Part 8

Every instant Frederick had to perform some small service, and while she was giving an enthusiastic description of a little monkey from Java that she had once owned, he asked himself whether he was a physician, a nurse, a hairdresser, a chambermaid, or a steward, and whether Ingigerd Hahlström would not in the end reduce him to a messenger boy.

He yearned to be on deck in the open air.

Soon after, Achleitner entered with an anxious, questioning expression in his eyes, and Ingigerd dismissed Frederick most ungraciously. There was a look of hatred in her glance. But scarcely was Frederick outside in the fog with the knob of the door still in his hand, when it seemed to him as if ropes and chains, the chains of an enslaved man, were dragging him back to the girl's couch.

XXIV

"What is to become of me?" Frederick questioned himself. He scarcely heard Hans Füllenberg's jolly shout of greeting as the young man reeled past. Hans Füllenberg did not fail to observe whose door it was that Frederick von Kammacher had just closed behind him, nor that, as he stood there with the knob still in his hand, he seemed to be in a state of indecision and absorption.

The siren was sending up its deafening roar. It was that wild, fearful, ascending cry, as if torn from the breast of a monster bull, which he had first heard on the tender. There was something menacing in it, and at the same time something of an anxious warning. Frederick never heard it without applying menace and warning to himself. Likewise, the driving mist seemed to be a reflection of his soul; or his soul a reflection of the driving mist and also of the vessel, as it struggled onward into the unknown, unseeing and unseen. He stepped over to the railing and looked straight down the ship's side. There he could tell with what tremendous rapidity the _Roland_ was cleaving the water.

"Isn't man's courage utter madness?" he thought. Could any one, from captain to the lowest sailor, prevent the propeller-shaft from snapping at any moment? The screw was constantly rising and buzzing in the air. Who could sight a vessel in time to prevent the collision that would inevitably smash in the thin walls of the great hollow body? Who could hope to avoid one of the many derelicts drifting in the fog almost submerged? What would happen if the might of the waves were to hurl that great lumped mass of wood and iron against the _Roland's_ side? What would happen if the engines were to break down? If a boiler were to prove unequal to the uninterrupted strain put upon it? Then, too, icebergs were met with in those waters. And suppose the storm were to grow worse.

The things that European civilisation has accomplished are tremendous. The trouble is, the object to which the means are applied is not worthy of the means. The how is great. The wherefore receives only a stammering reply. So much is certain, that the life of the average man to-day is fuller of adventure and heroism than the life of a bold adventurer a hundred and fifty years ago.

Frederick went to the smoking-room on deck. He found the card players, Doctor Wilhelm, Arthur Stoss, Professor Toussaint and some more gentlemen gathered over their afternoon coffee.

"Hullo!" they shouted when he appeared in the doorway.

The room smelled strong of coffee and the pungent odour of tobacco. In the instant that Frederick held the door open, the wreaths of mist and heavy tobacco smoke met.

"What's the matter, gentlemen?" Frederick asked.

"Did you operate on the dancer," someone cried, "to remove that mole two inches from her backbone right over her left hip?"

Frederick turned pale, and said nothing. Had he uttered a single word, the result might have been a scandal, perhaps even a duel, out there on the high seas.

He seated himself beside Doctor Wilhelm and acted as if the shout of greeting and the unknown man's question had not referred to him. Doctor Wilhelm proposed a game of chess. Frederick accepted, and while playing, he had time to choke down his humiliation and resentment. He glanced about furtively to find the speaker.

"There are some people, Doctor von Kammacher," Arthur Stoss said in a raised voice, "who leave their decency in Europe when they travel to America, though that does not reduce the price of the passage."

The man at whom the remark was aimed left it unanswered.

"But, Mr. Stoss," said an elderly man from Hamburg, whose conscience in regard to the offence thrust upon Frederick was evidently clear, "we're not in a ladies' parlour, and we needn't take jokes amiss."

"I am not in favour of jokes," said Stoss, "that are made at the expense of persons who are near at hand, but not present, especially when a lady is concerned. I am still less in favour of them when they are coarse and indecent."

"Oh, Mr. Stoss," rejoined the man from Hamburg, "everything in its place. I have nothing against sermons, but we're having bad weather here on the ocean and this room is not a church."

"Besides, nobody mentioned names," another man said.

Here the American jackanapes joined in the cross talk.

"When Mr. Stoss is in New York," he said drily, "he will hold services every night at Webster and Forster's."

"Some American youngsters are celebrated for their cheek," Stoss countered.

"Directly after the celebrated Barrison sisters' appearance, after the song 'Linger Longer Loo,' Mr. Stoss will raise his hands to heaven and beg the audience to pray." The American spoke without moving a muscle of his face. He had the last word. The next instant the slim young fellow was outside the door.

Arthur Stoss had the pleasure of knowing he was a fool for his pains. But, like Frederick, he paid no attention to the thrust, or to the laughter it provoked.

"People are very much mistaken," he said, turning to Professor Toussaint, who was sitting beside him and to whom he had been introduced a few minutes before, "if they suppose that morality among vaudeville performers is laxer than among any other set of persons. It's an absolutely false assumption. A performer above the average, who must always be at the very height of his powers, has to practise moderation to the point of abstinence if he wants to remain on top. Does anybody suppose that a loose life is compatible with those startlingly bold feats that an acrobat does every day and tries to improve upon every day? Damn it! It's something to make your ordinary mortal marvel at. Why, to do any one of the many things we do, we have to practise asceticism and chastity, and patiently peg away day after day at hard, dangerous work. Your plain business man, who never omits his glass of beer, has no idea what it is like." He continued to sing the praises of vaudeville actors.

"May I ask what your specialty is, Mr. Stoss?" asked Hans Füllenberg.

"A very easy specialty, once you know how. But if it should ever come to a duel between you and me, young man, you'd have to choose what eye or ear or tooth you'd be ready to part with."

"He's as good a shot as Carver," someone said. "He can take the middle right out of an ace three or four times in succession."

"Just like any other display of skill. But don't for a moment suppose, gentlemen, that even if a man has arms and doesn't have to hold the gun with his feet and pull the trigger with his toes, that he learns how to do it without sweating and self-denial and endless patience."

"Somebody said you play the violin like Sarasate," said Hans Füllenberg.

"Not exactly. Nor need I, considering the way I was born. But I am fond of music and my audiences go wild over my playing."

Captain von Kessel entered. He was received with a general "Ah!" Through the door burst a great wave of sunlight.

"The barometer is rising, gentlemen."

The fog had lifted, and now the men in the smoking-room realised that the _Roland_ was rocking no more than easily and comfortably and was making its way with majestic speed.

This acted like a charm. The captain left the door open and had Pander hook it back. A man, who had been lying asleep in a corner--in that half sleep which is the mildest symptom of seasickness--rose to a sitting posture and rubbed his eyes. Hans Füllenberg and a number of other men hastened out on deck. Doctor Wilhelm and Frederick, who had lost the game, followed.

XXV

The two physicians paced the full length of the promenade deck. The air was mild. The ship was moving quietly, as if its great body took delight in pushing onward through none but low waves. It was surprising to see how gay the life on deck was. They were constantly raising their hats and making way for somebody. The stewards had carried the news of the good weather down to the passengers in their stuffy cabins, and all the seasick travellers had come crawling on deck. There was much talking and laughing. Each moment brought fresh surprise over the galaxy of merry women that had kept themselves stowed away in the _Roland's_ interior. It was just an ordinary Saturday afternoon in January; yet suddenly an atmosphere of festivity prevailed not to be outdone by a Christmas eve.

Hans Füllenberg passed by. He was cracking jokes for everybody's benefit and flirting desperately with his Englishwoman, who had recovered from her seasickness. She had found a friend, a woman in a fur cap and coat, with a magnificent crown of light hair, like a Swedish woman's. She seemed to be greatly amused by Füllenberg's poor jokes and poor English. He had abstracted her muff and was alternately conveying it to his stomach, his heart, and--this very passionately--his mouth. The young American jackanapes was promenading with his Canadian, who looked very haughty and blasé, yet much fresher. The delicate creature seemed to be shivering with cold, though she was wearing an elegant coat of Canadian sable, which reached to her knees. Frederick greeted the clothing manufacturer, whom his steward had helped up on deck. He had been lying in his cabin more dead than alive, and his steward had been feeding him on nothing but Malaga grapes.

Ingigerd was holding court on the port side in front of her cabin, the door to which stood open, it flattering her vanity to have the many promenaders see and envy the privilege she was enjoying.

"If it is agreeable to you, Doctor Wilhelm, let us remain this side of the Rubicon. That little girl slightly bores me. By the way, can you tell me how I came to bring down on myself that shout when I entered the smoking-room and that man's vulgar remark? To be sure, as a physician and free-thinker it's a matter of indifference to me."

"Oh," said Wilhelm, trying by an air of lightness to appease Frederick, "this is all it was. Füllenberg probably saw you coming out of Miss Hahlström's cabin, and said something in the smoking-room. You know his mischievous way."

"I'll box his ears," said Frederick.

"The trouble is, the little girl is making herself generally conspicuous. The worst rumours are afloat about her. All men seem alike to her, whether stewards, firemen, sailors, or cabin-boys. And that greasy Achleitner! I assure you, all over the ship, in the forecastle, among the stewards when they polish the silver, and in the officers' cabins, they do nothing but titter and laugh at her and Achleitner and anybody falling under suspicion on her account."

"Don't you think that's slander?"

"Why, you and I are physicians. I don't care a fig one way or the other."

Frederick laughed. "I have set my all on nothing."

Suddenly he said:

"You're right. I'm of the same opinion. I must really throw overboard that old idealistic German Adam sticking in me like a Sunday afternoon preacher."

The two men laughed. Their mood turned merrier, chiming in with the general atmosphere of hilarity.

One reason for this predominating sense of happiness was the fact that all the passengers, after struggling with nausea and sleeplessness during those miserable, crawling, endless hours in the doleful grave of their cabins, had learned to appreciate the value of mere healthy existence. Merely to live, merely to live! That was the cry that rang in every step, every laugh, every word, drowning all care. None of those concerns which each of them had dragged on board, whether from Europe or America, now had the least might. Merely to live was to win in the great lottery. They knew sunshine follows rain, and they said to themselves, "If worse comes to worst, you will willingly put up with bread and salt and a hoe and a vegetable garden, and no one in the world will be a happier mortal than you."

Those promenading men and women were each glad of the other's existence. They loved one another and were ready without hesitation to commit all sorts of follies, deeming them mere bagatelles, which on solid land they would never have condoned in themselves. Their rejoicing was a crucible melting together all the barriers by which convention divides man from man. They experienced a sense of relief and liberation, and drew in deep breaths of this atmosphere of freedom.

At the captain's order, the band set up its music stands and instruments on deck amidships; and when the blithe strains resounded through the whole of the _Roland_, that was the climax of festivity. For half an hour it seemed as if the few clouds floating in the blue sky, the steamer, the people on the steamer, and the ocean had agreed to dance a quadrille.

For moments at a time the waves would form the droll, chubby-cheeked face of a jolly old man. All at once the dreadful old man of the sea had turned good-humoured. He even seemed to be in a jocular mood and displayed a certain clumsy vanity in letting his puppets, swarms of flying fish, dance their dance, too, in a circle about the _Roland_. Perhaps, at his bidding, a whale would soon be spouting. Indeed, within a few minutes, the immigrants on the fore-deck were shouting, "Dolphins!"

The gentlemen could not for any length of time avoid Ingigerd.

"Theridium triste, the gallows spider, you know," said Wilhelm, as they approached her.

"How so?" said Frederick, slightly startled.

"You know what a gallows spider does near an ant nest. It sits on the top of its blade of grass, and when a myrmidon passes below, it throws a little skein of cobweb at its head. The ant does the rest. It gets tangled up until it is absolutely helpless, and then the tiny little spider comfortably eats it up."

"If you had seen her dance," said Frederick, "you would be more inclined to assign her the rôle of the ant throttled by the spider."

"I don't know who," said Wilhelm, "but some poet says, the sex is strongest when it is weak."

Ingigerd was able to boast a new sensation, which she owed to Mr. Rinck, the officer in charge of the mail, a pretty little dog, a ball of white wool, scarcely larger than a man's two fists put together. The polar bear in miniature was barking wildly in its ridiculous thin falsetto at the great ship's cat, which Mr. Rinck was holding to its nose.

"With your permission, Mr. Rinck, we shall sleep well to-night," said Wilhelm.

"I always sleep well," replied the other phlegmatically. Close to the cat's soft, heavy, hanging body, his cigarette, as always, was burning between the fingers of his right hand.

The cat spat, the dog barked. The piping sound drilled Frederick's ears like needle pricks. Ingigerd laughed and kissed the little yelper.

Wilhelm began a conversation by telling of the tremendous amount of work Mr. Rinck had to do between Cuxhaven and New York.

"Just take a look here, Doctor von Kammacher," he said, opening a door nearby, through which one could look into a deep, square pit filled half way up to the top with thousands of packages of all sizes. "Mr. Rinck has to arrange all of these."

"Exclusive of the letters," Mr. Rinck supplemented phlegmatically.

"Theridium triste," thought Frederick. He seemed to himself like an ant trying head over heels to escape the spell of the little spider, whose golden cobweb in long, open strands was luring on its victims.

"That Rinck," said Wilhelm, as they resumed their promenading, "is a peculiar sort of chap. It is worth the while to get to know him. Twenty years ago he suffered hard luck from a woman of the same type as little Miss Hahlström. Men should never marry women of that type. Ever since, he has been indifferently facing every sort of death on all the waters of the globe, not to mention an attempt at suicide. You ought to hear him talk. It is very difficult to get him to do it, because he doesn't drink. You can't succeed until you have been on four or five trips with him. People speak a great deal of fatalism, but to most of them the idea is merely a paper idea. To Rinck it is not a paper idea."

The life on deck kept assuming a more and more unconcerned, mundane aspect. Frederick was astonished to see so many persons from Berlin whom he knew by sight. Professor Toussaint introduced himself, and led Frederick to his wife, who was lying stretched out in a steamer chair. Their attempt at what is called conversation resulted in a few sickly sprouts.

"I am making this trip at the invitation of an American friend," Toussaint explained somewhat condescendingly, and mentioned the name of a well-known millionaire. "Even if I receive orders over there, I will not allow myself to be persuaded into making America my home. Interest in art should be elevated--" The pale, aristocratic man with the care-worn expression went on to expatiate upon his hopes and troubles, while his wife, who was still beautiful, looked on with a blasé expression of irony. Probably without being conscious of it, Professor Toussaint too frequently referred to the United States as the dollar land.

On the after-deck the passengers in unrestrained jollity, had begun to dance. It was Hans Füllenberg, the ever vivacious Berlinese, who had taken the lead. Inspired by the Strauss waltz that the band was playing he had engaged the lady in the fur coat. A number of other couples followed their example, and there, under the bright sky, an informal ball was opened, which did not end until sundown.

When the musicians with their shining brass instruments were about to make their way inconspicuously below deck, the passengers detained them, and in the twinkling of an eye, a large collection was taken up. Thereupon the dance music began again, even blither than before.

XXVI

Doctor Wilhelm was summoned away, and after a while Frederick succeeded in taking leave of Toussaint and his wife. He remained alone. The clear heavens, the deep blue sea, smooth as glass, calmed as if by a miracle, the music, the dancing, the sunlight, and the dear, sweet, pacifying, all-forgiving letter of his mother--it was in his pocket--awakened in him a fresh, pleasant sense of vitality.

"Life," he said to himself, "is always this way or that, a moment filled with pain or pleasure, with darkness or brightness, with sunlight or heavy, black clouds; and according to the moment in which we view our past and future, these will darken or brighten. Should existence in the shining light possess lesser reality than existence in the dark?" "No, it should not," was the answer that came from everything within and about him, filling him with youthful, almost childlike joy.

Frederick had pushed back his slouched hat, had unbuttoned his light overcoat, and was standing with his arms crooked over the railing. He looked out upon the sea. He felt the pulse beats of the engines, his ears were filled with the pliant, melodious chords of the Viennese waltz; the whole world had turned into a brilliant, lively, sparkling ballroom. He had suffered and caused others to suffer. Now he embraced all those through whom he had suffered and who had suffered through him, and seemed to wed them in blissful intoxication.

At this point Ingigerd Hahlström passed by with the giant Von Halm. Frederick heard her say she did not dance, that dancing was an insipid pleasure. With that, he started away from the railing, went up to the Canadian, and in a peculiar, fiery German manner ruthlessly drew her away from the young American, who was completely taken aback. It was evident that the delicate, exotic woman, whose breast rose and fell convulsively, took pleasure in that strong conqueror's arm as they circled about in the dance.

At the conclusion of the dance, he found himself under the necessity of murdering French and English with her for a time and was very glad when he could gracefully deliver her over again to the jealous young American.

Stoss was being transported across the deck by his valet, who, as always, held him by his coat collar.

"My private overland and oversea express," he called to Frederick.

Frederick pulled up a steamer chair for him in a sudden impulse to chat with Stoss.

"If the weather remains like this," said Stoss, after his valet had carefully and skilfully seated him in the chair, "we can reach Hoboken some time on Tuesday. But only if the weather does remain like this. The captain tells me that when we are running under full steam, as now, we make sixteen knots an hour."

Frederick started. So Tuesday this life under the same roof with Ingigerd was to end.

Frederick had been profoundly humiliated by the coarse insult offered him in the smoking-room. He knew of no other way to escape the impression of it except by a sort of ostrich policy. For that reason he had passed over the incident lightly when speaking to Doctor Wilhelm. Once his feeling of delicacy, smarting like a sensitive nerve, had ceased to ache so intensely, he looked upon the scandal much as a somnambulist would look upon the thing that has awakened him and guarded him against a humiliating fall. For more than half an hour his passion for the little devil of a dancer had turned into disgust and repugnance, until now he suddenly had to admit once again that separation from her was inconceivable.

"That little dancer is a piquant wench," said Stoss, as if he had divined Frederick's thoughts. "It would not seem at all strange to me if an inexperienced man were to fall into her toils. I think she resembles one of the younger Barrison sisters, who sing 'Linger Longer Lucy, Linger Longer Loo.' A man must certainly don armour in dealing with her."

"I am completely at a loss to understand," lied Frederick, "how I ever came to fall under suspicion with that creature. She is of absolutely no interest to me."

"Good Lord, Doctor von Kammacher! Who doesn't fall under suspicion with her?" He laughed unblushingly. "I myself did."

Frederick suffered. He looked sidewise at the armless trunk, and his soul writhed in humiliation at the thought of his own ridiculousness.