrought, over-taxed nerves are in revolt. They are taking revenge and at the same time curing themselves."

"Though I have inherited the strongest constitution from both my father's and mother's sides," said Frederick, "yet, from last summer on, I have been assailed by so many things that I have long been expecting a collapse. I know this will not be the last attack. I should have cause for rejoicing were the condition not to become chronic."

"Oh," said Schmidt, "you may have two or three more attacks, but if you live quietly for a few months, they may never recur again."

In coming out of his swoon Frederick, as he himself said, returned from a trip around the world. He had travelled through the axis of the earth to the antipodes, which actually did hang head downward.

"I felt as if I had been dead and had come back to life," he said, trying to give his friend a conception of the remarkable state through which he had passed. "It was not like being asleep. During the first part of my dreams, I felt as if I had been something like a block of granite for hundreds of years. On awaking I stood in the shadow of the deepest abyss. I saw subterranean landscapes, gigantic caves, heavens of stone, enormous Adelsberg grottoes. Something lifted me up. The only thing I can compare it to was the way a diver must feel who slowly, slowly rises to brighter and brighter regions from ten thousand feet below the surface of the sea. I felt as if I were forcing myself up out of the grave. I re-lived my whole conscious life from my babyhood up to this very day. You can imagine what a medley it was of nurses, military expeditions, cramming for examinations, confirmations, birthdays, marriages, sick-beds and death-beds. At the end I went through the whole sinking of the _Roland_ again. And when you called me, I heard you in spite of my paralysed condition, but I saw you coming out of an inn on the quay of the little harbour where Columbus's flag-ship was slowly decaying."

"All right, all right, Friedericus Rex," Peter Schmidt soothed him. Friedericus Rex had been Frederick's nickname at the university. "Never mind," Peter continued, in a tone clearly revealing that he took Frederick's dreams to be a symptom of his over-wrought nerves. "Don't think of it, don't think of anything, old man. Let your ganglion cells rest."

Frederick assured Peter that he felt like one newly arisen to a new world and had rested better than he had for years. While they walked on together, Peter Schmidt tried to speak only of the mechanical, physiological causes of the attack. After a while, the friends regained their old liveliness and began to talk of other things. From now on, Peter Schmidt was careful never to mention the sinking of the _Roland_ in Frederick's presence.

VII

"We are near Ritter's studio," Schmidt said. "If you like, we might drop in for a while."

Frederick agreed, again begging his friend not to refer to his nervous attack.

"It was very astute of me, or of the wire-puller above us, to postpone my fit until the very moment you were with me," he said.

Several times within the next few hours, Schmidt had occasion to be struck by Frederick's evident belief in predestination and the superstition that clung to him from his crossing of the Atlantic.

The street that Bonifacius Ritter's studios were on adjoined Central Park. In the first room, a man in a round paper cap of his own making was at work taking a plaster cast of a man. His cap and his smock and trousers, or as much of his trousers as showed from under his smock and above his slippers, were covered with hardened daubs of clay. Death-masks, casts of antique statues, and anatomical studies of the human body, in whole or part, hung on all the walls. When the workman left the room to announce the visitors the model, whose upper body, nude to the hips, showed the brawny development of an athlete, began to speak to Frederick and Peter.

"What won't a man do to earn his bit of daily bread!" he said. "I am from Pirna"--he pronounced it "Berna," speaking in a round Saxon dialect--"and I tell you, it's no joke for fellows like me in this damned New York. At first I earned my living as a professional strong man. Then my boss failed, and I had to give up my outfit, my iron bars and my weights and everything I needed for my job. I can carry twelve hundred pounds on my stomach."

Ritter sent word asking the gentlemen to come to his private studio. They passed through a room in which a stately young lady was working without a model at an almost completed portrait bust in clay. In the next room, three or four marble-cutters were making a great noise hammering and chiselling imperturbably, without glancing up, at marble blocks of various sizes. From this room, a cast-iron circular stairway led up to a narrow skylight studio, where Bonifacius Ritter received Frederick and Peter.

It was a delight merely to behold the young master in his slimness and elegance. When the men entered, he removed his left hand from the pocket of his light smock, tossed away his burning cigarette, and greeted them with evident pleasure, blushing like a girl. He ushered them into a small room adjoining, lighted by a single window of antique stained glass from a French church. The low ceiling was coffered in weathered oak, and the walls were panelled in wood to a height of about six feet. A heavy oak table with benches on three sides took up nearly half the length of the room. The front of the room was partially blocked up by a genuine Nuremberg stove with the precious Delft tiles of antique green glaze testifying to the wonderful old potter's art. Willy Snyders had chanced upon the beautiful Renaissance piece in a shop near the wharf, and had succeeded in buying it for Ritter for only one hundred dollars.

"Here's a comfortable corner of the Fatherland," said Ritter. "Willy planned it all, collected all the stuff, and attended to the entire furnishing."

The university student in Frederick, the thorough German in him was surprised and delighted. Though the room looked like the cell of a St. Jerome, or, better still, the study of an Erasmus, it nevertheless resembled in its least details the dim sanctum of a German _Weinstube_, and all the more so when a young man in a blue apron, a stone-cutter's helper, who might equally well have been a wine-cellar keeper, brought in a bottle of old Rhine wine and several coloured hock glasses.

The wonderful poetry of their student days long past descended upon the friends. Frederick was still in a state of excitement and irrational recklessness. He pinned his faith to the moment, ready to stake his yesterday and his morrow upon it. The twilight of the room brought back memories of youthfully blissful times. He had found his old friend again and a new friend of the same warmth of temperament and of the same German ways, far from the old home. Settling himself snugly in the corner by the window, like a man intending to take his ease in a restaurant, he touched glasses with the others and uttered an exclamation of rapture.

"You'll never get me to budge from this corner, Mr. Ritter--though," he added, "I should first like to see your works."

"No hurry about that," said Ritter gaily, at the same time bringing an album bound in pigskin, in which he asked Frederick and Schmidt to write their names. Then he opened a very practical closet reaching to the floor, one of Willy's contrivances, and took out a carved wooden figure, a German Madonna by Till Riemenschneider. The sweet oval of her lovely face was not so much that of a Madonna as of a real German Gretchen.

"Willy Snyders told me," Ritter explained, "that he bought it from a rascal of a New York customs official, a man of German extraction, whose father had been a cabinet-maker in Ochsenfurt. The figure comes from the town-hall there and had been taken to the cabinet-maker for repair. He substituted another freshly painted figure, which the good folk of Ochsenfurt greeted with joy as the original greatly beautified and rejuvenated. Thus, Willy Snyders. I am not responsible for the version," he concluded laughing. "But one thing is certain, it's a genuine Riemenschneider."

The lovely statue by the Würzburg master radiated a vivid charm, which with the spell of the small room, decorated with such tender affection for old memories, and the greenish-golden sparkle of the Rhine wine in the hock glasses, brought back the German home in all its deep-seated force and beauty--a beauty, it is true, unintelligible, and therefore non-existent, to the average German of to-day.

"Once I followed up Tillman Riemenschneider's works," said Ritter. "I started at Rothenburg ob der Tauber, and went down the valley of the Tauber past Kreglingen, and so forth, as far as Würzburg. I am confident of recognising every piece of his at first glance, especially his Madonnas. They have almost completely cast off the Gothic, and no other sculptor in wood of his time knew so well how to treat the peach bloom of a woman's skin or the charm of a woman's face and body. His women are the pick of the lovely girls of Würzburg and its surroundings. Each one is adorably beautiful. Here is Veit Stoss." He took a portfolio from a shelf filled with portfolios. "Veit Stoss is superior to Riemenschneider in force of temperamental expression; he has capacities in his passions that make him superior, or at least equal, to Rembrandt." Ritter spread before them several reproductions of the master, showing the seriousness and sorrow inspiring all his works. "Nevertheless," he said, "Riemenschneider holds his own against him for the very reason that he differs from him so absolutely."

"The obstinate resistance of the Gothic," said Frederick, "the nightmare condition of mediæval Christianity, its fearful revelling in pain, its ardour for suffering had to give way to the clear, healthy vision of a burgher. The atmosphere clears, the garments acquire a natural flow of line, erring flesh begins to blossom forth--"

"Tillman Riemenschneider's portraits are unsurpassed by any works, ancient or modern, unsurpassed, I say, by the very best," Ritter reiterated.

Willy Snyders entered with a great bluster. He had come directly from his work in the offices of an interior decorating firm.

"I say, Ritter," he said, shaking hands with the men, "if you think I'm not thirsty, you're very much mistaken." He examined the bottle. "The deuce! Without me to help him, the wretch taps one of the twenty bottles of Johannisberger with which a Chicago pork packer presented him when he made a portrait of his humpbacked daughter. Well, now that one is gone, another may as well follow. Gentlemen, isn't this a jolly place for little carousals?" Pointing to the Madonna from Ochsenfurt-on-the-Main. "Isn't she a smart little body? She certainly is not by Pappe. I myself collect nothing but Japanese works." The fact seemed quite to accord with his appearance. "I'm nothing but a poor dog now, but inside of four or five years I intend to have the wherewithal, and the collecting of things Japanese will proceed by electricity. There's no race that can compete with those fellows in art. But now I want to tell you something." He turned to Ritter. "With your kind permission, I'll go call Lobkowitz and, what is more, I'll call Miss Eva. Just now, as I passed through her room, she told me she would like to meet the hero of the _Roland_." Without awaiting an answer, he left the room; and within a few moments Lobkowitz, who collaborated with Ritter, and Miss Burns, the pupil, appeared.

After the conventional greetings were over, the little Madonna was used as a welcome occasion for starting conversation again, which had begun to lag a bit on the entrance of the newcomers. Willy held the statue, a little less than three feet high, against different panels of the wall to see how it looked for permanent placing there. A spot was finally chosen, and the Madonna was fastened to it temporarily.

The stone-cutter's helper brought another bottle of the heavy, expensive wine, more hock glasses, large Delft plates, and a mountain of sandwiches. Though Frederick and Peter had declared they must end their too lengthy visit, a fresh wave of conviviality swept over the company and held them on. A half hour passed, and another half hour, and a whole hour, and still the new friends were sitting over their German wine and still they were discussing that inexhaustible theme so dear to all of them, German art.

"It is an eternal shame," said Frederick, "that the spirit which created the art of the old Greeks cannot be united with that profound German spirit, an entirely new spirit, which characterises the works of Adam Krafft, Veit Stoss, and Peter Vischer."

"Doctor von Kammacher," Miss Burns asked, "have you ever done any work in sculpture?" Miss Burns spoke a correct German. Her father was a Dutchman, her mother a German, and when her parents settled in London, she was only a child of three.

"Doctor von Kammacher exudes talent at every pore," said Willy, answering in Frederick's place. "I can testify to it." Willy Snyders' passion for collecting had manifested itself while he was still a boy. Among his treasures had been some copies of so-called "beer gazettes," humorous sheets got up to be read at German students' merrymaking. The copies in his possession contained sketches by Frederick, both of a humorous and serious character.

"I exude talent?" Frederick exclaimed, blushing. "Never, Willy. I beg of you, Miss Burns, don't believe that enthusiast of a schoolboy. If I really have talent, those sketches of mine in beer gazettes wouldn't prove it. As a matter of fact, I once did do some work in art. Why should I deny that, like all silly children of between sixteen and twenty, I dabbled in painting, sculpture, and literature? Once my father had to bring me to reason because I was all afire for going on the stage. Later, I wanted to throw everything to the winds to enter politics and revolutionise society by working for a party which has never even existed, a German-Social party. I leave you to judge how flighty I was and how much talent I had for art. But I love art, with a love stronger, I think, now than ever before, because everything in the world beside art has become problematical to me. I would rather have carved a wooden Mary like this"--indicating the statue by Riemenschneider--"than have been Robert Koch and Helmholtz rolled into one. Of course, I am speaking purely subjectively. I know how great Koch and Helmholtz are, and I have the profoundest admiration for both."

"See here! See here! What's the matter with us, Friedericus?" cried Peter Schmidt, jumping to his feet. Though the artists had great fondness and respect for Peter Schmidt and went to him for advice, yet, whenever he was with them, a violent discussion invariably arose whether art or science deserves precedence in the field of human culture, Peter, of course, championing the cause of science. "If you were to throw that wooden statue into the fire," he said, "it would burn like wood. Neither the wood nor the immortal art infusing it resists fire. And once it burns to ashes, it can, of course, be of no significance to the world's progress. The world is full of marvellous gods and mothers of God, and so far as I know, they never cast a single ray of light into the night of the darkest ignorance."

"I'm not saying anything against science," Frederick declared laughing, "I am merely speaking of a very unsettled man's love of art. So be at ease, Peter."

"If sculpture really attracts you," said Miss Burns, who had given her exclusive attention to Frederick, "why don't you begin right away to model here under Mr. Ritter? Begin to-morrow."

"I can't say I know very much about wood-carving," said Ritter, gaily. "However, I am entirely at Doctor von Kammacher's disposal."

"I cannot leave my little Madonna, my wooden Mother of God," cried Frederick, flushed with the wine, rising and holding up his glass. The others followed his example, laughing; and they drank to the little Madonna, each with a secret thought linking Frederick's outburst with the girl in the club-house. The glasses rang, and Frederick continued rather daringly: "I wish it had been granted me to do with divine intelligence and human hands, as Goethe said, what the animal man can and must do with the animal woman." He made a cup of his hands as if to dip up water. "I feel my Madonna in the hollow of my hands like a homunculus. She is alive there. The palms of my hands are warm. They are a golden shell. Conceive my Madonna to be a hand's breadth high, of live ivory, and imagine some rosy flecks here and there on her. Imagine her robed in the garments that Godiva wore, that is, nothing but her hair of flowing sunbeams, and so on, and so on." Frederick began to improvise poetry.

"Said the master: 'Come into my workshop.' And he took, like unto the Creator, God! in both his hands a little image, And his heart with mighty throb vibrated. 'As thou seest it, once I saw it living.' And so on, and so on.

Over my hands Flowed golden wavelets, Cool, sweet lips and--

I'll say no more. I'll merely add that I should like to carve that Madonna in German linden-wood and give her all the colours of life itself, and then die, for all I care."

Frederick's enthusiastic outburst was received with great applause.

Eva Burns was a beautiful young woman of over twenty-five years, imposing and perhaps somewhat masculine in appearance. Her German was rather hard, suggesting to a hypercritical person that her tongue was too thick for her mouth, like a parrot's. Her abundant hair was parted in the middle and drawn over her ears. Her figure was broad, stately, and perfectly formed. While Frederick spoke, and even after he had done speaking, she looked at him with searching interest in her large, intelligent, meditative eyes. Finally she said:

"You really ought to try to do it."

Eva Burns was one of those knowing, companionable women that are always welcome and never disturbing in a company of men. Her eyes and Frederick's eyes met, and the young scholar answered her in a tone of mixed raillery and gallantry:

"Miss--Miss--"

"Burns," Willy helped him, "Miss Burns from Birmingham."

"Miss Burns from Birmingham, you said something of great significance. On you be the blame if the world is impoverished by the loss of a poor physician and enriched by the addition of a poor sculptor."

It had grown dark, and they lighted three large candles of the finest bee's wax in the chandelier above the table.

"I have no objections," Schmidt several times interjected in the debate, "I have no objections to your trying to help toward the evolution of sublimer types by means of divine intelligence and human hands; for all I care, by means of divine intelligence alone, that is, by means of reason. The very same, if you will allow it, is the object, the ultimate object, of the science of medicine. A day is coming when artificial selection among human beings will be obligatory." The artists burst out laughing, but Schmidt continued unabashed. "And another day, a still more beautiful day, is coming when persons like ourselves will be considered like, well, let us say at the utmost, the African Bushmen."

VIII

The candles had almost burned to the bottom when the little company decided it was time to break up. It was a half holiday, the stone-cutters had stopped work sooner than usual, and the other rooms were dark and deserted. The artists used the stumps of the candles to light the company about. In passing through the first studio, Lobkowitz partially uncovered pieces meant for the Chicago Exposition, colossal plaster casts and models in clay representing commerce, manufacture, agriculture and the like. They threw enormous shadows on the walls and ceiling.

"You can't get results in art from large figures," said Ritter, though the statues were full of animation, and there was something prepossessing in them.