CHAPTER ONE

As Andreas's carriage drew up before the embassy, his ears were greeted with the strains of Chopin's music pouring down to him through the open window, and while he waited in the marble vestibule his whole being seemed to be bathed in the sounds. Could it be that these minor cadences, simultaneously so bitter and so sweet, gave him a foretaste of the reception he might expect? He was ushered into a darkened room, fitfully lighted by tiny rays of the southern sun penetrating through the Venetian blinds. The alternation of heat and cold, of dazzling radiance and veiled obscurity, plunged his senses into uncertain depths. He felt uneasy as he watched the gold-clad kavass noiselessly retreating into the shadows with his card. At once elated and oppressed, he was conscious of his heart-beats.

"Fate seems to brood over this palace," he mused. "Am I to be drawn into its labyrinthine ways? That oriental moves noiselessly up the stair. I can hear him knock at the door, can see the statesman looking at the message which is to introduce a stranger into his house. My name is unknown to him; nor do I know him. But in a neighbouring room is a woman playing, sending forth to a stranger sounds that convey a warning, and seem to tell him that he is more akin to the music than to the statesman's papers..."

He took a few steps towards the side whence the music came, hoping to hear better. He recognized the piece. It was the _Ballade in G minor_, and as he listened to the constantly recurring lilt which brought to his mind the leaping and subsiding movement of a fountain, he thought:

"The countess plays like a man. I play it more delicately."

The door was thrown open, and the silent domestic signed to him to follow. They mounted the stairs, and he was led to the room whence the music came. At that moment the final note was played, the servant opened the door, and Andreas moved forward into a twilit chamber. A tall, slender man in a light summer suit rose from the music-stool to welcome him.

"You have just come from Vienna," said the count, so quickly that Andreas scarcely had time to recover from his surprise. "I am very grateful to my old friend for sending you to me. What is he doing now? Rarely do I get a chance of seeing, or hearing about, old acquaintances. Ah, how one longs for the freedom of youth! Then one could travel, one had no responsibilities... I gather from my friend's letter that you are here to look around a bit, to take your bearings... If only the later gains could make up for our lost youth! ... Do you smoke? A cigarette?"

Andreas, from the depths of a huge arm-chair, took a cigarette from the box his host was offering with the quick, jerky movements of a restless boy. Then the count went over to the window, and, with an impatient gesture of the foot, pushed the shutters open. His figure was silhouetted against a dazzling background of scintillating water, the broad span of water above which the palace had been built. Andreas came to his side, and gazed over the landscape. From no other spot could so magnificent a view of the town and surrounding country be obtained. Yet it was his host and not the panorama that held Andreas's attention. The count's right arm was outstretched as he pointed to certain details, while with his left hand he shaded his eyes from the midday glare.

Gregor, Count of Münsterberg, was not the man whose talented Don-Juan type Andreas had seen in portraits taken long ago. Indeed, the count had not allowed any pictures of himself to be published for many a year, and he would certainly not have placed himself in this pitiless light if he had known Andreas of old. For Gregor's hair was grey--those golden locks which had bewitched so many women ten or twenty years back as he sat drawing sweet music from the piano, or casting a look behind as he rode by. The face whose laughter had once beguiled, was now furrowed; the cheeks were sunken, the blue, seductive eyes gazed forth from deep hollows, the mocking lips, slightly open and moist as with much kissing, lay clean shaven over a chin that still had something of its former sauciness but which was no longer round.

As soon as the ambassador felt himself observed, he withdrew from the window, closed the shutters, and motioned his guest to an easy-chair. He himself made for the music-stool once more, puffing at his cigarette as he went. His hands moved to and fro above the keys as if they itched to be playing.

"Am I disturbing you, Your Excellency?" asked Andreas.

"Not in the least, Doctor."

"Oh, please, I never use the title."

"Good. And I will beg you, in return, not to call me 'Your Excellency.' Now, tell me in what way may I be of service to you?"

"In nothing specific, Count. I have come here to get in touch with persons and things, so that ultimately--perhaps--I might be attached to some provincial consulate--or--"

"Have you studied law?"

"No. I am a poet."

Andreas made the statement with such childlike simplicity that he left no margin for astonishment. The count, whose passionate nature made him delight in the unusual, swung himself round on the music-stool as he laughingly declared:

"So you want to make Plato's ideas of the State a reality, eh?"

The name of the great philosopher gave Andreas back his self-confidence, which the abrupt movement of the count had somewhat shaken. He therefore replied vivaciously:

"Action! said Demosthenes."

"Action, yes. I said that too when I felt my talent and inclination drawing me to take up music as my profession, while other feelings were impelling me to devote my life to other issues. Do you imagine there are no regrets?..."

"Who has never had things to regret?"

Andreas spoke very softly. The count became attentive. Such words coming from so young a man left him wondering. He looked more keenly at his visitor, while he thought:

"Should he be pitied or envied because experience has touched him so early in life?"

Slowly he left the piano and walked over to where Andreas sat. His words fell upon the poet's ears like dark drops from a deep, quiet spring.

"If only reality corresponded to our formulas! Action? I would answer your rhetoric with: 'First of all, patience!' Thirty years of patient work during which your black locks will slowly turn to grey, as mine have turned which once were golden. Then, when you have got to the top of the ladder--are you free at last to do what you have always yearned to be doing? Are you then a master, and can you, with the freedom of an artist, put your sign manual upon the clay of a world that now bewitches you? It would have been so splendid to compose a whole series of operas--to have evolved a new form of undying melody, far outstripping the wonders Wagner achieved, a huge symbolical trilogy in three spheres--working undisturbed--in one's chosen medium--undisturbed... Do you really mean to give up writing poetry, to crush the dreams that are now surging in your brain, to renounce the drama now shaping itself within you, in order that you may become consul in, let us say, Kilimanjaro?"

Andreas, who had been much with artists and very little with realists, was not as surprised at such a speech coming from an ambassador within the walls of an embassy as he might otherwise have been. He answered composedly:

"A step up the ladder of patience, Count!"

The elder man roused himself from his gloomy recollections, resumed his alert manner, and said briskly:

"Very well, let us suppose that at some future date you enter as master into the house of my colleague over the way. Who are you then?"

"I don't know exactly... If you mean to imply that here, in this house, you yourself, Count... Great schemes have matured under this roof, far-reaching treaties have been signed at that table, maybe the most amazing alliances have been conceived in this very room. And do you mean to say that all these things have brought no satisfaction to the man responsible for their creation, that they are not sufficient compensation for the sacrifice of a musical career? Forgive me, a stranger, speaking so freely..."

He had risen as if to master his emotion, for he felt the rhapsodic spirit rising within him, and did not wish to be carried away by his own words, especially in this house. But to the master of the house the young man at this moment was particularly attractive, as they walked up and down together and Andreas looked at him, his eyes aglow.

"Go on, go on! You bring youth back into this room."

He blew the smoke from between his lips, flicked the ash from the cigarette, strolled over to a map that was hanging from the wall, and said, speaking indistinctly and with assumed indifference:

"Satisfaction? An excellent word! Occasionally it is--even--quite--interesting."

He stuck his hands deep into his pockets, balanced himself on the toes of his brown leather shoes, gazed absently at the map, and hummed quietly to himself as if he felt he had achieved some mysterious and subtle victory. Then he was silent for a while, bit his lips, and looked with concentrated attention at one particular spot on the map as if he wanted to wrench a town or a province away from the glazed surface of the print. A minute passed. Suddenly he turned to his visitor and asked in cold, formal tones:

"Can I help you in any way? Give you an introduction?"

"Many thanks. Our own..."

"I hope to see you again before you leave, Dr. Seeland."

"With pleasure, Your Excellency."

An hour later, the ambassador sat at table with his wife and his eight-year-old son. While they lunched he told them of his interview with a young poet who was set on taking up a diplomatic career.

"Otherwise he seems a most interesting young fellow. The pity of it! There'll be one poet the less, and if he does not shake off his present enthusiasms, there will not be one statesman the more!"

"Who is he?"

"Let me see... Ah, here's his card."

He read the name.

"Andreas Seeland has written some delightful sonnets. I should like to know him."

"Invite him to lunch."

"Lunch is not a good meal at which to make a poet's acquaintance," laughed the countess.

"Well, ask him to tea."

She turned to the butler, gave him Andreas's card, and said:

"Get some one to telephone to the Grand Hotel as soon as possible to ask this gentleman if he can come to tea with me this afternoon at five."

"Today?" queried the ambassador, looking at her dubiously, as if perplexed by his wife's strange caprice.

"Why not?" she counter-queried coldly.

"May I come too, Mamma?" pleaded the child.

"Why do you want to come, I'd like to know?"

"There are always such lovely sandwiches at your tea-parties!"

Andreas had heard various reports concerning the Countess of Münsterberg. It was rumoured that she was a Dalmatian princess, emancipated, but not amorous; that she wantonly defied the fashions in dress; that she disseminated scandalous stories about her own life in order to revenge herself for her husband's dalliance with the fair sex. All these stereotyped items of society gossip had left Andreas cold. Nor had his curiosity been sufficiently aroused to make him seek an early interview with the lady. Besides, he had been influenced by the almost universal detraction, and fancied her no more than a society dame wishing to make herself conspicuous by eccentricities. The unfavourable impression was redoubled when he received her sudden and informal invitation. With a nameless dread and misgiving in his heart, he climbed the stairs and was shown into her boudoir. He stood bowing on the threshold as the kavass noiselessly closed the door.

The room was wide and lofty, illuminated with the mellow light of the afternoon sun. Blue was the prevailing colour, but the furnishings were in no particular style. Over against one of the windows he saw a massive table and some cumbersome easy chairs. Away in the farther corner, as it might be on the opposite bank of a wide river, he guessed there must be a commodious divan, for he saw the outline of a reclining feminine form. A vast expanse of blue carpet, thrown rug-fashion on the floor, separated him from this woman, a huge sea through whose waters he must swim if he wished to reach her shore. Slowly, stepping cautiously, he ventured forward. His eyes were riveted on to that far-off strand where--was it a shoal?--the half reclining, voluminous shape of the woman awaited him. The rock on which she lay shone like gold; her flowing raiment was blue; and, like a golden wave, her hair was massed upon her head, shimmering amid the encompassing ocean of blue which lapped around her resting place. He paused for a moment on reaching the middle of the carpet. The whole thing must be a dream-canvas by Veronese. But those were two living eyes which gazed so fixedly at him, patiently awaiting his approach. As if swimming against a strong current, he advanced step by step towards the distant shore. She raised herself on her arm, and he saw that she held a book in her hand, a book of verses, judging by the wide margin. Her eyes were intent upon him, unfathomable in their earnestness. So immobile was she that he could study the details of her face as he drew near, could see the passionate curve of the lips.

These lips now fell softly apart, and a clear contralto voice exclaimed:

"Poeta!"

He tried to smile his thanks, but when he opened his mouth to speak, his expression remained serious and he could utter one word only:

"Principessa!"