CHAPTER EIGHT

For an hour Olivia had lain motionless upon the divan in the guest's room. Then she was seized with anxiety, not so much as to the issue of the duel, but rather as to the possibility of seeing Andreas again. He could not come to her; she could not go to his hotel. Next morning she sought out the prince in his office. She was hatless, for thus she had left her apartment to come down to see him. Her whole aspect and the unusualness of such a visit (she had never entered the offices at the embassy before) were a surprise.

"Prince, listen to me. I want--I must--this evening--I must see Herr Seeland once more. You will lend me your rooms?"

It sounded more like a command than a request. He understood, drew his keys from his pocket, and handed her the one she needed.

"Thanks. Thank you very much."

Late that same evening, on foot, muffled in a veil, she entered the little flat. It was empty. Soon after, there was a gentle tap on the door. She opened. Andreas stood outside.

There had been no extensive preparations for the visitors. On the buffet, fresh water and wine, cigarettes, and a few biscuits, were just as the prince had left them. He had sent his servants away till the morrow, had, himself, gone through the rooms to see that all was as it should be. In the dining-room where, on New Year's Eve, they had drunk the count's health, he paused for a moment and smiled ironically. Here, two weeks later, the count's wife was to spend what would perhaps be the last hours she would ever spend with her husband's rival. He put on his hat, took his walking-stick, then went back to his bedroom to readjust his tie in front of the mirror. His eye fell upon the perfectly made bed with its faultless coverlet, and he whistled softly as he puffed at his cigarette.

"Honi soit..."

At first Olivia seemed agitated, and her lover thought:

"She's not at her best tonight."

She would stare mutely into nothingness, and then suddenly make a wild gesture as if to pull him to her, following this with another gesture which thrust him away. She got up and paced to and fro in the little room, backwards and forwards between the window, the chairs, and the divan. She spoke of Clemens, of divorce, of Linnartz, once even referred to her mother in Dalmatia, about whom she usually thought with contempt. But Andreas soon realized that all this was merely an effort to bridge the gulf that had yawned between them when these two persons of simple nature had suddenly been brought face to face with the fact that they were guilty of adultery.

Andreas had always looked indulgently and even reverently upon her blind gratification of her instincts; he had interpreted the inability on her part to speak, a dumbness which was wont to follow upon moments of ardent ecstasy, as a symbol of the ineffable which he, the plastic artist, was excluded from experiencing. His alert and active mind had found a haven in the churlish silences of this woman, and it was that more than anything else which had swept him along into the stormy waters in which he now found himself. He had never conceived of his passion or of hers as appertaining to the courses of everyday life, and he was at a loss to understand why this everyday life should now intrude upon a province outside its sphere. Yesterday's happenings left him cold, they did not seem to him to be part of the world he and she had created in common--a community based on the sensuous and yet quite above and beyond the circle of the senses, intangible, in no way belonging to the realm of reason.

Now, when he and Olivia were alone and together once more, he too was aware of the same inhibition within himself which had caused her so much disquietude; and he who had vowed himself to Olivia with that first look into her languorous eyes as he gazed from afar across the wide expanse of blue carpet, felt that he was hedged about with the identical constraints as she. Had it been otherwise, the insatiable thirst which consumed them would have driven them into one another's arms immediately the door had closed upon the outside world, and the turbulent waters of passion would have submerged them, leaving them with neither regrets nor shame when they came to the surface again. Today the banality of a conventional discovery stood like a barrier between them. In the twilight hours, as he sat with Othello in his room, the thought of death sprang at him, attacking him unexpectedly, from the rear. But now he had no other thought at all than to come to some sort of an understanding with this woman.

An hour of torturing suspense found them at last in that sphere which their natures shared in common: their passion. Olivia, wearied with pacing the tiny room like a wild beast in a cage, had thrown herself, distraught and exhausted, upon the divan, and Andreas, who felt that at any cost this state of tension must be snapped, flung himself upon her and with shameless cynicism took that which in no way he desired. And yet, maybe, it was this rough handling which she needed for the appeasement of her uneasy soul. She yielded to his embraces with the frosty delight of a hetaira, wrapping herself round in the mantle of fleshly lust as if in defiance, as if to shield herself from a foe.

Yet when they emerged from this dread battlefield, they had found themselves and they had found each other. The lassitude with which love's combat had so often before made limp their limbs, filling their souls with a strange and voluptuous horror, was now, after this present possession, bordering as it did upon the realm of hate, to leave them benumbed, inert, as if death's hand were upon them. Bitterness, the bitterness Olivia had dreamed of these twenty years, the draught whose waters she had first tasted in Andreas's arms, now submerged her, covering her face, her body, as with a grievous mask. She felt the flesh of her cheeks, her brow, her chin, her throat, filmed over as it were with a strange, green patina like that which covers very ancient bronzes, while her body seemed crushed and broken beneath the man who lay like a corpse across her.

A chance movement at last released them from the spell. Andreas said:

"Why continue?"

The words fell into the great pool of tragical silence with a sound as warm and gentle as that of woodwind after brass.

"We should soon have been consumed in our own fires. It is well that the man should die, his heart pierced by so tiny a thing as a bullet. But the woman must live!"

She scarcely heard what he said. All she felt sure of was that he had surrendered himself to his destiny, that a strange, far-away voice was telling her what she had known since yesterday: "It may not be just, but it is perfectly logical, that Andreas should perish at Gregor's hands." Age-long and primeval things had surged up within her. In the half-ruinous crypts of her soul, after millennial sleep, feelings, judgments, rights, belonging to an ancient line whose origins were lost in the mists of time, now stirred, revealing to her, who had imagined such primeval impulses to be dead, that she was indeed a true daughter of her race, and that in her veins too the same blood flowed. Vague memories of fights long past merged themselves with present-day combats in her brain. In the mechanical processes of thought, Gregor once more stood before her as a young man, the descendant of a long succession of counts, bearing every advantage in his hands; for now he was to use the weapons familiar to all members of his caste, and to use them against a stripling who had moved away from the customary pursuits of several generations of learning in an inward, spiritual sense only, not by practical experience. She, who had always been out of tune with his plans for worldly advancement, who had been ever more and more strongly convinced that his urge towards the practical field of politics and diplomacy was in truth only the outcome of imaginative yearnings, felt today more keenly than ever that he was a poet first, last, and all the time, and that his invasion of the practical world would recoil on his own head.

Andreas swung his legs over the divan and sat on the edge. Olivia leaned on her elbow as was her custom, and surveyed the length of her body. Then she said softly, as if lying in wait for his reply:

"Not long now, Andreas."

The words, and the queer way she added his name as an afterthought, struck him by their strange ambiguity. He tried to jest:

"You are right, it is two o'clock," he said, glancing at the little timepiece over the fireplace.

He did not know Diana's bedroom, nor could he know what she was doing at the moment; and yet her form, her voice, appeared clearly to his memory, at that instant when she, too, was saying the same words while glancing at a similar clock. Incontinently he asked Olivia: "Where's the count? At home?"

"He went out before I left. The servant said he had gone off in the motor boat."

She held her peace and he, too, was silent. But Olivia's thoughts ranged wide, and she asked after a considerable interval:

"Do you still love Diana?"

He flushed a little for she had read his thoughts, and countered with:

"Do you love the count?"

Olivia stirred. She put her right foot to the ground, and at the same time drew the coverlet over her naked limbs as far as the waist. Then she leaned her right arm on to the low table at the head of the divan, and, drawing up her knee, clasped it round with her left hand. A smile, at once wise and tragical, flitted across her habitually solemn features. She gazed straight before her.

There rose upon her vision a castle overlooking the sea. Wedding festivities were in progress. Two evenings earlier Gregor had been sitting near her in her low-ceilinged, wainscoted room, and he had watched her, from the embrasure in the window, combing her long, golden hair. Suddenly he had sprung to his feet, had seized her in his arms, had stepped over to the door and slipped the bolt, and had had his will of the astonished bride. For him it was probably no more than a dare-devil escapade, the gratification of a young man's vanity; but her heart went out to him in thanks, for her stormy nature felt a repugnance of displaying the squeamishness of a maiden who, though betrothed, has not yet been legally wedded. Many years later, in the midst of the disappointments of her married life, her imagination was still pleasurably stimulated by the thought of that adventurous impropriety which had been the herald of their nuptial day.

"At one time I loved him," she said at last in a calm voice strangely resembling the tone in which Diana was speaking those same words at that same hour. Her alto gave the phrase a richer, fuller sound, maybe; she uttered it, too, with greater solemnity to match the heaviness of her nature as compared with Diana's elasticity and lightsomeness.

Like an endless band, her life with Gregor unrolled itself before her vision in retrospect. They were out hunting, the horn sounded in the air, she was riding in advance of the others. Now she was walking slowly, like a beast heavy with young. Those were the months just before Clemens was born. She saw Gregor's gleeful face as he tossed the baby, and how he played with the child in those early years. Then she saw him drift away from her, she heard the whispers of friends, the advice of the family doctor, her mother's anger; it seemed as if her own recollection of these troublous days was becoming dimmer, as if the measures taken by her relatives, their aid and their claims, were receding more and more into the background. Now she was always alone, she took no further part in the hunts, but rode by herself, galloped, put her horse to jumps that only a madman would attempt. She fell and lay for long where she had fallen. Peasants found her and carried her home. Long months she kept her bed, motionless. It was at that time she had acquired her taste for recumbency. She read much, read and pondered. Sometimes she would write letters which were never posted. She probed and sampled the many who came to her house; in her, distrust of the higher circles of society grew to irony, irony to cynicism. A sculptor had once wished to model her, but Gregor had refused to let her sit to the man; such opposition roused her desire, and for a while she was restless and agitated. Then the post of ambassador had come their way. She saw their new, palatial dwelling, heard the congratulations, pictured again the mighty waters upon whose bosom she wished, all in vain, to sail alone, gazed upon the immemorial park which reminded her so poignantly of the home of her fathers, contemplated the blue carpet she loved, alone, all alone, always alone, for Gregor had long since vanished from the landscape, and even the child was lost in distant mist-wreaths. Now, the poet entered her blue room, and she was recalled from her dream, back into the world of reality, back to the present hour.

Meanwhile Andreas had been gazing his fill at the majestic creature before him, the woman who lay as it seemed on a rock emerging from a vast blue sea, her eyes grave, overshadowed by a dark and monstrous bird with pinions wide spread behind her. The beat of those giant wings caused a wind which ruffled his hair; he knew that those were the wings of the angel of death and he gazed on them unafraid. The vision and the night filled his passionate nature with a contentment he had never experienced before, so that as she now looked up at him her eyes met a countenance at once so earnest and so taciturn that she felt she must be gazing into her own soul.

They suddenly realized that this was the moment of their leave-taking. Slowly they drew nearer to each other, body to body, lip to lip, in a long farewell.

Four hours later three carriages drew up near a little pinewood where many westerners had ere this met in mortal combat. Gregor was accompanied by Kopp and the major; Andreas by two compatriots from the Austrian embassy; the prince by a doctor. Abdul ran by the side of the first carriage, eager as if going to the chase. He had escaped just as his master was leaving the embassy and none had been able to catch him.

It was raining. The fog lay like a canopy over their heads as they took up their positions. The prince tested the pistols, handed them to the seconds for their examination; hardly a word was spoken. Andreas was wearing a grey morning suit; Gregor his loose and easy blue jacket. The prince measured the distance; gave each a weapon.

Andreas was himself amazed at his own coolness. On the drive hither he had been thinking: "Nikolai will publish my last poems.... My sister will hang my portrait in the old garden house, next to father's, in a black frame...." Now, when they had led him to his place and he could look his opponent in the eyes, he thought: "Yes, he is a lovable man; I understand Diana's choice better than I do Olivia's. I wonder if Diana will weep when she gets my letter? I have never seen her cry...."

Gregor was thinking: "He is still very young." And immediately thereafter: "Scoundrel! What is the countess to him?" He looked towards the prince from whom the signal was to come.

The prince asked:

"Ready?"

"Ready," came the reply.

"Fire!"

The two men stood unscathed.

The prince thought:

"What madness! As if a woman's part in life were not to bind men in friendship rather than to separate them!"

While thus thinking he stepped up and changed the weapons.

"Attention! Fire!"

Gregor fell to the ground. The prince raised an arm. Kopp, who was holding the dog in leash, was dragged forward by the outraged animal. Doctor and umpire hastened to the wounded man's side. Gregor did not stir, a little blood was oozing through his clothes on the left side. The doctor cast a look of intelligence at the men who had gathered round. The prince formally declared the duel at an end.

At first Andreas did not in the least understand what had happened. He looked inquiringly at his seconds. One of them went over to where the count lay. Then he beckoned to Andreas. The young man approached. He found four men busied round Gregor. The doctor was giving an injection of camphor; he was pouring brandy into the prostrate man's mouth. Five minutes passed. At last Gregor opened his eyes, looked at the circle of men, realized from the expression on their faces and from his own feeling of weakness, from a strange sensation near his heart, that all was over with him.

The others pushed Andreas forward. The count contemplated the young man for a while, critically rather than wrathfully. He was silent. Then he held out his hand and Andreas took it in his own. "Impossible," the poet thought. "He cannot be more than slightly wounded. He'll be all right again in a few minutes. Then..." He felt himself tapped on the shoulder; he drew back, slowly, as if his senses were befogged. Abdul was whining at his master's side. The dog had growled at Andreas's approach. Then, he laid a paw ever so lightly on the master's breast, cautiously, a caress as airy as gossamer lest the touch should hurt the dying man.

Gregor tried to rise. Impossible! He mused: "Better lie quiet, absolutely quiet, then, perhaps, I'll be able to say a few words." With a look, he bade the prince come nearer. The other three withdrew. The prince knelt close beside him. Gregor looked him in the eyes, assembling his forces for a last endeavour. Then, very slowly, in short-pulsed sentences:

"I beg you--to see that--Muthesius is not--given the post--as ambassador--otherwise--everything will be ruined--Tell His Majesty--yourself--personally, Prince--personally--I would recommend--Winterthur--He shares my views--Promise me you'll..."

The prince slipped his hand into the limp hand beside him. He knew his chief was nearing the end. A few minutes went by. Again the lips moved, but all Gregor had strength to say was:

"My love to--my love to--the ladies...."

His eyes glazed over; another fifteen seconds passed; he fell back, dead.