Part 45

“I am not unaware,” he began slowly, just as if he were making a campaign speech to his electors, “I am not unaware that our marriage has not been the source of wholesome blessings. To be convinced of this, your declamation was unnecessary. We married because the circumstances were favourable. We had cause to regret the decision. Is it worth while to investigate the cause now? I am quite devoid of sentimental needs. This is true of me to such an extent that any display of sympathy or exuberance or lack of harshness in other people fills me with mortal antipathy. Unfortunately, my political career obliged me to assume a favourable attitude toward this general tendency of the masses. I played the hypocrite with complete consciousness of what I was doing, and made so much the greater effort to conceal all feeling in my private life.”

“It is easy to conceal something you do not have,” replied the Baroness in a tone of intense bitterness.

“Possibly; but it is a poor display of tact for the rich man to irritate the poor man by flaunting his lavish, spendthrift habits in his face; and this is precisely what you have done. The emphasis you laid on a certain possession of yours, the value of which we will not dispute, provoked my contempt. It gave you pleasure to cry when you saw a cat eating a sparrow. A banal newspaper novel could rob you completely of your spiritual equanimity. You were always thrilled, always in ecstasy, it made not the slightest difference whether the cause of your ecstasy was the first spring violet or a thunder storm, a burnt roast, a sore throat, or a poem. You were always raving, and I became tired of your raving. You did not seem to notice that my distrust toward the expression of these so-called feelings was transformed into coldness, impatience, and hatred. And then came the music. What was at first a diversion for you, of which one might approve or disapprove, became in time the indemnity for an active life and all the defects of your character. You gave yourself up to music somewhat as a prostitute gives herself up to her first loyal lover”—the Baroness twitched as if some one had struck her across the back with a horsewhip—“yes, like a prostitute,” he repeated, turning paler and paler, his eyes glistening. “Then it was that your whole character came to light; one saw how spoiled you were, how helpless, how undisciplined. You clung like a worm to uncertain and undetermined conditions. If I have become a devil in your eyes, it is your music that has made me so. Now you know it.”

“So that is it,” whispered the Baroness with faltering breath. “Did you leave me anything but my music? Have you not raged like a tiger? But it is not true,” she exclaimed, “you are not so vicious, otherwise I myself would be a lie in the presence of the Eternal Judge, and that I had borne children by you would be contrary to nature. Leave me, go away, so that I may believe that it is not true!”

The Baron did not move.

In indescribable excitement, and as quickly as her obese body would permit, the Baroness leaped to her feet: “I know you better,” she said with trembling lips, “I have been able to foreshadow what is driving you about; I have seen what makes you so restless. You are not the man you pretend to be; you are not the cold, heartless creature you seem. In your breast there is a spot where you are vulnerable, and there you have been struck. You are bleeding, man! If we all, I and your daughter and your brothers and your friends and your cowardly creatures, are as indifferent and despicable to you as so many flies, there is one who has been able to wound you; this fact is gnawing at your heart. And do you know why he was in a position to wound you? Because you loved him. Look me in the eye, and tell me that I lie. You loved him—your son—you idolised him. The fact that he has repudiated your love, that he found it of no value to him, the love that blossomed on the ruined lives of his mother and sister, this is the cause of your sorrow. It is written across your brow. And that you are suffering, and suffering for this reason, constitutes my revenge.”

The Baron did not say a word; his lower jaw wagged from left to right as though he were chewing something; his face seemed to have dried up; he looked as though he had suddenly become older by years. The Baroness, driven from her reserve, stood before him like an enraged sibyl. He turned in silence, and left the room.

“My suffering is her revenge,” he murmured on leaving the room. Once alone, he stood for a while perfectly absent-minded. “Am I really suffering?” he said to himself.

He turned off a gas jet that was burning above the book case. “Yes, I am suffering,” he confessed reluctantly; “I am suffering.” He walked along the wall with dragging feet, and entered a room in which a light was burning. He felt the same satiety and disgust at himself that he had experienced a few moments earlier. This time it was caused by the sight of the hand-carved furniture, the painted porcelain, the precious tapestries, and the oil paintings in their gold frames.

He longed for simpler things; he longed for barren walls, a cot of straw, parsimony, discipline. It was not the first time that his exhausted organism had sought consolation in the thought of a monastic life. This Protestant, this descendent of a long line of Protestants, had long been tired of Protestantism. He regarded the Roman Church as the more wholesome and merciful.

But the transformation of his religious views was his own carefully guarded secret. And secret it had to remain until he, the undisciplined son of his mother, could atone for his past misdeeds. He decided to wait until this atonement had been effected. Just as a hypnotist gains control of his medium by inner composure, so he thought he could hasten the coming of this event by conceding it absolute supremacy over his mind.

III

When Eberhard von Auffenberg left the paternal home to strike out for himself, he was as helpless as a child that has lost the hand of its adult companion in a crowd.

He put the question to himself: What am I going to do? He had never worked. He had studied at various universities as so many other young men have studied, that is, he had managed to pass a few examinations by the skin of his teeth.

He had had so little to do in life, and was so utterly devoid of ambition, that he looked upon a really ambitious individual as being insane. Anything that was at all practical was filled with insurmountable obstacles. His freedom, in other words, placed him in a distressing state of mind and body.

It would not have been difficult for him to find people who would have been willing to advance him money on his name. But he did not wish to incur debts of which his father might hear. If he did, his solemn solution of an unbearable relation would have amounted to nothing.

He could, of course, count on his share of the estate; and he did count on it, notwithstanding the fact that to do so was to speculate on the death of his own father. He stood in urgent need of a confidential friend; and this friend he thought he had found in Herr Carovius.

“Ah, two people such as you and I will not insist upon unnecessary formalities,” said Herr Carovius. “All that I need is your face, and your signature to a piece of paper. We will deduct ten per cent at the very outset, so that my expenses may be covered, for money is dear at present. I will give you real estate bonds; they are selling to-day at eighty-five, unfortunately. The Exchange is a trifle spotty, but a little loss like that won’t mean anything to you.”

For the ten thousand marks that he owed, Eberhard received seven thousand, six hundred and fifty, cash. In less than a year he was again in need of money, and asked Herr Carovius for twenty thousand. Herr Carovius said he did not have that much ready money, and that he would have to approach a lender.

Eberhard replied sulkily that he could do about that as he saw fit, but he must not mention his name to a third party. A few days later Herr Carovius told a tale, of hair-splitting negotiations: there was a middleman who demanded immodest guarantees, including certified notes. He swore that he knew nothing about that kind of business, and that he had undertaken to supply the needed loan only because of his excessive affection for his young friend.

Eberhard was unmoved. The eel-like mobility of the man with the squeaking voice did not please him; not at all; as a matter of fact he began to dread him; and this dread increased in intensity and fearfulness in proportion to the degree in which he felt he was becoming more and more entangled in his net.

The twenty thousand marks were procured at an interest of thirty-five per cent. At first Eberhard refused to sign the note. He would not touch it until Herr Carovius had assured him that it was not to be converted into currency, that it could be redeemed with new loans at any time, and that it would lie in his strong-box as peacefully as the bones of the Auffenberg ancestors rested in their vaults. Eberhard, tired of this flood of words, yielded.

Every time he signed his name he had a feeling that the danger into which he was walking was becoming greater. But he was too lazy to defend himself; he was too aristocratic to interest himself in petty explanations; and he was simply not capable of living on a small income.

The endorsed notes were presented as a matter of warning; new loans settled them; new loans made new notes necessary; these were extended; the extensions were costly; an uncanny individual shielded in anonymity was taken into confidence. He bought up mortgages, paid for them in diamonds instead of money, and sold depreciated stocks. The debts having reached a certain height, Herr Carovius demanded that Eberhard have his life insured. Eberhard had to do it; the premium was very high. In the course of three years Eberhard had lost all perspective; he could no longer survey his obligations. The money he received he spent in the usual fashion, never bothered himself about the terms on which he had secured it, and had no idea where all this was leading to and where it was going to end. He turned in disgust from Herr Carovius’s clumsy approaches, malicious gibes, and occasional threats.

What an insipid smile he had! How fatuous, and then again how profound, his conversation could be! He took upon himself the impudent liberty of running in and out at Eberhard’s whenever he felt like it. He bored him with his discussion of philosophic systems, or with miserable gossip about his neighbours. He watched him day and night.

He followed him on the street. He would come up to him and cry out, “Herr Baron, Herr Baron!” and wave his hat. His solicitude for Eberhard’s health resembled that of a gaoler. One evening Eberhard went to bed with a fever. Herr Carovius ran to the physician, and then spent the whole night by the bedside of the patient, despite his entreaties to be left alone. “Would it not be well for me to write to your mother?” he asked, with much show of affection on the next morning when he noticed that the fever had not fallen. Eberhard sprang from his bed with an exclamation of rage, and Herr Carovius left immediately and unceremoniously.

Herr Carovius loved to complain. He ran around the table, exclaiming that he was ruined. He brought out his cheque book, added up the figures, and cried: “Two more years of this business, dear Baron, and I will be ready for the poor house.” He demanded security and still more securities; he asked for renewed promises. He submitted an account of the total sum, and demanded an endorsement. But it was impossible for any one to make head or tail out of this welter of interest, commissions, indemnities, and usury. Herr Carovius himself no longer knew precisely how matters stood; for a consortium of subsequent indorsers had been formed behind his back, and they were exploiting his zeal on behalf of the young Baron for all it was worth.

“What is this I hear about you and the women?” asked Herr Carovius one day. “What about a little adventure?” He had noticed that the Baron had a secret; and it enraged him to think that he could not get at the bottom of this amorous mystery.