Part 26

"For several years," he said, "New York has been overrun by a peculiar sort of freebooters." He laid emphasis on the word freebooters. "There is a connection between this phenomenon and the increasing atheism in our country, the increasing irreligion, and the craving for pleasure and dissipation, which always goes hand in hand with irreligion. This growing immorality, this festering corruption in our midst is the wind that fills the sails of those pirates. The disease is not of American origin. It has come to us from the dens of vice in the large European cities, London, Paris, Berlin, Vienna. It is an epidemic the spread of which must be arrested, and to that end we must put a curb upon the freebooters who spread the infection and continue to bring it in from abroad."

Lilienfeld, red as a lobster with rage, fidgeted on his seat.

"In the opinion of these men, circumventers and despisers of the laws of the land, the United States is here merely for their purposes, to allow them to sow disease and rake in the dollars. They are not good American citizens, these peculiar Europeans. They are not citizens at all." Mr. Garry pronounced every word with hard correctness. "That is why it is a matter of perfect indifference to them if our religion, our customs, our morals are destroyed. They are unscrupulous birds of prey, and once they have filled their crops, they return with their spoil to their haunts in Europe. The time has come when Americans should take thought and repel the invasion of such parasites."

While the old jingo made these cutting remarks, speaking with an unshaken front, proudly, hitting straight out from the shoulder, Frederick unwearyingly watched every movement of his hard, noble old face. The anthropologist and the newly awakened sculptor in him were equally stirred. When comparing the "freebooters" to birds of prey, Garry himself had resembled a bird of prey. His expression was like an eagle's. He stood with his back to the windows, but with his head turned slightly to one side, and when he spoke of the birds filling their crops, it seemed to Frederick that his light-blue eyes paled to a whitish sheen.

Garry now came down to the subject of Ingigerd.

"By God's will a tremendous shipwreck has occurred, an appalling event, wholly calculated to turn men's thoughts to repentance." He interrupted himself to say it was useless to go into more details on this point, since those who did not know how to respect such a visitation from God were beyond redemption. "It has not been proved that the girl who survived the shipwreck is over sixteen years of age. I propose to place her in a hospital, have one of the steamship companies transport her back to Europe as soon as possible, and consign her to her mother, who lives in Paris. She should be placed in the care of a physician and under guardianship. She has been trained to do a certain dance, during which she falls into a pathologic condition not unlike an epileptic fit. She turns stiff and rigid as a block of wood, her eyes start from her head, she plucks at her clothes. Finally, she falls into a faint and loses consciousness of her surroundings. Such things do not belong on the stage. It would be an outrage, an insult to public opinion to reproduce this hospital scene in a theatre. I protest against it in the name of good taste, in the name of public morality, in the name of American decency. It is not seemly to drag that poor unfortunate child before an audience and shamelessly exploit her misery, merely because the shipwreck has placed her name in everybody's mouth."

Mr. Garry seated himself. He had pronounced his last words with sharp emphasis. Mr. Samuelson, Lilienfeld's counsel, turned pale and arose instantly. The reporters moved up closer and leaned forward, cocking their ears to catch every word of the famous lawyer. He began in a very faint voice. Frederick as a physician saw he was suffering from chronic laryngitis, probably having exchanged his sound larynx for his millions. Samuelson's delivery, his way of pleading were well known. At first he would spare himself, in order later to take his auditors by storm in a violent outburst of passion.

When the violent outburst of passion came, it did not fulfill the expectations either of Lilienfeld, his client, or the reporters, or Frederick. It was very noticeable that his indignation was forced, that it did not flow from a natural source, but from a bottle standing long uncorked. His iron will compelled him to simulate a feeling that he owed it to his client to display. In fact, the tired, harassed man, with his small, pointed beard and his worn, dirty-looking skin, was remarkable merely as a victim of his profession. Even in that capacity he was not so imposing as pitiable. Unfortunately, he was most pitiable when he gave the whip and spurs to that jaded little charger, the Rosinante of his eloquence, to ride down his opponent.

Mr. Garry and Mr. Ilroy, the Mayor, looked at each other significantly. They seemed to wish to return good for evil and come to the help of this knight of the sorry figure on his hack all skin and bone, which at the end of the attack fell and broke his legs.

Lilienfeld could not restrain himself. He turned crimson. The veins of his forehead swelled. The time for remaining silent had ended and the time to speak had come. Since the man with the hundred typewriters and the millions was unequal to the task, Lilienfeld had to take the reins in his own hands. From the mouth of the dumpy, bull-necked impresario, the words came pouring with irresistible momentum, with elemental force, as from the crater of a volcano.

Now it was Mr. Garry's turn to suffer in silence the thrusts and blows that rained down on him from his opponent. The old gentleman was not spared. He had to swallow many disagreeable statements about the exploitation of children in certain factories in Brooklyn, about Puritan hypocrisy, about drinking water in public and wine in secret. He was told he was a member of that narrow-minded caste hating art, culture, and life itself, and seeing devils with cloven hoofs and long tails in authors like Shakespeare, Byron, and Goethe.

"Such people," Lilienfeld said, "are always trying to turn back the hands on the clock, a most revolting sight in this so-called land of freedom. There is very little hope of success in trying to turn back the hands on the clock. The days of Puritan prudery, the bothersome Puritan conscience, Puritan orthodoxy, and Puritan intolerance have passed, never to return. There is no stemming the tide of time, or the tide of progress, or the tide of culture. But the forces of reaction, threatened in their mediæval management of things, have begun a cowardly guerilla warfare, a series of petty, cowardly, miserable, meddlesome tricks."

And now Lilienfeld handed back to Mr. Garry what Mr. Garry had given Mr. Lilienfeld.

"If there really is a pest in America, its seat is in the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. The society is the very breeding-place of the epidemic, in so far as there is an epidemic in the land. It is ridiculous in Mr. Garry to maintain that Europe is a plague-boil. Europe is the mother of America. Without the genius of a Columbus--we are at this very moment celebrating Columbus's discovery of America--without the genius of a Columbus and the constant influx of powerful intellects from Germany, England and Ireland," here he winked an eye at the Mayor, "the United States would be a dead and dreary land."

After thus moving heaven and earth and sea for the little dancer's sake, Lilienfeld exposed the base intent of his competitors, Webster and Forster, in denouncing him to the Society, and indignantly repudiated Garry's assertion that he, Lilienfeld, was an exploiter. His competitors, perhaps, were exploiters.

"See how good the conditions are under which Miss Hahlström is filling her engagement with me. There is my wife. In some respects she has been a mother to the girl. She is taking care of her in our own home, and the girl is in good health. She has a dancer's physique. It is a piece of bare-faced impudence to impugn the girl's honour. She is not a degenerate. She is not a neglected child. On the contrary she is simply a great artist."

Lilienfeld had left his highest trump for the last.

"Mr. Garry," he shouted so loud that the lofty windows rattled, "Mr. Garry called me a foreigner, a freebooter and the like. I object most decidedly. I am as much an American citizen as Mr. Garry. Mr. Garry, do you hear I am an American citizen?" For certain reasons Lilienfeld had had himself naturalised only a month before. "Mr. Garry, do you hear I am an American citizen?" he cried several times in succession, directly addressing the old jingo and leaning far across the table. "Mr. Garry, do you hear I am an American citizen? Mr. Garry, I am an American citizen, and I will have my rights like you."

That was the end. The wheezing in Lilienfeld's chest, as he seated himself, breathing heavily, was distinctly audible. There was not the faintest quiver in Mr. Garry's face.

After a rather lengthy pause, during which there was profound silence, the Mayor spoke. His words came out quietly, in his customary manner of mild embarrassment and shrewd affability, which rather became him. His decision was exactly what the political augurers, judging by the constellation in the ascendant, had prophesied. Ingigerd was granted the right to dance in public.

"The young lady, according to the decision of physicians called upon to testify, has been declared sound in body. There is no occasion to doubt that she is over sixteen years of age and no reason for preventing her from earning her livelihood by the exercise of an art which she has already practised in Europe."

The reporters grinned at one another significantly. The secret hate of the Irish Catholic toward the native Puritan of English descent had broken through the surface. Mr. Garry arose and shook his enemy's hand with cold dignity. Then he walked away, drawn up to his full height. His other adversary, of a very different nature from the Mayor, did not succeed in darting in his face his look of hate, also of a very different nature from the Mayor's; for Mr. Garry's eyes did not rest upon Lilienfeld for the fraction of a second.

Everybody crowded about Ingigerd, overwhelming the girl, the impresario and his wife with congratulations. In her joyous excitement Ingigerd's small face beamed sweetly. She looked very lovely. It was something to her heart's desire, this struggle to possess her carried on, as it were, before the eyes of two continents. Indeed, the extreme importance to which her person had attained almost humbled her a bit; but her pride and pleasure every now and then showed in her glances, even in the glances she sent Frederick. The men fairly courted her and did homage to her. Had a princess of the royal blood come along at that moment, their attention could not have been diverted for an instant from the little dancer, whom the delight, even gratitude shining in her face made very attractive.

Lilienfeld immediately invited all the reporters to luncheon. Mr. Samuelson declined the invitation, pleading an urgent appointment in the Court House. This may have been a pretext, for Frederick noticed, not without peculiar sympathy, that he was suffering under the consciousness of his failure. The poor man, so famous and influential, but now totally disregarded, was extremely grateful when Frederick, descending the City Hall stairs beside him, said a few words of appreciation of Samuelson's presentation of the case, though he actually felt no appreciation.

To excuse himself from taking part in the luncheon, Frederick said he had several business engagements. Nevertheless he had to promise Ingigerd that he would return in time for the demi-tasse.

XX

Frederick crossed the park to the main Post Office, a huge building, in which twenty-five hundred clerks and officials worked. Here he despatched a telegram, and then turned back into the noise of the streets, where the people, bending their heads before a cutting wind, ran about in hurrying swarms. The unceasing traffic, the cars and cabs and trucks, produced a deafening din. Frederick drew out his watch. It was half-past twelve, the exact time at which Miss Burns was wont to take her modest lunch in the little restaurant near the Grand Central Station. Frederick hailed a cab and drove to the restaurant. If on this occasion Miss Burns had failed to be lunching there, he would have been sadly disappointed. But there she was, happy as usual to see the young German scholar.

"Miss Burns," he cried, seating himself beside her, "you see in me a man who has been dismissed from prison, from a reformatory, from an insane asylum. Congratulate me! I am at last a free and independent agent again." He was blissful, exultant. "I have the appetite of three men, the humour of six men, and good spirits enough to cheer Timon of Athens out of the blues. I am totally indifferent to the future. So much is certain--no Circe has power over me any more."

Miss Burns congratulated him and laughed heartily.

"What happened?" she asked.

"I will tell you all about the tragi-comedy in the City Hall some other time. First I have to prepare you for dreadful news. Set your teeth, Miss Eva, and listen--you are going to lose me."

"I, you!" she laughed. Yet she was somewhat taken aback, and a dark red came and went on her face.

"Yes, you are going to lose me," Frederick repeated. "I just sent a telegram to Peter Schmidt in Meriden, and to-morrow morning at the latest I shall leave you. I shall leave New York, go to the country, and turn farmer."

"Oh, I really am sorry if you are going away," said Miss Burns, turning serious, though without the least trace of sentimentality in her voice.

"Why should you be sorry?" Frederick cried gaily. "You will come out to see me. The man you have until now known me to be has been nothing but a dish-rag. Perhaps, when you come to visit me in the country, you will discover that I am good for something after all. I really think I see land in the distance now. I feel I still have sound bones in my body. To take an illustration from chemistry. A salt solution vigorously stirred by the spoon of God Almighty begins to crystallise. Something in me is struggling to crystallise. Who knows whether, when the clouds that surround and penetrate the solution precipitate, the result of all the storms in the glass will not be a new, solid piece of architecture. Perhaps the evolution of a Teuton does not stop at the age of thirty. In that case the crisis may come just before the attainment of settled manhood, the crisis which, to all appearances, I have just safely passed through, and which, in any circumstances, I should have had to pass through."

Frederick now gave a brief account of the audience in the City Hall, the comic clash of two worlds in Garry's and Lilienfeld's speeches, which he called _tant de bruit pour une omelette_.

"The Mayor's decision," he said, "in opening up to Ingigerd the career for which she was so anxious, has opened up to me the way to a new life, a life all my own. It was almost like a physical sensation to realise that the Mayor's verdict decided my case, too."

He described Garry and told how, despite the opposition in their views, the descendant of Cromwell's followers, whom Charles I persecuted and executed, had impressed him and made him think. Undoubtedly his harsh, severe dealings had been dictated by purely humanitarian sentiment for Ingigerd's welfare, because of the frailty of her body and still more the frailty of her soul, all in accordance with the narrow-minded principles of a traditional belief, of which he was a credulous follower. As for Lilienfeld, did not victory in the struggle to possess Ingigerd body and soul mean money to him?

"Garry may really have been a hypocrite, yet wasn't Lilienfeld a hypocrite, too, when he spoke openly of Ingigerd Hahlström's honour and chastity? I looked up in alarm, and I saw a grin glide like a malicious shadow over the rows of reporters. Doesn't falsehood blossom everywhere? Doesn't hypocrisy flourish equally on each side of every contest? Isn't it a matter generally taken for granted?"

Frederick, as always, was feeling very comfortable in Miss Burns's company. Her presence always gave him, spiritually speaking, a sense of neatness and order. A man could tell her everything, and her replies straightened things out, instead of muddling them, steadied things and gave them a mooring, instead of tossing them about tempestuously. But he was not so well satisfied by her manner as usually, she not seeming sufficiently pleased with his release. He did not know whether he should attribute this to lack of sympathy or to secret doubts.

"I came to you, Miss Burns, because I do not know anybody to whom I would rather speak of this new phase of my life. Tell me frankly, was I right in doing what I did, and do you understand how a man feels when he is no longer in the chains of a senseless passion?"

"Perhaps I do," said Miss Burns, "but"--

"But what?"

Miss Burns did not reply.

"What you mean is, you cannot be certain of the convalescence of a man like myself. But I assure you, I will never sit in an audience watching that girl publicly expose her body. Still less likely am I to follow her to the four corners of the globe, through all the music-halls in the world. I am rid of her! I am free! I will prove to you that I am."

"If you were to prove it to yourself, it might be of some value to you," said Miss Burns.

But he much preferred to prove it to her.

"Perhaps you think it is a whim in me or a piece of foolishness. Yet, the way I am constituted, it is practically impossible for me to do anything for my sake alone. Your sympathy would act as a stimulus to keep me to my resolution." He drew from his pocket a letter from Peter Schmidt, saying that near Meriden there was a frame house that would be suitable for Frederick. Evidently his plan to retire to rural solitude was by no means a recent one. "When I come to myself in the quiet of the country, and I have reason to hope I will come to myself, you will hear from me. From time to time the world learns of a man of about thirty who suddenly disappears, leaving his family, his wife and his children in ignorance of his whereabouts. Sometimes he is a statesman, sometimes a young professor in a university, sometimes a mayor in good standing with all the citizens of his town, sometimes a rich business man enjoying the respect of the community. He leaves most unceremoniously, without concerning himself for the affairs of importance, even of extreme importance, that he may have to attend to the next day, perhaps the very next hour. He obeys the iron impulse to throw off the entire world, his next of kin, his dearest friends, and be alone with himself, so alone that he passes into oblivion and may even count as dead. It is a similar state, though perhaps not so pathologic in its character, a state conditioned rather by strokes of fortune, that has uprooted me. Don't forget, all social connections signify an immense consumption of nerve force and attach a person to his surroundings by a thousand threads and fibres. Ingigerd Hahlström is not the only one that is enmeshed and throttled in a spider's web. Every now and then all of us have to pant for air and tear away wrappings. Then the moment comes when we no longer do the thing that has been well considered, the thing that convention has established, but the very thing that has not been considered, that takes heed of nothing, the purely instinctive thing. Call it what you will, fermentation, folly, passion, shipwreck, storm. Whatever it may be, the fact is, all at once a man again feels the desire for life expanding his lungs."

Frederick now drew from his pocket the photographs of his three children, which his father and mother had sent along with their letters. In their great happiness that he had escaped drowning and was safe and sound, his parents had completely forgotten their solicitude for him.

Miss Burns took a friendly interest in the pictures and found a word of praise for each child. There was some discussion, pedagogic and non-pedagogic, of the characteristics of the little people. Frederick again spoke of his wife, this time without any critical reflections, dwelling only on her good and lovely and excellent qualities, really native to her.

The meal was over. Frederick had eaten heartily of the vegetarian dishes. He rose, shook hands warmly with Miss Burns, and thanked her for having listened so patiently. He left hastily, and jumped into a cab in order to keep his promise to Ingigerd Hahlström to come before luncheon was over at Lilienfeld's house.

XXI

The Lilienfelds lived in a one-family house, an exact replica of the other houses on the same block on 124th Street. Frederick found the company drinking coffee in a reception-room on the first floor, richly furnished with oriental rugs, expensive lamps, Japanese vases, and fine, dark, highly polished walnut furniture. The shades were drawn, and the electric bulbs of a gorgeous chandelier imparted a certain splendour to the room. The air was heavy with the smoke of Lilienfeld's strong imported cigars, at which the reporters were puffing away comfortably.

Ingigerd, smoking a cigarette, was reclining in an easy-chair surrounded by the reporters. Her hair was hanging loose about her shoulders and down her back. Altogether her appearance was not prepossessing. Since she looked impossible dressed as a grown lady in long skirts, she wore schoolgirl clothes and was tempted to furbish herself up like a tight-rope dancer with ribbons, openwork stockings, and white shoes.

When Frederick von Kammacher entered the room, she blushed slightly, and held her hand out to him indolently. Unfortunately, this hand had short, ordinary fingers, probably the plebeian heritage from her mother, her father having had long, beautiful hands. Frederick was at least a head taller than anybody in the room and was distinguished from the other gentlemen by his air of good breeding. He kissed Mrs. Lilienfeld's hand, German fashion, and begged her pardon for having come so late.