CHAPTER FOUR

"Are you taking the sea road?" cried Andreas, as the major suddenly turned his horse's head to the right. "Do you want to ride that way, Major?"

It was a bright, sunny winter's morning, and Andreas had asked Felix to join him. In the early hours, the wind blew chill from the west, but later it dropped, and the days were as mild as in September. The major and the young poet had made better acquaintance after meeting at the club, and the elder man was attracted to the younger on account of the intellectual interests they shared, rather than by Andreas's peculiar character and fantastical way of talking. Above all, however, what effectively bound the major to Andreas was the fact that Diana had known and had loved the youth.

"Yes, let's take the sea road," cried back the major, who was already some distance along it. "I hardly trust my mount's off hind shoe to keep on if we ride over cobbles much longer. What sort of a beast is yours?"

"This is not my own horse," answered Andreas, overhauling him, and endeavouring to push his way to the major's left. But the latter would give no room for such a manœuvre, saying pleasantly:

"Please, no formalities! Anyway it is only seemly that a simple soldier like myself should give the place of honour to the poet. Nay more, have I not heard that you are soon to become consul general?"

The last words brought home to Andreas the fundamental cleavage between his thoughts and that reality which he had made the goal of his life. What would he not give to be consul general here and now! He said resignedly:

"I'll be grey before that day arrives."

"And prospects?"

"They keep putting me off. All I've learned about nations and customs during these many months I could have learned equally well as a mere traveller in no way concerned with seeking an official post."

"Quite possibly," agreed Felix absent-mindedly, for his thoughts had suddenly switched off to other matters. He was thinking: "It is ten o'clock, we are riding along the sea road. Why the devil should I not call on her, seeing that I am not alone..." He calculated the risks, and held his peace.

Andreas was grateful to his companion for not talking. He loved to walk or to ride long stretches at a time, without exchanging a word. Then it was that he felt the thoughts of the two silent friends to be like huntsmen each going his separate way in search of game, getting widely separated. When, at last, one or the other raised his voice, it sounded like a distant horn calling to him in the valley from afar. To the right of him was the water reflecting the sun's rays in quivering columns of light. Ships sailed by, cutting the sparkling pillars in two, and followed by comet-like tails of dancing waters; the paddles of the little steamboats tossed sprays which glinted like a shower of stars; strife and sportiveness rose from the heart of the shining expanse, bringing to the poet's vision an allegory of love. He saw Olivia, majestically proportioned as some being of a primal age, resting on the bosom of the waters, smiling sensuously as the wavelets played on her white body. Like a sea-god he arose, and was about to seize her in his arms, when he heard a voice saying:

"Shall we put our horses to a canter?"

The major's thoughts had been with Diana, recalling the days long past. He felt agitated and disturbed by his reminiscences, and had recourse to the means which he knew from old experience would restore him to calm--a good gallop. But Andreas was vexed at being thus ruthlessly disturbed in his dream which weighed heavy upon him as Olivia's hair. Still, his ambition to make good in the real world, and not to be conquered by it, stimulated him to pull himself together and to put spurs to his horse.

On arriving at the villa quarter they reined in their mounts to a walking pace. Both men looked over to the white house which had so often been in their thoughts. The poet, who did not know the time of the count's visits, having never studied the man's habits, asked himself whether Gregor might not be with Diana at this very moment. The major, for his part, had reckoned up the reasons why the count could not possibly be there at this hour, and had by now determined to venture on the call. "I wonder if she'll be very angry," he asked himself. "Is this a harem, and she an eastern monarch's favourite? Two acquaintances, on a morning ride, stop in front of her villa. Perhaps we do no more than send her a hello as she looks out of the window...."

"You--know Fräulein de Wassilko, don't you?"

"Of course."

"Shall we--we're just passing by--just give her a wave of the hand?..."

"I'd rather not stop."

"Just as you like."

The major was furious. In a trice, he felt antipathy for this young man who was hindering rather than helping. He'd probably suffered at her hands and was afraid of seeing her again. Andreas meanwhile was thinking that the major would very likely deem him a bit of a coward. He had his suspicions as to the "slight" acquaintance the major had professed to have with Diana, remembering that she had once confided to him her weakness for handsome cavalrymen. Might not Felix be the man she had alluded to, and, therefore, a rival claimant to her affections? A few minutes elapsed before he could trust himself to speak.

"It's only that--perhaps..."

"I bet we'll not be coming at an inopportune moment," put in Felix quickly. "Is that all you are afraid of?"

"Yes; what else to be sure?"

"Then I'll take French leave!"

Felix, for whom to wish was to do, rode on, and in a few minutes they drew up by Diana's garden gate. Mary, thinking it was the count, poked her head out of the window, while the manservant was making his way down:

"Can we see Fräulein de Wassilko," Felix called up to Mary.

"I'll go and ask."

A moment later, Diana herself appeared at the window, crying down to them gaily:

"Good morning. Glad to see you. Ali, let the gentlemen in.--I hope neither of your horses is inclined to kick," she resumed when her visitors entered the hall and were shaking hands. "Poor Ali is so afraid of horses that at any sign of restlessness he lets go the bridle, and we have all the trouble of catching the beasts again."

"What a jolly old hunt that would be," laughed the major.

"What'll you take? Whisky, sherry, cognac? These changing temperatures make choice a difficult matter."

She was delightfully self-possessed as she entertained her two old friends. They thought her more charming than ever while she played the hostess, making them at home, ministering to their wants. She was wearing a short, sandy-coloured skirt of a warm material, and over her blouse she had slipped on a jacket of pale lilac silk. Motioning her visitors into arm-chairs, she pulled up a dumpty for her own use. Andreas saw her profile, clear-cut against the blue waters; Felix faced her; neither could catch the expression of her eyes as she glanced now at one and now at the other. She sat there aloof and free as a statue, instinctively yielding to the spirit of independence within her.

"Not to be taken unawares," thought the officer. "Already secure in the rôle she means to play."

"Aloof," thought the poet.

"Queer notion," thought Diana. "I wonder if they came hoping to surprise Gregor. He's not likely to turn up this morning. And if he did?"

Aloud she said placidly:

"How is Countess Münsterberg?"

Her eyes travelled over the water as she spoke, for she did not wish either to look at Andreas or to look through him.

"I have not had the pleasure of seeing her this week. Perhaps Herr Seeland..."

Andreas felt that he was taking part, not so much in a dream, as in some intangible scene conjured up from the world of unreality. An unknown voice seemed to be asking him a question, to which he answered very slowly:

"I believe she is very well."

Diana murmured softly:

"I should very much like to see her again."

Andreas, whose nature responded more readily to plastic transformations than to cold facts of reality, and who was ever prone to merge contrasts into a poetical whole, suddenly threw off his reserve at this sign of Diana's sympathy, and said warmly:

"The countess, I fancy, has taken a great liking to you."

"I should, indeed, be happy if that were so, but can hardly hope that it is. It seems to me that the countess is deceived in herself."

They were interrupted by the entrance of the servant bearing a tray with glasses.

"Now, Major, you'll take whisky, I know," she cried teasingly, for the major had always and emphatically expressed his dislike for the beverage. "Real Old Scotch Whisky, your favourite poison!"

"No thanks! I'll have some of this deliciously fragrant Arab coffee."

"Are you, too, succumbing to the spell of the East? How are negotiations getting on?"

She went over to where Andreas was sitting, and, while the major held forth about Serbia, she placed the tray at Andreas's elbow. Then, taking two bottles of liqueur, she mixed a glass of cognac and Chartreuse and handed it to the young man as if he were a friend of the family whose tastes were well known and whom one was accustomed to serve. Diana had forgotten herself for a moment because she was really interested in what the major was saying, and liked him immensely for the line he was taking in respect of the count. But her spontaneous action had not escaped Felix, who drew his own conclusions, and was even more delighted at having caught Diana out, than at having solved the riddle of her earlier relationship with the poet.

Andreas took no part in the political discussion that ensued. His mind was occupied with Diana's words, so inopportunely cut short, and he spun fanciful tissues with the antitheses which these two women presented. Suddenly he was torn from his dream by a gesture he particularly loved in Diana; she was tossing her head in that audacious way which had always captivated him, and he saw her before him as she really was. Short-kirtled, she stood free and debonair in the centre of the hall, her chin tilted in the air, her curls tossed back, reminding him of the youth portrayed by Antonello da Messina. Again he was aware of her mastery of life, a mastery he admired so intensely as expressed in the statues and pictures, the romances and histories, of the Renaissance. And he said to himself:

"Does she not stand there discoursing about the Serbs as if she were a member of parliament who had been making the same demand for decades? Who could believe that those lips had recited the tenderest verses of Petrarch, and said my own poems, yes, my own poems..." He lost himself in recollections of how those lines of his had been written, the circumstances that had inspired them; and incontinently his thoughts flew back to the enchanted isle.

The sound of horses' hoofs hammered upon his ears, breaking the current of his fantasy. Bustle without, and the noise of neighing as when horses that know one another meet. Then Gregor stood on the threshold.

"May I come in? Am I disturbing you? I was just passing. Came to ask how you were--Good-morning, Major. Ah, Herr Seeland?--Glorious riding weather. How would it be if we all went on a little expedition round to---- Perhaps rather too late--and business..."

"I'm all confusion, Sir," said Felix, "to be caught away from work at so late an hour."

"Pray don't mention it. I'm caught playing truant too. I ought to have been consulting the oracle long ere this for an answer to this morning's dispatches. An almost insoluble riddle, I must confess. What has the sphinx to say about it? And what the poet?"

He was the "mad" Gregor of his youth, tossing his ambiguous words in the air, including all three in his talk, making light of an embarrassing situation with quips and sallies, anecdotes and laughter, putting them at their ease. But he simultaneously scrutinized their faces, took in every detail of table, chair, and stool, to see if anything suspicious lay hidden. Then he looked again at Diana, who had not shown the slightest uneasiness, but had remained her own natural self in spite of the surprise of his sudden appearance. When his first rush of words was exhausted, she fell in with his mood, teased him, retaliated, egged him on with smart repartee, until the major and the poet were bewildered by the concentrated medley of gallantry and mockery, of gaiety and mischievousness, and retired from the scene, leaving the field to a man who was victor even before he entered the arena.

At last the two young men rose to go, and Gregor said, with an abrupt change of manner:

"How are your plans shaping themselves, Herr Seeland? Are you going to be sent travelling? Or are we to have the pleasure of your company among us for some time to come?"

Andreas's reserve once more broke down as he answered:

"If Your Excellency will not consider me a nuisance..."

"Certainly not, my dear Doctor. Anyway you seem to have returned to the country of the muses rather than gone forward into the realm of politics, eh?"

"May I ask why...?"

"The countess has told me you are reading Dante together. I'm fond of the poet myself, at least the first part. Paradise is for me too--what shall I say--too..."

"Innocent, perhaps," put in Andreas, trying in vain to mitigate the sharpness of the words by speaking gently.

"Say, rather, too clear," interposed Diana, who scented danger in the air.

"I--love the rose of heaven," added Andreas defiantly.

"For my part," said Gregor, avoiding Diana's eye, "I'd like to be like Paolo in the region of winds, always flying, flying eternally, with Francesca."

Diana laughed.

"Yes, but then both you and Francesca would to all eternity have your old cavalry sabre stuck into their hearts!"

"Is that so? Was that so? I had quite forgotten about the sword. I've always had the picture of them in my mind as eternally flying. To be flying with Francesca!"

When they were alone again, Gregor looked searchingly at Diana as if awaiting an explanation, as was the custom of this man in his dealings with women. But Diana merely laughed up at him so sweetly that his one desire was to catch her and hug her to him. She, however, kept the table between them, dodging his every approach. At last she took refuge behind the piano whose long tail cut off one of the corners of the room. Before he could catch hold of her she drummed delicately on the case to remind him of the lesson the fair Helen had taught her husband--that he should have knocked before entering, since his coming was unexpected.

Gregor, whose mind had been completely tranquillized by the behaviour of the two men, was in a gay mood. He took his place at the keyboard, struck a few chords, and after a while began playing Chopin's _Fantasia-Impromptu_. As he played, he kept Diana close to him, his right arm encircling her hips so that he had some difficulty in reaching the keys. Her left arm had slipped round his neck.

As the music echoed through the room, she stood motionless; even her hand had ceased to caress his hair, and lay at rest. The extraordinary rigidity of her body thus pressed so close against him filled him with a vague apprehension as he played, and he looked up at her in alarm. Her head rose above him, the eyes were closed, but around the slightly open mouth was a smile of perfect self-surrender such as he had seen only once before--the morning they had reached the temple. Very cautiously, so as not to rouse her from her trance, only desirous of giving a lead to her thoughts, he quickly let the fantasia peter out into a few chords and cadences which brought him to the Nocturne in F-sharp major.

A new light of interpretation flashed upon him as he played. In the charmed circle of love, he once again heard this melody which had sprung intact from Eros's realm. He pressed his beloved yet closer to his side, laid his grey head against her breast, and he, too, closed his eyes, while his hands continued to play and he forgot that it was he himself that drew the music from the keys. It seemed to him that he was cradled with her upon these swaying passages of sound; as if they lay together dreaming on a cloud while the wind blew around them; as if they were almost sexless beings, united by an intangible tenderness, without ecstasy, without awaking, without strife, without goal....

Voices from outside came to disturb them. Diana sprang away, and Gregor broke off suddenly as Mary came in to say deferentially that her mistress's secretary had arrived. Gregor burst into jovial laughter, exclaiming:

"The fair Helen was right, one should never come unannounced, especially when one is a man of Menelaus's age!"

"Send him to the devil, Mary," said Diana in a rage.

"No, no! Let him be. Show him into the other room," said Gregor. "He need not exactly find me here, you know. Duty calls, as Linnartz would say. I'll leave the field to your secretary, since work claims you. Let's hope you will have some famous revelations from him. I'm off. And may I--tomorrow...?"

"Tonight, come, come back this evening," she cried, still carried beyond herself by those moments of rapturous communion.

Never before had she pleaded for his company, it had always been he who urged. He was taken aback, and stood for a while asking himself whether it were possible that at last her love was unfolding itself like a flower.... He drew her to him.... Did her words imply a surrender she had never yet granted him? ... And he smiled down into her eyes, saying:

"This evening, if you like. Nocturnes in the morning are in any case not quite fair! I'm invited to the Spanish embassy tonight. Never mind, I'll plead a headache, and he can say what he likes in Madrid!"

Diana gazed after him as he rode away.

"I breathed in time to that night-song, and as my bosom rose and fell with the music, his head rose and fell too.... Is his hair grey? ... I did not see any... His kiss and his hand are gentler than the fierce touch of youth.... We hover beyond the starry heights and the depths...."

She wrenched herself away from such musings, and went resolutely through the hall to the room where her secretary awaited her.

"Good-morning! What is the news today?"

Her tone was friendly, and yet distant, as though she were the wife of a minister of State. She dealt with correspondence, with dispatches, questioned the man, discussed affairs with him, then she was silent. Finally she got up, and started dictating:

"Postscript to the dispatch of the 26th. (You can type this afterwards.) I did not receive the report from T. until this morning. As far as my trustworthy sources of information go, we may reckon that the influence of the very able French consul in this province will continue to grow. He is actually responsible for having brought the construction of the railway to a standstill in that locality under pretext of Mohammedan feast-days. We must try and win over his lady, an Armenian, who was once the Wali's...."