Part 21

"Everything for the anniversary of 1492, everything for the Chicago Exposition," said Willy. "A Viking ship is coming over from Norway. The last descendant of Christopher Columbus, a knock-kneed Spaniard, is to be passed around for show, a tremendous humbug, always an acceptable dish to the Americans. Ritter owes this big order to his monkey-like quickness. The building commission applied to various sculptors, and Ritter sent them sketches for all the statues before the other artists had even wet their clay."

"I was working in my little studio in Brooklyn," said Ritter, "and for forty-eight hours in succession I didn't take my hands out of clay. These figures don't bother me in the least. After the Exposition they won't exist except in photographs."

"That's the way the Americans are. Please, Ritter, do give us a Washington memorial. Perhaps you have a Washington memorial ready-made in your waistcoat pocket."

"No, but by eight thirty-five this evening I will have one for you."

"He can do it, too," said Willy, patting his idol. "That is why he fits so well into the United States of America."

The men now entered Ritter's real workshop. Here there were pieces very different in spirit. While the large figures for the Chicago Exposition showed traces of commercialism, here everything was thoroughly artistic. A companion piece in clay to the bas-relief in the club-house, a group of singing girls not yet completed, was standing on a heavy scaffolding. It showed the same noble qualities that Frederick had observed in the relief of the singing boys. Had these works been displayed in Germany, they would undoubtedly have been epoch-making. A bust of an old woman had some of the traits of Donatello. Everything in the room testified to the facility with which the youthful master created. There was a long decorative frieze in clay, putti with goats, dancing fauns, mænads, Silenus on his donkey, a procession of bacchantic figures celebrating the vintage and reproducing all the bacchic joyousness, the drunkenness, of men and women vintagers, as they cut and trod the grapes and drank the wine. Another uncompleted work in clay was the figure of a middle-aged Neptune at a fountain, looking with a jolly smile at a huge fish in his hands. There was a completed plaster cast of St. George, frankly inspired by its glorious model, the St. George of Donatello in the National Museum in Florence. In all these works, Ritter had struck a happy medium between the Greeks and Donatello and created a style fully expressing his own personality, yet showing permissible dependence upon his predecessors.

The pieces in this room were without exception meant for the country residence of an American Croesus, who had taken a tremendous fancy to the young sculptor and his work and jealously tried to keep his creations from straying into another's possession. He looked upon himself as a Medici of the nineteenth century. His marble palace in extensive grounds on Long Island had already swallowed up millions of dollars, though meant as a residence merely for himself, his wife, and his only daughter. No one but Ritter was to do the statuary and sculptural decorations for his house and garden, and he was to have free play. What commissions are given in America! Were talents as easy to create in "our country" as dollars, there would be a second Renaissance even greater than the great Italian Renaissance.

Frederick was fairly intoxicated by the young man's singular good fortune. What he particularly admired was the union of success and merit. When he compared the abundance of these works, tossed off apparently as in play, and the young man's cheerful evenness of temper with his own torn, distracted existence, a feeling came upon him that he had never before had, the feeling that he was an outcast, a feeling of discouragement and helpless defeat. While the light of the candles glided over the creations of the man who had infused form and soul into the formless clay, a voice within him kept saying:

"You have frittered away your existence, you have wasted your days, you will never retrieve your loss."

And the voice of envy, of bitter reproach against a nameless being asked why he had not been permitted to find a similar path and follow it in time.

Ritter's life had received a wrench in Europe. Some brutal mishap while he was serving in the army had made him revolt and later desert. Now, after seven years in America, he was compelled to admit that the wrench had been indispensable for transplanting the sapling to the soil best suited to its growth. In the new surroundings, Ritter's nature developed simply, harmoniously and symmetrically, like a tree with plenty of space and sunlight. Fate atoned for the lack of military subordination in the young prince from genius-land by granting him a surplus of superordination.

Suddenly Ritter said to Frederick:

"I understand Toussaint, the Berlin sculptor, was on board the _Roland_."

Peter Schmidt had warned the artists in an aside not to touch upon the disaster, telling them his friend was very nervous and a reference to the accident might have a bad effect upon him. But his warning had been forgotten.

"Poor Toussaint," Frederick said, "hoped to find mountains of gold here, though, you may say, he was nothing but a fancy-cake genius."

"And yet I assure you," said Lobkowitz, "there was something grand about him as a man. In spite of his success, he was always poor. He suffered from having a wife who was too fond of society and from having to associate with the persons who bestowed favours upon him and were so much richer than himself. That dandyism of his was not natural. Had he reached America, he would probably have ignored his wife and become an entirely different man. All he wanted to do was to create, to work. What he loved best was to be perched on a scaffolding, with shirt sleeves tucked up, among first-rate workmen. Once he said to me, 'If you should happen to see a mason resembling me in New York, sitting on the pavement eating his lunch and drinking a can of beer, don't hesitate to believe I am that mason, and don't pity me. Congratulate me.'"

"Another one," thought Frederick, "who kept the best part of himself hidden beneath the conventional foppishness of his time; another one who, like me, may always have been trying in vain to reach a definite decision between being and seeming."

IX

Ritter's dog-cart was waiting in front of the door. He suggested that Frederick and Schmidt drive down in it to the railroad station, where Schmidt was to get the train back to Meriden. The two men squeezed in beside the Austrian horse-trainer, valet, or whatever Ritter's coachman was. The trotter went off at a swift gait, and again the wild, noisy phantasmagoria of the streets of the new Babylon went flashing by Frederick's eyes.

Ritter had introduced his coachman as Mr. Boabo. He wore a small round hat of brown felt, brown gloves, and a short brown jockey's overcoat. His chin was heavy, his nose finely chiselled, and his moustache dark and downy. He was a handsome man, or lad, since boyish naïveté still predominated in his expression. He was about the same age as Ritter. While guiding the magnificent grey through the medley of cabs, trucks, and street-cars, he smiled faintly, as if delighted by it all.

Notwithstanding the city's excesses of architecture and engineering, its distinctive characteristic was unimaginativeness. The hurry and bustle, "business," the chase after the dollar had lashed the technical arts on to audacious attempts; for example, the skyscrapers, or the elevated railroad, with its unfenced tracks high overhead, its trains thundering along incessantly in two directions, winding sharply about the corners like an illuminated snake, and writhing into streets so narrow that a person in one of the upper stories of the houses can almost touch the coaches with his hands.

"Madness, lunacy!" Frederick exclaimed in his amazement.

"Not altogether," said Schmidt. "Back of it all is a very sane, unscrupulous practicality, riding down every obstacle in its way."

"It would be hideous were it not so tremendous," Frederick shouted above the din.

The newsboys were still calling the wreck of the _Roland_.

"What is that? What was that?" thought Frederick. "I am wallowing in life. How does that story concern me?"

A congestion of traffic compelled the grey to come to a halt. He champed on his bit, tossed his head, sending flecks of foam flying from his mouth, and looked about as if to try the heart and reins of the young Austrian officer with his heroic, fiery eyes. During the compulsory pause, Frederick had a chance to observe how sheafs of newspapers were being consumed by the pressing, crushing, jostling throngs.

"The cow gobbles grass, and New York gobbles newspapers," Frederick thought. And heaven be praised! In _The World_ that Schmidt bought of a boy, who at risk of his life had threaded his way to the cart, there were fresh sensations taking precedence of the _Roland_--"Explosion in a Pennsylvania mine. Three hundred miners cut off." "Fire in a factory in a thirteen-story skyscraper. Four hundred working-girls perish in the flames."

"After us the deluge," said Frederick. "Coal is dear, wheat is dear, oil is dear, but men are cheap as dirt. Mr. Boabo, don't you think our civilisation is a fever of a hundred and six degrees? Isn't New York a mad-house?"

But the handsome youth, after the fashion of Austrian officers, put his hand to his cap with inimitable grace, while a decided smile, a smile of happiness, played about the corners of his mouth, and his answer by no means expressed assent.

"Well, I love life. Here one really lives. When there is no war in Europe, then it is wearisome," he said, speaking in English, which most clearly proved how distant his relation to the old continent was.

At the station, when they were standing on the platform beside the train, Schmidt said to Frederick, wringing his hand impetuously in his German way:

"Now, old fellow, you must soon come to see me in Meriden. Meriden is a small place, and you can recuperate there better than here."

"I'm not altogether a free agent," Frederick replied with a faint, fatalistic smile.

"Why not?"

"I have obligations. I am tied down."

With the indiscretion of intimacy, Schmidt asked:

"Has it anything to do with the wooden Madonna?"

"Perhaps it is something of the sort," Frederick replied. "The poor little thing lost her father, her natural protector, and as I had a share in her rescue--"

"Then there was a girl in a shift, and a rope ladder!"

"Yes and no. I'll tell you more about it some other time. Now just take my word for it, there are times when all of a sudden in a most surprising way, one finds oneself saddled with complete responsibility for a fellow-creature."

Peter Schmidt laughed.

"You mean, if a woman steps up to you in a crowded city street and asks you to hold her baby a moment, and never comes back for her baby?"

"I'll tell you everything some other time."

The train with its long, elegantly built coaches began to move slowly, though no signal of any sort had been given, no whistle or bell or word of command. Without the least to-do, it slipped out of the station wholly disregarded. Peter and Frederick were the only persons taking leave of one another in this crowded train bound inland. Peter mounted the steps, and again shook hands with Frederick.

"I hope to see you soon again," each said to the other warmly.

X

When Frederick returned home, he learned that a number of reporters and other persons had been there inquiring for him. Webster and Forster's agent had given his address, Frederick deduced upon seeing among the reporters' cards one of Arthur Stoss's. There was also a letter from an impresario, a German of the name of Lehmann, who, failing to find Frederick in, had left a pencilled note asking whether, and under what conditions, Frederick would be prepared to deliver a medical lecture in New York, Boston, Chicago, and later other cities, in which lecture he was each time to touch upon the sinking of the _Roland_ and weave in some of his impressions of the event.

"What else?" thought Frederick, disgusted, though he had to admit that he had actually become famous.

Through Petronilla he sent word to Ingigerd to ask whether it would be agreeable to her to receive him. Petronilla returned with the message that Ingigerd would see him in a quarter of an hour. "Signor Pittore Franck is with her," the housekeeper added; which piece of information sent the blood rushing to Frederick's head; and though it had been his intention to wash and change his clothes, he scarcely waited for Petronilla to conclude her message, and dashed up-stairs three steps at a time. He knocked on Ingigerd's door loudly. No one said "Come in." Nevertheless he opened the door and entered and saw the gypsy painter sitting at Ingigerd's side. On the table under the electric bulbs, lay a large sheet of paper, on which Franck was sketching with a soft pencil what Frederick on stepping nearer saw to be hasty designs for costumes.

"I said in a quarter of an hour," said Ingigerd slowly, making a wry face.

"I'll come whenever I choose to," said Frederick.

Franck, rising without the least air of haste or confusion, greeted Frederick with perfect cordiality and walked to the door.

"I don't want to disturb you. Good evening, Doctor von Kammacher," he said with a grin betraying some delight in Frederick's annoyance.

"Rigo!" Ingigerd called after him. "You promised to come again to-morrow morning."

"What's that boy doing in your room, Ingigerd?" Frederick demanded somewhat roughly, in evident anger. "And 'Rigo'? What does 'Rigo' mean? Are both of you out of your wits?"

Though this tone of his must have been new to her, it seemed agreeable to her, for she said very humbly:

"Well, why did you stay away so long?"

"I'll tell you later. But as matters now stand between us, I forbid your striking up such friendships. If you want to do something for the fellow, present him with a comb and a nail brush and a tooth-brush. Besides, his name isn't Rigo but Max, and he's a seedy sort of chap, absolutely dependent upon his friends."

In his moments of jealousy, it was easy for Ingigerd to put Frederick to shame.

"It makes no difference to me," she said, "whether a man is poor or rich, whether he dresses like a dude or a tramp. Rigo intends to paint my portrait, and I'm looking forward with pleasure to being his model."

"His model? You won't be his model. I'll see to that," said Frederick. "But please explain how you hit upon 'Rigo'? Why do you call him 'Rigo'? Tell me."

"His mother was a gypsy, and when he was a child, some respectable people took him into their family."

"Do you believe that? Franck's friends say he lies every time he opens his mouth."

"I'm not a father confessor. He may lie for all I care."

Frederick did not reply.

Ingigerd was still sitting at the table. With gentle ardour he pressed his lips to her head, loosened the ribbon tying her hair at the nape of her neck, and plunged his fingers deep into the wave of flowing gold.

"Where were you?" the girl asked. Frederick told her of Peter Schmidt and the exhilarating afternoon in Ritter's studio.

"I don't like that sort of thing," she said. "How can people drink wine?"

The thought passed through Frederick's mind that the girl's remarks were rather flat and failed to echo the things he had been telling her.

About an hour later Frederick asked Willy to help him find a boarding house where he and Ingigerd could live, or Ingigerd could live alone without his protection.

"You must realise," Frederick explained, "that no matter how unprejudiced you and your friends may be, it won't do to let a young lady remain permanently in a bachelors' club-house."

Willy did realise the impropriety of the situation; and that very same evening he found an excellent place for her with friends on Fifth Avenue.

The next morning, after the men had left the house, Frederick again fell under the spell of a strange excitement that led him to Ingigerd's room. This time, however, it was not a wave of passion, but a storm of desire for self-purification.

"Ingigerd," he said, "fate has brought us together. I am sure you, too, feel that in spite of all the appalling events we underwent, something like predestination was at work." Frederick now told her, as he had fully planned to do, the story of his past. It was a complete confession. He spoke of his youth and marriage, spoke with all possible forbearance and love of his wife. "There was no hope for her ever getting well again. I have nothing to reproach myself with in regard to her, except that I was a man merely of good intentions and imperfect achievement. But I may not have been the right husband for her in so far as I could not give her the repose of spirit that she needed and I myself lacked. When the collapse finally occurred and other misfortunes--they seldom come singly--and in addition I suffered disappointments outside my family life, I had great difficulty in bearing up. I hate to speak of it, but it is the truth--before I saw you, I picked up a revolver more than once for a very definite purpose. Life weighed upon me like lead. It had turned stale and tasteless. The sight of you, Ingigerd, and, strange to say, the wreck, which I experienced not only symbolically but in actuality, taught me to value life again. You and bare existence--the two things I saved from the wreck. Once more I stand on terra firma. I love the soil. I should like to fondle it. But I am not yet secure, Ingigerd. I am still sore, without and within, you know. You have suffered a loss, I have suffered a loss. We have beheld the other side of existence, the unforgettable gloom. We have looked into the pit. Ingigerd, shall we cling to each other? Will you come to a man torn and distracted, lashed by scorpions, to a man who is greedy to-day and surfeited to-morrow, to a man who longs for peace and repose, and be peace and repose to him? Could you for my sake give up all that has until now filled your life, if I for your sake leave behind me everything that has wasted my existence? Shall we both begin afresh, on a new basis, simply and without any false glamour, and live and die as plain country persons? I will be tender with you, Ingigerd." Frederick hollowed his hands and held them as he had done when speaking of the Madonna. "I will--" He broke off and cried: "Say something! Just tell me the one thing, Ingigerd! Can you--can you become my comrade for life?"

Ingigerd was standing at the window looking out into the fog and tapping the pane with a pencil.

"Perhaps, Doctor von Kammacher," she said finally.

"Perhaps!" Frederick blazed up. "And Doctor von Kammacher!"

Ingigerd turned and said quickly:

"Why do you always fly into such a temper right away? How do I know if I am suited to your needs and desires?"

"It is merely a question of love," replied Frederick.

"I like you. Yes, I do like you, but whether my feeling for you is love, how can I tell? I always say that so far I haven't loved anything but animals."

"Animals!" cried Frederick von Kammacher. He felt mortally ashamed. Never, it seemed to him, in his whole life had he so degraded himself.

XI

A few moments later there was a knock at the door, and a man in a long overcoat and brown kid gloves, carrying a silk hat in his fat hand entered.

"Excuse me," he said, "I presume this is Miss Hahlström?"

"Yes. I am Miss Hahlström."

"My name is Lilienfeld--manager of the Cosmopolitan Theatre." He handed Frederick his card, which announced that he was also manager of a variety theatre and impresario in general. "I obtained your address from Mr. Stoss, the armless marksman, you know. I heard you had had some unpleasantness with Webster and Forster, and I said to myself, I must go and call on the daughter of a good old friend of mine. I knew both your father and mother." Mr. Lilienfeld, in tactfully subdued tones, wound up his rather lengthy address with delicate expressions of sympathy and his personal sorrow at Hahlström's death.

Ingigerd being helpless as a child in business matters, Frederick had taken it upon himself to represent her, and he used the pause in the impresario's speech to put in a word. The man's personality was by no means displeasing to him, and his presence for several reasons was highly welcome.

"Owing to the state of her health, Miss Hahlström was unable until now to appear in public. I as her physician am responsible for her refusal to dance, but Webster and Forster used such rough methods of coercion both through intermediaries and through the mail that Miss Hahlström of her own accord decided in no circumstances to dance under their management."

"Never!" explained Ingigerd. "Absolutely never."

"Besides," Frederick continued, "their terms are miserable. We have received letters offering three and four times as much."

"Exactly what was to be expected," declared Lilienfeld. "Pardon me if I give you a bit of advice. In the first place, be perfectly easy in your mind about Webster and Forster's attempts to intimidate you. For various reasons the contract with Mr. Hahlström is legally invalid. It so happens that I have pretty accurate information regarding the terms of the divorce between your father and mother. They themselves told me, and what is more, my brother was counsel for your father. Your mother was made your legal guardian. Your father had no right to make a contract for you. You ran away. You went with your father because you were devoted to him body and soul and the relation between you and your mother may not have been quite so pleasant. I do not hesitate to say you acted wisely, very wisely. Your father's training has made a great artist of you."

"Thank you," Ingigerd laughed, at the mere memory of her training involuntarily protesting against her artistic education. "For hours at a time, while he sat in a chair comfortably smoking his meerschaum, I had to dance for him without a stitch of clothing on and perform all sorts of contortions and acrobatic feats on a rug. In the afternoon he would play the piano and I would have to go through the same thing all over again."

"Your father was a positive marvel as a trainer. He put two or three international stars on their dancing legs, if you will permit the expression. He was the dancing master of two worlds and"--the impresario laughed significantly--"many other interesting things besides. But to stick to the matter in hand--if you want, your contract with Webster and Forster is null and void." He paused for an instant and began again, this time addressing himself more to Frederick. "I do not deny that I am a business man--always within the limits of gentlemanliness--and I should like to ask you a question, Doctor von Kammacher. Is it your intention to let Miss Hahlström dance at all again, or have you and she decided that she is to retire to private life?"