'r-m 
 
 MARTIN SCHULER 
 
 ^^:
 
 Ex Libris 
 C. K. OGDEN 
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 MARTIN SCHULER
 
 MARTIN SCHULER 
 
 BY 
 
 ROMER WILSON 
 
 SECOND EDITION 
 
 METHUEN 6p CO. LTD. 
 
 36 ESSEX STREET W.C. 
 
 LONDON
 
 First Published - - - October 3rd, 1918 
 Second Edition - - - IQIO
 
 19(9 
 
 CONTE NTS 
 
 HEIDELBERG 
 
 CHAl'TER 
 I. 
 II. 
 III. 
 
 IV. 
 
 V. 
 
 VI. 
 
 VII. 
 
 PAGli 
 
 I 
 
 14 
 31 
 
 37 
 51 
 61 
 70 
 
 LEIPSIC 
 
 VIII. 
 
 IX. 
 
 X. 
 
 XI. 
 
 XII. 
 
 XIII. 
 
 XIV. 
 
 XV. 
 
 79 
 85 
 97 
 
 III 
 
 123 
 132 
 137 
 149 
 
 XVI. 
 
 XVII. 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 BERLIN 
 
 157 
 170 
 
 181 
 
 'p
 
 vi. CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 XIX. 189 
 
 XX. ----- 197 
 
 XXI. - - - - - 208 
 
 XXII. - - - - - 213 
 
 XXIII. - - - - - 217 
 
 SCHWARZWALD 
 
 XXIV. - - - - - 225 
 XXV. - - - - - 236 
 
 XXVI, ... - - 240 
 
 XXVII. ----- 246 
 
 XXVIII. - - - - - 252 
 
 XXIX. ----- 257 
 
 XXX. - - - - - 264 
 
 XXXI. - - - - - 270 
 
 XXXII. - - - - - 278 
 
 XXXIII. - - - - - 281 
 
 XXXIV. ----- 286 
 
 XXXV. ----- 292
 
 HEIDELBERG
 
 MARTIN SCHULER 
 
 HEIDELBERG 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THERE were in old times, before Europe 
 was divided amongst the children of 
 Asia, nine peahens. These peahens 
 were in reality nine spellbound damsels of sur- 
 passing loveUness. Eight of them were fit brides 
 for the princes of the earth, but the ninth was far 
 lovelier than any queen or princess man has ever 
 imagined. The ninth peahen, who was a queen 
 in her own right, fell in love nevertheless with an 
 ordinary prince, the youngest son of a king — 
 antiquaries suspect that this prince was Joseph, 
 son of Jacob — and therefore she came every evening 
 to perch in the branches of a golden apple-tree that 
 grew in the garden of his father's palace. This 
 tree blossomed, bore fruit, and yielded it all in the 
 same night. The peahen, by perseverance, decoyed 
 the young prince into the garden and, after revealing 
 to him her true nature, disappeared. After many 
 adventures and in spite of the powers of evil, the 
 prince recovered her and they were married. They 
 had several children who became kings and princes.
 
 2 MARTIN SCHULER 
 
 Martin Schiiler read this talc carefully in a more 
 elaborate edition than the above, namely, in the 
 pleasant translation made from the Serbian by 
 Madame Elodie Mejatovitch. He was searcliing 
 for some tale upon which to erect an opera, and there 
 lay around him English, French, and German books 
 of fairy-lore, ancient legends and ghost stories. 
 Martin Schiiler was very ambitious and very young. 
 At twenty years old he was a hot Wagnerite and 
 hoped, if possible, to create a counter-type of Tristan 
 and Isolde and one or two Gotterdammerungs ; his 
 heart was full of the passionate fire that results in 
 magnificent if somewhat commonplace noise ; his 
 mind yearned to stretch itself in wide orchestration ; 
 the nerves of his ears strained to balance themselves 
 upon flute-arias played perfectly, even a little too 
 perfectly, in tune. His musical temperature was 
 a little too sharp, whereas that of most people is 
 decidedly too flat, as we say. He was mad for 
 perfection, he was without experience, he was 
 swamped by the master-writer of Europe, he was 
 insane for precocity. He determined that at 
 twenty-three he would shake the world. In his 
 immense hurry he bought several books of fable 
 and mythology because operatic music seems a 
 misfit on the back of truth. Having decided at 
 all costs to be original he read tliree or four books 
 on Slav legendary, but the only one he could com- 
 prehend or fasten down to any Teutonic idea of an 
 opera was that which contained the story of the 
 nine peahens. Being in a huny, as soon as he
 
 HEIDELBERG 8 
 
 discovered anything at all suitable he stopped 
 searching and began to dream with the book in his 
 hand. 
 
 Martin Schiiler lived in Heidelberg with his 
 parents, who gave him an attic with a piano in it 
 where he could be both noisy and untidy. The 
 late afternoon sun came in from the west and filled 
 the attic with brown light. It had a dormer window 
 and a sloping ceiling, and what upright wall there 
 was was papered with a shiny yellow wall-paper 
 of an acanthus leaf design that at the time of the 
 accession of the third Frederick had been new and 
 mustard-coloured. It was now mellowed with 
 years and mildewed with damp, and ought long 
 ago to have suffered the fate of its larger portion 
 that lay obscm-ed beneath a newer design in the 
 sitting-room downstairs. This wall-paper shone 
 in the sunshine like a halo about Martin and his 
 piano, and his table and chairs and books and ink- 
 pots and music paper. He sat with his feet on 
 the table, and in the middle of his dreams began to 
 think of his sister, who wore a blouse cut square 
 at the neck and played the piano beautifully. He 
 had his theories of inspiration hke everybody 
 else, and one of these was that music inspired music, 
 so he used to get his sister to play to him. As a 
 matter of fact, the music he heard suggested similar 
 music, and in many of his earher efforts Chopin 
 and the others would have recognized variations of 
 airs that had been discarded by them for better 
 variations. Youth is a period of disappointment.
 
 4 MARTIN SCHttLER 
 
 Young men find when they first begin serious work 
 that there is nothing new under the sun and that 
 it is impossible not to create platitudes. 
 
 Soon Martin began to want his sister to play for 
 him, and remained in this condition for about ten 
 minutes before he got up enough energy to rouse 
 himself to call her. Presently, throwing the book 
 aside, he got out of his comfortable position and 
 went to the door, calling in a guttural voice, 
 " Bertah ! Bertah ! Come up here ! " 
 
 Bertha, who was mending socks in the sitting-room, 
 called out, " I am coming," and after carefully 
 rolling up the grey pair which she was darning in 
 such a way that the darn did not show, she went 
 upstairs singing, 
 
 " The wife indeed to her good-man." 
 
 Like her brother she had smooth fawn skin, 
 soft dark eyes with scarcely any iris, abundant, 
 rather coarse dark hair, a marked chin with a 
 cleft in it, a firm Teutonic mouth and a round 
 head, rather forced forward above the brows. 
 Martin Schiller's eyes were a little deeper set, his 
 mouth was more mobile ; besides, he had a shock 
 of unkempt hair, whereas his sister's tresses were 
 glossy with much brushing and lay round her head 
 in smooth shining plaits, 
 
 " Come play, " said Martin, as his sister's plaits 
 appeared above the stairs. Then her body emerged 
 in its cotton house-frock, and he went to the piano 
 and kicked two chairs into position. Bertha never
 
 HEIDELBERG 5 
 
 refused to play. She sat down immediately and 
 set off into a cascade of Chopin. Blartin sat by 
 her like a music-master and said, " Piano ! " 
 " Allegro ! " " Forte ! " and occasionally tapped 
 high C to emphasize his murmurs, but she took 
 no notice of him. 
 
 In the middle of a Schumann intermezzo he 
 put his big hands on hers and stopped her senti- 
 mentally. 
 
 " Sweetest sister," he said, " I wish I could play 
 as you do." Bertha smiled with delight. Her 
 brother was the apple of her eye. 
 
 " Martische," she said, " you would if you had 
 not been such a bad Httle boy." 
 
 " Never," he said. 
 
 He did play very badly. Bertha had invented 
 the fable that the fairies had stiffened his finger 
 tendons because he was once so naughty as to dis- 
 believe in them. She liked teasing him about it. 
 She liked being able in one thing to excel him, 
 to excel everybody in the house. When she played 
 the piano everybody in the house looked up to her 
 and she liked it. She played so well that all her 
 friends thought she was exceedingly virtuous 
 and clever, and Martin played so badly that all her 
 friends thought him good for nothing and stupid. 
 Her father shared this idea, and was for ever 
 goading at him and accusing him of cow-like dull- 
 ness, but he indulged him to a certain extent 
 because the military authorities let him off service 
 and he was considered delicate. He was not in
 
 6 MARTIN SCHtlLER 
 
 the least delicate, but, like many young people, 
 he had shown slight symptoms of heart weakness 
 at the age of examination. 
 
 Martin kept his hands over Bertha's for a moment 
 or two, and went on talking. " I have had to- 
 day a glorious inspiration," he said. He let the 
 announcement sink in, and seeing a sympathetic 
 look of expectancy in her eyes, leant over the back of 
 his chair and twitched Madame Mejatovitch's 
 book off the table into his hands. 
 
 He read her the story of the peahens. 
 
 " That won't make an opera," she said. 
 
 He was disappointed. He thought her slightly 
 cruel, as a small boy thinks his brother is cruel 
 when the brother assures him that the rock he is 
 standing on is not a mountain. 
 
 " What shall I do ? " he said. Though neither 
 of them knew it, her opinion was his criterion of 
 judgment. In those days his critical faculty did 
 not extend to his own. productions ; he depended 
 upon his untrained instinct, and it depended 
 upon the opinion of those around him, and, because 
 Bertha was obviously sane, chiefly upon Bertha. 
 An instinct before it is sure clings to sanity. 
 Thus young instincts often regulate themselves by 
 the works of acknowledged masters. 
 
 " Wliat shall I do ? " repeated Martin sadly. 
 
 " You must mix it with something more solid," 
 she said ; " allegorical, I think, or human. You 
 will never rise to deep passions on that," She 
 too admired Wagner.
 
 HEIDELBERG 7 
 
 Martin put up a defence. " You are right, 
 Bertab," he said, "but I could make something 
 very beautiful and lovely out of it." 
 
 " You will never get the desired deep passion 
 out of fairy stories." 
 
 " I could make the prince have a human sweet- 
 heart also." He opened the book and made the 
 pages run like a little cascade between his finger 
 and thumb. " Or could I not imagine passion 
 into the princess ? " 
 
 " It would be very difficult," said Bertha ; "an 
 opera ought to touch some vital string of the heart 
 to vibrate in us very deeply. Now I must go and 
 mend your all-too-many socks." 
 
 She rose, but Martin took hold of the skirt of 
 her cotton dress. " Stay," he said, " play again. 
 You have caused a downfall in me ; it is only right 
 you should help me to rise. Play to me while I 
 look out of the window at the evening which will 
 presently creep over Heidelberg. Perhaps I shall 
 recover myself and have a heavenly thought." 
 
 Bertha teased him. " Your socks have real 
 holes that must be filled in. Your dreams are 
 castles in the air ; no one will live in them so they 
 need never be built." 
 
 " I have heard Mama talk like that," he said; 
 " it is very silly. No one can estimate the value of 
 a beautiful opera ; socks cost at most three or four 
 marks." 
 
 " Don't begin to be philosophical," said Bertha ; 
 " I know all about that. I can tell you everything
 
 8 MARTIN SCHtlLER 
 
 yoii are about to say, including even starvation 
 is a beautiful and noble death if it produce a 
 wonderful work of art.' " Nevertheless, she was 
 obedient by nature, and before any more was said 
 upon this controversial subject she began to play. 
 She began with a tinkling melody of old Rubin- 
 stein's, which is certainly worth less than a pair 
 of socks ; then she played a comic song which 
 Martin, who had begun to think, thought was worth 
 writing because of the - disproportionate riches it 
 brought to the composer. For a minute he was 
 guilty of wishing to write a comic song, but he 
 purged himself quickly of the desire. She played 
 a waltz — not a dance waltz, a concert waltz — and 
 Martin felt an appropriate and lively pleasure 
 creep up to his head where it turned into the obvious 
 question, was such a production worth all the 
 strain and labour and bad temper that had brought 
 it to perfection. He began to be moral and to 
 balance relative worth until she annihilated his 
 feelings with a passionate grand opera, and left him 
 cold and chill upon an early work of Claude Debussy. 
 He got up and shouted, " Not that ! Not that 
 inventor of seductive titles." She played on, 
 however, as she chose until she fell into the most 
 stirring music. 
 
 Meanwhile Martin had gone to the window and 
 looked out over the river. The house of the Schiilers 
 was up one of the steep streets of the town below the 
 castle. It was high enough up to see a long 
 way from the attic window. Martin stood in the
 
 HEIDELBERG 9 
 
 window quite alone because the sloping roof and 
 the walls made it into a little box where one could 
 isolate oneself even if the room were full of people. 
 He gazed out over the river towards the north- 
 west, where the sun had already sunk from view. 
 The window faced west, but the side panes looked 
 north and south ; thus he could see if he chose 
 the overmantHng darkness of the castle, the whole 
 town, the new western part of the town, the broad 
 river ghding away to the west to fold itself into the 
 Rhine, the broad Rhine plain beyond stretching 
 west and north-west, and, close in again, due north, 
 just across the river, the vine hills with the ruined 
 tower and the philosopher's way creeping down to 
 the pretty suburb of Neunheim, where the richer 
 people built their houses. The Elector's Bridge 
 was just out of sight beyond the roof. Directly 
 below him the old town lay in a tumbled heap. 
 It seemed that if one house fell or moved the whole 
 lot would rattle like bricks into the river. Splash I 
 what a splash if the whole towi fell into the 
 river ! 
 
 " The whole town has fallen into the river ! The 
 whole town has fallen into the river ! " somebody 
 seemed to sing in clear, tragic notes. Martin's 
 gaze was fixed on the far horizon, and his imagina- 
 tion seemed to see, as if at the end of a very long 
 telescope that reduced objects to microscopic 
 dimensions, a little highly-coloured facsiinile of 
 the old town falling into a little river. What a 
 downfall ! How the people cried like a thousand
 
 10 MARTIN SCHtlLER 
 
 souls in a sinking ship, " God, have mercy upon us ! " 
 The houses toppled forward and crashed into the 
 river, crushing in the bridges. " The bridges 
 have been crushed in : the town has fallen into the 
 river." The people wailed ; the noise of their 
 lamentations rose from the falling ruins like flames 
 from a fire. " How shall we cross ?• The bridges 
 are crushed in. Our dear ones are drowned. Let 
 us climb up to the castle. That too falls. Our 
 dear ones are drowned in the river. Lord, have 
 mercy upon us ! It is the end of the world — down 
 on your knees — it is the end of the world. Say 
 the Litany." What an end for an opera with the 
 deep, sonorous music of the Litany ! Martin's 
 thoughts culminated in this thought. His spirits 
 had revived. He cried out joyously to his sister : 
 " Little sister, play no more," and pusliing her off 
 the chair played out the music he had heard. 
 
 " The whole town has fallen into the river ! " 
 He thumped, and strummed a good deal more 
 besides, including a motif for the Litany. 
 
 "That is better," said his sister; "but you 
 must begin." 
 
 " I shall begin with the peahens," he said, 
 " they shall entrance the princes of the town ; all 
 the people will go to the bad because of them, 
 and then God with one kick of His foot will send 
 all the town rolling into the river." Martin smiled 
 and almost licked his lips at the magnificent thought 
 of the Deity propelling Heidelberg into the Neckar 
 with His foot.
 
 HEIDELBERG 11 
 
 Bertha was practical. " Who will write the 
 poem, brother ? " she said. 
 
 Martin was a little irritated to discover that she 
 never imagined he would do the whole thing alone, 
 but he answered, " Werner and I together. I'll 
 sketch it out and run to Werner at once. He will 
 see eye to eye with me." 
 
 " How ill poor Werner looks," said Bertha. 
 "I'd like to buy him a good dinner every day till 
 he gets fat." 
 
 " He's diseased. He'll never get fat — besides, 
 he never has an appetite." 
 
 I expect he's trained himself to starve because 
 it is more convenient," said Bertha, getting up 
 from her chair. " Poor Werner! Mother and I 
 were grieved last time you brought him to supper. 
 We pressed sausage and chicken and soup and cakes 
 upon him, and father urged him to take beer, but 
 he only drank a little wine and sat there amusing 
 us all with his clever remarks, and eating nothing, 
 like an unbidden guest. Mother likes Werner, 
 and so do I. He looks old, doesn't he ? I should 
 say he was thirty-six or seven. I wonder why he 
 doesn't make any money with his clever brains." 
 
 "He's a little bit queer," said Martin. "He 
 needs a pubHsher, you know ; he lets his works 
 lie in a drawer and forgets them directly they are 
 finished, and if I or any of his friends urge him to 
 publish something, he says, ' Yes, perhaps,' and 
 puts it back into the drawer and forgets it again. 
 I don't believe he's so old as you think. He can't 
 
 y
 
 12 MARTIN SCHULER 
 
 be more than twenty-seven, because he passed liis 
 examinations when I was thirteen or so." 
 
 " He looks so clever," said Bertha again ; "he 
 reminds me a Httle bit of Dante." 
 
 " Oh, come," said Martin, Hghting liis lamp, 
 " he is not at all hke Dante. He hasn't Dante's 
 nobility of feature, nor his nose ; that's because 
 he is so thin. Don't compare moles to mice 
 because they are small and have fur." 
 
 " I must go," said Bertha. " I hope Werner 
 will agree to do it." 
 
 " There's no doubt," said Martin, who, neverthe- 
 less, had a slight qualm of doubt. " He's very 
 obliging." 
 
 Bertha went to the door. " Good luck," she 
 said as she opened it and went out. She stuck 
 her head in again to ask if he were going that night. 
 
 "Immediately," said Martin; "I shan't sleep 
 unless I do." 
 
 Bertha went down the dark stairs to the kitchen, 
 where her mother was making herb soup for supper, 
 and set about to prepare a ragout of mutton and 
 chickens' legs. She cut up a terrible lot of onions, 
 until the tears ran out of her eyes and the pungent 
 odour of bruised onions rose through the house to 
 the attic where Martin sat. The Schiilers owned 
 the top part of the house ; the two lower floors 
 belonged to somebody else. As Bertha cut onions 
 she thought of Martin and his opera and his 
 aspirations. It seemed very unlikely a Wagner 
 would emanate from their house, but what of that ?
 
 HEIDELBERG 13 
 
 IMiisicians had to be bom and brought up some- 
 where. She removed the coarse skin from another 
 onion. It seemed to her that an immense time 
 must elapse before Martin completed an opera, 
 and that a gulf must be crossed before he became 
 famous. He must surely lose his boyhood, change 
 the aspect of his countenance, vanish, and return a 
 stranger related to nobody, before he could take a 
 place amongst that group of creatures called rich 
 and famous men. She bent to the onion basket 
 for yet another onion, and something pricked her 
 breast. She knew what it was : it was the corner 
 of her lover's last letter. Her lover's name was 
 Hermann Markheim, and he was surely the most 
 wonderful young man on earth. He had a small 
 government position, and Bertha had secured his 
 affections by giving him sweet glances and "thank 
 yous " every time he turned over her music for her 
 at soirees. She moved herself inside her clothes 
 until the letter was comfortable without putting 
 down the onion or the onion knife, but her thoughts 
 turned to marriage and dowries, bed-Hnen and the 
 slow progress of time. All Bertha's family were 
 very fond of her and valued her. She accepted 
 their valuation, though it was too low. Nobody 
 but Markheim ever saw her true worth, and he 
 forgot that two years after their marriage, but she 
 was happy and uninjured because she always saw 
 herself as others saw her, and not as she was.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 MARTIN made a rough draft of the opera, 
 with the words and tune that came to him 
 at the window fully inserted. He was 
 anxious, agitated, and delighted ; his heart leapt 
 continually in long beats, his eyes strained, his 
 fingers hastened, his hands shook. He wanted to 
 capture his memories ; he wanted to complete his 
 idea ; he knew that if he completed the idea the 
 opera would follow in due time. He put down all 
 he could — ^the destruction of the city, the counter- 
 motif of constructive love : 
 
 "Ah, beautiful love why adornest thou only the apple- 
 tree ? " 
 
 He emptied his mind ; he drained his imagina- 
 tion ; he exhausted the forces that he had acquired 
 from the sunset and his sister's piano-playing ; 
 but instead of falling into despair when he could 
 think no more, he rose up happy because he was 
 satisfied in his emptiness that he had taken out some- 
 thing vital, something which to-morrow or the next 
 day would be added to, something which would 
 act upon his mind and stimulate in him ideas, 
 desires, and thoughts, and so force itself to its own 
 completion.
 
 HEIDELBERG 15 
 
 Martin got his soft hat off the floor and paused 
 before he put it on his head to gaze again at the 
 perfection of the peahens. He seemed to hear 
 actors and actresses singing the beautiful unwritten 
 tunes. He saw himself applauded as he took a 
 curtain on the first night. All the usual dreams of 
 future fame came into his head. He put on his 
 hat, took up the manuscript and read portions 
 of it again as he stood by the lamp. He smiled 
 because it was so good. He held it very close to 
 the lamp, and the light on the white paper dazzled 
 his eyes so that when he looked up he saw green 
 and yellow blurs. He put the manuscript into 
 his coat and walked downstairs as young men 
 do — clamp, clamp, straight on liis heels. The 
 yellow and green blurs swam before him down to 
 the street door, where they were dispelled by the 
 light from the street lamp just above it. He lit 
 his pipe and sauntered round to see Werner. 
 
 The street in which Werner lived was dark and the 
 houses were old and shabby. Sentimental Britons 
 would have considered it vandalism to rebuild them 
 because they were ancient and picturesque, though 
 millions of generations of house-fleas and worse 
 pests had seen the hght there, and mice abounded. 
 It was unlikely they would be rebuilt for many 
 years, for the rich people of the town were moving 
 to the west end, and the landlords had a sufficient 
 stream of low-class lodgers to make optimistic 
 hopes of long leases still worth holding. Land- 
 lords will allow bad and worthless houses to stand
 
 16 MARTIN SCHULER 
 
 for ever all on the chance that some day some one 
 will offer a fabulous rent for an unending term of 
 years. " I am sure to get an offer next year," they 
 say; " I'll let it stand a year longer." "This is 
 no time for building. House property is the devil " ; 
 and thus old houses get older, and poor dis- 
 tricts get poverty-stricken, until some enterprising 
 man with pyramids of red-brick at his command 
 commits those abhorred acts of vandalism which 
 ruin the town, destroy the taste and individuality 
 of the working man, provide good and clean homes 
 and ensure, as far as a mere bricklayer can ensure, 
 the health of a future generation. When the red 
 brick begins to mellow and the roof to leak, the 
 landlord comes into his own again — those pleasant 
 years of procrastination — and one can annoy him 
 by quoting apt proverbs all containing the word 
 "time." 
 
 Martin got to the door of the house where Werner 
 dwelt. A carved face with an evil leer grinned 
 from over the lintel. The door itself was sparsely 
 decorated with ancient and inferior patterns and 
 the door latch was an example in wrought-iron 
 of the bad taste that was considered good taste in 
 Heidelberg two or three hundred years ago. Martin 
 pushed open the door and entered the house. He 
 shut it behind him and found himself in total dark- 
 ness. Werner provided no lamp for chance visitors, 
 nor did the other tenants, because there were no 
 other tenants. He lived alone there, and he 
 only rented one room at the top. Martin stumbled
 
 HEIDELBERG 17 ^ 
 
 up the bare wooden stairs, cursing softly. By 
 the time he reached Werner's door his hands were 
 begrimed with feehng along walls coated with 
 damp dust, and he was out of breath with the long 
 struggle upwards and the fear of hitting his Lead 
 against some beam or corner. He knocked on 
 Werner's door with his knuckles, and as the door 
 seemed cleaner than the walls he rubbed off what 
 dirt he could on it. A voice growled for him to 
 enter. He went in. The feeble light of two 
 candles almost dazzled him. He blinked, and 
 stretched out grimy paws to Werner, who actually 
 got up to welcome him, but refused his outstretched 
 Jiands. Werner was quite fond of Schiiler, and 
 thought that perhaps he might make a name for 
 himself some day. He never said so or accorded him 
 any familiarity on that ground ; but he was quite 
 fond of Schiiler and thought better of him than 
 he did of most people, and Schiiler thought well 
 of him. He made Schiiler sit down, adjusted the 
 candles so that he could see his face, and then sat 
 down himself in a chair that nobody had ever 
 known him to yield to anybody. He wore a ragged 
 red cotton dressing-gown bordered with a bad 
 Paisley design, a pair of check trousers made 
 in France in the year 1890, and an unclean cotton 
 shirt. These clothes had been his father's, and for 
 eight years, since that gentleman's decease, their 
 inheritor had worn them as a boudoir suit to 
 save his cloth clothes. Werner was twenty-eight 
 years old ; he was ugly and diseased. Bertha's
 
 18 MARTIN SCHllLER 
 
 remark that he was hke Dante probably meant 
 he was thin and foreign looking ; his nationality 
 was not to be guessed from his face, for when his 
 beard was long he resembled a cadaverous French- 
 man, and in those periods when, as at present, he 
 was clean shaven, he resembled only himself, or, 
 as one of his friends said, all the thin men in the 
 world. 
 
 Some beer was produced, and Martin began to 
 open out his opera. Werner pretended to be bored, 
 and Martin prevented himself from becoming 
 chilled with the greatest difficulty. When the 
 panegyric was over, Werner muttered " Wagner- 
 esque " between his teeth. In Werner's company 
 Martin felt a little ashamed of admiring Wagner, 
 so he said, " No, not the idea : it is heartfelt." 
 Werner still appeared to be bored, and showed 
 no signs of longing to write the poem about which 
 Martin had hinted very broadly, for now he was 
 in the Presence, and the Presence was so un- 
 sympathetic Martin found it impossible to say 
 outright, " Look, my friend, here is your chance 
 for fame. Compose the verse for my future opera ! " 
 Werner sat and looked at Martin, and Martin 
 sat and blinked at Werner, and decided that he 
 must take him out and give him some more beer, 
 so he invited him to rouse, change his clothes, 
 and come and have supper with him up by the 
 castle. Werner acceded, and shortly got up and 
 put on respectable garments, drew water from a 
 tap outside his door, and threatened to go to hell
 
 HEIDELBERG 19 
 
 before he'd go out with such a dirty-pawed dog 
 as Martin. Martin washed gladly, and said he 
 too would go to hell before he'd negotiate Werner's 
 stairs again without a hght. Thus they became 
 quite moderately gay and jolly — Martin in spite of 
 the burden of immediate fame, and Werner in 
 spite of his poor and miserable circumstances. 
 
 There was no moon that night, and the stars 
 were brilliant, Martin commented on this as 
 they walked up the exceedingly steep hill to the 
 castle. 
 
 "It is always so without a moon," he said. 
 " The moon makes the stars pale, does it not ? 
 And puts some of them out. I like these cloudless 
 dark nights. Look at the Great Bear I only 
 know her and the Plough by sight." 
 
 " That is the Belt," said Werner, as Martin 
 called it the Plough ; " and over there are the 
 twins, Gemini, Lovely Children. I believe so, at 
 least, but I am not an astronomer.' 
 
 " Sometimes I wish," continued Martin, " that 
 the stars were all planets, and sometimes that 
 they were all fixed." 
 
 " I dream of collisions in space when Martin 
 Schiller says let all the stars be planets ! " Werner 
 actually began to laugh. 
 
 As they ascended the hill the last red Hght of 
 sunset was fading into purple in the west. 
 
 " The sun takes so long to go these summer 
 nights," said Martin. 
 
 " Spring," said Werner. *' May surely is spring ;
 
 20 MARTIN SCHtlLER 
 
 call it spring. Why do you hurry the year over 
 so quickly ? " 
 
 " Summer begins for me," said Martin, "when 
 the trees are green." 
 
 " And for me when the heat stenches. The 
 smell of the heat in the street is horrible." 
 
 "I generally take a walking expedition with a 
 few friends," said Martin. "Dark forests, the 
 Schwarzwald, and the little lakes up there are cool 
 and full of dreams and also of amusements for 
 swimmers and fishers and stone-throwers. We 
 take rucksacks and sleep under the trees. On 
 some days the girls come by train and we have fun." 
 
 "Fun with girls," said Werner; "that sounds 
 nice. You like girls, of course. You are young, 
 and have desires. Which is it you Hke best— the 
 girls or the desires ? " 
 
 Martin laughed. " Oh, the girls ; quite frankly, 
 the girls," he said. " We have great fun, of course- 
 games — and they scream and we are all jolly." 
 
 "You all Hke showing off your arms and legs 
 and your wits, and your naughty stories, and 
 immediately you see a sign of the moon you 
 become sentimental and pair off each one with 
 the girl who has chosen him, and kiss perhaps." 
 
 " Perhaps," said Martin. " It's fun, I can tell 
 you." He blushed, because he remembered the 
 first experiences of love, and they were not very 
 far away ; they had hardly receded behind the veil 
 of shame to that far place where they arouse no 
 feeling.
 
 HEIDELBERG 21 
 
 They were nearing the Restoration-place up by 
 the Castle, and could see each other by the glow 
 of its many little lights, which shone out, making 
 a multicoloured blaze. 
 
 " Red, white, and blue is an ugly combination 
 of colours," said Martin, who seemed bound to 
 make ordinary conversation. 
 
 "Yes," said Werner, "especially when the light 
 inside is yellow. Why, can you tell me, do places 
 of public entertainment always oppress themselves 
 with jewels like a Dowager Grand Duchess ? " 
 He said this mincingly. 
 
 Martin laughed. " I am boring you with silly 
 conversation," he said. " I am very hot and 
 excited inside. Here, I've given myself away. 
 You would take the meat out of a live crab, 
 Werner." 
 
 " There are worse occupations," said Werner, 
 meaningly. 
 
 " I don't see the point," said Martin, but Werner 
 forced it in with his eyes, and Martin blushed 
 and almost said aloud, " Better, you mean, than 
 taking poetry out of live poets," but he covered 
 his thoughts with an exclamation about their 
 proximity to the restaurant. They talked no more, 
 and Martin ordered a table quite close to the 
 parapet, whence the best view can be had. This 
 especial supper-place was not his haphazard choice 
 He chose it because of its height above the city, 
 and because one could watch the winding of the 
 river ; in a word, because of its noble surroundings,
 
 22 MARTIN SCHULER 
 
 for he was aware that in noble surroundings a man 
 often hears better. 
 
 Presently they were seated face to face at a white 
 table, and Martin ordered sausage and ham, sauer- 
 kraut, and beer for two, and then, in the last faint 
 glow of the May twilight, set himself the task of 
 warming Werner up. 
 
 The beautiful night had stolen over the town, 
 and far below on the black river lights sparkled. 
 Lights shone in the houses and at the theatre and 
 in the streets, a universe of stars fallen to earth. 
 It was easy to pick out the constellations of the 
 Bahnhof, of the market-place, and of the principal 
 wharves. Martin felt like a dweller in Uranus, 
 remote and yet a companion of the planets, as he 
 sat with Werner in the multicoloured star of the 
 Restoration-place. He said so to Werner, who said 
 he was far-fetched and rather taken up with the 
 stars that evening. Martin ignored him and pointed 
 out the theatre, and what he imagined was the 
 fencing schools, and what he thought were the 
 streets in which he and Werner lived respectively, 
 and finally made a general remark about the equality 
 of all places after dark when they were lit by 
 municipal gas, which was the same for all. Werner 
 told him that if his opera was as unoriginal as his 
 remarks it would be practically worthless. Werner 
 was in a tedious mood. The minor poets often 
 assume, and sometimes suffer, tedious moods ; 
 they are a part of the divine uneasiness that afflicts 
 genius. One is tempted to believe that great
 
 EIDELBERG 23 
 
 poets are always in a state of uneasiness and 
 unrest, always unhappy, unbearable, and morose, 
 always topheavy, with no sense of balance, with eyes 
 straining into heaven unmindful of the lesser 
 things of hfe. Great poets should be selfish and 
 exacting, should have strange habits and wear 
 strange clothes, should have an excess of one 
 virtue or one vice, should thrill the lucky individuals 
 who hear them on those rare occasions when they 
 speak. They have no familiar friends and no 
 relations ; nobody calls them "Dick," or " Toto," or 
 "Willie " ; they address nobody as "old boy," "old 
 girl," or "kiddy." As all poets are the same to the 
 crowd, all poets are great poets, more or less readable, 
 more or less comprehensible. Some people are 
 so clever that they read Goethe and Browning 
 and Dante — at least so people say. One has to 
 be clever to understand the incomprehensibles. 
 Anybody can understand Shakespeare : they teach 
 it in all the schools ; they teach Goethe too, but 
 only clever people care for him and keep up with 
 him afterwards. Nobody ever met a poet in the 
 flesh. There are not grades of poets, but those we 
 understand we like, and as time goes on and we like 
 the more difficult and at last the most difficult, 
 those left behind fall from grace and become bad 
 poets, poor poets, minor poets. Such things do 
 not really exist : they are creatures of the minds of 
 clever men — men who only understand higher 
 mathematics, invent morse-codes, read Arabic, 
 and know exactly without the aid of a dictionary
 
 24 MARTIN SCHULER 
 
 what the Bible means in the original, and what 
 German expressions Homer intended when he 
 wrote Greek. 
 
 Looked at from the point of view of clever 
 men, Werner was a minor poet. He had to 
 work uncommonly hard to produce any tiling worth 
 reading. He had an acute sense of rhythm, and 
 would sweat for hours to produce lines to satisfy 
 his sensitive nerves. Sometimes he had remark- 
 able successes, which few people appreciated 
 because passion and ideas are chiefly sought for in 
 poetiy. His efforts mostly resulted in a tour de 
 force, but after exerting his intellect like a mathe- 
 matician for several hours to complete some ode, 
 he would suddenly sigh, relax, and scribble in half- 
 consciousness a really good lyric. He wrote twelve 
 lyrics worth reading, but these were the fruit of 
 immense toil, though they dropped off the branches 
 of his labour like ripe peaches, for they only came 
 into being after long hours of conscious work upon 
 something entirely different. His works after his 
 death were admired by philologists, musicians 
 of the better class, who got a good many rhythmic 
 ideas out of him, and schoolmasters, who found 
 him pure enough to read to their pupils as an 
 example of modern poetry. His lyrics appeared 
 in anthologies, and thus misquotations of them 
 spread to tombstones, Christmas greeting cards, 
 and birthday books, for they had the misfortune to 
 be clear and easy to understand if one did not care 
 to see what they really meant. While he was alive
 
 HEIDELBERG 25 
 
 he never published anything, partly because he 
 was too busy and partly because he was too idle 
 to struggle with publishers ; thus he remained 
 poor and unknown till he died. He was also a snob, 
 because he enjoyed privately all the posthumous 
 appreciation that his creditors got. 
 
 Werner drank out of a mug adorned with the 
 arms of Bavaria, and looked at Martin through 
 the angle formed by the lid and the top of the mug. 
 His grey eyes were summing up Martin Schiiler ; 
 he was in a contrary mood and prepared to resist 
 Martin's enthusiasm, but he was a httle flattered 
 because a young man desired to associate him with 
 a dreamed-of masterpiece. He continued to assume 
 boredom and to drink measured drinks out of 
 his mug and to say very little. He watched Martin 
 finish his sauerkraut and sausage ; he watched 
 him open his mouth to insert the beer mug ; he 
 watched him put the empty beer mug down and 
 turn on his seat away from the table ; he watched 
 him adopt towards the night the attitude of a 
 night-enchanted young man, and then pause and 
 dream a little before he spoke. 
 
 " On such a night," said Martin at length, sweep- 
 ing his arms wide to indicate it, " the beautiful 
 peahen first disclosed herself to the amazed prince. 
 He lay on his couch beneath the golden apple- 
 tree, and, lo ! in the branches appeared a 
 shining light. ' O whence dost thou, thou bright 
 illumination,' shall be the note for the prince. 
 ' O whence dost thou, thou bright illumination.'
 
 26 MARTIN SCHtJLER 
 
 Do you hear the movement ? It came into my 
 mind just this moment as the moon came over 
 yonder hill. The peahen was as beautiful as the 
 moon. I feel the enchantment ; I feel the move- 
 ment. Don't you feel it also ? " 
 
 " Not very clearly," said Werner, in a voice of 
 clay ; but, nevertheless, the extreme beauty of 
 the night over the river and the silence of the May 
 moon and the darkness of the vine-clad hill that 
 had just slid from before her face and the youth 
 of Martin and the age of Heidelberg were begin- 
 ning to enter his mind and steal away his cynicism. 
 For all that he remained ungracious in manner ; 
 he was not the one to give himself away when he 
 felt a little romantic. 
 
 Martin shifted his chair round the table till 
 he faced the moon and could at the same time 
 rest his arms on the table. The moon stood opaque 
 and unluminous in the deep purple of the lower 
 heavens, round, orange, and immense, seen through 
 the smell of new leaves and May flowers that rose 
 in mist from the hills. The hills stretched like 
 a bov/ in the darkness along the river as it flowed 
 under them from the east. The heavy moon cast 
 no shadows upon them and sent no shafts of light 
 between their trees. Heavy and silent she stood, 
 while the horizon sank slowly beneath her, sank 
 as slowly as time. Slowly the veils fell from her — 
 the veil of mist, the veil of heat, the veil of the work 
 of the day that floats up from the world at sunset 
 and is dispelled by the night breezes. Slowly
 
 HEIDELBERG 27 
 
 she became bright, swift, and cold : a light giver, 
 a shadow maker, diminished in size, the naked 
 spirit of the red veiled disc. The two men at 
 the little glittering restaurant watched her slow 
 transformation, and one saw in his mind a lovely 
 garden with green grass and jewelled flowers, 
 and in the garden a golden tree, and in the tree a 
 moon shining upon a bewildered prince clothed 
 in mediaeval clothing; the other saw nothing but 
 what was before his eyes. He became aware of 
 it and lost himself in it and went away from his 
 body across the river, and for one short instant 
 held the moon in his hands. He fell to earth in a 
 distant place where the moon shone white upon white 
 mountains in an indigo sky, he stood one instant 
 in the antithesis of gold and purple, and returned 
 in the wink of an eye to gaze from where he sat with 
 brooding memory upon the wdde expanse that 
 seemed large enough to be the world, and the 
 ascending moon that now seemed distant as the 
 remotest star. 
 
 Martin continued to talk, and Werner awoke 
 from his moon-memories to the sound of a well- 
 fed young man's voice. Dreams were rare with 
 him, and he felt peevish with the voice for dis- 
 pelling them. 
 
 " The princess descends from the tree, and then 
 of course there is a love scene," said Martin. 
 
 " That is very banal," said Werner, but all the 
 same, directly he became aware of what Martin's 
 words meant, he received an idea for a love song,
 
 28 MARTIN SCHtJLER 
 
 or, rather, saw an opportunity for introducing an 
 idea that had long vaguely haunted his mind. 
 
 " If you prefer," said Martin, who felt suddenly 
 angry, " there shall be a quarrel with swears and 
 curses." 
 
 " No," said Werner ; " don't be stupid. It is 
 a very nice idea. The descent from the tree, and 
 love to follow, quite after the classical example. 
 I'll do my best for you, but Christ Himself knows 
 all love scenes are dull." 
 
 " I'll ask Monk," growled Martin; " he'll do it." 
 
 " No, no," said Werner, " don't do that." 
 
 Martin remembered he was only twenty, and saw 
 in Werner's attitude some sort of patronage, which 
 did not really exist. He felt resentful. 
 
 "You are a superior animal" — he muttered 
 " superior." 
 
 " Oh, no ! " said Werner ; "I want to write this 
 poem for you." Martin had made his point with- 
 out actually making a demand, but he did not feel 
 victorious. Werner went on : " It is not a bad 
 idea ; might be quite pretty, though I see you 
 are going to make common pitfalls, I'll sweat 
 them otit of the poetic part even though you are 
 too young to sweat them out of the music, and my 
 efforts will probably be wasted. You ought to 
 drop the whole thing like a penny, and pick it up 
 tail first to get a new point of view, or you ought to 
 walk all roimd it till it looks absurd and then begin. 
 The apple-tree is a charming notion. I wish youth 
 and experience could be given to us at once. I am
 
 HEIDELBERG 29 
 
 in such a high state of technical perfection that I 
 cannot write a really bad piece of verse without an 
 effort, and yet, my dear boy — lassitude" — he 
 paused and looked Martin in the face — " I am so 
 bored that I feel convinced my first youth is 
 over," 
 
 Martin became sympathetic. 
 
 " You're only young, Werner," he said, " only 
 young yet." 
 
 " Yes, but I came into existence long before my 
 mother sent me forth into the world. What 
 happens to the prince after embracing his peahen ? " 
 
 " They lead the city to destruction, and there is a 
 final calamity through the interference of God." 
 
 " A tragedy. Very dreadful." 
 
 " An idea runs through it of the relationship of 
 love to facts." Martin invented ideas as he spoke. 
 " Love, though beautiful, begets disaster. Disaster 
 is the beautiful and right climax of love. Nothing 
 great can be anything but disastrous." 
 
 " Sad truths," said Werner. " Go on." 
 
 " Always, always, love brings disaster. Great 
 things and noble things are incautious and reckless, 
 so they make omissions, and do acts that turn to 
 their destruction, or they disregard some principle. 
 Don't you think so ? Jealousy and unhappiness 
 always exist ready to destroy great things. Werner, 
 you and I can make something out of this. Werner, 
 Werner ! My youth and your experience ! And 
 what words when the city crashes into the river, 
 and what praises of love ! "
 
 30 MARTIN SCHt)LER 
 
 Werner could not help an habitual lifting of the 
 lip. " What unrestraint," he murmured, " and 
 what banging on the drum and squeezing of air 
 through bassoons ! " 
 
 " Go to hell ! " said Martin. 
 
 " Give me your notes then," said Werner, " and 
 some more beer. Perhaps another mug will send 
 me slobbering into Paradise."
 
 "CHAPTER III 
 
 WERNER returned home with the manu- 
 script to his house, where the mice made 
 merry with cheese crumbs among his 
 boots, where they built their nests and laid their 
 young in the cupboard of his clothes press, the 
 contents of which had long been pawned. The 
 mice scurried away as he entered, and he swore 
 for the thousandth time to import a cat, but the 
 mice looked upon this oath as part of the noise a 
 door made in shutting. Werner was careless where 
 he lived and how, and had no particular but 
 rather a conventional disHke of mice. He had 
 no philosophy of Ufe either, and no opinion to offer 
 about morality, war, religion, or any other topic ; 
 he thought deeply without coming to any conclusion, 
 and lived pretty consistently without making any 
 rule. He was one of those men to whom acquaint- 
 ances attach themselves, whose remarks are valued, 
 and whose actions are outside the pale of comment : 
 a man about whom scandal is silent, who is credited 
 with no vice and no virtues, who influences the 
 thoughts of those he comes in contact with, and, 
 though opinionless, sometimes sows the seed of 
 definite opinions. He never put himself about 
 
 31
 
 32 MARTIN SCHtlLER 
 
 for his friends or indulged in any practice of 
 nnselfisliness. 
 
 Werner came into his room and lit the candles 
 upon his desk, and the light revealed the anxious 
 eyes of the mice peering from their holes, also the 
 broken state of his sparse furniture, the cracked 
 stove that even in winter was never filled with 
 fire, the uncurtained window, some panes of which 
 were replaced with paper, and the bed, rough from 
 many nights of broken sleep, heaped with soiled 
 and ragged bedclothes. The irregularities of the 
 glass in the window sparkled where they caught 
 the candle-light and recalled the sparkling lights 
 on the dark blackness of the river. Werner sat 
 down and wept, wept for possibly half an hour ; 
 his nerves were in a very bad state. Then he 
 addressed the mice and summoned them to sit 
 about him, but the mice, who had come out of 
 liiding again, fled, and he pretended to be dis- 
 appointed. He wept again, because he wept 
 habitually ; it was a part of the mortal illness 
 which consumed him. He also wept because 
 to-night he had been reminded that he had reached 
 his zenith and fulfilled the promise of his youth, 
 and that whatever more he did was only at the 
 stingy charity of fate. 
 
 The tears dried in his eyes, he groaned within 
 himself and wrung his hands, miserable, miserable 
 because he was at an end, jealous of youth, jealous 
 of the future, jealous of joy. Then suddenly 
 his gaze became fixed on the glitters in the window
 
 HEIDELBERG 38 
 
 and in his mind they began to take rhythmic form, 
 and the form became words, and the words a far- 
 off version of what Martin had said to him up at 
 the castle. Soon, infused with youth, he began 
 to write. He wrote steadily, without exertion, 
 and without physical discomfort. The peahens 
 were being born. He wrote until dawn, until 
 his false youth ebbed away. When the candl/js 
 guttered and went out he rose, pulled off his boots, 
 took a draught from a black bottle, and fell upon 
 the bed ; then he pulled the clothes over his head 
 and went to sleep, but he tossed for some hours 
 in spite of the drink from the black bottle. 
 
 All this time Martin was walking about the 
 castle yard. To Martin the success of this new 
 venture seemed sure, and he was so happy that he 
 could not return to bed. He walked up and down 
 the castle court-yard and up and down the terrace 
 amongst the ghostly shadows of the ruins. He 
 grinned to himself with wet, glistening eyes because 
 of the happy vision of his future happiness. The 
 wonderful bliss of premeditation upon the seeming 
 certainties of the future is only to be compared 
 with the bliss of the discovery of love. Waves 
 of sensation passed from his head, the seat of the 
 imagination, to his abdomen, the seat of the know- 
 ledge of pleasure. He quivered, he yawned, he 
 smiled, he stretched his arms, he struck the parapet 
 of the terrace with his flat hands and leered at the 
 view, he threw a little stone into the woods below 
 the castle and then sprang up on to a dangerous 
 
 3
 
 34 MARTIN SCHtJLER 
 
 spot and recklessly flung back his head and laughed 
 without making a sound. He struck his chest 
 and shook his head from side to side, and blinked 
 his eyes from which tears fell. Then he took to 
 prowling again in and out of the shadows, mad 
 with youth and hope and dreams of success and 
 the May moon. Soon, needing exertion, he 
 cUmbed over the parapet of the terrace and made 
 a perilous descent into the woods, and then wandered 
 far, roaming away in the beautiful woods till dawn. 
 He rested now and then upon the ground amongst 
 lilies of the valley and violets and Solomon-seal, som- 
 nolent among green leaves that seemed white and 
 immobile as wax in the moonlight. He crushed 
 them down with his body as he lay, lost, and in 
 paradise, half awake, half asleep, without know- 
 ledge of anything save beauty and happiness. 
 He slept among them and awoke soon, to rise 
 and pass on to some other dell or grove under the 
 lightly leaved beeches. He walked ankle deep in 
 young grass and knee-deep in blue flowers, through 
 blue groves where the moon did not pierce, and at 
 early dawn, when moon and morning struggled 
 to make wan each other's light, he slept under tall 
 cherry-trees that grew among the larches. Day 
 broke and birds sang ; the nightingale redoubled 
 her endeavours that had ceased in the last hour of 
 night, a blackbird called in the grey branches 
 of a cheny-tree, and Martin awoke again refreshed, 
 an ordinary young man, sane and joyful. He lay 
 and watched the cherry blossom become tinged
 
 HEIDELBERG 85 
 
 with pink and recommence its business of falling 
 that had ceased during the night. He called to 
 the blackbird until it flew away, then arose and 
 wandered towards the river. Soon he emerged 
 into the vineyards, where the young leaves of the 
 vine were spreading out their hands. The vine 
 stalks were red in the rising sun, and the leaves 
 were of the most dehcate green in the morning 
 air, and the shadows of the hills upon the vineyard 
 were deep blue. The sky was azure and the air 
 white, thin and pure, and so clear that trees and 
 dwelHngs could be distinguished in the far-off 
 Rhine plain. All was clear, fresh, and lovely : 
 pale green, golden, golden-red, and blue. All the 
 world was these four colours in the morning sun. 
 There was no smell save the smell of the dew, and no 
 noise save the deep running of the wide river far 
 below and the noise of the birds. 
 
 Martin stared and stared, and thought how- 
 strange day and night were, how empty day- 
 break was, how crowded evening. How could one 
 be responsible in this new land for deeds and 
 thoughts of last night's old one. There was no 
 link between the days. Only a stupid man or a 
 priest could bind himself by the vanished day be- 
 fore. Freedom ! To-day ! This morning ! Birth ! 
 Rejuvenation ! The past is dead. We pluck from 
 the past, but it is dead. We thiust back a hand to 
 take from out of the coffin. To-day there is no 
 yesterday, only to-day. Even in war we can say 
 to-day is to-day. Enmity died in the night.
 
 86 MARTIN SCHtJLER 
 
 Martin felt clean and free as he stood at the top 
 of the vineyai-d on the hill, but by the time he had 
 got to the bottom he perceived that he was par- 
 tially covered already with the flies of memory and 
 thought. He said, bowing to necessity, that this 
 could not be helped. He also felt hungry, and 
 tliis, and the magnetism of human life, drew him 
 back towards the town. He walked by the river, 
 where many flowers grew, and when in the course 
 of time he remembered Bertha he gathered her a 
 bouquet of these to please her. He walked back to 
 Heidelberg picking flowers, the embryo of a famous 
 man, with full intuitions, ciystallized ambitions, 
 and a temporary loss of youth.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE spring passed into summer, and Martin 
 began to assume the behaviour of a young 
 genius. All that he wrote, whether it was 
 suitable or not, he labelled "Peahens," and shut 
 up in a black portfolio. He wrote a great deal 
 his imagination ran wild, Werner called the pea- 
 hens the rabbits, because they bred so often in so 
 short a time. He became imperious towards his 
 family, particularly towards his mother; he 
 became silly and superior in female society. He 
 changed his mode of dressing and wore check 
 ties, and had his hair cut in a different fashion. 
 He began to quiz girls in tea-shops and to take an 
 interest in the fair performers at the theatre ; 
 he changed from a simple, dull boy into a conceited, 
 flashy young man, absurd, and yet charming, who 
 made girls giggle and chatter and nudge one another 
 and become hysterical because they couldn't keep 
 their animal feehngs in order. He was a young 
 animal himself, infatuated with the idea of himself 
 as something god-like. The human element in 
 him was reduced to a minimum, was reduced to 
 his attitude about himself. It is human to be 
 god-like and animal-like at the same time ; the 
 
 37
 
 88 MARTIN SCHtLER 
 
 result is human because it is absurd. Martin's 
 godliness was symbolized by check tics and straighter 
 shoulders, tremendous energy and noisy rushing 
 from place to place ; but his godliness itself was 
 symbol of the awakened animal just as the girls' 
 giggles were symbols of the corresponding animals 
 in them. Physical excitement and dull contem- 
 plation produce artistic work. Some artists are 
 hermits, some are rakes. Some men produce 
 beautiful things from the sparks that excitement 
 clashes out of them, particularly from the sparks 
 of sexual excitement, passion, and the rest of it ; 
 others by deep thought drag wonders from the 
 dark unknown. 
 
 Martin began a series of more or less serious 
 love affairs. The first began upon the first of June, 
 when he reached the age of twenty-one. All that 
 he did before with a feeling of daring he now did 
 naturally and as a matter of course. The first 
 result of this new attitude was the Romance of 
 Lili. Lili was fair, sweet, and round, and so far 
 influenced him that he threw into the peahen port- 
 folio what afterwards became a ballad. The affair 
 began upon one of those pleasant expeditions which 
 the Enghsh call "excursions " to the small town of 
 Eberbach. 
 
 Early in the morning of the first of June a party 
 
 of friends arrived, according to pre-arrangement, at 
 
 the Schiller's house. Markheim came, Lili and 
 
 Max Bauer, Frau and Fraulein Offenbach, Herr 
 
 ' Karl Fink — a placid, fair young man — George
 
 HEIDELBERG 39 
 
 Fink, his solid elder brother, Peter Flettner, and 
 Mimi Adler, two young and detached people. 
 Of all this company, LiH Bauer was the queen and 
 her brother Max the death's head. Frau Offen- 
 bach paired off with Papa Schiiler and Frau Schiiler 
 with George Fink, two suitable and heavy couples 
 of chaperons. Martin at once pounced upon Lili 
 and Markheim upon Bertha. Peter Flettner got 
 the ugly, but good-natured, daughter Offenbach, 
 and young Fink got Mimi. Max Bauer was offended 
 because Martin had forgotten when counting the 
 men to count himself, so there were too few girls. 
 Everybody tried to think of a remedy, but Max 
 refused to call for any of the girls suggested, or to 
 share any of those there, and took upon himself 
 bearishly all the railway ticket-buying and cab- 
 ordering. The party left the house at seven, 
 dressed in expedition clothes. Everybody had a 
 sandwich box suspended from a strap passed over 
 the shoulder, all had walking sticks with points, 
 and stout boots. Some of the men wore Tyrolean 
 shorts and round felt hats, and Martin wore a 
 loose black suit and a red silk tie. The ladies were 
 clothed regardless of years in cotton dresses with 
 full skirts and collarless, square-cut bodices with 
 elbow sleeves, and each carried a jacket of some 
 dark colour in case the temperature fell. Soon 
 the men were carrying the jackets, also the parasols 
 that some girls thought fit to bring as well as walking 
 sticks, but Max collected these sunshades and threw 
 them overboard when they were on the steamer.
 
 40 MARTIN SCHULER 
 
 because he found they would ultimately devolve 
 upon him. 
 
 At seven-thirty they all boarded the little 
 steamer that goes a few times a day up and down 
 a short distance of the Neckar ; and once aboard 
 Max discarded the sunshades and the party threw 
 off the cloud his grumbles had spread over them, 
 and all at once began to be very merry. 
 
 At first Martin was shy and stiff with Lili, and had 
 nothing to say, but at breakfast, which as they 
 were a large party was served for them at a table 
 in the stern, Lili began to thaw him. She thawed 
 him with honey. There was honey for breakfast, 
 a kind of sweet glue, of which Martin, who was 
 greedy, took so much that it ran all over his 
 plate. 
 
 " You must be a bee," said Lili ; " how fond 
 you are of honey." 
 
 "He loves honey, he has a sweet tooth," ex- 
 plained Frau Schiller ; " he always did love honey." 
 
 "I hated honey," said Martin. 
 
 " Hated honey ! oh, Herr Schiiler ! " cried Lili. 
 
 " I don't now," said Martin, whose face suddenly 
 relaxed ; " I like all sweet things," he said this in 
 a lower voice. " My name is Martin, LOi." 
 
 Lili blushed and said, " Don't, don't ! " making 
 believe he was pinching her. 
 
 Throughout breakfast they carried on a slight 
 flirtatious warfare, and after breakfast Herr Schiiler 
 recommended them all to watch the fine scenery 
 and not to miss any of the noble castles because it
 
 HEIDELBERG 41 
 
 would be dark when they returned. Lili and 
 Martin, however, hung over the stern, and Martm 
 told Lili all about himself, and squeezed her hand 
 until they wondered why they both felt a little 
 sick. 
 
 " I feel sick," said Martin, suddenly and quite 
 candidly. 
 
 "Don't look at the water," said Lili ;" it 
 comes so endlessly from under the boat, so wriggly 
 and streaky, I feel as if my own eyes were looking 
 backwards." 
 
 " When we walk up the Weg after dinner," said 
 Martin, " will you walk with me ? " He said this 
 seriously. They leant on the stern rail, looking 
 at one another. 
 
 Lili gave him her hand behind her dress, " Of 
 course," she said ; " I am your day-friend." 
 
 " My life friend," said Martin, whose heart 
 jerked suddenly. 
 
 Then they joined the others, and Martin became 
 facetious and witty, and in due time they arrived 
 at the landing for Eberbach, where, amongst much 
 hilarity and jokes about the size of Frau Schiiler 
 and Frau Offenbach, all of which were deeply 
 appreciated by the crew, they got off the boat 
 and into rickety pair-horse carriages, which dragged 
 them through the little streets, an extremely 
 short distance, to the best restaurant. Here they 
 all got out amongst many more similar jokes, 
 some of which were \ailgar, and crowded, laugh- 
 ing and giggling, into the restaurant. All things
 
 42 MARTIN SCHtLER 
 
 had been ordered beforehand, and the proprietor 
 showed them into a pleasant garden where tables 
 were ready set for dinner. Soon, under wistaria 
 boughs and lilac blossom, they devoured a large 
 and substantial meal, in the middle of which 
 Fran Offenbach exclaimed to Herr Schiiler by pre- 
 arrangement : 
 
 " Why. to-day, of all days ! It is dear Martin's 
 birthday ! " 
 
 Everybody remembered what they had known 
 all along, and amidst general confusion, which Martin 
 enjoyed, the lost jackets were called for, found and 
 rifled, and simultaneously everybody presented 
 him with mementoes. Martin accepted them 
 suitably and thought "What will all these people 
 say a few years hence ! Little do they think 
 that soon it will be kind of me to speak to them." 
 His left hand was pinching Lili's little finger. 
 
 In the course of time dinner and wine-drinking 
 came to an end, and the ladies went indoors to 
 rest and the men lounged in the garden smoking 
 cigars. 
 
 Max spoke to Martin, 
 
 " How old ? " he said. 
 
 " Twenty-one," said Martin. 
 
 " Not really," said Max, " I would not have 
 thought it." 
 
 " Which way ? " said Martin, and laughed when 
 Max allowed himself to be scored off. 
 
 "My sister is nineteen," said Max. 
 
 "Oh !" said Martin.
 
 HEIDELBERG 48 
 
 " She is a pretty girl ; she ought to have a mother. 
 I have had her on my hands four years," 
 
 " Get her a husband," said old Schiiler, and young 
 Fink said : 
 
 " Martin, aren't you sweet on her ? " 
 
 " Who knows ? " said Martin, looking at Fink, 
 with the eye that Max could not see half shut. 
 
 Fink went into roars of laughter and came over 
 to Martin. He talked into Martin's ear, chuckling. 
 
 " You are walking up the Weg with Lili ? " 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "Walking? " 
 
 ' Yes ; so so." 
 
 " We are all going to the tower," 
 
 ' One needn't hurry." 
 
 " Better not hurry back ; one can miss the boat," 
 
 ' Yes," said Martin, " perhaps. What are you 
 talking for ? " 
 
 " Mimi and I intend to be lost ; do you get lost 
 also, it will look better." 
 
 Martin grinned. " Very well, then. Where 
 will you be lost ? " He felt like a benevolent 
 uncle, 
 
 " On the way from the tower. We will take 
 the first wrong turning on the way down. Do 
 not deceive us, Martin. Mimi and I can rely on 
 you ? " 
 
 "Perhaps," said Martin. 
 
 " Can you manage Lili ? " 
 
 " Women ! " said Martin. ' I cannot answer 
 or Lili."
 
 44 MARTIN SCirQLER 
 
 " Then I will answer for her myself." 
 
 Soon they all came together agam and set off 
 in grim earnest to make the two hours' walk to 
 the tower on the top of the Katzenbuckle. The 
 girls felt they were going a walking tour, and 
 looked it ; the men felt the same, but said in 
 answer to their cries : 
 
 " The Katzenbuckle ! Only a step ! Dear girls, 
 what an outcry about a mere stroll." 
 
 The walk began briskly, but degenerated 
 into an amble, which became slower as the paths 
 became steeper. The party spread out further 
 and further, until Max, who found it impossible 
 to be genial with any of the pairs, had arrived 
 at the tower, and Mimi and young Fink, who were 
 deeply in love, were half a mile behind. 
 
 Martin sauntered with his Lili, pausing every 
 now and then to gather wild flowers and make 
 silly speeches. 
 
 As they neared the tower Martin said : 
 
 " Lili." 
 
 " Yes, what is it you want ? Another kiss ? " 
 said Lili softly. 
 
 " I want you to love me." 
 
 " Love you ! " Lili was serious. 
 
 " Yes, to love me." 
 
 " I shall always love you," said Lili senti- 
 mentally, "but you will only love me a short 
 time." 
 
 Martin ought to have protested, but he said : 
 
 " Why ? Why do you say that ? "
 
 HEIDELBERG 45 
 
 " I do not know," said Lili, " It is true." 
 
 He ought to have protested again, but again he 
 did not. 
 
 " Love is not to be calculated in lengths," he 
 said ; " only in depth." 
 
 " Oh, no, no!" said Lili; " the noblest quality 
 of love is endurance." 
 
 " Perhaps," said Martin ; " but we don't cal- 
 culate by endurance, any more than if you live 
 long we shall honour you any more than if you die 
 young." He was not feeling inclined to argue 
 clearly. " Love is deep," he went on, " or shallow. 
 A long shallow love is worth less than a deep short 
 one." 
 
 " A long deep one is best," said Lili. 
 
 " Well, will you love me ? " said Martin. 
 
 " How ? " said Lili. 
 
 " Let us say short and deep." Martin embraced 
 her and gazed into her eyes. " I love you to-day, 
 Lili," he said ; " who knows if I shall love you 
 to-morrow. Love me in return to-day." 
 
 " How beautiful," said Lili, whose eyes had 
 tears in them ; " how beautiful your voice sounds ; 
 what cruel things it says." 
 
 " Love me to-day," said Martin, drawing her 
 into the woods aside from the path. " My birth- 
 day ! On the return from the tower, surrender 
 your sweet little hands into mine and let me lead 
 you. Lili ! look at me. In the eyes — no, in 
 the eyes. Don't you love me ? Ah, yes, you love 
 me, I can see. Lili, I adore you ! Kiss my
 
 46 MARTIN SCHDLER 
 
 lips ! Dear little girl, yours are as sweet as honey. 
 ' Lili Lara ' I shall call you. 
 
 " Lili Lara, listen to your lo-o-ver. 
 Lili Lara, give him all your heart. 
 Lili Lara, give him all he asks you, 
 
 Lest he leave you, lest he should depart 
 After other maidens, Lili Lara ! 
 Lili Lara, Lih of my heart. 
 
 "Hush, don't sob. I made that up. The tune 
 too." 
 
 " What does it mean, Martin ? Do you love 
 me, or are you just pretending ? I've loved you for 
 so long." 
 
 " I mean it, Lili. Come, we must walk on. 
 I mean it. Promise me — after the tower — ^to love 
 me. My birthday, on my birthday. Walk on, 
 we must catch up, Lili ! " 
 
 " But " 
 
 " I'll see you come to no harm. I swear, Lili — 
 be mine." 
 
 ' Yes, we must walk on. I will think ! Oh, 
 we must not do anything silly. Libet, you 
 know " 
 
 " Yes, hush ; I know about Libet — her lover 
 was a cad." Martin took her ai'm and led her 
 slowly onward till they regained the path higher 
 up, and neither of them spoke again until they got 
 to the tower. In Lili's mind consent and refusal 
 were alternating mechanically. No, yes ; no, 
 yes ; no, yes. Her reason had left her ; she felt 
 that if No was top when next Martin spoke to
 
 HEIDELBERG 47 
 
 her she would refuse, if Yes she would consent. 
 Her heart was beating heavily, but she did not 
 recognize it ; she felt as if some rhythmical machine 
 were swinging in her. She did not anticipate love 
 recklessly and gaily ; she was numb, cold, and 
 terrified, but she felt only the swing in her body 
 and the regular beat — ^no, yes; no, yes; no, yes. 
 
 Martin walked beside her with a sense of control 
 in his mind like an expert contortionist on the 
 tight-rope, like an expert engineer with a delicate 
 machine ready to give the slightest touch with 
 his hand, to exercise exact judgment in his mind. 
 He advanced beyond his years to the expert age 
 of thirty or so, and the next musical composition 
 he wrote benefited by it, gaining sureness and finer 
 balance. 
 
 The situation was not in Lili's hands. 
 
 At the tower were several excursionists, many 
 from Heidelberg, who had taken advantage of the 
 Friday facilities and of the fine weather. Old Herr 
 Schiller met several friends, and soon the chaperons, 
 who were all tired, settled down with other old 
 gossips and began even there on that summer 
 afternoon to pull to bits their absent friends and 
 enemies, and to discuss trade, crochet, cookery, 
 and babies, according to their sex and taste. Frau- 
 lein Offenbach and Bertha, who were tired, also 
 sat near them with their fiances. They sat near 
 enough to hear what was said upon certain interest- 
 ing subjects, because they were both soon to be 
 married and lost no opportunity of collecting
 
 48 MARTIN SCHtlLER 
 
 evidence upon certain events of married life. 
 They both hoped Flettner and Markheim could 
 not hear; but Flettner and Markheim did hear, 
 and felt hot and happy inside. Soon they definitely 
 joined their elders, and the young ones — ^the boys and 
 girls, the children as they were thought of — went 
 up to the top of the tower, and, straming their eyes 
 to see the Swabian Mountains, the Black Forest, 
 and what not, saw nothing but the human being 
 next to them, and heard nothing but one voice. 
 
 There below the old tower sat the old men and 
 women like mushrooms, gossiping of life, and round 
 the top like birds hung the young ones, chattering 
 of love. The old ones, unmoved, impervious to 
 the weather, blind to green trees and blue distances 
 and the romantic far-off presence of the mountains, 
 sat like besiegers who bide their time at the base 
 of an impregnable fortress, and the young ones, 
 sensitive to light and darkness, and to the black 
 name of Schwarzwald, flew free in their minds 
 across rivers and across plains, even to the sea, 
 even to that same forest, free until the inevitable 
 return, the moment of capitulation, of humiliation, 
 and descent. 
 
 At five o'clock the sandwich boxes were opened 
 and their contents eaten, and at six the cavalcade, 
 which had been jomed by many acquaintances 
 and friends, began the long descent. 
 
 It was easy to stray, easy to get lost, and at 
 seven o'clock young Fink and Martin and their
 
 HEIDELBERG 49 
 
 girls were far away, unmissed from that straggling 
 stream. Fink winked at Martin when he was going 
 to disappear, and Martin gave liim ten minutes' 
 start, after which he himself plunged with Lili into 
 the secretive undergrowth; but he did not tell 
 Lili about Fink, nor did Fink tell Mimi about Mar- 
 tin. Men are keepers of secrets. 
 
 The four returned home late by the last train 
 that night. Lili and Mimi were silent and white. 
 Fink was pale, but deeper than ever in love ; passion 
 had filled him and was not yet exhausted, and 
 Mimi knew even in her tired mind that he would 
 marry her. But Martin was calm ; he had no 
 love feelings one way or the other ; he was possessed 
 by a thought which afterwards became a long 
 ballade. He felt simple, and was simple in the 
 midst of complexity, straightforward and sure, 
 honest in his dishonesty, momentarily complete, 
 perfectly wedded, perfectly divorced. Love and 
 fancy had vanished, and his thought, fitting per- 
 fectly to the rhythm of the clanking train, found 
 him pure, virgin as white snow, master of himself, 
 isolated, a monk, above his companions in virtue 
 and in ever3d:hing else, alone in their midst, inhuman, 
 silent, and remote. Beside him sat his girl, begetter 
 of his thought, but he had forgotten her ; she was 
 dead to him. There she sat — ^used, inferior, and 
 dismissed, he had no further need of her. She 
 was inferior, she felt inferior — inferior and feminine, 
 until she looked across at Fink. He too looked
 
 50 MARTIN SCHULER 
 
 puny, microbc-souled, even less than herself. She 
 at least was associated. All of them were but 
 the ether round the planet, but Lili, perhaps, was 
 a little moon. " Oh, dear," she sighed to herself, 
 " how clever he looks, and how stern ! I suppose 
 I ought to be proud. Oh, oh ! I hope nothing will 
 happen — ^why was I such a fool ! I hope nothing 
 disgraceful will happen." 
 
 Thus they came into Heidelberg and were greeted 
 by frantic friends, but Martin, who with perfect 
 self-possession helped Lili, almost fainting, to 
 the ground, said, " We are late, yes. The gods 
 be damned : in the twilight we took the turning 
 down to Zwingenberg."
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 AFTER the Eberbach expedition Martin 
 i^A thought more of himself than ever. He had 
 long stretches of manhood when he forgot 
 that he had recently been a boy. He became for 
 days together a stranger in his family, and Bertha 
 and his mother sighed to one another over 
 the change that had come upon him. Now and 
 then he relapsed, wore his old clothes, and was 
 gay and affectionate with Bertha, imperious and 
 gentle with his mother, dull and sulky with his 
 father, until he met Fink, or saw a new piece at 
 the theatre, or got a girl to kiss him at the cafe 
 again. In his mannish moods he would talk of 
 earning money and Uving away from home ; he 
 would look upon Werner as a rusty old chap ; 
 he would say to his friends, " I'm getting that 
 chap Werner to do the dirty work for my opera " ; 
 and to Werner he would say, if he met him in the 
 street, " Hello ! how's the work going ? " as if 
 he were a master-builder, too rich to worry, and 
 Werner were a very young foreman. He seemed 
 to think Werner had only one object in Ufe, and 
 so Werner had ; but that was to live until he 
 died, not to slave at Martin's peahens. 
 
 5»
 
 52 MARTIN SCHt)LER 
 
 In one of these moods he went to see Werner. 
 
 " Hello, Werner!" he said, "I've come to see 
 how the brood is," 
 
 " What brood ? " said Werner, desisting from 
 writing an address to the spirit of the age. 
 
 " My hens." 
 
 " Oh ! oh ! " said Werner, " they have gone 
 to roost." 
 
 " Where ? Can I have a look at them ? " 
 
 "If you like," said Werner; "they are in 
 that drawer." 
 
 Martin pulled out the drawer hastily, and found 
 a few sheets of paper in it, 
 
 " What ! " he cried, " four sheets ! In two 
 months only four sheets ! " 
 
 " Well," said Werner, " you don't want me to 
 hurry your life's work. Masterpieces are the 
 blood of the spirit. The condensation is a slow 
 business." He did not tell Martin this was the 
 beginning of the fair copy and that several sheets 
 of unintelligible hieroglyphics lay in the drawer 
 above. 
 
 " I'm damned ! " said Martin. 
 
 " To disappointment," said Werner. " Slow, 
 slow, slow ; hfe's slow, isn't it ? Why don't you 
 and I wake up famous one morning instead of having 
 to creep slowly up the old mountain to the tower. 
 WTien we've been to the tower we can enjoy our- 
 selves." 
 
 " You old beast," said Martin, patting Werner's 
 shoulders roughly ; " who told you ? "
 
 HEIDELBERG 58 
 
 " Max Bauer and I do talk when we meet,'' 
 said Werner. 
 
 " Max ! " 
 
 " Yes," said Werner ; " he is a shrewd man, 
 and terrified lest his sister should do anything 
 fooUsh." 
 
 " Lili is a little ass." 
 
 " His dying mother handed her over to him," 
 said Werner ; " he's sentimental about her." 
 
 " Well, I say," said Martin, " there is no harm 
 in it, you old crow, you old Puritan crow. No- 
 body knows, and it's all safely over." 
 
 Werner laughed. " You are irresistible. People 
 cannot refuse you ! " 
 
 " They can if they want," said Martin ; " we 
 are all human beings." 
 
 " You seem to think yourself a little divine 
 now and then, all the same," said Werner. " I 
 think you think yourself superior to the world 
 in general." 
 
 " What if I do ? " said Martin ; " what if I am ? " 
 
 " It's of no consequence," said Werner, and 
 settled down to write. 
 
 " You are a bear," said Martin. 
 
 "Well," said Werner, after a silence, "sit 
 down ; don't raise the dust with your feet. My 
 mice will lose their way if you obliterate their 
 tracks, and perhaps miss even the last train." 
 
 "Oh, stop ! " said Martin, sitting on a stool 
 with his hands in his pockets. 
 
 " Listen," said Werner, " to a djdng man. You
 
 5 MARTIN SCHCLER 
 
 cannot have life both ways. You are either 
 superior or equal. If you are superior you must 
 not expect in others the strength and virtue which 
 you find in yourself ; if you are equal you must 
 not act hke a superior." 
 
 " Wise, wise words ! " said Martin. 
 
 " Yes," said Werner, " beyond your compre- 
 hension." 
 
 Martin lost his temper. 
 
 " See here," he said, " give me those peahens. 
 I'm going." 
 
 " No," said Werner, " they are incomplete." 
 
 " Give me them, I say," he said, stamping his foot. 
 
 " The manuscript is mine, unfortunately," 
 said Werner. 
 
 Martin went out of the door and cried, " Keep 
 it ! keep it, destroyer of my idea ! " and began to 
 run home in a rage ; but before he got half-way 
 his rage turned into a thought which he put down 
 directly he got back. 
 
 All his emotions that summer became converted 
 half-way through into music ; the music generally 
 was good, so there was some excuse for his 
 grotesque superior airs, and the evaporation of 
 his constancy. 
 
 He returned to Werner that evening in a boyish 
 mood and brought some of his tunes. Werner 
 disclosed the hidden manuscript and they talked 
 amicably. Werner told liim he had improved 
 in originality and quality, and Martin professed 
 ill turn to admire the peahens.
 
 HEIDELBERG 55 
 
 Martin became human and sentimental. 
 
 " You're my only true friend," he said, grasping 
 Werner's hand. " Life is difficult." 
 
 " It is," said Werner, " for all." 
 
 " I wish I could love deeply and truly," said 
 Martin. " The fact is, all my feelings change 
 into tunes after a little. What am I to do ? " 
 
 " Your constancy becomes immortal," said 
 Werner, putting both hands on his arm. " Dear 
 Martin, I love you — a declaration of passion 
 from a dying man. Immortalize that." 
 
 " Unfortunate, but I cannot," said Martin ; 
 " when I don't want to I must, and when I want 
 to I can't. It's all chance — all chance. I've no 
 will in the matter." 
 
 " Some day, after long practice," said Werner, 
 " one gets the will in the matter." 
 
 " Why can't I go straight ahead like plain sewing 
 women do, like a steamer ? I don't believe I 
 shall ever arrive at anything. I'm over twenty- 
 one, and yet there is nothing in sight." 
 
 " You've developed late," said Werner ; " but 
 that will not hurt you." 
 
 " It's all such a mess," said Martin, picking up 
 a poem Werner had just completed, and tearing 
 it absent-mmdedly mto little bits. " Nothing 
 definite, all a mess — such a mess." 
 
 " Perhaps your first ambition is beyond you," 
 said Werner, making a slight grimace, and sweeping 
 the bits of torn paper oft" his desk on to the floor. 
 
 " Perhaps so, damn it ! " said Martin sullenly.
 
 56 MARTIN SCHtlLER 
 
 " I must write songs — bah ! songs ! chansons 
 d 'amour ! waltzes, pooh ! The gods be damned ; 
 why don't I obey myself, why don't I do what I 
 wish ? I've not the strength of character. I'm 
 not a genius, that's it. Why don't I produce 
 operas instead of portfolios of silly tunes ? My 
 head swells, I think I am being magnificent, 
 writing wonders ! It draws together, I've written 
 a fragment after Chopin ! Look at all this ! To- 
 morrow I'll begin again. Only that bit is worth 
 anything " — he began sorting through his port- 
 folio — " and that, perhaps, and perhaps that, and 
 those two also. That's all there is out of the pea- 
 hens." 
 
 He sighed and dropped the portfolio on the floor. 
 
 " Do you want to make money ? " said Werner. 
 
 " I should not mind," said Martin ; " then I 
 could live alone. I believe the atmosphere of our 
 house prevents me writing." 
 
 " Finish that baUade," said Werner. " It is 
 good, almost very good, but quite public taste. 
 Finish several of these tunes, publish them, get 
 assurance, get a grip, make money. Then look 
 at the peahens, and if you don't fancy them, 
 invent something else." 
 
 " Thanks," said Martin, freezing for a moment ; 
 " I want your advice, don't I ? " 
 
 " I don't know," said Werner, " perhaps not. 
 Your instinct will guide you. It is dangerous 
 to interfere with genius." 
 
 Martin became hot again.
 
 HEIDELBERG 67 
 
 " I only found that women were ever able to 
 deal with genius," said Werner ; " they know all 
 about sacrifice and hero-worship. Cherchez la 
 femme, that is my advice. Yes, that is the best 
 advice — Cherchez la femme." 
 
 " It is curious," said Martin, " but that seems 
 true. All great men " 
 
 " Yes, yes," said Werner, " have picked the 
 brains and hearts of a few women. Beautiful 
 things and clever things all originate in a woman. 
 The paradox : the greater are the lesser ; the 
 lesser, greater. Out of sweetness came forth 
 strength. Out of meat came forth the eater." 
 
 " We excel," said Martin, meaning men. 
 
 " Until the day of judgment," said Werner. 
 
 " We are strong and * do ' after all," said Marthi. 
 
 " The women have not the women," said Werner, 
 " but only the men." 
 
 " Are you a feminist ? " said Martin surprised. 
 •* A believer in equality ? " 
 
 " Yes," said Werner, " I am ; but, as the world 
 is, things will always appear unequal. I believe 
 in the appearance of unequality. That perhaps 
 is fact. Such an unequality is perhaps a real 
 unequality, however. We fare beginning to get 
 philosophical. Do not lead me to discuss fact and 
 fancy, spirit and matter. I get cold shivers." 
 
 At that moment Max Bauer came in at the door. 
 
 " Hello ! " he said softly, in a gentle voice ; 
 " is that Martin Schiiler with you, Werner ? " 
 
 " Yes," said Martin, " it is me."
 
 58 ]\LiIlTlN SCHULER 
 
 " Shall I go, Werner ? " Bauer continued ; " are 
 you discussing business ? " 
 
 " No, no," said Werner. " Max, we have decided 
 that women are inferior and equal." 
 
 Platonism. I am not clever. Are you going 
 to argue to a conclusion ? " Max was quite 
 sociable and not at all bearish. Evidently daylight 
 did not suit him and nightlight did. 
 
 Martin felt eager to argue. He had a superficial 
 intellect quite apart from his musical intellect, 
 and he liked indulging it. 
 
 " I don't think so," said Werner ; " that is 
 the conclusion : women are inferior and equal." 
 
 Max stayed a few minutes, but he became over- 
 whelmed with shyness in the presence of Martm 
 and felt his gruff mood creeping upon him again, so 
 he said good night as politely as possible, and went 
 away. 
 
 " He dislikes me," said Martin. 
 
 " He is fond of Lili," said Werner. 
 
 "Ah, well," said Martin, " I seem to make a 
 mess of everything." 
 
 " Do not begin all over agam," said Werner. 
 
 " No," said Martin ; " let's finish about 
 women." 
 
 ' We had," said Werner, " everything is finished. 
 Finis ! I am about to die. I hope I shall finish 
 your peahens." 
 
 ' Don't ! " said Martin, " you can't possibly 
 die." 
 
 " It is quite easy," said Werner.
 
 HEIDELBERG 59 
 
 " Oh, my God, don't die ! " said Martin, who had 
 never met death. 
 
 " The consumption of my vitals is almost com- 
 plete," said Werner. 
 
 '* What you need is to go out," said Martin ; 
 " you're pale. You must eat, sleep, and take 
 exercise." 
 
 " I cannot walk, mif ortunately, " said Werner. 
 
 " Can't walk ! " 
 
 " No, I gave up walking last week." 
 
 " God ! What do you do ? " 
 
 " I crawl on my hands and knees." 
 
 " God ! how horrible ! God in Heaven, how 
 horrible ! " 
 
 "It is horrible. Martin ! is the door shut ? — 
 Martm ! " 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " I'm at my end — I must talk. I feel rejuve- 
 nated — ^I feel your age. I must tell you — 
 what it means — ^to me — ^to die." Werner jerked 
 out the phrases. " I am cynical. I am sour. 
 You know me. I know myself, I know all, I know 
 everything — ^I am wise, wiser than Pallas. I write 
 well. I am jealous — ^I am jealous of genius, of 
 youth — oh, of youth, of youth, of youth ! Now 
 I am ruining the personality I created before you — 
 I am disclosing my weaknesses. I want to tell you 
 — ^it means a lot — ^for m^ — to die. Coward I am." 
 He smiled and blinked his eyes. "I'm going out. 
 Quite dark— black — soon. Contemplation does 
 not harden me to that fact."
 
 60 MARTIN SCHiJLER 
 
 " Oh, Werner!" said Martin ; " Felix, my friend, 
 my friend ! " He grasped both Werner's hands. 
 " Shall I die with you ? " 
 
 Werner's face looked suddenly overjoyed. 
 
 " No," he said; " I can manage by myself"; 
 and held Martin's hands very hard and drew in his 
 breath whistling through his teeth. 
 
 He suddenly relaxed. " Sentimental," he said; 
 "are we not? Goodnight." 
 
 " Am I to go ? " said Martin. 
 
 " If you please," said Werner. " Don't talk 
 about me to your friends." 
 
 "Well, good night," said Martin. "Shall 1 
 come to-morrow ? " 
 
 " As you wish," said Werner. 
 
 Martin went away feeling cold and creepy, but 
 during that night he remembered that Werner had 
 indirectly called him a genius, and with the help 
 of this he got back his confidence and his self- 
 esteem. After that he had another bout of manli- 
 ness, during which he took Werner's advice and 
 completed a few things for the publishers.
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 DURING the next few weeks Martin spent 
 much of his time with Werner, and be- 
 came so accustomed to the sight of Man 
 succumbing to Death, that when Werner actually 
 died he was not shocked nor did it seem abnormal 
 and peculiar to discover that that which was was 
 not. It seemed to him that Werner had been sinking 
 slowly into a hole, and he would have been more 
 startled if Werner had suddenly sprung out of it 
 than if he had suddenly shot underground. Werner 
 died very slowly ; day by day he became a little 
 worse; day by day his man's character slipped 
 off him, till at the end he was naked as it were, 
 his real self, inexperienced, gentle, and affectionate. 
 As his body died his mind discarded the clothing 
 it had pulled on itself. He threw off his knowledge 
 of the world and was left a believer in the simplicity 
 and honesty of the human race. He threw off 
 his hard, useful, intellectual, critical faculty, and 
 was left ingenuous. He threw off his inexorable 
 attitude towards smallness of mind and weakness 
 and was left weak himself, A delicious feeling 
 came over him of soft May winds and incapacity 
 and convalescence, when the bouts of pain, which 
 
 6i
 
 62 . MARTIN SCHULER 
 
 were infernal torture, sank to soft, pleasant currents 
 under morphic influence. He lay dying in his bed, 
 cleansed and sweet-sheeted by Martin and Bertha. 
 The dust had gone from the floor, many mice had 
 died in traps, his desk was pushed against the wall 
 with the lid shut over straightened papers. Nothing 
 of this interested him, nothing he could not see 
 without raising his head existed. He could see 
 the sky out of the window, he could see the ancient 
 cobwebs under the ceiling, he could see people 
 from the knees up when they stood by his bed. 
 
 Max Bauer used to come. He could see more of 
 Max than anybody. Max had such long thighs. 
 He was tall in consequence. Max sympathized 
 with him in the right way, agreed with him that to 
 be dead would be unpleasant and that the greatest 
 catastrophe of existence was very near, quite near 
 enough to be alarming. Death was horribly 
 alarming when near ; it made one cry in the night, 
 and want to catch hold of a human being's hand. 
 Surely a man could not die if he held a living man's 
 hand. Such things do not happen. A living hand 
 does not clasp a dead one. The life would run 
 through it out of the finger tips and bring the 
 dead Ufe back. 
 
 Werner wondered what death was. Max thought 
 it was being extinguished. 
 
 " It must be," said Werner, childishly. " I feel as if 
 I were going out. Out and out and out." 
 
 " It is very queer," said Max, " to see you slowly 
 passing away. I feel as if the surplus, what has gone
 
 HEIDELBERG 63 
 
 was floating about like a fog in the room. Do you 
 feel that you are going out of the open window 
 into a distant country ? " 
 
 " No," said Werner ; " I am getting slower and 
 slower. I feel I cover less and less space. I cover 
 now less space than my body. When I have 
 shrunk to a point in my mind I shall die ! " 
 
 " Lili is iU," said Max. 
 
 Werner was not interested ; he was immensely 
 selfish just before his death ; his own affairs alone 
 interested him. He said lazily, however : 
 
 " Perhaps she will die ! " 
 
 " She is making herself lovesick over that fool." 
 
 " Oh," said Werner softly, " Martin ! Love is 
 a wild business. Max. I remember," he went on, 
 drowsily, " I used to fall in love when I was young. 
 Always in love. My digestion got out of order, 
 I used to be so violently in love. I cannot remember 
 all their names now — Marie is the only one. She 
 was pretty — I cannot tell you how pretty — with 
 soft pink cheeks and curly hair. She married 
 her cousin because of family affairs. I believe 
 I am dying because I let myself go to ruin for a 
 short time when she got married. I am dying 
 of love. Max, old boy. Perhaps Lili will." 
 
 Max looked tenderly at Werner, and Martin 
 came in. 
 
 " You look better to-day," said Martin. 
 
 " He is worse," said Max ; " one day nearer his 
 eath." 
 
 " You look certainly better," said Martin.
 
 6 MARTIN SCHULER 
 
 " Bauer, you are a gloomy beast with your de- 
 pressing rubbish." 
 
 " I am worse," said Werner; "I think I am 
 paralysed in my legs. They do not seem to be 
 there. I feel like a pool of blood on the mattress." 
 
 Martin put his hand under Werner's back. 
 
 " No blood ; that wound is quite clean and 
 bandaged." 
 
 " I did not mean that," said Werner with a sigh. 
 
 " No," said Max, " he meant he felt as if he himself 
 were reduced to blood and lay in an oval patch 
 on the mattress." 
 
 " Yes," said Werner. 
 
 Martin blushed dark red, and said : 
 
 " I see." 
 
 " Play," said Werner. 
 
 " There is no piano," said Martin. 
 
 " What did he say ? " said Werner to Max. 
 
 " No piano," said Max, softly. 
 
 " I cannot hear them when they talk loudly," 
 said Werner, who was evidently beginning to dream 
 again. 
 
 Martin stood uneasily by the bed. 
 
 " He'll probably die in a day or two," said Max. 
 
 Werner woke up at the mention of his one topic 
 of conversation. 
 
 "Yes," he said, "I am nearly done for." 
 
 "Bertha sent these," said Martin, producing 
 a pair of bed-socks and an enamelled tin of soup. 
 
 Nobody laughed. The situation was one which 
 only men can achieve without humour. Martin 
 
 i
 
 HEIDELBERG 65 
 
 put the objects down on the floor and said, after 
 another pause : 
 
 " Well, good-bye. You ccrtamly look better." 
 
 When he was gone, Werner said, "Do I look 
 better ? " 
 
 " You look restful," said Max, " and the after- 
 noon has flushed your cheeks." 
 
 "Perhaps I am better," said Werner. "What 
 did Doctor Kapp say to-day ? Perhaps I shall 
 recover. Max, if I recover, I'll lead a totally 
 different life. How stupid I have been ; what a 
 lot of important things I have ignored. The things 
 I put first ! At one time I put enjoyment, and then 
 love of women, and then work, and then my health. 
 That was too late. If I recover I will walk about 
 amongst men and women treating them all as 
 human beings, I fly from one extreme to the other 
 —Oh, goddess ! Oh, slut ! Oh, harlot ! Oh, virgin ! 
 Oh, saint ! Oh, villain ! Oh, genius ! Oh, idiot ! " 
 He began to ramble on about women. " I have 
 so much to say. I must talk, Max, about men and 
 women. Be a happy man. Max. I think I am 
 spreading out a little. I feel a little better, per- 
 haps." He lay silent and as still as a corpse. 
 Then he said. " I like morphia. The sky is blue to- 
 day. Could the window be covered ? Those blue 
 squares in the window come so close to my eyes 
 and then retreat into little specks — beads running 
 up and down strings. The world used to be — 
 Ah ! " He suddenly groaned and screamed and 
 the pain began again. Max let it rage a little 
 
 5
 
 QG MARTIN SCHULER 
 
 while until he began to look like a wild beast pos- 
 sessed of a devil, and then gave him another dose 
 out of a little bottle. 
 
 Somebody knocked at the door, and Lili came 
 in, 
 
 " How is the poor man ? " she whispered to 
 Max. 
 
 " It is only a question of time, according to the 
 doctor," said Max. "He is unpleasant just now; 
 he has been in pain. He is so full of morphia, 
 I had to give him a very large dose. I shouldn't 
 look at him." 
 
 " I would like to," said Lili. 
 
 " Well," said Max, " I would not look at him ; 
 you might feel sick." 
 
 " You are becoming a doctor, Maxishe." 
 
 "Yes," he said; "they are all fools." 
 
 They stood at the bottom of the bed. Werner 
 was labouring under the morphia. He did not 
 look a man. 
 
 " Terrible ! " said Lili. " Poor creature ! If I 
 were a doctor I should overdose him. Isn't it 
 queer, he doesn't look real, Max. He looks like a 
 dog." 
 
 "Terrible!" said Max; "he was himself a 
 little time ago." 
 
 " He looks savage." 
 
 " Yes," said Max. 
 |.,. " I feel he dwindles every time I come to see him 
 — a little and a little less. Can he hear us ? " 
 
 " No," said Max ; "he is fightirg with dreams."
 
 HEIDELBERG 6T 
 
 " Oh, Max, isn't it horrible ? Dear, dear Max ! " 
 Lili began to cry a little. " We used to like him, 
 and talk to him. It is quite incredible. I brought 
 him some flowers and some eggs. I can't give 
 them to him, can I ? I feel ashamed of having 
 brought flowers and eggs." 
 
 " He'll die soon," said Max; "he says himself 
 his soul is dwindling to a point." 
 
 " How dreadful ! " 
 
 "He is quite interested in it," said Max ; " he 
 raves now and then of course, when it bores him, 
 and he realizes he really is about to die." 
 
 " Poor man ! Max, does Martin come here ? " 
 She put her hand on her brother's arm. 
 
 " He has been," said Max dryly. 
 
 Things seemed bare to Lili, and raw, standing 
 there before Werner's half-dead body. She felt 
 at the place in creation where we have our bodies 
 opened and their workings displayed together 
 with the workings of our souls. She was not 
 aware that those were her precise feelings, but she 
 went on talking in a manner which showed that 
 they were. 
 
 "Max," she said, "I cannot seem to think 
 Martin and I were very wicked in that wood." 
 
 " It was not your fault," said Max. 
 
 " He seems somehow a special sort of man," 
 said Lili ; " I can't blame him either. I feel if 
 anyone ought to be blamed it is me. I have been 
 thinking a lot, Max. Max, it isn't a very simple 
 world, is it ? "
 
 68 MARTIN SCHULER 
 
 "No," said Max. 
 
 " It seems so mixed. I can't quite understand," 
 said Lili; " and in the middle there seems to be 
 something beautiful and powerful, and that some- 
 times, very often — oh, I can't explain — seems, 
 it seems as if, well, it was a kind of Martin." 
 
 " You have him on the brain, that's all ! " said 
 Max. " He is an ordinary sort of young fool." 
 
 " No, no ! " said Lili, ' he's not ! " She forgot 
 Werner and leant her hands on the footrail of the 
 bed, gazing into space. " He's not. He's above 
 all this — Heidelberg and us. I can't explain. It 
 seems a bit as if he was lent to us, like God lent 
 Christ to Maiy." 
 
 " Rubbish ! " said Max ; "he isn't divine." 
 
 Lili went on talking, as if to nobody. " Divine, 
 that's it ; yes, that is what it is. If the Kaiser's 
 son came to your school. Max, and sat in your 
 class, you'd know what I mean." 
 
 "He won't, thank God!" said Max, looking at 
 her. " You have got him on the brain." 
 
 " Yes, and in my heart," said Lili. " Oh, Max ! 
 I'm pulled to bits, and I'll never have him. Oh 1 
 I feel like wanting to be his house servant," 
 
 " Rubbish ! " said Max. " Don't be so silly, 
 Lili ; he's a rotten character." 
 
 Lili flashed round at him. " He's not ! " she 
 said ; " he's a genius ! " Her voice was so deep that 
 Max started. "Oh, Max ! " she said, "I am so 
 lonely." She threw herself in his arms. 
 
 " My pet/' he said, " don't cry ; be brave.
 
 HEIDELBERG 69 
 
 sweet girl. Werner was just as unhappy when he 
 was a young fellow." 
 
 At the mention of Werner, Lili recollected her- 
 self. 
 
 " Oh, how wicked of me to talk like this and for- 
 get that poor man ! Poor man ! I'm not the 
 unhappiest, but I'd rather die. Max, if you knew, 
 oh, if you knew ! " 
 
 Max was bending over Werner. He came round 
 to Lili after fidgeting with the sheet in some manner 
 in the dusk. 
 
 " He's asleep," said Max, who knew that Werner 
 had just died ; " let us go." 
 
 " W^here shall I put the eggs and flowers ? " said 
 Lili ; " where shall I put them ? " Max took the 
 eggs and put them in his pocket. " The flowers- 
 put them " he caught his breath because he 
 
 had been very fond of Werner — " put them — on 
 the sheet." She put them on the sheet, and knew 
 by the stillness that crept through the silence 
 what had happened, but she said nothing, and was 
 not shocked because she had no direct evidence 
 of touch or announcement. She was hardly aware 
 in her mind of the fact : it pervaded her senses, 
 her body. Max drew her away ; he was trembling. 
 She gripped his arm to comfort him. Now she 
 knew for certain that Werner was dead, but her 
 tact kept her from speaking. She led Max to the 
 door and they went out of the room together in 
 silence.
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 WERNER was a Roman Catholic, not by 
 belief but by accident. At the age of 
 nineteen he had been very religious and 
 had become a convert. Since that age he had 
 remained a Roman Catholic, but it was a mere 
 superscripture, a label directing in which cemetery 
 he should enjoy his last repose, and what ought to 
 be done and said when he was consigned again to the 
 dust. The Church never forgets her children, and 
 soon after his death, which Max made officially 
 known, a Sister and Father came to do what they 
 could for his stray soul, and the Sister remained 
 to watch and pray all night. It was a privilege 
 to sit by the beautiful dead ; and besides, sleep is 
 easy in a chair with arms. 
 
 Directly Martin heard of Werner's death he seemed 
 pleased ; he sighed with relief, and if we always said 
 exactty what we felt, would have ejaculated, " Thank 
 God, no more going up those horrible stairs ! " 
 
 Martin was not cynical ; he thought he was 
 sorry Werner was dead, and said so. Bertha was 
 very sorry, and cried a little over his " happy 
 release," as her mother called it. Martin said, 
 " Poor chap ! poor chap ! " a few times, and 
 then " Poor chap ! " like a machine that makes 
 
 70
 
 HEIDELBERG 71 
 
 one last revolution before it gradually stops. 
 Werner belonged to the past, to-morrow he 
 would be quite past. Martin spent that evening 
 alone in his room meditating; his meditations 
 strayed from love, from Lili whom he no longer 
 loved, to burials and after death. He paused a 
 moment to remember Werner's great kindness 
 to him in not moralizing over his little affair with 
 Lili, and suspected Werner of arguing Max into 
 quiet anger. He wondered if Max would ever 
 murder him in a temper ; he seemed so fond of 
 Lili, seemed to guard her like a father-brother- 
 husband. Short of that, a man like Max, a mere 
 schoolmaster, could do him little or no harm. He 
 dismissed the thought ; it was too trivial. He was 
 right in dismissing it ; Max was too sane and gentle 
 to do anything violent, and too fond of Lili. What 
 gossip originates in meditation ! After a time he 
 began to conjecture what influence Werner had 
 had upon himself. It seemed little or none ; 
 Werner was an admirable person ; he left one alone, 
 yet made one realize the value of endeavour and 
 attainment without ever talking about them. 
 But, of course, he had abominable faults ^nd 
 deficiencies ; he was so excessively private, that 
 was his worst fault : private was written all over 
 him. He began to die when he began to give away 
 his privacy. He was conceited and had no end of 
 an idea of himself, and was terribly contemptuous 
 of less brilliant people. Martin was glad he would 
 no longer be made to feel small, and yet he felt
 
 72 MARTIN SCHCLER 
 
 lonely. He seemed to have become, \vithout his 
 own consent, an independent man with his own 
 future upon his hands. There was no one to com- 
 plain to, no one to give him sincere praise. He 
 felt hurt. Poor Werner ! A lump came in his 
 throat. He thought he was sorry for Werner. 
 Poor Werner, he did not even live to finish "the 
 Peahens." Martin began to wonder where " the 
 Peahens " was. He had lost acute interest in it 
 for the time being, though he still looked upon it 
 as his coming masterpiece, a kind of life-work. 
 " It must be in his room," he said to himself. 
 " The devil ! I'd like to have a look at it." He 
 began remembering his former thoughts about 
 it, and the memory roused in him a new burst of 
 ambition. He thought what a little he had written 
 for it, and then what a lot ; what a lot if he counted 
 arias, what a little if he compared part and bulk. 
 The delicious, rapturous harmonies were still behind 
 the beyond. The astonishing modulations still 
 bridged the gulf of unknown heavens. The bril- 
 liant variations, the broad and deep basis of the 
 whole, still rose a pyramid in an ethereal desert. 
 There was good and strong music in his black 
 portfolio, and he was only twenty-one. The 
 beyond, the heavens, the desert, were in his mind. 
 He was not yet able to see them ; but every month, 
 every emotion, every piece of knowledge, every 
 attempt, he came nearer to them. .Some da}/ he 
 would be able to visualize them, some day to realize 
 them. Realization for liim meant to be able to
 
 HEIDELBERG 73 
 
 turn into sound. He felt proud of himself and a 
 little sure. Some things he could never forget, 
 some things caught in his mind like the cogs of a 
 mountain train. He could not slip. 
 
 Suddenly it dawned upon him that all Werner's 
 manuscripts would sooner or later be seized by his 
 creditors. He was known to be in debt. He would 
 be buried to-morrow ; to-morrow morning some- 
 body would go and seal everything with red seals. 
 That would be a catastrophe for the peahens. 
 The creditors would either publish it, or require 
 large royalties for its loan from him, Martin. 
 Martin Schliler became very agitated. There 
 seemed no chance of doing anything. He wished 
 he had made Werner give it to him that day. He 
 hated the thought, but gradually it seemed to him 
 essential to pay the corpse a farewell visit, and, 
 if possible, to steal the manuscript at the same 
 time. When he had formulated it, he put it away 
 from him, but it recurred. He tossed up, but for- 
 got to remember the result, which was against 
 going, because he knew he must go. Soon he put 
 on his best black clothes to pay his last respects to 
 the dead, and told his mother as he went out of 
 the house that he was going to have a last look at 
 Werner. He looked agitated, and his mother 
 said sentimentally to Bertha, as he went out, 
 " Poor Martische is deeply moved for his friend." 
 Certainly his intentions were hateful to him, but 
 it seemed absolutely necessary to get hold of the 
 peahens that night. Several times, however, on
 
 74 MARTIN SCHtlLER 
 
 the way to Werner's house, Schiiler stopped and 
 hesitated ; once he stopped because his deed 
 seemed sacrilegious, and because he did not want to 
 go where Max Bauer and others probably were ; 
 once because he might be caught in felony, and once 
 because he was afraid of spirits and devils ; but 
 all the time the fact was he could hardly bring 
 himself to go near a dead body. At last he came 
 to Werner's house. It was nearly midnight and 
 very dark. He had a covered lamp in his hand. 
 
 The door was shut and locked, the bell wire was 
 rusted. Upstairs Werner lay dead on his bed, and 
 the Sister with the dead, old Sister Eulalie, had 
 fallen asleep, so Martin, even if he had wished, 
 could not have got anyone to open the door for him. 
 He tried the door softly ; it wheezed on rusty 
 hinges, but remained closed, so he was forced to 
 get in at a window. The felonious nature of his 
 entrance led him to believe he was a criminal. He 
 took off his boots in the deserted lower room and 
 prowled upstairs. He prowled past uninhabited 
 rooms, up the narrow old stairs — a stranger in a 
 strange house, a stranger to himself. He almost 
 stopped and cried out to himself, " Who's that ? 
 What do you want ? Don't you dare to rob 
 the dead ! " Then he remembered that the 
 ghoulish prowler was himself, and thought of battle- 
 fields and fingers cut off hands with rings still 
 on them, widows hoping for mementoes, and 
 prison. 
 
 Werner's door was open. Martin shaded his
 
 HEIDELBERG 75 
 
 lamp and went in. The fat old Sister snored in 
 her chair, her beads in her hand. Beside her lay 
 a long wliite object on a bed, and on the top of 
 it reposed a bunch of mixed autumn flowers. 
 Probably Werner's breast was under the flowers. 
 Martin moved softly round past the old Sister, and 
 took a hasty look at the man under the sheet. 
 He had a very faint resemblance to Werner — like 
 a bad drawing by an amateur. Martin knew he 
 was Werner only because he knew that Werner 
 had died, and lay dead under that sheet on that 
 bed. He put back the sheet reverently and 
 mumbled something about God, and then went to 
 the bureau where the manuscript usually reposed. 
 The bureau had been reversed and pushed with 
 its face to the wall in order to give the dying man 
 more room. This was awkward. Martin did not 
 want in the least to wake the old dead-watcher 
 by dragging the bureau about on the bare boards 
 of the floor. He began to be frightened again, 
 and almost thought of abandoning the manuscript. 
 He wished there had been other tenants in the 
 house, then Werner would have been put in the 
 Morgue. After a moment's hesitation he inspected 
 the bureau and found that it could be got into 
 without moving it, for it had a sloping front which 
 let down. He prayed that the poem was not in 
 any of the drawers. It was not in the top. He 
 cursed. Fear, desire, and rage made him strong 
 and resourceful. He became a maniac for pos- 
 session. He lifted the whole burea\i bodily by
 
 76 MARTIN SCHtJLER 
 
 its top and turned it. He did it quietly. It was 
 a marvellous feat of strength because the bureau 
 was quite large and also full of papers. The manu- 
 script was not in any of the drawers. He put things 
 in order ; but not daring to repeat his feat, which had 
 strained him a little, he merely put the bureau on 
 a line with the wall, and left it. 
 
 Maddening ! In rage one has queer ideas. 
 Martin became certain that the manuscript was 
 somewhere about the dead body. Horrified with 
 himself, he searched everywhere else, but the idea 
 followed him about the room, pointing to the 
 corpse. At length he forced himself to approach 
 it, and turned back the death sheet a little. The 
 eyes seemed eternally shut, stuck down with 
 glue. He drew the sheet further back, and with 
 his eyes fixed in fear upon the dead features ran his 
 hand under the cold body and felt along between 
 it and the bed. He expected to feel a pool of blood, 
 just as earlier in the day he had expected to feel 
 a pool of blood. 
 
 In the mattress was a lump. Joy bounded in 
 his heart. He knelt down, and, careless of the 
 corpse, pushed the mattress up. There was what 
 he sought ! He dragged the papers out, crushed 
 them into his pocket, straightened up the dead 
 as well as he could, and scurried out of the house. 
 
 He had become a thief ! 
 
 For several nights afterwards he dreamt of that 
 most ugly, cold, unrecognizable piece of flesh that 
 had been his friend ; and his distaste for the name 
 and manuscript of the peahens lasted a whole year.
 
 LEIPSIC
 
 LEIPSIC 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 yl S an oyster covers a pearl with scales, so 
 AnL Martin covered Werner's death, and Lili 
 and the peahens, with days and months 
 of forgetfulness. Twenty-eight months lay smooth 
 over the past, and only those with long memories 
 and awkward imaginations thought less well of 
 him than he did of himself, and saw the little piece 
 of grit that had got into his shell. Martin was 
 now in the first fullness of manhood. His 
 father was dead, therefore he had a respectable 
 income, and his mother lived with her daughter 
 and son-in-law, the Schiiler-Markheims. He had 
 been to Paris for a year to study the Modern Move- 
 ment, and considered himself therefore a man of 
 the world. The municipal band played from time 
 to time one or two of his lighter compositions, the 
 theatre had produced one of his sentimental 
 operettas, he had set one or two bad songs, 
 by bad local poets, to indifferent tunes ; for these 
 reasons persons began to point him out to one 
 another, and being well-off and good-looking the 
 best people in the town invited him to their parties. 
 
 79
 
 80 MARTIN SCHt)LER 
 
 Some people thought he took his elevation in 
 society a little too much for granted, and his 
 sister held her breath when she heard him for 
 the first time joke with Frau Professor Kort. His 
 sister was not invited to those houses which he 
 frequented, but the great cannot monopolize 
 an art exhibition, and it was there Bertha heard 
 him make the joke that finally pointed out to her 
 that indeed her brother was lost to her for ever, 
 and had sailed out of the dim Hght of her own social 
 hfe. The joke caused her to hold her breath, 
 but looking down his body instinctively to his 
 feet, she saw how classically they stood upon the 
 floor and how his elegant body was perfectly poised 
 upon them. She blamed him because he was 
 level-headed and at home where she was modest 
 and nervous, but she admired him because he was 
 liked, and because she had had a great deal to do 
 with his upbringing. 
 
 Bertha's friends were astonished that she did 
 not devote her conversation to this family marvel, 
 pray her prayers to it, and spread her husband, 
 her house, and her children, born and unborn, upon 
 the background of the canvas of its hfe, or, to 
 use a prettier simile, throw her love, her babes, 
 her happiness like roses on her brother's path. 
 Frau Schiller, her mother, joined with her in her 
 reserved and decent attitude, and people said they 
 had quarrelled with Martin, and, because he was 
 hardly ever with them, that Herman, Bertha's 
 husband, had forbidden him to come to the house
 
 LEIPSIC 81 
 
 This gave rise to the opinion that some people 
 were cutting off their noses to spite their faces. 
 Herman Markheim had been heard to say, it is 
 true, that Martin was not his sort; and people 
 added, because he, Markheim, didn't care for 
 young fools who painted the town red, even if 
 they were Wagners. All this did not affect Martin. 
 He was unconscious of Bertha's pride and of what 
 people said about his affairs. He lived alone in 
 a good part of the town. He had few worries. 
 His love affairs were amiable and a little sordid ; he 
 had no serious friend like Werner, and the delicate, 
 too-familiar relationships of home-life no longer 
 existed to trouble him. 
 
 When his last piece of band-music had been 
 played so often that the brain was sore with hearing 
 it, and people began to ask themselves what he 
 would do next to delight them, he condescended to 
 try an experiment upon them : he produced, with 
 the aid of the graduates and undergraduates of 
 the Heidelberg University, a short musical drama, 
 entitled, " The Poverty of Croesus." The pro- 
 duction took place at the theatre about midsummer 
 and astonished Heidelberg, though it depressed the 
 actors, that is to say until the full report was 
 published in the newspaper. The newspaper was 
 so eulogistic, and the parents, aunts, and lovers 
 of the actors so dithyrambic, that Heidelberg was 
 full of swelled heads for several weeks. This, 
 again, did not affect Martin. 
 
 There was at the University of Heidelberg at 
 
 6
 
 82 MARTIN SCHt)LER 
 
 that time a young man of the name of Stembach, 
 an ugly and thick young man who had come to 
 Heidelberg for a summer course to fill in the time 
 between the end of his career at Leipsic University 
 and the beginning of his career at he knew not 
 what. Like many other brilliant young men who 
 are too rich and not scholarly enough to enclose 
 themselves for life m a classical or philosophical 
 world, he was lost when his terms at college came 
 to an end. He had a strong desire to do some- 
 thing, particularly something that would entail 
 notoriety, so he went to Heidelberg University 
 in order to get to an out -of-the- world place where 
 youth was rife and where he could think. In a 
 fortnight, owing to having assimilated its spirit, 
 he decided that to remain was waste of time. He 
 thought of going to Cambridge in England. The 
 day that he was introduced to Martin Schiiler by 
 von der Gorst he changed his mind. This was 
 before the performance of "Croesus." Von der 
 Gorst was to be " Croesus." He was chief classic 
 of his year, and had a fine baritone. When he 
 introduced Steinbach to Martiii, Steinbach shook 
 hands, and said he was extremely pleased to make 
 the acquaintance of one with such a future before 
 him. He eyed Martin steadily, and determined 
 not to decide then and there if he really had a 
 future before him, but to wait. That same spring 
 afternoon, after the departure of Martin, von der 
 Gorst told him about the approaching performance. 
 When he was tired of Gorst 's florid optimism about
 
 LEIPSIC 88 
 
 the affair, he went home. He sauntered under 
 the buddhig Hnden-trees along the river road with 
 a feeling of joyful interest in his mind. The houses 
 across the way, and the river on his right, and the 
 dusty, sun-flecked road, and the dry, dusty gutter 
 pleased him. He liked them for the first time. 
 This morning they had tired and bored him, now 
 he liked them. Tlie soft spring breeze blowing 
 in gentle puffs from the river, the quiet, slow- 
 moving water, and the gentle shivers of the little 
 leaves on the trees, soothed him deliciously ; he 
 sauntered along, noticing the summer-like quality 
 of the dust, the summer-like rattle of the carts 
 and cabs along the road ; the houses across the way 
 no longer showed naked through the bare boughs ; 
 green leaves partially hid them, and soft air per- 
 meated with sunshine, with the scent of trees and 
 particles of dust from the road, focused them, so 
 that they did not appear, as in wet and cold weather, 
 to be starting forward into the road upon passers- 
 by. Steinbach had taken a fancy to Martin, and 
 one is always happy when one has just taken a 
 fancy to somebody. He was not tliinking, like most 
 people, " I must see that chap again ; shall I ask 
 him to the theatre, shall I go to his rooms, shall 
 I wTite ? " He was thinking, " I shall not make 
 his acquaintance just yet. I will notice him and 
 glean facts about him, and when I know him, 
 perhaps after he has produced his opera, I'll get 
 him to know me." He paused and looked over 
 the river. " When I've heard his opera." he
 
 / 
 
 84 MARTIN SCHt)LER 
 
 decided, " it will be time to get him to know 
 
 me." 
 
 Not for a moment did he think that anyone else, 
 or any number of anyone elses, would crowd him 
 out ; he was quite certain that at his own time he 
 would be able to get what he wanted. Of what 
 he wanted he had no clear idea, but a thought 
 not expressed in words began to haunt his mind. 
 He walked on for five minutes, then turned down a 
 narrow street to the left and disappeared from the 
 public on the river road.
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 STEINBACH sat amongst the audience at 
 the students' performance of Martm's "The 
 Poverty of Croesus." He sat solidly and 
 silently, with wide open blue eyes behind powerful 
 pince-nez that magnified them to imbecility and 
 made them bulge. His round, pink head seemed 
 stuck with glue into his tight, shining collar. His 
 nose rose into a snub above a short golden crop of 
 hairs that he wore as a moustache. His mouth 
 was large and full of admirable white teeth, and his 
 hair, which was sandy, was parted and brushed 
 in the English fashion. He kept his eyes fixed 
 on Martin, who conducted his own composition, and 
 his mind became concentrated critical faculty and 
 power of judgment. Martin looked imposing in 
 the conductor's chair. His black hair was thick 
 and oily, and brushed back in the solid wave set 
 in fashion by Beethoven. He had a small, dark, 
 square moustache clipped along the line of his 
 upper lip, and down the lines from his nose to the 
 corner of his mouth. He might have been twenty- 
 eight years old, but he was barely twenty-four. 
 He wore pince-nez, but rather from affectation 
 than from necessity. His head, arms, and shoulders 
 
 85
 
 80 MARTIN SCHULER 
 
 looked fine and able against the light background 
 of the stage, and Bertha, who was amongst the 
 audience, sighed with relief because he showed no 
 signs of physical decadence. He wore a fine black 
 cloth coat and dress trousers, the coat cut like a 
 dinner jacket, no waistcoat, a soft white shirt, 
 a high double collar, and a small black tie of the 
 day variety that resembled his moustache and 
 repeated its design. Upon his hands he had white 
 kid gloves ^\dth black markings. Frau von Arnim, 
 who at that time had a sentimental attachment 
 for him, thought this was a pity because it hid the 
 fascinating way his fingers turned up at the ends. 
 He looked conceited and prosperous, and, from 
 the back, impressive. From the stage he was 
 terrifying ; one could see him bite his lips and 
 swear when response was not forthcoming. His 
 manner assured one of failure before one had 
 failed, and frightened the last vestige of confidence 
 out of the performers. Von der Gorst, who acted 
 Croesus, alone saved the situation from fiasco. 
 From the outbursts of applause, however, one 
 would have concluded that a masterpiece had 
 been most magnificently exhibited 
 
 When the affair was over, and von der Gorst 
 was in the dressing-room with his wig in his hand, 
 Martin sulked in and burst into self-condemnatory 
 rage. 
 
 " The gods be damned! " he cried; " I have 
 made a fool of myself. What acting ! What 
 apes, what cows ! They could not put their tights
 
 LEIPSIC 87 
 
 on decently. Can one conduct when one is dis- 
 tracted by crooked leggings ! Damnation ! " 
 
 " The acting was awful," said von der Gorst, 
 disinterring his young moustache from grease 
 paint ; " that was not your fault, old chap. You 
 pulled horrible faces ! " 
 
 " Did I ? " said Martin ; " what has that to do 
 with it ? " 
 
 "There was a man in the audience," went on 
 von der Gorst, " with ghastly eyes. When I 
 first came on I could not see anything else. They 
 bulged and shone in that beastly dark cavern." 
 
 " What has that got to do with it ? " said Martin. 
 " People from other towns were there. I might 
 have made a hit.. It was a fiasco." 
 
 " No," said von der Gorst ; " nearly, but not 
 quite. The music was all right. You cannot 
 help the sheepishness of the students." 
 
 " Whatever failure there was," growled Martin, 
 "my fault or not, will be put down to me. I tell 
 you I will never produce another cursed thing in 
 this hell of a town." 
 
 "Don't pull faces next time," said Gorst, laugh- 
 ing. " Really, the audience thought the whole 
 affair wonderful, and, for a citizen of this town, 
 rather magical." 
 
 " Oh, yes, say straight off it was good for an 
 amateur ! " Martin scowled ferociously, and snapped 
 his pince-nez, which he held in his hand, in half 
 with his fingers. 
 
 Steinbach sauntered in.
 
 88 MARTIN SCIltJLER 
 
 " You are not an amateur," he said quietly ; 
 " may I compliment you, Herr von Schuler ? " 
 
 Martin was not called von Schiiler as a rule 
 Steinbach thus paid him a delicate compliment. 
 
 "Those were your eyes, then," said von der 
 Gorst, and laughed. 
 
 Steinbach smiled and showed all his beautiful 
 white teeth. " Windows which not only admit but 
 also shed the light ! " he exclaimed, and sat down 
 on a packmg case marked "Manskoff & Sohne." 
 
 There was a pause in which nobody said any- 
 thing. Von der Gorst went on with his operations, 
 which seemed to be rather painful ; Martin fitted 
 and refitted his broken glasses together. 
 
 " You have broken your glasses," said Steinbach. 
 " The glass is broken, and the play is done." Martin 
 took no notice, and Steinbach looked at his watch 
 and said very politely, " May I call upon you to- 
 morrow ? " 
 
 Martin felt pleased. He answered cordially, 
 "Any time. You may walk home with me to supper 
 if you care to." The truth was he wanted to hear 
 somebody criticize his music, particularly some- 
 body who was not stupid. He wanted to say then 
 and there, " Tell me what did you think of the 
 thing ? " but von der Gorst was present, and he 
 also felt averse to open the subject although he 
 longed to do so. If he was shy it was a new sensa- 
 tion. He would not have felt shy if he could have 
 thought of a good roundabout sentence to begin 
 with. He was too tired to go straight to the point
 
 LEIPSIC 89 
 
 and afraid, because he was tired, of hearing some- 
 thing not to his liking. He thought he would be 
 sick if in answer to a plain question Steinbach 
 had said his play was bad, or might have been 
 better, or that he had flown too high, or that he, 
 Steinbach, would like to hear something else 
 before thinking him a genius, or even that it 
 was quite good. 
 
 Steinbach looked at his watch again, and answered, 
 " Thank you, I will." Von der Gorst was exposing 
 a tender fencing wound on his cheek ; he looked at 
 Steinbach out of the corner of his eye, who stared 
 solemnly back at him. " That looks very painful," 
 said Steinbach ; then turned to Martin and asked 
 when and where he was to meet him, or if they 
 were going now. 
 
 " Meet me in half an hour by the church in the 
 Markt Platz, if that is not too late," he answered. 
 He wanted to find out what Gorst thought of Stein- 
 bach, though he really did not care. He was 
 sensitive and silly that evening. 
 
 " Very well," said Steinbach, and turned to go. 
 " We shall meet again." When he was out of the 
 room, von der Gorst said : 
 
 " That's a queer fish." 
 
 " Yes," said Martin ; " his appearance is un- 
 prepossessing." 
 
 " Look here," said von der Gorst, through 
 whistles of pain, " come to lunch to-morrow. 
 Damn this plaster ! " Blood was trickling down 
 his cheek.
 
 90 MARTIN SCHULER 
 
 " I cannot," said ]\Iartin, for no reason but that 
 he felt inexpressibly bored with him at that moment. 
 He was pressing a towel to his face, and IMaiiin 
 thought he looked second-rate ; he smelt second- 
 rate now Steinbach had been in the room, and 
 Martin wondered why he had remained to hear 
 any of his opinions about anything. It is rather 
 difficult not to appear at a disadvantage in clothes 
 semi-classical and semi-modern, with a towel 
 round one's neck and a sore cheek, especially when 
 one is very tired. Martin made no allowances. 
 Von der Gorst thought, " I shall not see much of 
 this young man any more," but added aloud, 
 " We are both tired." It is easy to come to the 
 end of a friendship when tired, but he hoped, like 
 everybody else, that when they were themselves 
 again everything would be as before. 
 
 Martin watched him uneasily for a few minutes 
 and longed to go away. Soon he said, " I must 
 
 go." 
 " You have plenty of time," said von der Gorst, 
 
 rather sourly. 
 
 " Not too much," said Martin; " good night." 
 
 " Good night," growled von der Gorst. He 
 
 had a grievance. Martin had neither thanked him 
 
 nor complimented him. With this grievance he 
 
 consoled himself, and pretended that he had ceased 
 
 to think himself a friend of Martin's, and said so 
 
 the next day to some of his acquaintances. 
 
 Martin met Steinbach at the church. They were 
 
 both early, but Steinbach was there first.
 
 LEIPSIC 91 
 
 "I am afraid I am late," said Martin; but 
 Steinbach replied, " No, no, I am early." It was a 
 light night. The full summer moon shone down 
 into the Market Place, and in the light darkness 
 the roofs of the houses showed reddish, and the 
 leaves of the trees greenish, and the brown wood- 
 work of the windows and doors brownish, like a 
 photograph faintly washed with pure colour. There 
 were clouds of thin, filmy white in a sky that was 
 almost blue, and through and between the clouds 
 a few pale sulphurous stars showed. The two men 
 walked out of the indigo shadow of the church 
 across the light grey open space, around which 
 stood white and grey and dark-coloured houses. 
 An open cab rattled across the square, making a 
 stony noise. One of the men said something to 
 the other, then the cab stopped and they both got 
 in it. The cab turned round and the unwilling 
 horse was again driven away from his stable. He 
 reared up his head at the end of his long, straight 
 neck, and, pulling the cab by his shoulders, clattered 
 with his heavy hoofs and sloping haunches out of 
 the Market Place towards the New Bridge. He 
 could hear everything, partly because of the still 
 night and partly because he was tired. He stretched 
 back his ears to listen, because when he listened he 
 forgot he was pulling a cab. He could hear the 
 rattle of the cab wheels and the unoiled sigh of the 
 springs, and the driver's sleepy, " Tchk, tchk," 
 and the voices of the two men in the cab talking 
 about plays and theatres. Above these sounds
 
 92 MARTIN SCHtlLER 
 
 he heard a buzzing noise in his head, a buzz in 
 which the noises of the trams and shouts and foot- 
 steps and wheels of the past day were all combined, 
 and again above that he could hear the river moving 
 — ^the sound of water. Perhaps that was the reason 
 why he stretched his neck and kept his head up. 
 
 "This is nineteen-three," said Steinbach, in 
 the middle of the bridge ; "let us produce some- 
 thing at Leipsic in ninete en-four." 
 
 " Us ? " said Martin. 
 
 Steinbach looked at the moonlight on the water, 
 and let it sink into his mind. It was sinking 
 into Martin's soul, as all such things did without 
 him making any effort. Steinbach answered as he 
 looked at the water, " I can wTite better stuff than 
 those Croesus words." He went on, " We can 
 live in Leipsic. My father will back Croesus for 
 you for a week at one of the theatres." 
 
 " It is very kind," said Martin dreamily. 
 Not at all." Steinbach 's face beamed in a 
 radiant smile, which immediately woke Martin 
 out of his short dreaming fit. " My father lias 
 nothing to do with his money. What a queer 
 little place this is," he said as they turned over 
 the bridge into the new part of the town. 
 
 " A queer little place," assented Martin. 
 
 " Why do you live here ? " 
 
 " Force of habit," said Martin. 
 
 " You do not look a native," 
 
 " I was born and bred here."
 
 LEIPSIC 93 
 
 ' Aha," said Steinbach, as other people say 
 "Yes," "and bedazzled." 
 
 " I was more bedazzled in Paris," Martin laughed. 
 
 " Were you born in the house we are going 
 to?" 
 
 " No," answered Martin, " down near the Markt 
 Platz." 
 
 " Of the people — quite so," said Steinbach ; " the 
 upper classes are too well fed to breed a genius. 
 They say over-feeding and idleness produces women 
 and inferior men. I am the product of luxury." 
 
 " When I was in Paris," said Martin, " everybody 
 was very effemmate." 
 
 " Women are the children of civilization," said 
 Steinbach. " All the primitive, horrid, grand states 
 of being, such as war and savagery, produce 
 men, and silly women." He laughed then, and 
 said, " You did not become effeminate in 
 Paris ? " 
 
 "No," said Martin ; "but it civilized me." 
 
 Steinbach did not expect him to be capable 
 of making a confession about himself. What 
 he said was perfectly true. Paris had had an 
 immense influence over him. He was quite inca- 
 pable at present of midnight rambles or ecstasies 
 under the moon. He had forgotten the unchained 
 feeling of his twenty-first year. His abiUty to call 
 the past the past made him appear to be a new kind 
 of man to those who knew him intimately. He had 
 given up worshipping nature with the passionate 
 abandonment of his youth, and his vitality, stimu-
 
 I 
 
 94 MARTIN SCHtlLER 
 
 lated enormously by the new things of Paris, was 
 expended upon technical rather than passionate 
 art, and amongst drawing-rooms and clubs rather 
 than amongst hills and valleys. His work gained 
 in suavity and brilliance, but it was not profound. 
 " The Poverty of Croesus," the outcome of his 
 Parisian year, had bouquet rather than depth, 
 and was more original than inspired. 
 
 They arrived at Martin's door. The horse no 
 sooner heard the chink of money than he strode 
 round and was off in a hurry to his stable. He 
 hoped there would be no one in that fateful Markt 
 Platz. Late diners-out always hailed his cab in 
 that wretched place. 
 
 Martin opened the door with a key and they 
 went in. 
 
 " I wait on myself at this time of the night," he 
 said, taking his companion into a room where 
 an elaborate cold supper was put in easy reach 
 of a chair drawn up to the table. Steinbach 
 thouglit of an illustration in a romantic tale wliich 
 he liked when a child, of a young musician supping 
 alone at a table covered with a lace-edged cloth 
 and spread with delicious viands. Martin ht the 
 candelabra and turned off the electric Hght. 
 
 Steinbach told Martin of the illustration, wlio 
 did not know it, never having cared much for books. 
 
 They ate a great deal, and drank a great deal 
 of white wine, and Martin at last said, " What is 
 your opinion of my opera ? " 
 
 " 1 thought," answered Steinbach, looking down
 
 LEIPSIC 95 
 
 into his glass, from which he extracted a little bit 
 of cork with his Httle finger, " that your music 
 was very good and original. I should like to have 
 a share in your fate. I listened very carefully 
 to your music because I intended you to ask me 
 my opinion. You should never conduct your 
 own things. You see what they are meant to 
 represent rather than what they do represent. 
 Composers usually misinterpret their own works 
 of art. An outsider would have marked those 
 interesting subtleties which doubtless you know 
 nothing about. There was an hiatus or two where 
 you found yourself over-interpreting. Do you 
 object to my criticism ? " 
 
 " Not in the least/' said Martin ; "go on." 
 
 Steinbach siniled broadly. " I've nothing more 
 to say. If you will live with me in Leipsic I shall 
 be delighted. I will marry you to some good 
 woman." 
 
 "No," said Martin ; " I will not many yet." 
 
 " A loose character, are you ? " grinned Stein- 
 bach. 
 
 " Not more so than others," said Martin. 
 
 "I do not approve of moral looseness nor 
 atheism," said Steinbach in a slow, humorous 
 voice. 
 
 " You sound tolerant," Martin answered smiling. 
 
 " Quite so," answered Steinbach, " but I am not." 
 He smiled again, " I am a prig but not a prude." 
 It was impossible to tell if he meant what he said, 
 or whether he were the loosest man on earth.
 
 96 MARTIN SCHtJLER 
 
 " I want to give you an impression of myself. 
 See ? That is done." 
 
 Martin had received no impression whatever 
 of Steinbach. He seemed to assume a kind of 
 green virtue. He seemed very easy. He made 
 statements about their partnership as if that 
 were easy, and about producing Croesus in Leipsic 
 for a week as if that were easy. 
 
 " Show me your works of art, Schiiler," he said 
 after a pause, and Martin showed him all his better 
 and more recent productions, and played, after a 
 fashion, all that he thought would redound to 
 his credit. Steinbach murmured, " Yes ! Good ! 
 Quite so ! Go on !" at intervals, and listened 
 with calculating, critical ears, but gave no opinion 
 on any particular fragment. At last he said he 
 must go, and without any further talk departed. 
 When he had gone Martin felt pleased, praised, 
 and happy. He smiled at himself in the glass 
 before he went to bed ; for he often looked at him- 
 self in the glass when he lived alone for companion- 
 ship. After that he got into bed and fell asleep 
 remembering non-existent beauties of his Croesus.
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 STEINBACH came round very early the 
 next morning, before breakfast even. Martin 
 was still in bed, but when he heard his un- 
 mistakable, pleasant voice arguing with the servant, 
 he shouted to him to come up. Steinbach stood in 
 the doorway opposite the bed, with a grin on his 
 cheery face. 
 
 " Good morning," he said, making an idiotic 
 bow with his head and neck only. He looked 
 as if he wore a buckram waistcoat to keep his 
 fatness within bounds. He was very stiff in the 
 body. 
 
 " I came to say — er — thanks." He interrupted 
 himself to come into the room and sit squarely 
 on the bed. " I came to say," he went on, " what 
 day, when, now, soon, or never, when shall we go 
 to Leipsic ? " 
 
 " Any time will do for me," said Martin. 
 
 " Very well, then, Friday of next week. Very 
 good. You will come and live with me in Leipsic 
 next Friday." 
 
 Martin laughed. "God! you do amuse me! 
 You don't seem to think about anything before 
 you do it." 
 
 97 
 
 7
 
 98 MARTIN SCHULER 
 
 " Don't I ? It is all luck anyway, whatever 
 happens ; wliy spend too long thinking ? Per- 
 haps I have thought of this for weeks. Will this 
 logic please you ? I like your music, I take 
 a fancy to you, I want to launch you. Why 
 not adopt you ? See ? If you have no objec- 
 tion, it is all serene." 
 
 " You amuse me," said Martin. 
 
 "There you get amusement: amusement is 
 pleasure, pleasure is the aim of life. What more 
 can a man want ? My name is Bernard Christian 
 Steinbach, at your service." He smiled all the 
 while, and turned his smile on Martin from time 
 to time like a searchlight. 
 
 " I'll get up if you will stay to breakfast," said 
 Martin. " I feel too idle to dress this morning." 
 
 " Here is your vest," said Steinbach, leaning 
 over from where he sat and picking up an object 
 off the floor. "As a commencement of friend- 
 ship I will valet you." 
 
 Martin laughed and put his arms behind his 
 head, but did not attempt to get up. " You do 
 amuse me," he said again. 
 
 " Leipsic is a nice place," said Steinbach. " I 
 have a lot of friends," 
 
 " Your father is rich ? " 
 
 " Oh, yes, quite well off. We have three houses. 
 I will get the little town house." 
 
 " The prospects you hold out excite me." said 
 Martin, sitting up. 
 
 " I am excited myself," Steinbach answered.
 
 LEIPSIC 99 
 
 " Directly I saw you I was fascinated. 1 am 
 clever to detect your genius." 
 
 Martin's excitement reached a high enough pitch 
 to get him out of bed. He stood up in the middle 
 of the room in his pyjamas and stretched. 
 
 " You have a good figure," said Steinbach ; 
 " I am disgustingly fat. You are handsome in 
 a way. Did you ever see anyone as ugly as I ? " 
 
 Martin did not reply, but took a tin case of 
 cigarettes from amongst the jumble of rubbish 
 on the table. He offered them to Steinbach. 
 
 " Have a cigarette." 
 
 " It is these horrible specs," said Steinbach, 
 taking one. " I don't put my lights under bushels, 
 do I ? " He stopped talking to light his cigarette, 
 and as he lit it his hand trembled a little. 
 
 " You have a shaky hand," said Martin. 
 
 " Quite so," he answered, " emotional excite- 
 ment and no breakfast." 
 
 Martin struggled into his shirt and emerged 
 rather embarrassed. 
 
 " If you get a dislike to me any time," his patron 
 continued from the bed, " walk out of my house. 
 Neither you nor I are to have any debts to one 
 another. It is always wise to start with an under- 
 standing." 
 
 " Yes," said Martin, " it is always desirable 
 to be definite." He was feeling that he did not 
 care for Steinbach very much at that moment. 
 
 " You sound curt," said Steinbach in a gentle 
 voice as he got off the bed. " I do not think I will
 
 100 MARTIN SCHtlLER 
 
 stay to breakfast after all." Then he almost 
 simpered, " Nine a.m. is not conducive to emotional 
 crises. Good-b3'^e." 
 
 " Good-bye." Martin opened the bedroom door. 
 
 " May I come this evening ? " 
 
 " Certainly," said Martin, as Steinbach passed 
 through. " I shall be delighted " ; but he was 
 thinking, " I can still refuse! I can still refuse! 
 The way of success is up strange ladders." 
 
 For financial reasons alone Martin decided to 
 accept Steinbach's proposal, and when he arrived 
 that night and walked lovingly into the lamp-lit 
 room, Martin said solemnly: 
 
 " I have been thinking over your proposal. I 
 wish to thank you and to say how much I 
 appreciate your interest in me. I accept your 
 of^er with gratitude." 
 
 " Just so," said Steinbach. " It is a queer 
 world." He sat down opposite Martin in an easy 
 chair. Like him he wore dress clothes, as if on a 
 formal occasion. " We shall be sitting together 
 like this in Leipsic, in neither your house nor 
 mine, drinking neither your nor my wine." 
 
 Martin laughed. " It is impossible to be solemn 
 with you." 
 
 " Quite so," said Steinbach ; " we shall become 
 familiar, we shall be rude and quarrel and get 
 on each other's nerves." 
 
 " Help yourself to the cigars and wine," said 
 Martin, pushing a box and a glass across the little
 
 LEIPSIC 101 
 
 table. The room was warm and pleasant, the 
 lamp cast a comfortable light, the wine-glasses and 
 the bottles on the table sparkled Uke jewels. Smoke 
 accumulated in the top of the room, and red shadows 
 of it fell on the faces and hands of the two men. 
 Beyond the circle of light cast by the lamp was a 
 deep brown gloom. The walls of the room sank 
 back into the darkness, and the floor fell away 
 into deep pits at the sides ; the two men sat like 
 giants on the hump of the world with their heads 
 near the sun and their shoulders in the clouds. 
 Bright corners of frames and ornaments on the walls 
 gleamed like distant stars. What would come to 
 them out of the abyss ? When Steinbach re- 
 ceived the burden of Martin upon his mind he felt 
 the floor revolve quickly under his feet, and his 
 chair move half a pace; a lump came into his 
 throat and he felt happy. After a silence he 
 said: 
 
 " I have pushed my way into your life. I have 
 been meditating it for several weeks. This was 
 a good opportunity." — 
 
 " You seem to run on wheels," said Martin, 
 " and to glide through brick and mortar." 
 
 " I am quite concrete. Feel my hand." 
 
 Martin felt his extended hand, and Steinbach 
 grasped Martin's with it. " Do I feel genuine ? " 
 he said, looking at Martin seriously, who threw off 
 his embarrassment with an effort. 
 
 " Yes," he said, " I believe you are." 
 
 " You don't like me."
 
 102 MARTIN SCHtJLER 
 
 " How can I tell? " Martin evaded his assertion. 
 
 " It doesn't matter," murmured Steinbach, 
 
 With an effort Martin looked him in the eyes. 
 
 " I believe you are genuine," he said. 
 
 " Thank you." Steinbach dropped his hand. 
 " Love is a peculiar thing. All attractions are 
 peculiar." He smiled. " Aren't they ? " 
 
 " Yes. That is easily said about anything. Help 
 yourself to wine." 
 
 Steinbach poured out a glass and held it up to 
 the light. " My father always looks through his 
 wine," he said. " I gather nothing from the per- 
 formance." He turned and held up his glass to 
 Martin. " There is comradeship ; may there be 
 friendship ! " 
 
 Martin answered with another quotation : 
 
 " ' I and me are always too earnestly in con- 
 versation ; how could it be endured if there were 
 not a friend ? ' " 
 
 " I thought you did not read ? " said Steinbach 
 with a benign smile on his face. He sipped his 
 glass, then took it from his left hand by the top 
 with the outspread fingers of his right and put it 
 on the table, after which he leant foi-ward with his 
 elbows on his knees and his fat hands hanging 
 loosely from the ends of his arms. " You have 
 read Nietzsche ? " he asked. 
 
 " No," said Martin, " not Nietzsche, only the 
 first part of the " Superman ' and the tirade against 
 Wagner. I like the first part of the ' Superman ' ; 
 I can understand it — my God ! how humble you
 
 LEIPSIC 103 
 
 make me — and I agree with his ideas about women 
 and about stupidity. Perhaps I am an incarnation 
 of the ' Superman,' I say to myself, to balance 
 my humility. I suppose I read Wagner because 
 I think myself his Elisha." 
 
 " I have been to Silvaplana, have you ? " 
 
 "No," answered Martin; " I have been to France 
 and Heidelberg ! " He laughed. " The world- 
 shaking genius will soon have added Leipsic to 
 that Ust." 
 
 " Do you believe in palmistry ? " said Steinbach, 
 leaning a little further forward. 
 
 " The ministers of the dark science are always 
 obscure and uncomplimentary to me," replied 
 Martin laughing. " I am my own prophet. A 
 woman once told me I was the most selfish brute 
 imaginable." 
 
 " Tell me," said Steinbach, " what you thought 
 of Nietzsche upon Wagner." 
 
 "There, I cannot do so," said Martin ; " I have 
 forgotten everything in it. I remember I thought 
 that if Wagner could stir the passions of the body 
 very deeply, and desired to do so, he was to be com- 
 mended. He probably never set out to be an 
 intellectualist. I am not sure that I like trans- 
 cendental intellectualism." 
 
 " I do," said Steinbach. " That is the height 
 of creation ! " 
 
 " But Wagner was a humanitarian and a 
 spirituahst." 
 
 " I should like to know," said Steinbach very
 
 104 IMARTIN SCHtJLEll 
 
 slowly, " whether you have any kindred feeling 
 for other musicians." 
 
 " I do when I see, remember, or hear their music, 
 particularly when I hear it." 
 
 " And what do you feel ? " 
 
 " I cannot tell you. Perhaps I think how clever 
 they are to write this passage thus," 
 
 " Do you weep over Tristan and Isolde ? " 
 
 " I am sick of it. I have heard it ten times in 
 order to try and discover the secret of its power. 
 I feel now as if Saint Saens had written it, but 
 there is some remarkable work in it." 
 
 " Then you despise Tannhauser ? " 
 
 " Oh, my God ! Oh, my God ! " Martin pre- 
 tended to be horror-struck. " I love that beautiful 
 piece of hackneyed melancholy as if it were my own 
 bad temper." 
 
 " You think Wagner was a humanitarian and 
 a spiritualist ; you don't thmk he was an artist 
 and an economist ? " 
 
 "A money-maker?" said Martin. "Perhaps. 
 Perhaps we all are." 
 
 " I don't think any of you have ideals," said 
 Steinbach. " I don't think artists have." 
 
 " I have an ideal of fame," said Martin. " Once 
 I believed I could clap nature into nmsic by letting 
 myself go mad on the hills and writing it down at 
 home. Wagner can represent a storm, Debussy 
 the wind in the trees. I can do better than that. 
 I shall one day stir that question in your minds that 
 has never been answered, and I will answer it."
 
 LEIPSIC 105 
 
 "What is God? " 
 It has never been properly put into words," 
 said Martin ; " the answer can never be in words. 
 When you hear me speak in my fashion you will 
 know the answer." 
 
 " That is what you call transcendental intel- 
 lectualism." 
 
 " I do not call it anything," said Martin. " Oh, 
 my mind, my mind ! It bursts sometimes for the 
 experience it has not got. I am not such a fool 
 as to believe my first opera will reach the goal. 
 I am a perfectionist. I brought a great many ' ists ' 
 and ' isms ' from Paris. I can tell you a great man 
 has a long way to go to be his greatest. Like 
 Napoleon, I sacrifice humanity to myself. When 
 my conscience pricks me I say, ' Do not listen ; 
 these peccadilloes are incommensurate with the 
 necessity of your greatness.' " 
 
 " You will sacrifice me ? " asked Steinbach. 
 
 " What are you, after all, to me ? " said Martin, 
 " but a man who has made me a good offer ? I 
 think you are very kind. I hope I shall always 
 behave honourably with you. I hope there will 
 be no necessity for me to make myself the symbol 
 of ingratitude." 
 
 " I have my aims," said Steinbach, good- 
 humouredly. 
 
 " Nobody's aims but my own are anything to 
 me," said Martin, also pleasantly. 
 
 " Perhaps yours are nothing to me ! " Stein- 
 bach reached for his glass and drank once more.
 
 106 MARTIN SCIKJLER 
 
 i' 
 
 " Perhaps I do not care a rap for anything but the 
 picture of myself twenty years hence that I keep 
 here." He hit the front of his head. 
 
 One ought to honour the enemy in one's 
 friend,' " quoted Martin again. 
 
 ' Thou shalt be closest unto him when thou 
 withstandest him,'" said Steinbach, but he had 
 his doubts in his heart. 
 
 I like you," said Martin ; " we shall be able 
 to be antagonists." 
 
 I did hope we should have been friends." 
 " My antagonist is my friend, as you said yours 
 was your friend just now," answered Martin. 
 
 I had my doubts," Steinbach muttered. 
 
 I could like for my friend," said Martm, stand- 
 ing up and going over to a portfolio, "a man whom 
 I could trust with my bad temper and my selfish- 
 ness, and who would demand nothing from me but 
 the post of keeper of my unpleasant self. A friend 
 that I have to consider and cosset I do not want. 
 I am enough burden to myself without duplicating 
 it. I would be faithful to that man ; he would 
 be the recipient of my bad temper until the end of 
 my days. For kisses he could take my trust, for 
 embraces my music, and for a reward those good 
 days when I chose to be to him my other self. I 
 would put his name on some of my music — on my 
 masterpiece — unless in my stupidity I had made 
 my heart captive to some wietched woman. Now 
 you know what my ideal friend is ; all others 
 are my antagonists. I will have no friend that
 
 LEIPSIC 107 
 
 is not ideal. I either like or hate my antago- 
 nists." 
 
 Steinbach frowned. " You are very difficult 
 to please. Your friend will have to be a woman 
 or a toady. No man could be your genuine friend." 
 . " If I were divine I would dispense with women," 
 said Martin. " I had a friend who told me the 
 truth. Women are necessary to the procreator. 
 I cannot become the father of a child nor of a 
 masterpiece without a woman. The beauty and 
 the voluptuousness of women are necessary to 
 me. There is no substitute, I had a platonic 
 friend. I became the manservant of the woods 
 and all nature. Nothing has inspired mc like the 
 long falling hair of women or their wretched soft 
 curving lips and their white skin. I tell you," 
 he said, " I tell you, this portfolio is a record of 
 my affaires de cceur. My brain becomes clear 
 when I am intoxicated. I drink wine, I take 
 opium to try and urge myself to splendour. If I 
 am not at that point of my revolution where I 
 am turning again into the region of love, I am only 
 mediocre." 
 
 " That is youth," said Steinbach ; " I am an 
 ancient young man." 
 
 Martin hastened to seat himself at the piano. 
 His hands trembled and there was sweat on his 
 brow. The music he put up before him fell down 
 on his hands. He swore and fixed it up again. 
 Steinbach watched him calmly. His oiled hair 
 was getting out of order and his eyes looked tired.
 
 108 MARTIN SCHtJLER 
 
 Steinbach felt sorry for him. He thought, " Poor 
 chap, he must suffer from nerves." Martin began 
 to play. He played several short pieces, songs 
 and airs. Before some of them he exclaimed, 
 " I did this m love," or merely, " In love " ; before 
 others he barked, " Not in love," " Drink," 
 " Opium." He did not play from the music, he 
 watched his hands. At the end he said : 
 
 " Stembach ! " 
 
 Steinbach jumped ; the music was soothing him 
 into far-away thoughts. 
 
 " You have noticed, Steinbach, what I say is 
 perfectly true. I am a genius only when I am in 
 love. When I am not, it is an intellectual feat." 
 
 Steinbach could not truthfully say that he had 
 noticed, but he murmured " Yes." 
 
 " And I get tired of one woman, and they are 
 so easy to get. My conscience ! It is difficult 
 for a man to have one. I do not let it prick me 
 about such little things. I am not the shepherd 
 of the female sex. If they have sense let them shep- 
 herd themselves ; if they have no sense I do not 
 care, they are not worth care." 
 
 " I know a woman to whom I will introduce 
 you," said Steinbach, " whom I respect and honour. 
 You ought to love the best women. The best 
 women are better than the best men." 
 
 " Humorist ! " exclaimed Martin. 
 
 But Steinbach was feeling sentimental. " I 
 say better," he said as he got up — " better, 
 because to-night I feel a^ though they were
 
 LEIPSIC 109 
 
 better. Another night I might be more 
 moderate. Good night, Schiiler." He took Martin's 
 hand again and held it a short time whilst 
 he looked him steadily in the eyes. Martin 
 felt foolish. Those blue magnified eyes might 
 see him through and through, but he could 
 not tell. They might be shining with triumph 
 or with tears. They might belong to an exceedingly 
 stupid man, but they were not the eyes of a genius. 
 " Here is undiluted sanity," said Martin to himself ; 
 " curse it!" 
 
 Steinbach dropped his hand and went out, and 
 when he got out of the door Martin shook himself. 
 " Ugh ! " he exclaimed to himself ; " he sets himself 
 at rne ! " and, flinging himself at the piano, he 
 struck a note in the middle loudly with his fore- 
 finger. He did not strike another. Instead of 
 playing, as he had intended, he went to the brandy 
 bottle and poured himself out a wineglass or two 
 full, which he drank neat. 
 
 Steinbach stood outside in the rain and looked 
 at the grey front of the house. He looked up at 
 the roof and down to the pavement, and across 
 from side to side. It was very hot out in the 
 rain ; there had probably been a thunderstorm 
 in the hills. He heard Martin strike one note and no 
 more. Although it was hot he turned up his grey 
 coat collar and pulled his white silk muffler to his 
 ears. He could feel the rain striking the top of 
 his English bowler. He waited five minutes on 
 the pavement, patiently and, to an outsider,
 
 no MARTIN SCHtlLER 
 
 stupidly. He was not stupid ; what he waited 
 for he could not tell, but he did not go until he was 
 satisfied. Perhaps his body was waiting for his 
 mind to come out of the house. After about five 
 minutes he moved away, and walking on the outside 
 edge of the pavement he came to the bridge. In 
 the middle he stopped and considered. It was a 
 long way down on his side of the waU to the bottom 
 of the well. People outside might think him 
 shallow. He had a sensation of depth, probably 
 because he was looking over a high bridge into a 
 void, but the physical and mental sensations 
 coincided, though they were neither of them 
 expressed in words. 
 
 When he got back to his house he was conscious 
 of feeling better, though better than what he did 
 not know. If he had considered his thought he 
 might have got some light on the matter. He 
 was thinking, " I at least am human," but like 
 most thoughts it went through his mind without 
 holding the attention. As he took off his coat 
 he passed his hand over the wet, heavy material. 
 His hand was as wet as if he had dipped it into 
 water. He suddenly felt in sympathy with his 
 father and sister and all his friends. It seemed 
 to him that Martin could not get wet and would 
 not notice it if he did. " They are all on my side," 
 he thought. " Thank God ! "
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 IT was January. Hella von Rosenthal sat 
 beside Martin in a box at the opera. She 
 was not listening to the music, nor was he. He 
 was dreaming, as he always did when he heard 
 music, about something totally different. Stein- 
 bach sat at the back of the box and watched him. 
 Hella was pleased to be at the theatre with Martin, 
 though she hardly knew him. Steinbach had not 
 succeeded so far in making him her friend. She 
 was thinking what thoughts he must be having 
 when he sat in the darkness like that alone with 
 himself. She wondered what it would be like to 
 kiss him ; she had only kissed Bernard Christian 
 Steinbach amongst men, but he was an ancient 
 friend. She felt quite cold when she went mentally 
 through the experience of kissing Martin. " What 
 hundreds of men women kiss in their imagination," 
 she said to herself. The thought was quite pure. 
 After all, kisses can be as chaste as roses and lilies. 
 She wondered what it would be like to kiss him, 
 because she wanted to know what he was like, 
 not to discover what she herself felt. She next 
 wondered how he would treat a wife or a mistress, 
 and decided that he would treat a wife badly and 
 
 III
 
 112 MARTIN SCHULER 
 
 a mistress well for a short time and cruelly later. 
 " Preserve me from ever being his wife," she thought. 
 She looked at Steinbach. It excited her sense of 
 humour to see him sitting at the back of the box like 
 the keeper of a lunatic. She thought he had a bee 
 in his bonnet. She thought him very good to let 
 Martin spend his money ; she thought him very 
 silly to try and chain such an elemental being to 
 his will. Martin came to her without a past, as so 
 many of our friends do, like a mushroom. All she 
 knew of him was his " Poverty of Croesus," which 
 had caused a considerable sensation amongst 
 Leipsic critics. He seemed a mature person, full 
 of self-command and ability. She tried to grasp 
 the fact that Steinbach wanted to make him write 
 a light opera. It seemed to her incongruous ; it 
 seemed as if her ancient friend was making a mistake. 
 She felt herself siding against him. For years 
 their indefinite feeling of friendship had not expe- 
 rienced anything so strong. They had supposed, 
 in their gentle comradeship, that one day they would 
 marry one another ; she had called him her little 
 fat husband in fun several times. They were to 
 marry, they thought, at the end of his conscription ; 
 and again, after his university course, but nothing 
 had taken place. 
 
 She wore a black velvet gown that evening, and a 
 hat with ostrich feathers, and looked what we should 
 now call old for twenty-six, but at the beginning 
 of this century people looked women long before 
 their girlhood was properly over. She was very
 
 LEIPSIC 113 
 
 good-looking ; some of her friends called her 
 American. She was like a high-class German 
 who has emigrated to America and returned. 
 People sent her postcards of young women drawn 
 by Dana Gibson, and certainly with her fine eyes, 
 her oval face, and beautiful hair rolled up a la 
 Pompadour in front and tied into a large queue 
 with a black ribbon in the nape of her neck, she 
 closely resembled their general outline, but her 
 mouth with its definite curves betrayed her 
 nationality. She had also a beautiful dimple in 
 one cheek, and when she smiled she showed white, 
 regular teeth, and everybody thought she was 
 very handsome. 
 
 Martin deigned to admke her, but she seemed so 
 cold and statuesque that he made no effort to 
 approach her. He lolled back behind the ridicu- 
 lous side curtains of the box, with their ridiculous 
 fringes of little balls, and surveyed Steinbach 
 and Hella. She put up her fan and talked to 
 Bernard behind it. She referred to a joke of his 
 about not being able to manage Martin unless he 
 were going through a crisis or an emotion. Music 
 was supposed to produce the former. 
 
 " A crisis or an emotion ? " she whispered, 
 looking behind her fan towards Martin. 
 
 " I'll hire a beastly piano-player and work my 
 feet off," answered Stembach. " Why don't you 
 sing to him ? " 
 
 " I ? He has not asked me." 
 
 " Ask him." 
 8
 
 lU MARTIN SCHt)LER 
 
 " 1 don't know," said Hell a ; " why should we 
 squeeze operas out of the poor young man ? " 
 
 I want him, don't you understand, to be famous. 
 I do not believe he has gi^and opera in him. He 
 has the other sort. Why, he has half written one. 
 I cannot make him finish it." 
 
 " Are you fond of him ? " said Hell a. 
 
 " Oh, yes, I am fascinated ; to tell you the truth, 
 I am fascinated to see what he can be made to do." 
 
 " I think you are horrible." 
 
 " Who is horrible ? " said Martin, who had been 
 trying to catch the conversation. He leant forward. 
 
 " Bernard is," said Hella. 
 
 " Why ? " 
 
 Hella laughed softly. " Oh, oh," she said, " I 
 simply cannot tell you! That is forbidden, to 
 betray a friend." 
 
 Martin lolled back again behind the cmtain and 
 screwed up his eyes. 
 
 " Fraulein von Rosenthal," he said, " all I can 
 see of you is an obscure whiteness with diamond 
 flashes upon it, all I can see of Bernard is a shirt 
 front and a pair of rimless pince-nez, and those 
 spectral fragments I tell myself are my friends, 
 and yet against me." 
 
 " Quite so," said Steinbach, from the back of the 
 box, and smiled. 
 
 " I see teeth now — the teeth of the devourer." 
 
 Hella laughed. " You are absurd, Herr von 
 Schiller." 
 
 "I am serious. Perhaps you two spectres can
 
 LEIPSIC 115 
 
 enlighten me. In this darkness I can speak frankly. 
 Tell me, oracles, what does my lord and master 
 select that I shall do for him ? Why am I in 
 Leipsic, what is the price of my liberty ? Shade of 
 man and woman, are ye an expression of the devil ? 
 WTiy tempt ye me ? It is all too easy for me to 
 follow. I wish to excel everything and all, you 
 wish me to be easily brilliant. I have sold my 
 soul to a rich man. I try to evade his persuasive- 
 ness ; he brings me a woman to tempt me. I 
 do not wish to be clever in your way. Give me a 
 chance." He spoke in a low, quiet voice. 
 
 Steinbach leant towards him so that he could 
 have touched him with his hand and said also : 
 
 " Give me a chance." 
 
 " The chances are all yours," said Martin. He 
 turned to Hella. " Will you give me a chance ? 
 Your future husband is obdurate." 
 
 " I dare not interfere," she said with a smile, 
 and looked the other way. 
 
 Martin looked at Steinbach. 
 
 " If I could only make out what destiny you 
 have for me," he said. 
 
 " None, none," said Steinbach. " I want you 
 to see what ability you have. I want you to see 
 yourself. Give me my chance ; you are welcome 
 to discard me afterwards, but you will not discard 
 me. I have studied you for almost a year ; I know 
 your abilities better than you imagine, also your 
 temperament. Finish me the ' Coquettes.' You 
 will thank me when you get the net profits."
 
 116 MARTIN SCHULER 
 
 " This is an odd moment to talk business." 
 
 " You are an odd man. Half the business of 
 the world is done in odd moments." 
 
 The lights went up for the interval and Stein- 
 bach rose. His time was up for that day, probably 
 for a long period ; you could not badger a man 
 like Martin. He managed to whisper to Hella 
 as he went out, " Ask him to supper with us at 
 your house and sing to him — sing to him." 
 
 When he had gone, Hella started a conversa- 
 tion. 
 
 " Don't you think," she said, leaning her beautiful 
 arm along the edge of the box and looking over — 
 " don't you think people are too isolated nowadays 
 each within himself ? " 
 
 " I certainly feel isolated," said Martin. 
 
 " Look over the edge of the box," she went on, 
 " at that pink creature and that blue creature 
 and all the other creatures. Do they look to have 
 one single sympathy ? " 
 
 "I do not know," said Martin ; "I cannot 
 imagine myself partitioned amongst many." 
 
 " No," said Hella, " we shall cast lots for you." 
 
 " That will be very charming ; you will tell me 
 who wins ? " 
 
 "Oh, we shall not tell you! But the stakes 
 will be enormous." 
 
 " What sort of stakes ? " 
 
 Hella smiled sweetly with her eyes and mouth 
 at him. " Oh, I do not know ! " she said ; 
 " piano-players, reputations, peace of mind, self-
 
 
 LEIPSIC 117 
 
 esteem, and all sorts of things. You see you are 
 something to have and to hold." 
 
 You are flattering me." 
 
 Will you come to supper with us ? " said Hella 
 suddenly. 
 
 " I shall be delighted," said Martin ; but he 
 nearly yawned. 
 
 As they left the opera-house, Hella said to Stein- 
 bach, "He is coming. I am doing this to amuse 
 myself, but how it wiD amuse me I cannot see." 
 And then she laughed. " I am not in your power 
 too, am I ? " 
 
 Steinbach smiled. " Just so ! You are part of 
 the game ! " 
 
 She put her hand on his arm and shook her head 
 with a frown. 
 
 " No, no," she said ; " you are too young to have 
 a sensible woman in your power. I will do this 
 to oblige you. I do not want a midnight name. 
 You must remember I live alone." 
 
 " This will not make you a cocotte," said Stein- 
 bach. He smiled again. " Anyone can have 
 supper \vith a man this twentieth century." 
 
 " I look upon you as my protector," said Hella, 
 joking. " How you throw away my reputation ! 
 When a man wants anything every sacrifice must 
 be made ! " 
 
 Steinbach frowned. "HI could not trust him 
 with a sane woman," he said, "would I send him 
 to you ? "
 
 118 MARTIN SCHULER 
 
 " It will not be a success," said Hella ; " bring 
 him on Wednesday." 
 
 Martin had gone to look for a taxicab. 
 
 " What a long time that man is with the cab," 
 she went on. "Don't bring him to-night; say 
 I have a headache. Really, dearest friend, I 
 only want myself and you, if you will come." 
 
 "Oh, darling Hella ! " Steinbach answered, " you 
 ought not to fail your old friend." 
 
 " I wish we were married," said Hella with a 
 sigh. 
 
 " We will be when the ' Coquettes ' is produced." 
 
 " I believe you have somebody else in your eye." 
 
 " No, I have nobody else in my eye. Here's 
 Schiiier." 
 
 " You look like husband and wife from the 
 street," said Martin as he came up. 
 
 They laughed. 
 
 " I have known this creature from childhood," 
 said Hella affectionately. 
 
 " And I this creature," said Steinbach, taking 
 her hand. 
 
 " Leave me alone and get married," said Martin 
 cheerfully. 
 
 They went down the steps and got into the cab. 
 Hella got in first, Martin second, and Steinbach, 
 who held the door, made a feint, cried, " All right " 
 to the driver, and was left standing on the pave- 
 ment as the taxi buzzed away. 
 
 " Hullo ! " said Martin, leaning out of the window, 
 " where is he going ? "
 
 LEIPSIC 119 
 
 " I do not know," said Hella. 
 
 "I am trapped/' Martin ejaculated, as he sank 
 back on the seat. 
 
 "We are trapped," said she, 
 
 "It is impossible to escape that man," said 
 Martin, half seriously. " One day I shall shoot 
 him." 
 
 " Yes," said Hella, " he has a curious capacity 
 for making people do what he wants." 
 
 Martin was talking to Hella and eating sand- 
 \viches. 
 
 " Since I came to Leipsic," he said, " I have 
 changed. Paris made me stop being a foolish youth, 
 but Leipsic ! Oh, my God ! I have moods here. 
 I find that my temper is bad and I become depressed, 
 most terribly depressed. I have long periods when 
 I fail to know myself. I fail to recognize my actions . 
 Before, there never appeared to be more than one 
 way. And how do I now decide ? It is all luck ; 
 whichever I like best at the moment I do. I am 
 insecure. I wander. There is nothing to prevent 
 me from doing any mad thing. I step. I take 
 another step, but whether north or south I cannot 
 tell." 
 
 " It is change of place," said Hella. She was 
 seated on a sofa before an open fire. He was 
 standing beside the mantelpiece, sticking his first 
 finger into the crevices of an elaborate china group. 
 He went on : 
 
 " I was so sure when I was young. Without
 
 120 MARTIN SCHtJl.ER 
 
 thinking, a few years ago, I seduced a respectable 
 girl in a wood." 
 
 Hella's eyes intensified. 
 
 " I stole a manuscript from under the dead 
 body of a man — a man called Werner." 
 
 "Yes." said Hella ; "the 'Ways of Water' 
 fellow?" 
 
 " I thought well of that man," continued Martin ; 
 " he was curious — a dream, not real. It was a 
 queer life in those days ! He was my very good 
 friend. How dim the past is ! I remember clearly, 
 though, some of his unpalatable remarks to me. 
 He did not praise me. I remember how happy I 
 was to receive my patrimony. It wiped away any 
 sorrow I had for my father. I long to be at home 
 now. My sister Bertha was charming : now she 
 is a house-frau. Of course they were not your 
 kind of folk ; we are quite common people. It is 
 all vanished away like steam. I can never recall 
 to you, except in music, the charm of those past 
 days ! Have you been to Heidelberg ? The beauti- 
 ful woods and rivers ! Surely, I think to myself 
 as I recollect them, Paris and Helen dwelt 
 here ! " 
 
 " I have had no home for three years," said 
 Hella. " I am independent. I live alone. I am 
 sorry you are unhappy." 
 
 "I am not exactly unhappy," said Martin, 
 sitting down with a sigh. He adjusted the crease 
 in his trousers, and then hid his face in his hands. 
 
 " Bernard told me to sing to you," said Hella.
 
 LEIPSIC 121 
 
 " Damn Bernard ! " he cried, suddenly crossing 
 his legs and folding his arms across his breast. 
 " You are the only human being I have met for 
 weeks." 
 
 " Are we human ? " 
 
 " That is the point," cried Martin violently, 
 changing his position again ; " who is human ? 
 what is real ? what is false ? what are dreams ? " 
 
 " I am twenty-six," said Hella, without any 
 reason but an intricate chain of thoughts. 
 
 " I am nearly twenty-five," answered Martin. 
 
 " Bernard and I have been friends," she said, 
 " for years. He is so rational and gentle. He is 
 so sane in his judgments, so human." 
 
 " I cannot get familiar or at all at ease with him," 
 said Martin, standing up again. "I am so pleased 
 I have met you ; I have a friend in Leipsic ! Ah ! 
 Leipsic, now thou art more to me than a mere pile 
 of bricks." 
 
 " Please come and see me whenever you like," 
 said Hella ; "if you like me to-morrow, if I am 
 human." 
 
 " I have never met so clever a woman " — Martin 
 bowed — " one so human and — may I say it ? — 
 so much my equal." 
 
 " Oh ! " said Hella, laughing, " I can say the 
 same of you. We are two genuine and private 
 beings." 
 
 " Yes," said Martin. 
 
 " And you in public are a musical genius, and 
 I a "
 
 122 MARTIN SCHULER 
 
 Martin interrupted — " A very beautiful woman." 
 
 Hella made eyes at him. 
 
 " Good-night, Martin Schiiler ; we shall meet 
 again." 
 
 " Assuredly, many, many times. Allow me the 
 privilege of a friend." He kissed her hand, and, 
 looking up with a smile, said : 
 
 " Hella, next time perhaps you will sing one of 
 my songs to me." 
 
 Before she had answered he had kissed her cheek 
 and gone out of the door. 
 
 A most delicious feeling came to her. Happiness 
 suffused her mind and body. She half shut her 
 eyes as she stood, bathed in delight. Suddenly 
 she laughed girlishly, and M'ent to the mantelpiece 
 to get a cigarette, but when she found herself 
 standing just where he had stood, she hid her face 
 in her hands and said aloud, " Oh, I am happy, I 
 am hap-py ! Martin, Martin, Martin ! " Then, 
 almost delirious with pure joy, she hastened to her 
 bed in order that darkness might prolong her 
 gladness, and give her her desired dreams.
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 STEINBACH gave a dinner party some weeks 
 later to his young men friends. His dinner 
 parties were intellectual at the beginning 
 and often rowdy at the end. To this dinner 
 party came Griffenhousen, who knew more about 
 the antiquities of Greece than any man of his 
 years ; Paul Reinherz and Maurice von Rittenberg, 
 historic authors, one stout and one Bohemian ; 
 an artist, August Falls; another artist, Jensen 
 Christenholm, a Swede, who painted only naked 
 women as they were, not as the general public 
 supposes they are; the sixth was a Russian Pole, 
 who had tabulated human nature during his resi- 
 dence in a Siberian prison, and who, likeDostoieffsky, 
 had returned much the worse in health and 
 morals, to write novels. His novels were bad, 
 though startling. He was always in debt, always 
 unclean and fierce in behaviour, though of a weak 
 and mild appearance. His teeth were far apart, his 
 eyes pale and short-sighted, his hair lank and fair. 
 Martin was amused by him, probably because he 
 was a foreigner, and certainly he said amazing 
 things in an amazing way. 
 Martin was not in time for dinner. Nobody 
 
 133
 
 124 MARTIN SCHtlLER 
 
 waited for him. They seated tliemselves in Stein- 
 bach's modern dining-room round a round table 
 covered \vith fruit and wine. The Russian began 
 to smoke at once. He was supposed to suffer 
 from epilepsy, but his fits never occurred unless 
 he could gain something by them. He had fits in 
 the drawing-rooms of rich people in order that 
 they might put him to bed and look after him for 
 several days, 
 
 " Where is Schiiler ? " said Reinherz, looking at 
 the empty chair, 
 
 " Chez Hella von Rosenthal," said Steinbach. 
 
 Somebody made an indecent and obvious 
 remark. 
 
 "He is still a rose in the bud," said August 
 Falls, the artist, 
 
 " We expected more than we have got," sneered 
 Christenholm, the other artist. " The life of music 
 is short. Music is a spasmodic art. We are all 
 fools if we expect any more musicians for a thousand 
 years." 
 
 " Oh, pooh ! " cried Rittenberg as he swallowed 
 his hors d'ctuvres noisily, "don't you tell me that. 
 It is art that is on the wane." 
 
 Knives and forks clattered and glasses clinked. 
 Wine was poured out of bottles ; everything seemed 
 to be in shimmering movement like sunlit water, 
 
 " Steinbach, you got a bad e.^g when you went to 
 Heidelberg," said somebody. 
 
 Steinbach was silent. He did not like being 
 laughed at.
 
 LEIPSIC 125 
 
 The Russian spoke. " What is everybody say- 
 ing ? My premonitions are wrong, perhaps." 
 
 " What premonitions ? " everybody cried. 
 
 " That I shall have a recurrence of my illness 
 to-night." 
 
 " Oh, pooh ! " cried Rittenberg, " we shall souse 
 you in the bath if you do." 
 
 The noise grew, the plate clattered, voices 
 hummed, buzzed, and shouted. Griffenhousen 
 ate little, Steinbach nothing, the others a great deal. 
 Griffenhousen whispered to Steinbach : 
 
 " You have lost Schiiler." 
 
 " Perhaps," he answered stiffly. 
 
 " I suppose von Rosenthal is his mistress." 
 
 " Perhaps," said Steinbach stiffly again. 
 
 " People talk about them. He kisses her pub- 
 licly at her soirees." 
 
 " I daresay." 
 
 " I am sorry for you, Bernard. What a dis- 
 appointment. He is running to seed, I suppose. 
 We all expected something this March." 
 
 " You shall have it in October," Steinbach 
 barked. He was angry and hurt and annoyed with 
 Martin because he had not come to dinner. Martin 
 was hardly ever to be seen nowadays. He took 
 himself off to Hella's house, and the house of 
 rich men who flattered him and treated him like a 
 prince. He spent Steinbach's money, came back 
 drunk now and then, and gambled, rode, and 
 danced his time away. 
 
 Then there was Hella. He, Steinbach, had lost
 
 126 MARTIN SCHtJLER 
 
 her, but she seemed to have opened the gates of 
 life to Martin. It would have been easy to throw 
 Martin over, and kick him out of the house, but 
 Steinbach was hampered by jealousy, by fear lest 
 somebody else should participate in the success 
 that he himself hoped for ; and by love, because 
 he loved Martin and looked upon him as a 
 responsibihty. 
 
 Doors banged. The door of the dining-room 
 was flung open and Martin, gay and joyous, came 
 into the room. 
 
 " Hail, my friends ! " he cried. " Ccesar is late ! " 
 Then flung himself into a vacant chair. The servant 
 offered him hors d'cciivres. " No," he said, " I'll 
 go on with the rest." 
 
 " How is Hella ? " somebody said. 
 
 Martin frowned slightly. " Hella is very well," he 
 answered. " Make me a cigarette, Machinkoff ! " 
 
 Macliinkoff made him a cigarette, then stood up 
 and leant across the table, with a slight bow, to 
 hand it. " My friend," he said, in a voice too 
 deep for his exterior, " the immutable truth lived 
 at the bottom of the well." Nobody knew what he 
 meant, but somebody clapped his hands and said, 
 " Well done, Machinkoff." 
 
 " What do you mean ? " said Martin. 
 
 " Next time you are with your girl," answered 
 Machinkoff, " threaten to kiU her. Threaten to 
 kill a woman if you care for her mind. If you only 
 care for her body, do the same. It is amusing." 
 
 " The lunatic," said Falls.
 
 LEIPSIC 1J7 
 
 " I once in fun threatened to kill a girl," said 
 Christenholm ; " she was in her bath ; I spoke 
 through a locked door. She thought I should 
 drown her, so to save herself from being drowned, 
 she killed herself by jumping from the window," 
 
 Rittenberg thought no woman's equanimity 
 would stand a threat of death. Griffenhousen 
 said everything was less dear than life to some 
 people, but that others valued many things more. 
 He himself did not care how soon he died. 
 
 Machinkoff in a flash produced a revolver, and 
 fired it off in the air. The suggestion caused 
 Griffenhousen to think he had been taken at his 
 word, and he fainted. A commotion took place, 
 but he soon recovered and lived for many years 
 under the shadow of that joke. 
 
 Soon order was restored, and choice wines and 
 cigars were spread in the smoking-room, where all 
 the men shortly repaired. The din became deafen- 
 ing until Machinkoff, who hated noise of any kind 
 after his long and silent Siberian sojourn, suggested 
 cards, and no sooner were they all seated at cards 
 than he began to tell the fortunes of the three 
 men at his table from the hands they held. The 
 fortunes were banal enough, but as nobody is proof 
 against the black arts, soon everybody was clamour- 
 ing for a display of clairvoyance, except Steinbach, 
 who said he believed in God. 
 
 " If you will," said Machmkoff, " I must ; but 
 if I have a fit, be it upon your heads." 
 
 " Upon our heads be it," cried everybody.
 
 128 MARTIN SCHtlLER 
 
 Machinkoff looked from one to the other. He was 
 a little drunk, he was excited, he hardly knew what 
 he said. " All have blank faces," he said. 
 
 " Griff enhousen is a fool and of no use in this 
 world. What are the antiquities ? We live a 
 little in the present. He is in too much of a hurry 
 to belong to the past." 
 
 " Father of heaven ! " he suddenly cried, looking 
 at Martin, about whom he felt a stupid jealousy, 
 but whom he dared not mention first for fear of 
 being accused of charlatanism ; "Jensen Christen- 
 holm must beware of himself. He is a low and 
 cruel man. Thy place in hell is hot, Jensen Chris- 
 tenholm ! I see the devil with his tongs nipping 
 the soft parts of your body." He pretended to 
 shiver as if in the first stages of a fit. Christ enholm 
 laughed, but he felt the powers of evil run coldly 
 down his spine. When denounced, one's con- 
 victions are apt to give way ; even in fun it is 
 uncomfortable to be denounced. The Russian 
 took a drink of brandy, and, becoming more drunk 
 and more excitable, let out a flow of language that 
 was unintelligible even to himself. 
 
 " I see," suddenly burst out Machinkoff," Martin 
 Schiller crucified upon a high tree. ' Unfaithful ! 
 unfaithful ! ' cry the carrion crows as they 
 pluck out his once luminous eyes. Unfaithful ! 
 unfaithful ! His bonds burst, he falls from the tree. 
 He walks. He is full of death. Damned art thou, 
 Martin Schiiler, one way and another. I have lived 
 in prisons, I have worked in mines, I have stenched
 
 LEIPSIC 129 
 
 with filth and degradation, but I have not stenched 
 as Martin Schiiler stenches in his death's walk." 
 Machinkoff wrestled with his collar and groaned. 
 " Oh, I am bewildered at the sight of your degrada- 
 tion ! No diamond is true that will not withstand 
 fire. Hark ! Hark ! He howls as the dogs tear 
 him. As he walks, dogs tear him. Is he alive ? 
 Yes ! Dogs tear him. Do you see yourself as 
 you prowl in the night ? What a labour to live. 
 At the top of the hill you will die. How steep the 
 hill is, how barbarous the rocks ! ' Is there no 
 top to this hill,' you cry. At the top you die. You 
 live a little longer after you are dead — a minute 
 perhaps. That minute is everlasting, that is 
 hell. Hell is timeless ; hell has no locality ; for 
 you it is that minute when you are dead on the top 
 of the hill ! " 
 
 Machinkoff shuddered and pitched forward. Two 
 of the men caught him, and brandy was poured 
 down his throat. In a minute he spoke. " There," 
 he said, " I almost had a fit," but his eye was steady 
 and cold, he was pleased because he had made a 
 sensation ; he was looking for Martin. Martin 
 and Steinbach had gone. Steinbach was walking 
 in the dining-room ; in a miserable temper. He had 
 gone there at the outbreak of clairvoyance. Martin 
 had just been in to him and had struck his face. 
 Before he had time to retaliate or do anything else 
 Martin was gone. 
 
 When Martin arrived at Hella's house it was 
 9
 
 130 MARTIN SCHtJLER 
 
 after midnight. He let himself in with a key and 
 went to her bedroom. The opening of the door woke 
 her. She saw the outline of a man. 
 
 " Who is it ? " she said breathlessly. 
 
 " I," said Martin. " I am betrayed ! " 
 
 " Who has betrayed you ? " 
 
 " Steinbach. Oh, my God, my God ! " he cried ; 
 " I shall kill him. I shall go back and kill him 
 and then myself." 
 
 Hella sprang from the bed and ran to him. 
 " Don't, don't ! " she cried. " Oh, Martin, don't ! " 
 She felt his breast heave in fury. 
 
 " I must kill that man. I have struck him : 
 I must kill him." 
 
 " No, no ! " Hella left him hastily and put on 
 a dressing-gown. Then she led him into the drawing- 
 room. She believed he was drunk. 
 
 " My dear," she said, holding his arm as they 
 stood watching the red embers of the fire ; " my 
 dear, do nothing rash." 
 
 " Rash ! " howled Martin. " He hired a Russian 
 to insult me ! He cannot goad me into servility 
 with his insults. I shall kill him. Let me but 
 tear up all I have written, let me but get back when 
 they have all gone ! " 
 
 " You must tear nothing up — for my sake," 
 said Hella. " Remember you are going to be my 
 husband in May. My husband ! I want my hus- 
 band and all his works. I love his beautiful works. 
 Oh, dearest Martin, I love you." 
 " May is not the question now," said Martin;
 
 LEIPSIC 131 
 
 " I shall shoot Steinbach." He renounced, how- 
 ever, his last intention to shoot Steinbach as he 
 said it. Hella was crying. How lovely she looked 
 with her hair flowing over her shoulders ! She was 
 good too. She loved Martin perfectly and un- 
 selfishly, and an agony filled her heart lest he 
 should do anything outrageous. 
 
 " Darling, "she said, " you must not kill Bernard." 
 
 Martin growled, " You can marry him." The 
 reply, " But he will be shot," sprang to her lips. 
 She almost smiled as she answered instead, " I do 
 not love him." 
 
 They still stood in front of the fireplace. Martin's 
 hands were in his pockets. He frowned and puffed 
 out his cheeks. 
 
 " I cannot go back to his house." 
 
 A huge wave, like a wave of the sea, caught up 
 Hella's spirit and threw it at his feet. 
 
 " You can stay here," she said meekly. 
 
 " I cannot." 
 
 " You come here often," she said, almost bitterly. 
 
 " I do," he sighed, but he turned and took her 
 into his arms. "Hella, Hella, my love ! " 
 
 She put her arms round his neck and whispered 
 in his ear, " We will go to Switzerland. Up in 
 the mountains you will forget ; just alone, you and 
 I, and you can call me your wife." 
 
 " My wife," said Martin, kissing her hand. 
 
 " And we will not think of Bernard at all." 
 
 " Yes," he said ; " I will shake his dust off the 
 soles of my feet."
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 IN those days it was still possible to evade 
 the English in Switzerland, but then one 
 lacked convenient hotels and life was not 
 very comfortable. Martin and Hella wished 
 above everything to avoid people, so they went 
 neither to Davos, Caux, nor St. Moritz. Lunn 
 was beginning to popularize the Bernese Oberland 
 as a winter resort for the English and to import 
 as social attractions, to regions where society had 
 never yet flourished, certain poorer members of 
 the British aristocracy. It was probably a scheme 
 remunerative to Mr. Lunn and to the Swiss, but to 
 Hella and Martin, who wished to discover some 
 place where men and women were few, its results 
 did not appeal. Finally they took a chalet near 
 Les Avants, because Les Avants was small, 
 accessible, and not too high. 
 
 There, in a small chalet overlooking the lake 
 of Geneva, they began their life together. All day 
 they wandered in the beautiful clear winter sun- 
 shine, or climbed the Col du Lion, or walked down 
 the gorge beside the half-frozen mountain torrent. 
 Below and above their chalet grew immense pines 
 of a description only to be met with in those shaded 
 
 132
 
 LEIPSIC 133 
 
 mountain valleys, p)ines from whose boughs the 
 frozen snow continually slipped with a soft swish. 
 In those calm still days of winter sunshine this 
 was the only noise that invaded their peace. How 
 blissful and how idle their life was. Beauty and 
 goodness filled their hearts, they were as pure as the 
 endless snow upon the mountains. Sometimes 
 they walked high upon the hill-side to gaze at the 
 panorama of the Italian mountains, sometines they 
 went even higher amongst the rocks to gain a view 
 of Mont Blanc, remote and blu?, like a peak of 
 mist. Before them, wherever they went, stretched 
 the lake and the long Rhone valley, terminating 
 in the beautiful Dent du Midi. Sometimes they 
 took the train down to Vevey and pretended to 
 be frivolous at a tea-shop ; sometimes they ventured 
 on the lake. Hella was never tired of looking at 
 Chillon, she sailed past it, and walked past it, and 
 entered it several times. But there was no snow 
 in Montreux or Vevey, so that in spite of romantic 
 and frivolous attractions they did not very often go 
 down there. They preferred to be high up in the 
 whiteness of the snow, or under the warm shade 
 of the gigantic pines. They read many books 
 together and watched many sunsets, Martin, to 
 the outward eye, was changed. He wTote no 
 music nor did he talk about it except vaguely when 
 Hella opened the subject, which she did not fre- 
 quently do. He was mild, kind, and happy. The 
 joy of loving well and generously one who was so 
 good and who depended entirely upon him for her
 
 184 MARTIN SCHULER 
 
 happiness took hold of him. He did all she asked 
 him, went where she wished, sought to please her 
 and to make her as happy as himself. One lovely 
 day succeeded another. Rousseau in his highest 
 idyllic dream, his best idyllic experience, never 
 surpassed the beauty of those winter days. ITie 
 golden sunshine, the dark green trees, the white 
 snow, the blue lake, entered their hearts. They 
 were one with the beauty of nature. Their thoughts 
 and their conversation were too blissful to tell. 
 They dwelt in heaven. Marvels of existence were 
 revealed to them ; they spoke to one another of 
 these revelations. Nothing in the world seemed 
 impossible. The highest and most remote came 
 within their reach. They grasped it, they rode 
 among the stars. At night, in the cold glitter of the 
 moon, they would stand on their veranda wrapped 
 in the same fur cloak, and without speech would 
 enter into one another's souls. Not a moment of 
 the day or night were they apart. Their familiarity 
 became complete. Short, happy days, and long, 
 rapturous nights glided past — a never-ending day, 
 a never-ending night. The depths of their souls 
 were disclosed, their minds were awakened to their 
 own deepness, the profundity of human nature, 
 the magnitude of human love. 
 
 They met in that oblivion where the human 
 soul becomes utterly lost in one perfect light made 
 of the essence of oneness, made of the perfection 
 of thought, and of the perfection of physical tension, 
 when every nerve of the body is alive and perfectly
 
 LEIPSIC 185 
 
 controlled. They knew the complete self-con- 
 sciousness of the body when it meets the body in 
 no ugly frenzy of inequality but in the loveliness 
 of the purest free-will and the passionless beauty 
 of restraint. The delicate and most wonderful 
 contacts of supreme love : beautiful and strong 
 finger-touches, the light caresses, the meeting of 
 lips and length of limb : give wings to the soul, 
 upon which it flies a million miles above the stars, 
 so that they look below like silver streaks in space. 
 The soul poises a little while looking downwards ; 
 it cannot look up, it is supreme ; it looks sideways 
 and around for it knows that this instant of time 
 will never return except in memory. It shines 
 white like pure light and suddenly bursts into a 
 million silvery sparks that shower and scatter 
 and flow forth like the fountains of the day. An 
 instant, and then darkness falls over space, and with 
 sighs the body loses itself in the body and the lips 
 join in one unutterable annihilation, and time, 
 pain, and consciousness, restraint, beauty, and attain- 
 ment, life, desire, passion, and supremacy fade into 
 the deepness of the wonderful and silent night. 
 
 When the snow began to melt and to lay bare 
 great green patches on the hillside, they gathered 
 hepatica and crocuses together, primsoses and 
 white and purple violets. The saturated fields 
 were full of flowers. They wandered down the 
 slopes through little woods and crawled under 
 bushes for the hepatica; "fille avant la m^re " it 
 is called because the mauve flowers appear long
 
 136 MARTIN SCHIJLER 
 
 before the leaves. No day passed during the 
 spring thaw without a walk. They walked chiefly 
 in the gorge, and Martin, intrepid and bold, waded 
 out of sheer lightness of heart across the widest 
 part of the torrent with Hella in his arms. Their 
 ecstatic happiness seemed not to wane ; neither of 
 them could surfeit of love-making and kissing. 
 Every time they kissed was a new love. In the 
 woods sometimes they would suddenly kiss, and a 
 blind oneness would possess them for a moment. 
 Sometimes they denied themselves an embrace till 
 their hearts cried out to meet. They found a 
 thousand expressions of their love. When the 
 clouds rolled below them, close upon the lake, they 
 had the sensation of being in that material heaven 
 so dear to man's imagination. When they de- 
 scended through the fir trees down into the valley 
 they had the sensation of sinking into the oblivion 
 of love. When they stood high upon the hills in 
 the wind of early spring, they felt young and strong. 
 Courage, weariness, hope, sadness, aspiration, 
 wonder, fear, thankfulness : none of these things 
 did they experience. In their bliss was nothing 
 but gladness, certainty, and attainment.
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 MARCH became April, and April May, and 
 Martin Schiiler went to Interlaken with 
 Hella von Rosenthal. They had heard 
 nothing from Steinbach, though Martin, in a moment 
 of good feeling towards humanity, had written an 
 apology to him. 
 
 In those days, behind the Hotel du Nord was a 
 field full of flowers : forget-me-nots, primroses, and 
 daisies ; fuller of flowers than any other field in 
 the world. It was away from the main road, beside 
 an old monastery church, the vaults of which were 
 used as a beer cellar. Here in the early part of 
 summer, before visitors infested Interlaken, one 
 could pass whole days and see nobody but an 
 occasional peasant. Hella called it the Champs 
 Elys^es, for she and Martin frequently sat there 
 together and talked and wrote poetry and passed 
 idyllic days. When they were tired of the sight of 
 the Jungfrau and the Scheidech and the well- 
 wooded foothills of the Oberland, they sat beneath 
 the shadow of the huge walnut trees that grew 
 beside the church. The ancient trees and the old 
 church were, in quality and colour, like those old 
 trees and churches which one sees in landscape 
 
 137
 
 138 MARTIN SCHllLER 
 
 pictures of the late eighteenth century. There 
 was repose beneath them, and a feeling of rural 
 domesticity. Here village revels were held in 
 former times, and solemn Calvinistic ceremonies 
 performed. Here children sometimes played while 
 their mothers gossiped and made lace. Hans 
 Andersen probably saw Rudi's prototype kiss a 
 village girl in the secluded shadows of the church 
 walls ; probably Byron had lolled upon these 
 grasses, dressed fantastically in peasant costume, 
 handsome and emotional, lazy and energetic. The 
 ancient quality of that shady place brought peace 
 and the quiet things of love closer to Hella. She 
 enjoyed the placid calmness of her love there as 
 one enjoys the serenity of a lake after the turmoil 
 of the ocean. 
 
 In the warm afternoon, when she and Martin 
 sat together there, the proprietor of the Hotel du 
 Nord, their host, used to watch them through 
 a gap in the hedge that gave access to this field. 
 He was a fat Swiss, and habitually wore a grey 
 suit and a small straw hat. He used to wonder 
 how Herr and Madame von Schiiler could lie for 
 such hours in a common field instead of com- 
 mandeering his carriages for endless expeditions. 
 He spent a long time in that gap wondering who 
 the von Schiilers were, and excused his idleness by 
 pretending to scare birds off his grass-seed patch. 
 People did not usually come to his small hotel so 
 early. When the first visitor came the seed grass 
 was usually cut, his wife had usually been replaced
 
 LEIPSIC 189 
 
 by a chef, and his son by a few waiters more awake 
 to their work. 
 
 On the tenth of May Martin received a parcel 
 from Steinbach with a short, business-Uke letter 
 asking him kindly to go through the contents and 
 to make what alterations he liked. Martin did as 
 he was asked and then thrust the parcel into his 
 portmanteau. 
 
 One hot morning, as he and Hella lay in their 
 field, Hella sighed and said, " I could live and die 
 in this field ! " She lay on her stomach underneath 
 a blue parasol. " I love these forget-me-nots and 
 I love you." Then she whispered, " Forget-w^- 
 not, forget-m^-not ! " and ran her hands through 
 the grass and flowers as if they were the hair of 
 the earth's head. " Haven't we been happy here ? " 
 She picked all the forget-me-nots in her reach. 
 '* I never want to go back to Leipsic." 
 
 " I should hke to go to Lauterbrunnen again," 
 said Martin ; "I want to see old Staubach once 
 more." 
 
 " You old tourist," smiled Hella. 
 
 " You can stay here for ever," said Martin, 
 " if you hke." 
 
 " It is not nice in summer, I know by experience ! 
 If we could only keep the weather, and the wistaria, 
 and the emptiness, and this flowery field ! " 
 
 " Hella," said Martin, " I love you inexpressibly." 
 They looked into each other's eyes for a moment. 
 
 Then Martin said, " Hella ! " 
 
 "Yes."
 
 140 jMARTIN SCHtlLER 
 
 " Steinbach has sent me my opera comedy 
 finished." 
 
 " What ? that comedy ! " 
 
 " Yes ; I am amazed. It is wonderfully amal- 
 gamated ; he must have rifled my desk. All the 
 best parts I ever made for it and a multitude of 
 harmonies and odd tunes are incorporated. Two 
 songs need alteration. I did not think such a 
 thing was possible. It is very good. Do you 
 object if I ask him to come down here for a week ? " 
 
 " Oh," cried Hella, " do not let us spoil this with 
 him ! I would rather go back : either idea is 
 hateful. Martin ! " 
 
 " I am afraid I must see him," said Martin ; 
 " I have the fever. I did not realize that I had 
 done such brilliant works of art." He laughed. " It 
 is really a very nice comedy ; the waltzes and songs 
 are charming. Steinbach will have it played for me 
 on the first of June, my twenty-fifth birthday. He 
 is an admirable ass. The book is good, too." 
 
 Hella's heart sank into the bottomless pit. 
 " Oh ! " she said, " this was too lovely to last. 
 Martin, I want the impossible." 
 
 " What, dear love ? " said Martin, rolling under 
 the parasol. 
 
 She stuck pink forget-me-nots in his moustache. 
 His moustache was too short to hold flowers. 
 They fell out as he kissed her hands. 
 
 " I want to be alone with you always," she said. 
 
 " We will always be happy," said Martin ; " we 
 will get a house in Leipsic."
 
 LEIPSIC 141 
 
 " It will be funny to return," said Hella ; " I 
 am not what I was when I left it ; how much 
 happier, a thousand times happier ! Do you know 
 I am a bad woman ? " 
 
 " What ? " said Martin, kissing her ear. 
 
 " A bad woman," cried Hella, laughing and push- 
 ing his face away because his breath tickled her. 
 
 " You have been faithful to me," said Martin. 
 
 She put her head down on the grass and looked 
 sideways at his face, which was close to her own. 
 
 " I am so happy," she said, " I have gone to 
 the devil. Darling, you can throw me off absolutely 
 any minute." 
 
 " So I can," said Martin. 
 
 Hella had never discussed their relationship 
 before ; they had both taken it for granted. 
 Now she did so with a beating heart and a pleasant 
 feeling of daring. 
 
 " I am your mistress," she said. 
 
 Martin put his hand over her mouth. His 
 unconventionality was almost shocked. "Lawful 
 observances are nothing to me," he said ; "if 
 I ceased to love you I should leave you in any case. 
 Tell me, who is in the happier position, a wife who 
 has divorced her husband, or a deserted mistress ? 
 Both are free in either case." 
 
 " Do not talk about it any more," said Hella. 
 
 " No," said Martin. " It is too hot here ; my 
 legs are burnt. The sun makes me sweat." 
 
 " I like it," said Hella ; " I like being very hot 
 It will make me thin."
 
 142 MARTIN SCHULER 
 
 " You are thin enough. I forbid you to alter. 
 I should have to learn you again — you, whom I 
 know perfectly." 
 
 Hella kissed him under the parasol. 
 
 It was very hot, and high noon, so presently they 
 went and sat under the walnut trees. Blue shadows 
 and white sunsliine chequered the grass upon which 
 they sat. 
 
 " I have been idle," said Martin. 
 
 " I have been happy," said Hella. She felt as 
 if this moment were the end of something precious, 
 as if it were a moment placid to the mind, yet, to 
 the deeper consciousness, one of grave importance, 
 like the day when war becomes inevitable, or 
 when death begins to set in — a day without apparent 
 significance. Her deeper consciousness said " Fare- 
 well," and put in the irrevocable past a season 
 that to her would make her Hfe worth having been 
 lived. Although she knew that her natural 
 attitude was gone, and that every day would now 
 be wasted in an endeavour to make the most of 
 it, when Martin said, " I think I shall go back 
 to-morrow," she begged for another week of 
 happiness. 
 
 " I must go to-morrow," he decided, and got up. 
 His determination was stubborn once he had made 
 up his mind. " We will go to see old Staubach 
 once more this afternoon. I want to depart with 
 that sound in my ears." 
 
 Hella would have preferred to sail once more 
 upon Lake Thun. She had a passionate love of
 
 LEIPSIC 143 
 
 sailing upon still water. She did not say so to 
 Martin, but she was conscious of being opposed to 
 one who for months had been as herself. They 
 went into the hotel for lunch. 
 
 They stood near the waterfall and got splashed, 
 and were amazed at the height from which it fell. 
 The rainbows in the spray brought back to Hella 
 that feeling of hope which had been so long unneces- 
 sary to her. At the end of its fall the water was as 
 light and diffused as rain. The light breeze blew it 
 about as if it were the end of a long veil. Martin 
 would not go far away from it as long as they 
 were in Lauterbrunnen. It had a fascination for 
 him. They spent the afternoon upon the grass 
 slopes near it, and picked gentian because they were 
 as blue as Hella's eyes and as the sea which Martin 
 had never seen. Hella was horrified to hear he 
 had never seen the sea. He reminded her of his 
 mediaeval youth and the lack of imagination of his 
 parents. " Several people in Heidelberg have never 
 seen the sea," he said; " we do not go to Ostend 
 for our holidays like the Colognese." 
 
 " You must go with me to Norway," said Hella, 
 " and hear the sea roar amongst the rocks. It 
 seems incredible never to have seen the sea. You 
 have never seen anything really flat, nor anything 
 larger that your eye can look at, nor anything deep ; 
 Oh, Martin, the sea ! You would love me there ! 
 I can hear the waves thunder over the rocks, surg- 
 ing upwards and then sinking back with a rushing
 
 144 MARTIN SCHtJLER 
 
 sound and a rattling of thousands of pebbles. Oh, 
 it is so endless and eternal ! — Martin, you must go 
 to the sea ! How circumscribed this valley is ! 
 Like a crevice among rocks. You must see the 
 motion and continual heaving of the sea. The only 
 thing I know of like the sea is the Hungarian plain, 
 but it is still. I must take you to the blue, calm 
 Italian sea, too, where distant land is visible, and 
 islands. You must stand on an island." 
 
 " Perhaps I will go some day," said Martin, 
 who knew without having beheld it — because he was 
 descended of man — the whole nature of the sea. 
 It had probably a greater significance for him 
 because he had never seen it ; things unseen are 
 often most wonderful to us. " But people," he 
 added, " have exclaimed on beholding the sea for 
 the first time, ' How tame ! ' on beholding moun- 
 tains, ' How low ! ' on seeing foreign countries, 
 thrilling to their imaginations, ' How dull ! ' " 
 
 Martin looked up at the Jungfrau. " There is 
 my test of imagination," he said. The glittering 
 blue ice of the glacier sparkled in the sun ; the 
 whiteness of the mountain peak rose wreathed in 
 light clouds into a superb blue sky. " The sea 
 cannot be more beautiful." 
 
 " I would like to go to the South Pole," said 
 Hella. Captain Scott had just returned from 
 one of his expeditions. 
 
 " You would like the world to be smooth," 
 laughed Martin. 
 
 " Yes," said Hella, " I like expanse."
 
 LEIPSIC 145 
 
 " There we differ," said Martin, whose love for 
 her was cool that afternoon. " I prefer uprightness 
 and deep-downwardness unfilled by flat earth and 
 water. I rejoice in the confines of this narrow 
 valley. Wonderfullest of all valleys ! I hke the 
 perpendicular waterfalls and the menace of 
 overhanging cliffs. Give me precipices and high 
 mountains, give me a gazing upwards and down- 
 wards, give me gorges, give me passes ! To me 
 the Iron Gate is the symbol of imagination, the 
 sheer ascent of the Jungfrau the symbol of aspira- 
 tion, the blueness of moonlit white peaks the symbol 
 of fineness, the piled-up mountains grandeur ! — 
 Mont Blanc, Chimborazo, Everest, the earth's 
 attainment." He smiled at Hella. " You are a 
 quiet woman and a singular woman. Your passions 
 are wide and deep and, I should say, everlasting. 
 Mine rear themselves towards the sky. You and 
 I are the mountain and the plain ; on you I raise 
 myself, I am nearer the stars. O low-lying plain, 
 your constancy, not your poetry, is your beauty." 
 He pretended that he was teasing her, but he was 
 not. 
 
 When the afternoon drew to a close they went 
 to have tea in a cherry orchard full of white blossom. 
 They bought wooden swallows and carved spoons 
 from a brown little Swiss boy, and coarse, narrow 
 lace from a Uttle brown girl with her hair in pig- 
 tails. 
 
 " Shall we ever have a little boy and girl ? " 
 said Martin, patting the little girl's head. 
 
 10
 
 146 MARTIN SCH^LER 
 
 " With the grace of God and the mercy of our 
 Lady," said the infant. 
 
 " Yes," said Hella, " when we are married. 
 I will not inflict illegitimacy upon children." 
 
 Their last day in Switzerland was like the last 
 day of any long honeymoon — the beginning of 
 that time when adaptation sets in. Martin had 
 none of the domestic qualities. Hella might 
 elevate herself on to a pedestal sufficiently high 
 for his worship, she might become his slave, she 
 might become his mother, and, putting aside all 
 jealousy, guard his selfishness with devoted care. 
 .One could not tell what Hella would do. She 
 might continue passionately to love him and refuse 
 his secondary love, for it was as improbable as a 
 dream that his passion for her would endure, that 
 his inconstancy should for her become constancy. 
 
 They returned to Interlaken by the half-past 
 six train, which brought them to the station at 
 eight. The evening was so beautiful that Martin, 
 who found in woods a secret of inspiration, 
 suggested that they should walk home by the 
 Heimweh Fluh. 
 
 When they were deep in the woods Hella said, 
 " Our last stroll ! Kiss me, Martin." Her emotion 
 was very deep. 
 
 Martin kissed her and said, " I told you I once 
 seduced a girl in a wood ? " 
 
 " Yes, do not remind me of that now,' said 
 Hella, with tears in her eyes; " kiss me now — kiss
 
 LEIPSIC 147 
 
 me, only me ; tell me I am all you love in the 
 world." 
 
 " You are all I love in the world," said Martin, 
 and his thoughts flew to his opera comedy. 
 
 " What are you thinking of ? " said Hella ; 
 " I saw your thoughts fly to something." 
 
 Martin answered candidly. " I was thinking 
 how my opera would sound on an orchestra." 
 
 " Oh ! " cried Hella, sadly, " not of me." 
 
 " Of you all the while ; I always think of you." 
 
 They sauntered along through the woods in silence, 
 until Hella suddenly said, " Martin ! " 
 
 They stopped under the gloomy trees. 
 
 Hella looked at Martin and cried all of a sudden, 
 " I do not know how to keep you ! I am a child. 
 There is nothing to compare with you in all the 
 world." 
 
 Martin took her in his arms ; his heart suddenly 
 swelled with great feelings. " My lovely one," he 
 said. 
 
 " How gentle you are," whispered Hella. " How 
 gentle ! I adore you." 
 
 She rested against him peacefully. He kissed 
 her passionately as he knew she liked to be kissed, 
 then picked her up in his arms. 
 
 " In my power ! " he said. 
 
 " Utterly ! " she sighed ; " so beautiful ! " 
 
 He carried her some distance in his arms, and she 
 either swooned or slept. In the dim light he could 
 discern that her eyes were shut and feel her soft 
 regular breath.
 
 148 MARTIN SCHtlLER 
 
 " If I left her." he thought. " what would she 
 do ! " A kaleodiscopic vision of her grief ran 
 before him. He stood holding her for a moment, 
 and said softly, " I do love you, Hella, better than 
 my life." 
 
 For a moment he stood upon a pinnacle of goodness, 
 and then her weight impressed itself upon his arms 
 and he gently put her on the ground. She awoke 
 and murmured, " Lovely, lovely ! we do love." 
 
 " I am your slave," he said, sitting at her feet ; 
 then he in turn succumbed to love, and kissed and 
 embraced her passionately. 
 
 They sat together in the deep shade, bewildered. 
 Their love reunited them after the gentle estrange- 
 ment of the day. As if for the last time love made 
 a final and supreme expression of itself in them. 
 The beneficence of the past day floated up from 
 around them, the pines exhaled an aromatic per- 
 fume upon them, the white, dew-laden winds from 
 the lake blew softly past them. Small and still 
 and silent they sat among the vast mountains, 
 indistinguishable among the dark trees ; little beings 
 in the grandeur of nature. The mountains and the 
 valleys, the hills and forests, turned with the 
 turning earth further and further away from the 
 sun, but to Hella and Martin it seemed as if the 
 world stood still, as if the peaceful darkness hid 
 them in the eternity of death with their immortal 
 and transcending passion of love.
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 ON June 1st an orchestral rehearsal of " The 
 Coquettes " was held in the Neues Theater 
 of Leipsic. As Hella, Martin, and Steinbach 
 drove together in an open cab across the Rossplatz, 
 the two men seemed perfectly reconciled. Hella 
 was delighted with both of them. It was with the 
 greatest difficulty that she had persuaded Martin to 
 ride in the cab with Steinbach. Even as it was 
 he had endeavoured to be so late that Steinbach 
 would have driven off without him. Steinbach 
 was prepared to wait till doomsday. He had 
 gracefully acquiesced in Martin's relationship 
 with Hella. All that a man could do he had done ; 
 he had yielded everything in order to gain his end ; 
 but the prospect, now that his end was in view, 
 gave him no pleasure. His happiness seemed to 
 have been twisted back to front ; he felt entirely 
 the wrong way on. His determination, and his 
 subordination of all human considerations, had 
 enabled him by a judicious selection of helpers 
 to complete the work of another man. A chosen 
 path to him was the path of his life, he permitted 
 himself no change ; in fact, change to him was 
 impossible. The opera was about to be launched 
 
 149
 
 150 MARTIN SCHULER 
 
 upon the world. It was an achievement of lightness. 
 Steinbach's share in its construction had been 
 arduous. Although he knew that his labours 
 had been successful, he was disappointed ; he was 
 disappointed because Martin was not his friend, 
 because he had behaved badly to him and had not 
 kept his compact of co-operation. Disgusted, but 
 determined to bring the episode to a satisfactory 
 close, he had prepared everything for the final 
 obsequies, as it were. He spared no expense. In 
 the New Theatre, towards which they were driving, 
 were collected together the persons who were to 
 be asked to produce it. Steinbach drew out his 
 watch with a familiar movement as they passed 
 the Museum. 
 
 " Just so," he said; " we are half an hour 
 late." 
 
 He looked up towards the pseudo-renaissance 
 elevation of the theatre. " At last," he thought, 
 " I have got this horse to the water. In a minute 
 I'll make him drink." 
 
 Hella was excited. She sat beside Martin in 
 a brand new dress of blue crepe de Chine and blue 
 silk braid-lace. It fitted tightly round her figure, 
 but at the hem flowed out into a shower of 
 accordion-pleated chiffon frills. The bell sleeves 
 hung gracefully over her hands, the collar rose 
 to her very ears. Upon her head she wore a large 
 blue hat of fine straw, shaped like a dish, wliich 
 projected over her face but was cut away almost 
 like a Salvation Army bonnet at the back. Chiffon
 
 LEIPSIC 151 
 
 strings secured it under her chin. At her waist 
 she had a bunch of pink carnations to match the 
 one pink flower in her hat. Her face was sHghtly 
 flushed and she looked very pretty. As they drove 
 up to the theatre she slipped her hand into Martin's 
 and gave his a squeeze. 
 
 Martin was in a bad temper. He had manu- 
 factured a quarrel with Hella, one of their many 
 recent quarrels. They were all of his doing ; she 
 was as patient as a lamb with him. She had not 
 kissed him properly that morning, he said, or 
 something equally stupid. He was angry because 
 he had been forced to ride in a cab with Steinbach. 
 He felt full of ill-will towards everybody. Now it 
 was beginning to rain too, and he was quite sick 
 of the name of his opera. Why he had ever shown 
 a moment's interest in it he could not say. Now 
 he was forced to attend this performance. Why 
 should he ? There was really no law passed to 
 make him. It was only an orchestral rehearsal. 
 No use. If Steinbach cared to waste his money, 
 let him. After all, it was too much trouble to get 
 out of the cab and make a fuss now. He decided, 
 in spite of the waste of time, to go through with it. 
 
 The performance was concluded. The conductor 
 turned and bowed to Martin and he felt pleased. 
 Soon the financiers, managers, and directors ad- 
 journed from the grand circle to a box where they 
 could talk freely. When Martin found himself an 
 object of no notice in the middle of the dress-circle,
 
 152 MARTIN SCHtlLER 
 
 in the centre of buzzing and stupid friends, he was 
 cross. He thought he was being slighted. He got 
 up and hurried round to the box. Hella followed 
 him. He flung the door open and said in a 
 loud voice, " May I say a word ? I consider the 
 opera too bad to produce. I intend to re-write 
 it." 
 
 Makintire, the broker, shrugged his shoulders 
 and let his arms fall to his sides. 
 
 " You fool, Schiller ! " said Steinbach ; " you 
 fool ! " His obstinate patience had given out. 
 
 The director said, " I cannot undertake to pro- 
 duce it if it is rewritten. It has a very probable 
 chance of some success as it stands." 
 
 "Don't be foolish, Martin," whispered Hella ; 
 "don't be foolish." 
 
 Makintire came towards him. " Herr Schiiler," 
 he said, " reconsider what you have said. Surely 
 so fine a money-making production ought not to 
 be lost. It is worth a great deal of marks to my 
 pocket even." Martin's conduct had made up 
 everybody's minds that the desirable thing to do 
 was to have the opera produced. Steinbach was 
 tense. His father, who was there to countenance 
 his son with the brokers, began to be sUly and 
 persuasive. Ancient Rosenbaum, Makintire's de- 
 crepit partner, was making totally useless and 
 elaborate calculations. The manager of the theatre 
 kept his eyes on the director, and the director — 
 grandiose, young-middle-aged and essentially Prus- 
 sian — ^was smiling to himself, and thinking what a
 
 LEIPSIC 153 
 
 fine young woman Hella was. He was calmly 
 awaiting the moment when all the disturbances 
 should have been settled. Then he would give his 
 vote whichever way he chose. Having spent 
 several years in the army and retired a colonel, 
 he was quite satisfied with his superiority over 
 mankind. Hella was just behind Martin. Pride 
 rose in Martin. He wanted to exert himself like 
 Samson. He wanted to kick everybody over the 
 edge of the box into the stalls. He wanted to 
 escape and write a grand grand-opera. Hella 
 was behind him. One cannot brave out the foe 
 at one's back. Her hand touched his back. He 
 wavered. It was his birthday. He remembered 
 his bearishness of the morning. His birthday 
 kisses had fallen flat. He had meant to enjoy 
 to-day, but he had not. He thought his love for 
 Hella must be going off, which was true. Suddenly 
 it seemed that everybody was asking for something 
 Why not give ? He began to be flattered by the 
 obvious attitude of petitioning that every one 
 seemed to be adopting towards him. He began to 
 think he might enjoy the success of this affair. 
 Hella touched him again in a vital spot. He did 
 not at once see how to give in. Then the brilliant 
 notions of gallantry, reconciliation, and triumphant 
 climbing down all occurred to him simultaneously. 
 
 " What do you wish," he said, turning round, 
 " Hella von Schiiler ? " 
 
 Hella had never been called this before. Old 
 Steinbach winked at the director as being the
 
 154 MARTIN SCHtlLER 
 
 most jocose man present, but every one else's 
 eyes were turned on Hella. 
 
 Hella was not prepared for any such denouement. 
 She blushed deeply. 
 
 " Oh, I should like it to be done," she said, 
 " if Herr Schiiler wants it." 
 
 Bernard Steinbach was shaking her by the 
 hand, the director was murmuring some compli- 
 ment, some one was clapping his hands and saying 
 " Brava ! " 
 
 Thus the tedious affair came to be settled. 
 
 They drove away from the theatre in the late 
 afternoon in a shut cab, for the rain was pouring 
 down. Martin and Hella were alone together. 
 
 " Ah ! well," said Martin, looking with fixed eyes 
 across the grey spaces of the Augustplatz, " my 
 first public step is made." Hella felt sad ; she 
 seemed to see some unhappy thoughts in his face. 
 She sat closer to him. 
 
 " Forgive me," she said, " for being naughty 
 to you this morning. I won't ever answer back 
 again. Be happy on your birthday." 
 
 " All days are alike," said Martin. " What a 
 dreary occasion that was." 
 
 " But I love you." 
 
 He put an arm round her. 
 
 " I try to think," he said, " that love is the great 
 compensation, but it is as hard work as anything 
 else and does not make anything easier."
 
 BERLIN
 
 BERLIN 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 
 THE Countess von Ardstein was an extremely 
 ugly woman. Although she was barely 
 fifty years of age her skm was dry and 
 wrinkled and her hair was grey. It is said that once 
 she had been very handsome, but now her teeth 
 were long and wide apart and almost as brown as 
 her skin. She was as thin as a lath, and her hands, 
 covered with brown skin in which a multitude of 
 little dried veins showed, were like the claws of 
 an old witch. She was altogether like an old 
 female necromancer escaped into society. She 
 could read Latin and Greek, and had a passion for 
 money, music, art, and household economy. Her 
 costly clothes were horrible. She always wore 
 fur somewhere about her person, and a touch of 
 either emerald green or turquoise blue. These were 
 her favourite colours. In the daytime she perched 
 high hats, bedecked with ostrich feathers, upon 
 her hair, and decorated herself with bags, reticules, 
 chitelaines, umbrellas, parasols, and boas. At 
 night she always wore dicolleti, which she adored, 
 although her figure was such that only with great 
 
 157
 
 158 MARTIN SCHULER 
 
 difficulty did she evade slipping out of her clothes, 
 the contours of which were constructed by dress- 
 makers out of buckram. Her evening dresses 
 were always so much too large for her that it was 
 quite possible for her to turn round inside them. 
 
 " Ah, mais non," a French attach^, who was 
 sitting opposite to her once remarked to his dinner 
 companion, " les ^paules s'addressent vers le 
 monsieur a droite, mais le buste vers moi." 
 
 Had she not existed before the eyes of her friends 
 they would have credited her only as one of those 
 exaggerated impressions of clever women given 
 on the stage. To those who knew her she seemed 
 quite natural, for her eyes were undimmed and 
 beautiful, and her voice pleasant, though given to 
 uttering quick and often sarcastic phrases. There 
 was nobody more generally popular in Berlin ; 
 she continued throughout her life to make new 
 friends and rarely lost her old ones. The directness 
 and force of her personality commanded attention, 
 her assurance commanded respect ; she had also 
 the gifts of wit, success, and sympathy, and that 
 peculiar ability which often coincides with neither 
 beauty nor wealth, of attracting and subjecting 
 any male being she chose. She had political 
 influence and took care that it should increase. 
 Just a little below her as she rose in power her 
 husband ascended like the basket of a balloon, 
 but he thought, as every basket under every balloon 
 thinks, " How magnificently I rise." It was a 
 great satisfaction to her to give advice upon the
 
 BERLIN 159 
 
 situation between E^sen and Berlin, to dabble in 
 the corn question, and even to soil her fingers in 
 the muddy waters of interministerial affairs. She 
 never made the mistake of discussing politics, and 
 never gave any opinion on political matters unless 
 she was asked for it, but she was often asked. 
 Her other opinions she poured out gratuitously 
 and occasionally rather ferociously. Her favourite 
 ideas were those connected with economy and the 
 sexes. 
 
 Upon a particular evening she gave a music 
 party at her Berlin palace in order to encourage 
 society to admire a young man whom she had 
 recently discovered at Leipsic and brought to 
 Berlin, and whom she determined to exhibit after 
 sending him to the best tailor and flattering him 
 into the best humour. The " Ardstein Genius," as 
 Martin von Schiiler found himself called, had 
 delivered himself over entirely into her hands ; 
 she managed his affairs for him, engaged him a 
 secretary, lodged him at her house, and built him 
 at his expense an art villa in the Black Forest, 
 upon the shores of a small lake. Although he 
 allowed the Countess to order his life, Martin felt 
 free again. His successful light opera, " The 
 Coquettes," had given him money and introduced 
 him to the world. His second opera, " The Saddest 
 Singer," had been a wild success both at Leipsic 
 and in Berlin. It was the essence of light-hearted 
 gaiety and love. He had grown up upon it and 
 come to think himself one of the men of the day.
 
 160 MARTIN SCHt)LER 
 
 He had no friend, nor did he want one ; friends 
 were a dependency and a clog ; what he wished 
 for were friendly acquaintances towards whom he 
 need have no obligations. Above all things his 
 freedom was most precious to him ; he required 
 nobody who would at all deprive him of it. He did 
 not desire to enter again the dark forest of passion, 
 nor to have again the experience of cutting himself 
 loose from an octopus, for it was thus that the escape 
 from an unequal love presented itself to him. 
 
 The music party was held in the gilt and blue 
 reception-room of the Ardstein's large residence ; 
 cupids sported among the clouds and plaster- 
 work of the high ceiling, from which descended 
 chandeliers sparkling with a thousand drops of 
 glass that looked like fountains arrested in their 
 play by a magic wand. Above the doors and in 
 the alcoves cupids danced among tambourines, 
 harps, flutes, French horns, and kettledrums 
 heaped upon rolling clouds entwined with ribbons, 
 as if the angels had created there a dust-heap of 
 musical instruments in favour of the more modern 
 gramophone and player-piano. Martin Schiller, 
 who had never appreciated any form of decoration 
 more lovely than the Interior of an opera house, felt 
 at home in this music-room with the exquisitely 
 coloured and appropriate, if rather foolish, French 
 mural decorations. The long mirrors above the 
 consols, the ormolu clock and tables, the looped 
 blue damask curtains, gave him great pleasure. 
 There was nothing he liked so much in nature as
 
 BERLIN 161 
 
 the blue sky and the setting sun and flowers, or 
 in art so much as the pretty, the tastefully gaudy, 
 and the voluptuous. 
 
 The Countess wafted about among her friends 
 like a witch on a broomstick. She did not believe 
 in crowded parties. To-night she had caused to 
 be written on the programmes, " As a friend with 
 a friend," for she decided that it would be better 
 for Martin to meet her acquaintances in a beam of 
 intimate sunshine. Accordingly there were scarcely 
 more than thirty people present to hear Polinski, 
 who was the only performer of the evening, play. 
 Amongst them was Baron von Hirchner, the 
 Minister of Finance, a broad man of forty-five, at 
 least six foot three inches in height. His wife 
 Beda was there also, but not with him : she was 
 fifteen years his junior and preferred men of her 
 own age, such as Konstanz, the caricaturist, who 
 sat with her now in an alcove. Hirchner himself 
 was fonder of Countess von Ardstein than of any- 
 body. They knew each other's secret lives. His 
 tender emotions, however, belonged to Countess 
 Sophie von Sebaltz, who was the most beautiful 
 young married woman in Berlin. She had been 
 married four years, ever since she was eighteen, 
 and was the wife of a noble whom she had endowed 
 with sufficient wealth to allow him the pleasures of 
 the lion-chase in Africa. She got as much sport out 
 of her life as he did, and infinitely more joy. Her 
 beautiful clothes were the desire of everybody ; 
 to-night she was wearing a long pale satin dress of 
 II
 
 162 MARTIN SCHDLER 
 
 a thin silhouette, made without a single ornament, 
 with a trailing cape of blue satin falling from one 
 shoulder upon the floor. She had a string of pearls 
 round her neck and pearls in her ears. She might 
 have lived in any land at any time. Her dark 
 hair and eyes gave her a Spanish look, her mouth 
 was a little Victorian, her chin was decided 
 and Teutonic, her skin also had the immobile 
 pallor of Central Europe, it was of the palest cream. 
 Her cheeks blushed with the pink of roses and her 
 ears were like those pale, nail-pink shells common 
 upon the seashore. Her brows, her arms, her 
 figure were lovelier than those of any princess. 
 Her hands were like a china shepherdess's and her 
 feet beautiful and correctly proportioned. She 
 had all those attributes so long associated with the 
 fairest heroines, and if at times she emphasized 
 her not quite perfect mouth by dressing in frilled 
 mid- Victorian garments, she could, nevertheless, 
 always be the loveliest creature in Germany, the 
 queen of all young hearts in society. 
 
 Polinski wandered about among the guests as a 
 guest. The Countess von Ardstein had had to 
 pay for it. His hands flapped from pocket to 
 pocket of his suit. He had always lost something, 
 his handkerchief principally. He had a diamond 
 ring on his little finger. Anyone could see that 
 his life had been spent in his hands. They 
 might have been called intensely beautiful ; they 
 appeared to be heavy, loaded, so that all his move- 
 ments culminated in them instead of in his brain.
 
 BERLIN 168 
 
 If possible he never shook hands with anj^body ; 
 he let his hands fall heavily into the folds of his 
 fine brown cloth suit when he met an acquaintance 
 and bowed. Sometimes he put his hands under 
 women's when he bent to kiss their fingers, and they 
 conjured up a whole series of sensations, chiefly 
 due to romance in their hearts. His face was 
 wrinkled, with young eyes and young hair. A 
 moustache of fine hairs seemed to have settled like 
 dew on his upper lip and just above his chin. He 
 walked about with an air of sweetness and, per- 
 haps, of slight insipidity. 
 
 Martin walked about also ; he was the other 
 hero — the Countess's hero. He was aware of it, 
 and deliberately acted contrarily to Polinski. He 
 was a man of the smart world to himself, not an 
 old virtuoso. His pince-nez gave him the look of 
 a Viennese officer, but he was not as well corseted 
 nor as slim as those persons generally are. He 
 smiled and bowed with great dignity to the charming 
 people in the room, and raised himself in his conceit 
 above everybody there. The Countess gambolled 
 round him and ran after him, introducing him to 
 everybody, impressing upon him the advantages 
 of speaking to Hirchner and Sophie, to Konstanz 
 in the second place, and one or two duller people 
 in the higher rank of society. Martin had extra- 
 ordinarily well caught the air of superiority that 
 acknowledges the courtesies of human beings, but 
 abstracts itself in a moment to better thoughts 
 without waste of time.
 
 161 MARTIN SCHULER 
 
 Polinsld went to the piano and seated himself 
 at it, and the assembly grouped itself in a semi- 
 circle, with Martin Schiiler and Countess Sophie in 
 its midst, as if they were the king and queen in a 
 cinematograph play. The people were small for 
 the size of the room, which was lofty and wide 
 enough for a ballroom. They looked like a group 
 of moths and butterflies upon a gilt branch with 
 golden thorns and blue silk leaves. Suddenly 
 Polinski smiled across the space at Martin and made 
 him feel uncomfortable by playing out a phrase 
 of Chopin's Ballade, Ta.-ti, Tsl-H, t2i-ti, ta-ti-ti-ti, 
 as if he were making a joke at his expense. 
 
 Everybody laughed, except Hirchner, who was 
 leaning upon the back of Martin's chair in order 
 to be able to see what might happen between him 
 and Sophie, for it seemed at once obvious that 
 they would attract one another. Hirchner was 
 prepared to make a flight into flower-sown skies 
 upon the wings of good music, because he adored 
 music more than anything else in the world, and 
 had a passionate Teutonic love for soul-stirrings 
 and nervous excitements. 
 
 Polinski improvised upon an arpeggio and re- 
 solved through a dozen modulations into a series 
 of the preludes and fugues of Bach. Hirchner's 
 mind was captured by the antiphonous beauty of 
 the well-created sound. Martin forced himself 
 to realize what he heard. His animal nature died 
 in him, he ceased to be physical, his intellect gave 
 itself to the succession of phrases. From the animal
 
 BERLIN 165 
 
 he rose to the human, from the human to the intel- 
 lectual, from the intellectual to the absolute. 
 Sophie von Sebaltz, whose mind was that of an 
 educated woman of the world, thought that Polinski 
 seemed a very long way off, so she spent her time 
 examining Martin, whose breathings she could hear, 
 and looking at the large, unconscious Hirchner 
 who swooned with languorous and exquisite 
 enthusiasms as phrase fell into phrase. She saw 
 Beda Hirchner also carried away by the music 
 and understood why she had married Hirchner. 
 Konstanz also was smoking like a quiet chimney 
 at sunset, having his thoughts recalled to him 
 probably, for in some music only rouses the pleasant 
 memories. When Sophie had looked at all the 
 thirty men and women in the room, she returned 
 to the consideration of Martin, whom the rhythmic 
 ecstasy of the music was filling with joy and peace. 
 In that moment he was again young, lovely, and 
 good. Goodness is a thing not understood except 
 by those who understand Plato, Bach, and Martin 
 Schiller. He lost himself in regions where the Prince 
 Errant of fairy-tales seeks living water, and was 
 amazed to remember that there is something more 
 exquisite than love or passion. He knew that 
 Bach had attained the highest human possibility 
 by creating the uncontroversial. He suffered one 
 of those outgoings uncommon to the human soul, 
 and was aware that he went beyond the outgoing 
 of Pohnski or any man in the room. As for 
 women, they are only sighe s after departure ; they
 
 166 MARTIN SCHtJLER 
 
 yearn for the impossible voyages that they only 
 accomplish during periods of motherhood. He 
 became perfectly gay. The beauty of the earth 
 passed before his eyes, and he gave himself up to 
 the quiet of strifeless sound where there is no climax 
 but only a state of beauty. His heart was soothed 
 as if with the rippling of wind over a still pond. 
 
 Suddenly, with a brilliance of execution rarely 
 heard, Polinski, as if ashamed of disclosing his 
 soul by his Bach pla5ang, burst into a Hungarian 
 rhapsody. The nerves of the listeners quivered 
 exquisitely as the rhapsody vibrated through the 
 room. The rhythmic rush, the barbaric insistence, 
 the tremulous accuracy, scintillated like a cloud 
 of dancing sequins. The hearts of the hearers 
 were lifted to a point of attention hke the hearts 
 of spectators in a race. Their ears were opened to 
 the delicious translucency of a myriad of little 
 waves of sound that followed one another with 
 quivering, shivering movements. 
 
 It came to an end. Beethoven's sonata, com- 
 monly called the " Waldstein," next gave them an 
 unutterable j^carning, and tears stood in their 
 eyes, 
 
 " Ah ! " they thought, without expressing them- 
 selves save by occasional sighs, " how I could rise 
 from the ground in long leaps, how I could overcome 
 the waves with long strokes of swimming, how 
 I could glide low over the breasts of hills on 
 invisible wings." Hirchner looked towards Sophie 
 and thought that he might try to resuscitate the
 
 BERLIN 167 
 
 few sentiments they had shared together, and his 
 breath stirred her hair. Martin got up, and, leaving 
 his friends, began to walk about the room in god- 
 like attitudes. His heart expanded, his throat grew 
 dry. Beethoven always had a physical effect 
 upon him. He seemed to recognize for an instant 
 something he had felt before. 
 
 " Bethoven was a sensualist," somebody said. 
 
 " Beethoven was impassioned," somebody else 
 said. 
 
 The long sonata of variations was given with the 
 last movement in cumulative form that shook the 
 air and caused the chandeliers to rattle. Nobody 
 was very interested in it ; they were endeavouring 
 to catch again the sensations the " Waldstein" had 
 produced in them, then they were irritated because 
 it was not repeated. " The best music is the music 
 that appeals to men over and over again," thought 
 Martin to himself as he recognized the notes stream- 
 ing from the piano. He began to dream again. 
 Polinski's exquisite sense was something worthy 
 of his admiration, and he admired it with all his 
 soul. He desired to be played to endlessly. 
 
 A group of arias was performed, and from this 
 agglomeration of Bach, Wagner, Rubinstein, Martin 
 Schiller, and God knows whom, Martin received an 
 idea which he remembered several years later. 
 A Tschaikovski waltz, a romance by some 
 obscurity and Debussy's " Soiree en Granade " were 
 so delightfully represented that everybody began 
 to dream of the happy portions of their youth ;
 
 108 MARTIN SCHtlLER 
 
 and, after that, Chopin's alluring, worn-out, played 
 out, sensuous ballade in E flat that Polinski had 
 hinted at earlier in the evening made them laugh and 
 wink at one another and throw back their heads with 
 their tongues in their cheeks in order to appreciate 
 some gay and daring memory. At the end of it 
 they broke into such violent applause that it had 
 to be played again. 
 
 " Aubrey Beardsley illustrated it," somebody said. 
 
 " Ah, but badly ! " cried Countess von Ardstein. 
 
 " Yes," everybody assented, " he did not get 
 the feeling." 
 
 Martin, who knew nothing about Beardsley, 
 was amused to see how this light composition set 
 everybody gay and chattering. 
 
 "Chopin was a genius," he thought; but by 
 this time Polinski was playing one of Martin's own 
 songs. He pronounced the subtle harmonies with 
 distinction, and phrased the aria more nearly 
 after the manner of Martin's dream of it than 
 was common. Martin was delighted. He thought 
 how well he compared with everybody else, but 
 forgot to remember that Chopin had just preceded 
 him. His technique, played by a master hand, was 
 pure and finished ; there was no poverty or weak- 
 ness of quality. He was a musician of a high water, 
 even when compared with the classics and semi- 
 classics of other days. Polinski ceased in the 
 middle, and said, " The composer is the body, I 
 am the spirit," and then continued to the end of 
 the song.
 
 BERLIN 169 
 
 Everybody became very enthusiastic ; Martin 
 found himself embraced by Polinski, and his hands 
 shaken by several other people. Polinski had had a 
 success, and was, besides, generous natured. " My 
 friend," he said, with tears of enthusiasm and 
 exhaustion in his eyes, " I have shown you where 
 you stand amongst the immortals, and you will 
 rise ; I prophecy that you will rise to the presidency 
 of Parnassus. Oh, my friend ! you have very 
 wonderful gifts." He let two or three tears run 
 down his face. 
 
 " My gifts are nothing to yours," answered 
 Martin, who was deeply moved. 
 
 " Ah ! do not blaspheme," said Polinski, openly 
 weeping; "do not blaspheme. Your harmony! 
 Your delicious abandon ! You waste yourself on 
 the common public — ^no, you are generous — you 
 diffuse yourself so that the lowest rejoices when 
 it hears you. It has not been my honour to salute 
 so great a man since I kissed the hand of my dead 
 master, Brahms ! " and he kissed Martin on both 
 cheeks and left the room. 
 
 The soiree ended. 
 
 " I like Polinski," said Martin afterwards to 
 the Countess. 
 
 " Well," said the Countess, " I am not surprised." 
 
 But he liked Polinski not only because he flattered 
 him but because he was a musician and sought 
 after, and Martin added snobbishness to his other 
 vices.
 
 CHAPTER XVII 
 
 NOT long after this musical affair, Countess 
 von Ardstein gave a week-end party at 
 her country house, to which she invited 
 those persons whom Martin von Schiiler chose out 
 of her acquaintance : Sophie von Sebaltz, Hirchner, 
 Konstanz, Lottie Bischoffhcim, and one or two 
 other people. A great deal of riding and shooting 
 took place. Sophie brought her piebald half- 
 arab. She dressed herself to match it in a black 
 coat and white breeches ; in her riding gear one 
 would have said she was on the stage. Martin 
 himself had a sixteen-hand bay mare, which 
 Konstanz had induced him to buy. She was large 
 and vicious and strong, without grace, but with 
 a great deal of brute force. He rode her in a queer 
 mixture of riding clothes and ordinary lounge 
 garments. Down to his waist he wore his ordinary 
 navy blue clothes, but the lower half of him was 
 in doeskin breeches and long black military boots 
 and might have belonged to the army. Konstanz 
 was charmed with him and ran about \vith him all 
 over Berlin, so that people said they looked like 
 two dogs on the same leash. Konstanz decided 
 that Martin had never been spoiled by what he 
 
 170
 
 BERLIN 171 
 
 called life, and at twenty-seven was as young and 
 fresh as at twenty-one. Certainly he seemed to 
 be full of joy and vitality, never to have abused 
 himself or to have overtaxed either his mind or 
 his body in any way. Again, the past was all 
 gone from him, and the things that he had done 
 and suffered seemed to have vanished away like 
 clouds at sunrise. Wealth and adulation agreed 
 with his health, and though at times he suffered 
 from what he called nerves, sciatica, heart-trouble, 
 and other inappropriate names for indigestion, 
 which made his temper very bad, he was mag- 
 nificently well and merry most of the time. 
 
 One evening in June, in the dusk of a hot day, 
 Hirchner sat talking to the Countess von Ardstein 
 in the smoking-room that opened out upon the 
 piazza. Dinner was long since over, and there 
 remained but the hours of confidential chat before 
 bed-time. The Ardsteins' country house was a 
 pleasant place for friends to say their says in. 
 One need wear nothing but old shooting clothes 
 all the day and evening. The chairs were all 
 old, comfortable, and large ; there was no elegance, 
 merely food and quietness. The wide windows 
 all stood open, the country dogs slept and snored 
 upon the floor, the dachshunds, of which there were 
 three, occupied the chairs. The Countess was 
 beloved by dogs ; she had sixteen, four of which 
 had come to her from unknown wanderings upon 
 the earth. Hirchner, like the dogs, was inclined 
 to sleep and snore between the conversations.
 
 172 MARTIN SCHOLER 
 
 He lay back in a large and comfortable English 
 chair, upholstered in red leather, beside a small 
 table upon which were cherries and kirch-drinks. 
 He took some cherries off the plate and threw them 
 into his mouth, and spat the stones out on to the 
 carpet. 
 
 " Well," he said, moving the cherries about 
 in his mouth, "I hke your protdge." 
 
 " Of course," replied the Countess ; "I never 
 expected you to do anything else." 
 
 " But I am curious to know," he went on, " what 
 particular, what identical thing caused you to 
 take him up, to spend so much on him." 
 
 The Countess hfted her eyebrows a little, and 
 began to ferret in her bag for some handkerchief 
 or other, which came out rather the worse for 
 the chase, attached to a silver vinaigrette. She 
 behaved as if she were bUnd, due to the vanity of 
 foregoing glasses, which she ouglit to have worn, 
 
 " Of course you know about that girl of his." 
 
 " You have told me." Hirchncr settled himself 
 further down into his chair. 
 
 " And now I am so glad he has taken a fancy to 
 this Sophie creature, whom, by the way, I suppose 
 you were fond of, but then it was not serious, and 
 why not you as well as everj^body else. She is 
 a beautiful girl. She is Hght enough, she will 
 not corrode his fancy. Imagine, my dear man, 
 imagine. He was there baking to death in the 
 ardour of her smile." 
 
 " Mademoiselle Rosenstein's, you mean ? "
 
 BERLIN 178 
 
 " Baum ! Baum ! " cried the Countess ; " Hella 
 von Rosenbaum, She was killing him with an 
 ideal, at least that is my notion. She walked about 
 after him like a leech and kept her eyes pouring 
 adoration upon him. The lad could not move 
 without her moving, or think, I believe, without 
 her thinking after him." 
 
 " And yet," said Hirchner, " his fancy seems to 
 have produced this charmingest of light operas, 
 and it seems to me she was a very devoted young 
 woman with a fine idea of love." 
 
 " Oh, yes ! " said the Countess ; " she had the 
 genius of love, but she wore his heart out by 
 encircling it with her arms. That is not the 
 identical reason, as you call it." 
 
 " Well ? " Hirchner took and clipped a cigar. 
 
 " Leipsic is not Berlin, Humbert." 
 
 " To cosmopolitanize him," muttered Hirchner 
 through a new mouthful of cherries ; "I do not 
 like this centralization, this immense inmoving 
 tendency." 
 
 The Countess herself took a cherry and ate all 
 round it so as not to detach the stone from the 
 stalk. " Cosmopolitanization is surely the other 
 way." 
 
 " All women want to give men heaven or earth. 
 It is so, by God!" growled the Baron, grovelling 
 with his left hand over the arm of his chair after 
 two cherries that had got lost in the mat. " Let 
 the grass-widow have him." 
 
 " I am not a fool," yapped the Countess ; " I
 
 174 MARTIN SCHt)LER 
 
 will have nothing to do with him now I have got 
 him away from that miserable life." She chose 
 a bunch of three cherries growing together, but 
 one of them was malformed and unripe, so she 
 chose another three of more equal beauty. 
 Hirchner's huge form moved creakingly in the 
 chair, conveying the absurd little red fruits from 
 the plate to his mouth, and the darkness that was 
 never really dark all night gathered about the 
 room in vague clouds. The mountain of cherries 
 decreased. 
 
 " I have eaten a great many cherries, I think 
 too many," he said, pushing the plate away from 
 him an inch, but, like most people who are fond of 
 eating, he forgot next minute what he had said 
 and continued to demolish the mountain. 
 
 " It is a pity we are no longer young, Katchen," 
 he said, thinking of Martin, who he knew was in 
 the garden with Sophie, and of Lottie and Konstanz 
 — for Konstanz liked her equally with Beda — 
 who were joking in the card-room. 
 
 " Those were very tiresome days," replied the 
 Countess ; " how glad I am I have never to pass 
 through the tedium of experience again. Humbert, 
 I am glad I am old." 
 
 Humbert sighed. " I do not feel old, I wonder 
 why I have never changed since I was a child — 
 why I never seem to learn anything to do with the 
 game of life, to be as great a fool as ever. I under- 
 stand the technique and all that, but I am equally 
 puzzled by each new principle I meet. I am
 
 BERLIN 176 
 
 always discovering that everything is new under 
 the sun." 
 
 Hirchner ceased speaking and roused himself 
 to drink. 
 
 After he had relapsed into his chair, Martin 
 appeared at the window. Both the Countess and 
 Hirchner were impressed by his atmosphere of 
 preoccupation, and the strong disturbance that 
 his concentration made in the air of the room. 
 He seemed to have been running — ^to be waiting 
 to run again. 
 
 " Have some cherries," said the finance minister. 
 
 " No," said Martin, whose eyes were fixed on a 
 far part of the garden, " cherries — ^no, I do not 
 think so." 
 
 " Do you love her ? " said Hirchner, like a father 
 to his eighteen-year-old son ; " do you find her 
 as beautiful and as pleasing as you ought ? " 
 
 Martin felt insulted a little, but he gave what 
 he thought was the best answer. 
 
 " She is in the garden." 
 
 Hirchner leaned forward. " Is she ? " He hoped 
 he might be able to see her from that position, but 
 he could not. Martin raised a hand above his 
 head, shut down his fingers as if he were playing 
 a Castanet and at the same time imitated the 
 clack of it with his mouth. He let his arm fall, 
 saying sternly : 
 
 " I love her ! " 
 
 He was standing on the top step of the piazza 
 with his back against the window post. Suddenly
 
 176 MARTIN SCHULER 
 
 his heart leaped in him and he thought, " I am here 
 amongst these high-bred people." For an instant 
 he acknowledged an inferiority to society, and 
 then, looking at Hirchner's six-foot body and the 
 Countess's little one out of the corner of his eye, 
 felt infinitely superior. He was humble before 
 his idea of society, but in society itself he found 
 himself very much more remarkable than the 
 general herd, for, after all, it consists only of ordinary 
 people decorated by environment. The quiet of 
 evening came over the woody enclosure that was 
 called the garden, and all the happy ideas of love 
 and peace filled Martin's soul. The beauty of a 
 thousand and one stage nights pervaded the small 
 world that he could see, with its romance, its low- 
 hung moon, its dark shadows. The nightingale 
 cried plaintively and long through the deep blue 
 air, and the sweet scents of cedars and hay-grass, 
 night stocks, and old-fashioned roses came up from 
 the dewy ground. 
 
 " Why have you left her ? " said the Countess 
 after a long pause. 
 
 Martin pretended not to hear her, for he could 
 not very well reply, " We are playing hide 
 and seek, or hunt the girl, or wild men of the 
 woods," because he was twenty-seven and not 
 ingenuous. 
 
 " Incomparably indiscreet," said Hirchner, half- 
 asleep, as he fell back into his chair, but nobody 
 heard him or knew to what he referred. 
 
 " We are all catching our own fleas," thought the
 
 BERLIN 177 
 
 Countess, upon whom the stage effect of the window 
 and the moon had begun to dawn. 
 
 Hirchner also was dreaming of the isolation of 
 human beings ; he wished everybody was happy 
 and that they would all join together at something. 
 
 Presently Martin went away off the piazza to 
 renew his game, this time more seriously for he 
 had fallen straight into love during his rest at the 
 window. 
 
 " What are they doing ? " said the Countess, 
 when he had gone. 
 
 Why should I know? — playing the incompar- 
 able game of catch-as-catch-can," said Hirchner, 
 from whose mouth rings of blue smoke were 
 ascending. The repose of the beautiful end of day 
 was wrapping itself over the chairs and animals and 
 round the two people. Hirchner lay at full length 
 in his chair and seemed to have forgotten everything 
 to do with finance and the military. He began to 
 murmur to the Countess from under his cloud of 
 smoke. 
 
 " Wonderful, is it not wonderful, for ever and 
 ever wonderful ! " His virility and the huge power 
 of his animal personality were at rest. 
 
 The Countess sighed and moved her hands to 
 a different position, and the dachshunds sighed and 
 wagged their tails under the dream of her caress. 
 
 " A night for lovers," murmured the tender 
 IVIinister of Finance. " But indeed money and war, 
 slavery and cruelty, would never exist but for men. 
 The earth is ever so forbearing with us. Why does 
 
 12 
 
 V
 
 178 MARTIN SCHULER 
 
 she not ask the sea to leave its bed and smother 
 us with pillows of foam ? 
 
 The Countess sighed again, and again was echoed 
 by the responsive dachshunds. 
 
 " Ah me ! " continued the baron ; " and this 
 young man, what is he doing \vith himself, what is 
 he going to do ! He has earned riches. I feel a 
 wonderful sympathy with him. I love him even 
 as you do, as everybody must. I hope, as you 
 hope, that he likes me. When he walks about, 
 grown up and self-possessed, I am inclined to laugh, 
 and yet I know he is my superior. In the 
 beginning was the Word, and the Word was God — 
 that is not unlike him. The Holy Book we do not 
 read, Katchen, is wonderful, very wonderful. In 
 the beginning God created the world, and He said, 
 Let there be light, and He separated the light from 
 the darkness, and the light He called youth and the 
 darkness age. Remember thy Creator in the days 
 of thy youth, lest the evil days come and the years 
 when thou shalt say, ' I have no pleasure in them.' " 
 He was thinking how very sad for him it was not 
 to be young again in order at least to be the rival 
 of Martin in the garden. " That poor girl must be 
 tearing her heart out in Leipsic," he added. 
 
 " Yes," answered the Countess ; "I feel very 
 sorry for her, but men and genius first. Imagine, 
 if you have any imagination, how she killed him by 
 absorbing him." 
 
 " I am incredibly pleased he writes light opera," 
 said Hirchner ; " it is the most human, the most
 
 BERLIN 179 
 
 happy, the most enjoyable thing in the world." 
 He began to hum one of Martin's airs. 
 
 " Yes," said the Countess, whose thoughts saw 
 Martin chasing Sophie among the dark trees ; " I 
 find it hard to think that he wrote that ; all music 
 is astounding. Why think in tunes — who does ? 
 I do not, nor do you." 
 
 " Astounding," said the minister softly. " I 
 do not believe he is altogether happy." He made 
 this remark hoping that this was the case, for he felt 
 a Httle jealous of all the gifts of fate to Martin 
 Schiller. 
 
 " You are right," the Countess sighed ; " he 
 has been serious and grown up till I brought him 
 into the pretty world here." 
 
 " Oh, yes, oh, j^es, of course you are his fairy 
 godmother ! " 
 
 After an interval, during which the sleep of 
 twilight gave way to the wakefulness of night, 
 the Countess got up and went to the window. 
 
 " I can see them," she said ; " he has just 
 caught and kissed her." 
 
 Hirchner rose off his chair and yawned with 
 his arms raised above his head so that they nearly 
 touched the ceiling. 
 
 "Damnation of damnations!" he said slowly; 
 " you ai*e perfectly right — he is kissing her again, 
 and now, there, she is kissing him." It was hard to 
 say how he could discriminate between the actions. 
 " Come let us shut the window and go in. Venus 
 has capitulated and now Adonis will cany her off
 
 180 iMARTIN SCHULER 
 
 into the woods, or is it Endymion and his moon ? 
 Have you seen Paris in red hose run off \vdth the 
 gilt and white Helen ? " 
 
 " Your fantasies," said the Countess, shaking 
 her fingers loosely, as if she were scattering dew- 
 drops ; " how absurd ! your fantasies ! " 
 
 Hirchner gently shut the window as he continued 
 speaking : " Or the blue delphinium hurry the white 
 butterfly to his Hps, or why not say Martin von 
 Schiiler with the loveliest woman in Berlin. It is 
 all the same, my heart is absolutely captivated : 
 I have a mind to weep." 
 
 " Crocodile's tears," said the Countess, whose 
 own sentimental feelings forbade her to sympathize 
 with those of the six-foot financier. She turned 
 and went away out of the room, but Hirchner, 
 whose hfe on one side was limited by his work, and 
 on the other by the purest animal sensations which 
 occasionally gave him an insight into intellectual 
 truth, stood still and gently opened the window 
 again to be tossed a little upon the ^-adiating waves 
 of romance that spread through the garden.
 
 CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 KONSTANZ leant against the buffet of 
 his dining-room shaking a cocktail. He 
 affected a great many x\mericanisms in such 
 matters as boots, drinks, and hats. He loved 
 anything absurd and up-to-date. Having spent 
 his early years admiring Wilde and Beardsley, 
 now that he was thirty he turned his attention to 
 Uncle Sam, to Yankeeism, and to Boston. " Bos- 
 ton " and " colossal " were his favourite words, 
 just as the favourite words of Hirchner were 
 " wonderful," and " for ever." He now raised 
 his Boston cocktail shaker to his ear to Hsten to 
 the condition of the ice. Apparently it was satis- 
 factory, for he poured out the contents into a glass 
 and drank them off. Then he hastily pulled on 
 some wash-leather gloves, and seizing a hat and 
 stick that lay upon the dining table, ran to the Uft 
 and was conveyed to the ground floor. 
 
 He jumped into the first taxi that came along, 
 and throwing himself into a corner, began to read 
 with great speed a further account of the Steinheil 
 murder. 
 
 In five minutes he was at his destination, the 
 palace of the Ardsteins, near Unter den Linden. He 
 
 i8i
 
 182 MARTIN SCHl)LER 
 
 bounded out of the taxi and ran up the stairs to 
 the quarter assigned to Martin von Schiiler. A 
 servant let him in. 
 
 Wolf, the secretary, was writing in the large 
 outer room. He got up directly Konstanz arrived 
 and faded away, murmuring that Herr von Schiiler 
 would be disengaged in the space of a quarter of 
 an hour. 
 
 There was nothing to do but sit in a chair and 
 re-read the paper or stand on one leg and look at 
 the room. Konstanz preferred standing to sitting, 
 so he went from one part of the chamber to the 
 other, minutely examining every object in it, 
 
 Martin moved in sumptuous circles ; the poor for 
 him did not exist. The second floor of an hotel 
 was to him a garret whence issued those English- 
 speaking tourists who have adopted the world and 
 who stare as if to say, " Who are these coarse, 
 fat people in our restaurant ? " The houses in 
 the suburbs and second-rate quarters of Berlin 
 caused him to feel reminiscently sick of his Leipsic 
 experiences. The summer-house of the Ardsteins, 
 which had formerly been their only home, was as 
 near as he got to the shabby comfort of most of 
 the world, but even there everyi:hing had an air 
 of refined age. The sofas were baronial, the chairs 
 and tables belonged to the natural surroundings of 
 countesses and minor princesses. 
 
 He himself lived in the superb flat which he rented 
 from the Countess von Ardstein. His bedroom 
 was fit for an emperor, and he was glad, because
 
 BERLIN 183 
 
 luxury made him happier than anything else in 
 the world. He took for granted all his surround- 
 ings : the mahogany bed, with brass motifs of the 
 first Empire under a blue silk canopy, the carmine 
 silk bed-cover, the exquisite linen sheets, the fur 
 blankets. He never asked himself if things could 
 have been otherwise, if his mattress might have 
 been straw or his floor bare boards. He never 
 questioned the condition of any place into which 
 his life led him. All houses, chairs, and tables 
 seemed a part of nature and — created or uncreated, 
 he cared not which — ^to have had the origin and 
 suffered the history of the world itself. The Countess 
 von Ardstein seemed to have indulged in the fur- 
 nishing of his apartments that side of her nature 
 which is common to humanity and whose only 
 expression is, " If I had carte blanche and such-and- 
 such an amount of money, I would furnish a suite 
 of rooms thus." She went to the utmost limits 
 of the large sum of money that she asked Martin 
 for, if not a little beyond them. She contrasted 
 the voluptuousness of his night apartment with 
 the costly simplicity of the day-rooms. The table 
 of black ebony in the study was a replica of an 
 Italian altar. The black bronze lamp by whose light 
 he wrote was a masterpiece of the modern Cellini, 
 Gregory Comino. The fireplace in black basalt 
 was by the same master. Its pure and severe 
 proportions were relieved by nothing save by one 
 black classic vase placed immovably upon the left 
 end of the mantelshelf in order to frustrate the
 
 184 MARTIN SCHtJLER 
 
 inartistic fingers of the maids, and filled with a 
 collection of wax flowers arranged to recall Dutch 
 flower paintings. A black carpet of tapestry 
 worked with flower-bunches partly covered the 
 floor, and upon the obscure walls hung three pictures 
 two by Rubens and one by Titian, whose colours 
 kept Martin's eyes fixed upon them for hours, 
 for he was a prey to red and orange and sky-blue, 
 and to the richness of luxurious forms of art. There 
 was no other furniture in the room but one black 
 empire chair upholstered in cherry-coloured silk 
 to match the long straight curtains at the window. 
 It was not a large room, and the ceiling was high, 
 but nevertheless it gave no idea of being an un- 
 compromising box or a passage room, although it 
 was the only means of communication between 
 his bedroom and the sitting-room. His sitting- 
 room was larger than either his bedroom or his study, 
 and the ceiling appeared to be lower. It had in 
 it a modern picture of Spanish peasants by Alex- 
 ander BasUikoff, a Polish gipsy, typical of the 
 modern continental feeling. Broad proportions, 
 vermilion, cobalt, black, emerald green, chestnut 
 complexions, flatness and stupidity of feature, such 
 were the characteristics of the picture which 
 dominated the room. The room w^as dark, almost 
 black ; the walls and ceilings were covered with 
 large panels of heavily smoked Spanish leather 
 that had been lightly polished. The junctions of 
 the panels were made with narrow lats of mahogany. 
 Golden curtains radiated the hght into this im-
 
 BERLIN 185 
 
 posing gloom from two high windows, and reflected 
 themselves in the polish of the leather and 
 mahogany chairs and the Chippendale dining- 
 table. At night the room was lit by a Spanish 
 centre candelabrum that carried forty candles, 
 and by small electric lamps placed about the room. 
 The fireplace was a large square hole in the wall, on 
 a level with the floor. Above it was fixed as a 
 panel the Basilikoff production. No frames, 
 cornices, or shelves marred the beautiful lines of 
 this room. Martin disliked this picture; he said 
 it disturbed conversations, but he never supposed 
 that it could be taken away. The only addition 
 he made to his room was a convex mirror ; a 
 convex mirror was to him the height of pleasure, 
 for the eye, perhaps, if he had been candid, his 
 notion of perfect beauty. He sat for hours drinking 
 wine with his friends and watching their move- 
 ments accurately reflected in the convex glass. 
 In it his room assumed a mystery and became 
 something beside the ordinary : a comparative 
 criticism perhaps. As he gazed at it from amongst 
 a dozen faces his sense of the aesthetic was roused 
 by the reflected atmosphere of the dark room, 
 profound and strange, enhanced by the glitter of 
 candle-light, by the whiteness of the table-cloth 
 and the men's linen, by human faces and hands, 
 by minature reflections of bright flowers. 
 
 Konstanz stood looking at the mirror. He leant 
 against the dining-table smoking a cigarette, and 
 wondered why values were rendered so much more
 
 186 MARTIN SCHILLER 
 
 clearly in a diminishing-glass than in nature. He 
 felt that Hogarth and one or two of the Flemish 
 painters must have painted out of a glass. 
 
 Presently Martin came out of the study with 
 a hat and stick in his hand like Konstanz. 
 Konstanz spun round and said ; 
 
 "I bet my caricature of Steinheil you are off 
 to a house in Friedrichsvorstadt," 
 
 " No," said Martin, " I am waiting here till 
 she comes for me." 
 
 " I am colossally jealous." 
 
 Martin laughed. " I always prefer men to 
 women and women to men." 
 
 " What the deuce do you mean ? " 
 
 " Well, when Venus is in the ascendancy I am 
 in love — I hke women best — but at other times 
 I prefer men." 
 
 A rustle was heard outside the door, and in a 
 moment Sophie von Sebaltz came in dressed in 
 the most charming clothes to go shopping. 
 
 She greeted both men merrily, giving a hand to 
 each, and Konstanz hoped she would ask him to 
 go shopping too. 
 
 " Why not all go shopping ? " she said, " and 
 you shall see how women throw away money on 
 clothes in order to please you, and what a business 
 it is being pretty." 
 
 " You are always pretty, anywhere," said 
 Martin ; and Konstanz tried to think of a smart 
 compliment to pay, but allowed a second too many 
 to elapse before it came into his mind.
 
 BERLIN 187 
 
 They went down the stairs together, Konstanz 
 a little behind like an intelligent dog, and trying 
 to push his way forward into the intimate company 
 of the most sought after couple in Berlin, 
 
 They went to a parade of models where he 
 amused them by playing the clown, and with 
 silly remarks caused their happiness to escape in 
 peals of laughter, 
 
 " You dear thing ; you are so funny," said 
 Sophie, " I think he is the amusingest creature, 
 don't you, Martin ? " 
 
 " I think so," answered Martin very gravely ; 
 " and you are the most precious, the most sweet 
 woman on the earth." 
 
 They pleased themselves by buying her the 
 dress she preferred amongst all those that were 
 shown to her, and she promised to give them a 
 dinner in it at her house with nobody else there, 
 Konstanz gave her also a jewelled amber cigarette 
 holder, and Martin bought her a case to match, 
 and they drove back to tea at his rooms in a car 
 filled with boxes and flowers and jokes and noise 
 and general amiability. This is what Konstanz 
 meant when he said that life had not spoilt Martin 
 Schiller ; that one could play at boys and girls 
 with him without feeling forced or stupid. 
 
 At five o'clock, after tea, Konstanz went away 
 discreetly and left the lovers together, who became 
 serious directly they were left alone. The whole 
 of the fantasies and fripperies of life disappeared, 
 and they found themselves in the sweetest of
 
 188 MARTIN SCHt^LER 
 
 passions, strangers to one another, exhilarating 
 and exciting, and yet one because they possessed 
 each other. They remained themselves and took 
 nothing from each other. They gave one 
 another all the sensations of joy and all the light, 
 stimulating pleasures that neither destroy nor 
 create new souls. Their love was like the notes 
 of a harp, hke the cascades of the fountains of 
 Versailles, Hke the fluttering of beech leaves upon 
 the trees in May. They laughed and kissed, and 
 were serious with the seriousness of two Fragonard 
 lovers whose surroundings are silk and umbrellas 
 and parrots, black boys, white maidens, roses, and 
 loves. Nevertheless, Martin was only gay in 
 speech and thought ; his calm, dignified manner, 
 his slow attitudes, gave him still that superiority 
 which impressed the world and made Sophie in 
 her heart afraid of him. She could love nobody 
 she did not fear; she was the archetype of man's 
 dream of womanhood — effeminate, silver-voiced, 
 and silver-footed, with a laugh that rippled with 
 sensuality and eyes and lips always ready to send 
 pretty messages.
 
 CHAPTER XIX 
 
 IT may well be said that the sun never sets 
 on the noise created by the Cosmopolitan 
 Gramophone Company, whose offices have 
 for years been situated in the Markgrafen Strasse. 
 Herr Boch and Herr Walcker, the proprietors, kept 
 up a melodious gyrating all over the world. Black 
 discs belonging to them, stamped with a Uttle 
 world supported by cupids, spun round in every 
 country of the globe ; at no time were all at rest 
 and the earth quiet. No sooner had those belong- 
 ing to the garrison at Shanghai ceased revolving 
 than those in India began to go round hke the 
 spinning tops of Buddha ; continuously they buzzed 
 into noise round the world after the chariot of the 
 sun until the garrison officers at Shanghai met 
 again in the smoking-room of their mess. 
 
 Bernard Steinbach stood by the window of the 
 private room of the company's offices on the first 
 floor of their establishment. He had grown fatter 
 since the production of " The Coquettes," almost 
 four years ago, his shoulders were a little higher, 
 his face redder, and the cheeks more puffed out. 
 He hardly ever laughed because the action lifted 
 his glasses off his nose and because he had become 
 grave since the loss of his illusions. 
 
 189
 
 190 MARTIN SCHULER 
 
 He wore a grey suit that was a little tight for him, 
 and stood at the window with the knuckles of his 
 folded left hand resting upon his hip. In his right 
 hand he held a pipe. He was very troubled and 
 vexed with the idea of seeing Martin again ; his 
 mouth drooped, and trouble passed in shadows 
 across his brow. He stared down out of the window 
 vaguely watching the passers-by, and coursing 
 shame, resentment, and embarrassment ran through 
 him and brought the blood to his face. He hardly 
 moved at all for ten minutes ; most of the time 
 he kept assuring himself that had it not been for 
 the money part of the question, or had the money 
 been less worth while, he would never have come 
 near Martin again. He had to assure himself of it 
 however. 
 
 The yellow autumn sunlight shone on the tops 
 of the buildings opposite, for it was nearly half- 
 past four of an early October afternoon. 
 
 Herr Walcker came in ; he was tall and 
 Prussian, with an air of having been close shaved 
 about the head since infancy. Steinbach looked 
 round and said by way of greeting, without moving 
 from the window : 
 
 " That sewing-machine shop across the road 
 has your name on it." 
 
 " Yes," answered Walcker in a pale, highish 
 voice, " that is a branch of the business ; my 
 partner and Friedrich Cohen manage that." 
 
 Steinbach very much desired to remain at the 
 window in order to watch Martin's arrival, so he
 
 BERLIN 191 
 
 went on talking about the branch firm, Walcker 
 was not displeased to come to the window and 
 enlarge upon its prosperity. 
 
 " We make corset machines principally." 
 
 " Then you know the joke about the two mis- 
 tresses of Georges Faber." 
 
 " I do not. Our machines are used all over the 
 world." 
 
 Steinbach made no comment upon the univer- 
 sality of the " Bochen " se\ving machine, who owed 
 her name, as Walcker wished to explain, to the 
 portmanteau of Boch and Cohen. He went on 
 with his story, in which it appeared that a French 
 lady had met a German lady in unfortunate 
 circumstances under Faber's roof and had told her 
 that she was a simple-minded creature pushed by 
 accident into the wrong kind of corsets. 
 
 Walcker laughed, and then hurried to explain 
 the pretty idea of the trade-name of Herr Boch's 
 little jewel, for Walcker had all the worst \'ices 
 and mental attitudes of the over-assistant of a 
 hosiery department. 
 
 A large car stopped in front of the house and 
 Steinbach put his head out of the window hke a 
 detective. The effort made liim redder than ever. 
 He saw a smart man in a navy blue suit and a blue 
 Homburg hat get out of the car followed by a 
 commonplace looking individual in a rough grey over- 
 coat and tan gloves. The man in blue looked like a 
 very smart edition of Martin Schiiler. He seemed 
 to have the same shoulders and the same walk.
 
 192 MARTIN SCHL^LEll 
 
 What were his sentiments as he crossed the pave- 
 ment, or those as he came upstairs through the 
 show-rooms ? He evidently did not intend to 
 meet Steinbach alone since he had brought a 
 chaperon. Steinbach waited, answering, " Yes, 
 yes," not without irritation, to the pompous trade 
 descriptions of Walcker. Schiiler seemed very 
 slow. He must be looking at all the photographs 
 of the singers upon the walls, some of whom were 
 probably his friends. Steinbach's patience was 
 not great, but his obstinacy did very well to make 
 up for it. He was always obstinate for a plan or 
 for an advantage, in spite of every delay, and people 
 said that he had the patience of Job, but this was 
 not the case. He had got over his sentiments 
 and emotions some time ago with regard to this 
 meeting, at least that was his impression ; but 
 all the same, when he heard Martin's voice outside 
 the door, and saw the handle of the door turn to 
 let him in, he was startled. 
 
 Martin entered, handsome and smart and brave, 
 and good health, good looks, and the attractiveness 
 of one whom everybody spoilt filled the whole 
 room. Steinbach had the feeling of struggling 
 through several hoops of paper : he was not 
 happy. 
 
 " Well, that is you, Steinbach," said Martin, 
 advancing ; " this is my secretary, Wolf." Steinbach 
 was nearly forced to reply as he shook hands 
 with the ordinary creature Wolf, " The former 
 secretary is pleased to meet the present secretary."
 
 BERLIN 198 
 
 However, he felt too sore and uncomfortable to 
 say anything but Good day. Martin suspected 
 that his old friend's feelings towards himself were 
 not all good, and he suddenly became self-conscious, 
 and, looking at Walcker, suggested that they should 
 turn their attention to business. 
 
 Everybody became at once impersonal, and 
 in half an hour the whole of the matter, which 
 concerned certain rights in gramophone records 
 of " The Saddest Singer," were settled^and the 
 necessary signatures made. No sooner was the 
 barrier of business taken down than Wolf felt 
 impelled by some force to get Walcker into conversa- 
 tion outside the room, and leave his master with 
 the stranger. The inevitable kept Martin Schiiler 
 from following them out of the room. He found 
 himself in almost personal contact with Steinbach. 
 He got up and went to the window ; he desired to 
 say something but he did not know what. He 
 uttered the words, " There is a sewing machine 
 shop opposite." 
 
 " It belongs to the firm," answered Steinbach, 
 whose spirit was taken out of him. 
 
 A silence followed that seemed to last two years. 
 
 " It is autumn," said Martin after a long time. 
 
 " Yes, the trees are yellow in the country." 
 
 Martin pretended to look at something out of 
 the window ; he half wanted to laugh, to clap Stein- 
 bach on the back, to embrace him, to do everything 
 to show how ridiculous he thought the situation. 
 The seriousness of embarrassment did not appeal 
 13
 
 194 MARTIN SCHtJLER 
 
 to him. They perpetrated another pair of sentences, 
 this time nearer the thoughts in their hearts. 
 
 " I am fond of Berlin." 
 
 " You prefer it to Leipsic ? " 
 
 This necessitated an answer. Martin yawned, 
 and remembered the last scene they had had in 
 Leipsic over an imaginary corpse of Hella, which 
 was more violent on his part than any of the many 
 scenes of that miserable time before his escape to 
 Berlin. It was a long time since the sick illness of 
 violent temper had come over him ; now he felt 
 the cold creeping anger come up to his knees. It 
 rose like mercury in a thermometer suddenly sub- 
 jected to great heat. He said in a voice full of the 
 metallic sounds of cruelty. 
 
 " Well, as you are hostile, so be it." 
 
 Steinbach grew redder ; his head sunk on his 
 bieast and he readjusted his arms upon the backs 
 of the chairs on either side of him. 
 
 Martin had got to the door. In spite of the 
 terrible tension and of the sounds in their ears of 
 ugly ringing and booming bells, they both had a 
 desire to make an effort of friendship, but not the 
 will. 
 
 Steinbach began to think of nothing but Hella, 
 and Martin looked at him with a burning curiosity 
 to know his opinion of his conduct. 
 
 " It is not desirable for me to stay," said Martin. 
 " There are a thousand things I wish to ask you, 
 but, God in hell, let them lie unasked ! " 
 
 " Perfectly, perfectly, just so," muttered Stein-
 
 BERLIN 195 
 
 bach, whose anger was rising up to the top of him, 
 as Martin's had done. " I agree with you, I agree 
 with you." 
 
 " Well, you have made some money off me at 
 any rate," said Martin, not out of smallness of mind, 
 but because he really thought that this was some 
 consolation, as indeed Steinbach acknowledged 
 to himself that it was. 
 
 After that he went with hesitation down to his 
 car. 
 
 Steinbach again went to the window, a sense 
 of loss, a slight despair, a vast consternation in his 
 mind. Now that the meeting was over all those 
 secret hopes that he had not admitted went through 
 the pain of being extinguished. All those natural 
 and human feelings in connexion with his separation 
 from Martin broke to the surface for a minute, and 
 he found it necessary to blow his nose upon his large 
 white handkerchief. In a few seconds he adopted 
 again the general and commonplace view of the 
 actions of the man he had once loved, and moved 
 away from the window in a dreary and not very 
 satisfactory state of mind. 
 
 Martin drove off into the country in order to see 
 if the trees were as yellow as Steinbach suggested, 
 and in order to be alone. He sent Wolf home in 
 the tram, for he felt moody and not altogether 
 pleased or happy about the idea he entertained 
 that Steinbach did not think well of him. 
 
 " Am I bad ? Am I not good ? Have I done 
 wrong ? Surely I have not done Nvrong. I was
 
 196 MARTIN SCHtlLER 
 
 forced to act as I did — I have always been forced 
 to act as I have done " ; and, presumably having 
 convinced himself that the faults of his life were due 
 to the actions of others rather than to his own, he 
 regained his happiness and good temper, and 
 returned home. 
 
 With joy he saw that the trees in the Linden 
 were also yellow, and as he drove along under their 
 shade he lost the last vestige of second-rateness 
 that clung to him, and felt glad that never again 
 would he find himself face to face with Steinbach. 
 He stopped the car and got out to walk a little under 
 the trees, from which the beautiful thin leaves fell 
 now and then to the ground, and he paused a 
 moment before he turned up into the street where 
 his home was in order to appreciate the invigorating 
 air of the October evening, with its slight smell of 
 frost, of dried leaves, and of aromatic wood.
 
 CHAPTER XX 
 
 ONE morning on a bright day m spring Martin 
 hurried round to see his beloved friend. She 
 lived about a mile away from him and he had 
 to ride down Unter den Linden in order to get 
 to her. He had just finished his third light 
 opera, and a sense of freedom and recurrence of 
 youth came over him, although he had sat up all 
 night. The whole winter had been passed in not 
 too arduous work, which was preoccupying enough 
 to keep him in love with Sophie, who remained the 
 most charming, the most radiant creature alive. 
 Her charm and her loveliness seemed to have 
 increased under his caresses, and he belonged to her 
 in all his free moments as the shadows belong to 
 the sunlight. As he rode gaily down the Linden 
 at an early hour, the shops were washing their faces 
 and had menials manicuring their front doorsteps 
 as it were. Those ai'tful creatures, the stereotyped 
 shop-assistants, who in the daytime dressed in 
 smart clothes and tyrannized over customers, were 
 behaving Uke human beings as they walked along 
 the pavements to their work : the men were 
 chatting and joking with the women, the girls were 
 amusing themselves at the expense of the boys. 
 
 197
 
 198 MARTIN SCHt)LER 
 
 When Schiller came to the Brandenburg gate 
 with the quadriga of Victory upon the top, it seemed 
 to him that its looming proportions were the statue 
 of the mighty German nation, for the sun fell full 
 upon it this morning ; but in the evening, when the 
 sun was behind it and cast its huge shadow forward, 
 it seemed like an austere and overhanging rock. 
 To-day birds could be seen percliing upon its cor- 
 nices and even building their nests in the niches that 
 presented themselves. " What a lot of nests there 
 must be in the chariot of Victory," he thought, 
 and as in former days the thought inspired a musical 
 idea. " A cloud of birds fly from the chariot of 
 Victory," he said to himself as he rode under the 
 archway. When he got through the Brandenburg 
 Thor he turned his horse towards the Friedrichs- 
 vorstadt. The linden-trees were budding, the 
 sparrows chattering, dogs ran cheerily after their 
 owners, and little children on their way to school 
 were daring to play upon the steps of the Victory 
 monument and the Hall of the Imperial Diet. All 
 nature was merry, so that in spite of a feeling of 
 weariness he kept his restive horse at a brisk walk 
 with the aid of rein and heel. He experienced a 
 curious feeling of happiness. " I am myself again," 
 he thought. Perhaps it was the feeling of youth 
 that dispersed his experiences and gave him sim- 
 plicity. For a moment he hesitated whether to 
 call upon Sophie or to go for a long ride. He went 
 for a ride and turned his horse to the Charlotlen 
 Chaussee because that way was long and straight.
 
 BERLIN 199 
 
 He could ride here at ease and enjoy his morning 
 thought. 
 
 He thought he was very much like what he used 
 to be in the old days before Leipsic, and that social 
 life was a little tiring. He began to want to be 
 alone in his little house in the Black Forest, but a 
 consideration of Sophie's feelings drove away the 
 desire. He seemed to see his love for Sophie as 
 a reality and his love for Hella as a far away dream, 
 like a floating castle upon clouds, " Love like that 
 is not to be found down here," he said to himself. 
 " I should like to marry Sophie and carry her off 
 to my quiet den." So he went on talking quietly 
 to himself as one does in the early day when riding 
 upon a horse or walking over a hill. " No, I believe 
 if I were with her all night and day I should tire 
 of her. That is a heresy. Well, I can think of 
 heresies." The notion of Steinbach occurred to him, 
 and he felt a little uneasy and asked himself if 
 there were an after life, an idea which did not really 
 trouble him. " Of course there is," he said. " No, 
 of course there is not. There is a power of evil. 
 I am not pure, but after all I am not so bad." He 
 began to wonder where he was riding to, whether 
 it was to Charlottenburg or to an ultimate goal, 
 but he had only a vague idea of what that goal 
 might be. He decided that he was not yet dead 
 nor had he really lived. He felt for a moment 
 that he had been amusing himself for years and 
 waiting for sometliing, and that in the meantime he 
 had allowed people to handle him and influence
 
 200 MARTIN SCHtJLER 
 
 him. Then the idea vanished as he looked at the 
 arch of his horse's neck, and said, " My horse is a 
 good horse." He wondered if people admired him 
 upon horseback, for it seemed that he had looked 
 presentable in the glass of the shop windows of the 
 Linden. 
 
 The sun shone down upon him, a light wind blew 
 refreshingly in his face ; it wafted the trees about, 
 and the long streamers of water from the public 
 fountains. The trees formed long parallel lines 
 before him, between which ran the ever-narrowing 
 roadway, to which a thin sprinkling of people seemed 
 to be glued, so constant was their number upon it. 
 The people looked very small, especially in the 
 distance, when compared with the wide roadway 
 and the trees. 
 
 " How little everybody is ! " thought Martin, 
 but he himself felt about as large as the statues 
 dotted about the park, which are mostly of the 
 heroic size and compare well in height with the 
 trees and fountains. 
 
 He was unable to conceive the idea that these 
 Httle creatures walking about the road had erected 
 the Brandenburg Gateway just bcliind him or the 
 Charlotten Palace to which he was going. It was 
 difficult for him to credit that the builder of palaces 
 was not nature. 
 
 " The trees will soon be in full leaf," he tliought, 
 a little further on. " How I sigh for the forests 
 of Bavaria ! I would like to see Bertha, my sister. 
 Her children must be tall and strong now. Are any
 
 BERLIN 201 
 
 of them musicians ? Perhaps one of them will 
 outrival me ! No, damned be the thought : I will 
 be the greatest of our family," 
 
 Suddenly ho was overcome with impatience, and 
 turning his horse, made his way quickly by cross 
 routes to the house of the Countess von Sebaltz. 
 
 When he arrived in her boudoir he saw signs that 
 she had risen. He ran into her bedroom. The 
 morning sun filled the apartment, everything 
 glittered with white sunshine. The door into the 
 bathroom was open, and in the doorway stood the 
 Countess, as naked as Venus, drying her ears with 
 a fine lawn towel. When Martin saw how beautiful 
 she was erect in the morning sun he cried out : 
 
 "Oh, you remind me of all that I have not 
 attained ! " 
 
 " How innocent you are ! " she said with rapture ; 
 " you remind me of all that I have not been." 
 
 He began to approach her with hasty awe as if 
 she were a dream, but she vanished into the bath- 
 room and he could hear by the splashing that she 
 had descended into her bath. He walked quietly 
 to the door and watched her bathe herself in the 
 shimmering sunlit water. 
 
 When she saw him in the mirror opposite she 
 cried out, " Go away ! go away ! " and threw a 
 handful of water at him. She was just in the 
 right mood to please him, but then, when was 
 she not ! 
 
 He retired and sat down upon her bed with a 
 sigh. His eyes ached a Uttle. What hours she
 
 202 MARTIN SCHCLER 
 
 stayed in the water ! Presently, however she 
 emerged in a muslin robe-de-chambre, with a huge 
 cape of frills that half hid her face. He rose and 
 went up to her ; then put his left arm round her, 
 and with his right hand pressed back the frills of 
 her cape in order to kiss her. The firm muscles of 
 her beautiful youthful back were against his left 
 hand, as he held her well and lightly. She was aware 
 that she was perfectly held. Between his two kisses 
 she adored him, and said : 
 
 " Wonderfullest man ! " 
 
 " Most wonderful woman," he replied, and the 
 lightness and strength of that beautiful embrace 
 could scarcely be excelled. 
 
 When they were seated at the breakfast-table, 
 drinking coffee and eating rolls, he said : 
 
 " I came to tell you — I came to announce it 
 is done. The third one, dedicated to you." 
 
 " Well done, excellently done," she said, stroking 
 his hand. " But my dearest one looks a little 
 tired ! " 
 
 " I worked till four o'clock this morning." He 
 laughed a love-laugh, and jumping up suddenly 
 kissed her mouth. She was laughing too. 
 
 Presently she said, " Have you ever loved any- 
 body as you love me ? " 
 
 " No one," he replied. 
 
 " Have you ever loved anybody at all ? " 
 
 " I had a most troublesome and heavy-footed 
 passion for a good woman once. She demanded
 
 BERLIN 208 
 
 a complete sacrifice to love : not to herself, to love ! 
 It was all-too-serious. It did not endure." 
 
 Sophie sighed and said that she had had her 
 photograph taken. 
 
 " Do not give it to anybody but me," said Martin. 
 
 " Of course I would not dream of such a thing ! 
 Do I want everybody to have me to stare at ? " 
 
 Martin came and knelt at her feet. His feeling 
 of former days was returning. He put his arms 
 round her and hid his face on her breast in order 
 to shut out the present. It was strange for him 
 to have such a strong recurrence of the past. He 
 seemed to have before his eyes a photograph of his 
 youth. His loaded memory, from which up to now 
 he had taken nothing, was perhaps beginning to 
 burst. His thoughts came to a head. 
 
 " I am thirty," he muttered, " and I am not satis- 
 fied with myself. I am most displeased. Never 
 will I write anything more." 
 
 Sophie stroked his hair. " You are only tliirty, 
 dearest," she said; "what is the matter with my 
 little one ? " 
 
 His mood of self-criticism passed in a flash, but 
 he still hid his head in her breast. 
 
 " How often am I not content," she said, soothing 
 him ; " how often I am displeased with myself ! 
 When I was a girl I was so innocent and young that 
 my only dream was to be the faithful companion 
 of a man and a faithful mother of little children. 
 Fate has given me quite different things to do and 
 I try to do them well. Perhaps your successes
 
 204 MARTIN SCHtJLER 
 
 are not quite those you dreamed of, but they are 
 brilliant ; does not everybody love and admire 
 you ? does not everything you want fall at your feet ? 
 Your Sophie does ; she is your little slave. Per- 
 haps she is not very good. Some people call her 
 a little fool, and are writing letters to her husband 
 about her. But I do not think I am wicked, and 
 if so I must be wicked because you are so wonder- 
 ful. Are you not wonderful ? Of necessity I 
 am not good." 
 
 " I forgot Hella von Rosenthal," said Martin, 
 " as easily as a fledgeling forgets its mother." This 
 seemed to him at the moment a crime. " I may 
 forget you." 
 
 " You are a genius," answered Sophie; "every- 
 thing you do is right. I am sure she does not 
 reproach you ; I am sure she has only a few little 
 regrets because she is human." 
 
 Martin, who did not want to have the subject of 
 Hella enlarged upon, kissed her under the chin in 
 that small hollow that Frenchwomen are so proud 
 of. 
 
 " My darlingest," he whispered, " you smell of 
 wild roses and honeysuckle. That is my idea of you. 
 You are my genius and my muse. How lovely you 
 looked in your doorway. When I want pure inspira- 
 tion I shall come and watch you bathe yourself." 
 
 After he had kissed her he got up and left her. 
 Outside the servant was holding his horse for him. 
 He gave him a large tip, whicli was unusual, and 
 mounted gaily He rode down to the Potsdam gate.
 
 BERLIN 205 
 
 but the day was so beautiful that he decided to 
 resume his interrupted ride to Charlottenburg. 
 When he got there he stabled his horse and walked 
 to the Mausoleum, which he entered. He Uked 
 the entrance with the marble angel and the theatrical 
 light effects. Anything with wings was particularly 
 attractive to him. Entering, he found him- 
 self among dead Emperors and Empresses. He 
 stared some moments at the beautiful recumbent 
 figure of the Queen Louise, and a desire to pray 
 came upon him, but to what he did not know : 
 perhaps to Queen Louise. He seemed to be begging 
 of her to lift him up, but out of what he could not 
 tell : perhaps to a love he had forgotten, to a state 
 of mind that he had fallen from. His love for 
 Sophie had none of the depth of passion of those days 
 upon the mountains with Hella. Yes, the pure 
 marble of the statue recalled the snow upon the 
 mountains, and yet Hella was like the deep sea, 
 and Sophie was, in perfect taste, like a carven statue. 
 He did not require a woman who demanded from 
 him the sacrifice of his whole soul : he required 
 one who would fill him with life and joy and the 
 power to do great things. Was Sophie sufficient ? 
 Her body was a fine representation of the intellec- 
 tual. Did he lie within himself, sufficient unto 
 himself like these dead bodies ? Should he repel 
 outward influences and, like a great river, flow 
 from his own soul only ? His heart seemed full 
 to breaking. He stretched his arms above his head 
 like one who aspires physically, regardless of a
 
 206 MARTIN SCHtJLER 
 
 number of Americans who with devout stc])s were 
 prowling round the great dead of the old world 
 and sniffing their last musty savour with nostrils 
 dilated for the very purpose. 
 
 He heard the curator wliisper under his breath, 
 " That is Martin von Schiiler." 
 
 " Would he point me out to them if 1 had gone 
 my own way ? " he thought ; " perhaps fame is 
 better than immortality/' 
 
 The boldest of the Americans dared to ask him 
 for an autograph. 
 
 " No," he said in German, " I can write nothing 
 but music " — none of which she understood except 
 the negative. The curator laughed however, and 
 winked at Martin as the party left the place, but 
 he remained behind, and continued his meditations, 
 staring at the floor with his hands in his pockets. 
 His last work had been an effort. He had found it 
 necessary to work up to a standard — the standard 
 of his second opera. He had to keep in the same 
 vein — that was the most difficult part — and at 
 the same level. He was pleased with himself, 
 but he did not feel that a third effort upon the 
 same lines was possible to him, for he did not count 
 "The Coquettes," which was an accident. 
 
 " Well," he thought at last, " I cannot stand here 
 all day. I had better go and see if they are over- 
 feeding my mare." 
 
 He spent the afternoon choosing a present for 
 Sophie von Sebaltz, in order to commemorate the
 
 BERLIN 207 
 
 occasion. He was not fond of jewels; he liked 
 giving her flowers, but on this occasion he chose a 
 ring which the jeweller's assistant at Wagner's 
 assured liim was quite what she liked. It was a 
 cameo of the head of the Medusa, with black hair 
 and a white face upon a black background. " We 
 have ascertained that several queens have worn it, 
 excellency," said the salesman. A Jewish person 
 with a beak nose confirmed this statement. " Aber 
 so ! " he said, taking the jewel from Martin and 
 examining it with a lens. " Aber so ! It is the 
 finest, the most royal jewel in our establishment ! " 
 
 Besides this ring he had only given her a jewelled 
 cigarette case and a pearl upon a long platinum 
 chain. For this he had paid about eighteen thou- 
 sand marks. The pearl always hung near her heart 
 in the most sacred of love's shrines, for he called 
 it his frozen kiss. As for other gifts, he was not 
 fond of books. The only book he had ever given 
 her was Plato's " Phaedrus " in Greek, which neither 
 of them could read. He gave it to her because 
 Countess Ardstein had told him that it contained 
 the epitome of perfect love.
 
 CHAPTER XXI 
 
 A LTHOUGH Martin Schiiler was now thirty 
 /a years of age, the peahens was not yet brought 
 ■^ off. He had not even read Werner's poem ; 
 in fact he had almost completely forgotten the whole 
 idea. His second opera, "The Saddest Singer," 
 was a furious success. When he had brought it to 
 Berlin everybody went wild about it. Everybody 
 sang the chief song in it — 
 
 " So beautiful is the singer 
 Who sadly sings of love." 
 
 It was edited for sopranos, contraltos, tenors, and 
 baritones, with and without obligatos for every 
 conceivable instrument. It was edited as a piano 
 solo, a violin solo, a clarinet solo. Martin made 
 a fortune out of it. It was chanted in all countries 
 and in all languages by every make of gramophone. 
 One heard it as frequently as the "Merry Widow" 
 waltz, or Offenbach's "Barcarolle," which, after 
 a dozen years of popularity still moves the 
 hearts of the bourgeoisie. 
 
 One day Martin sat in the out-of-door restaurant 
 of one of the best hotels in Berlin in charming com- 
 pany. Amongst those present the beautiful actress, 
 Tarquine, sat next to him, clothed in an up-to-date 
 
 208
 
 BERLIN 209 
 
 white tailor-made. He chattered with her through- 
 out the luncheon, and she rubbed the whitening off 
 her doeskin boots on to his trousers. Tarquine 
 was one of those very vivacious people who can 
 neither keep their feet nor their tongues still. It 
 was difficult to recognize in this spick-and-span Herr 
 von Schiller, in the smart navy blue lounge suit, 
 with the longish oiled hair brushed up from his 
 brows, the black moustache and the slightly musical 
 tie, that sloppy, neglected-looking youth who used 
 to sit with his elder sister in an attic den, papered 
 with a soiled mustard-coloured wall-paper. He 
 was changed even from the somewhat provincial 
 creature of a few years ago, who bought good clothes 
 off the peg and wore rather too large collars. 
 
 Is one ever different from the present : that is 
 to say, has one a past ? It is difficult to believe 
 that one's other images were oneself at all and not 
 substitutes. 
 
 " Ah ! " said Tarquine, ' to-night we shall witness 
 another succes fou! Ah, mais oui, mon tout p'tit 
 homme," she exclaimed to Martin, " I intend to 
 make myself a success in the title role." 
 
 " I have no doubt of it," said Martin, who was in 
 good spirits. 
 
 This was the day of the production of his third 
 opera. He was always happy when there was any 
 chance of public glory. He loved his name in the 
 papers, and enjoyed the applause of the multitude, 
 for he valued the acclamation of the herd far above 
 the praise of individuals.] 
 
 14 ^ /
 
 210 MARTIN SCHCLER 
 
 The hors d'ouvres, the soup, the special fish, 
 the delicate entrecote maitre d 'hotel, the duck so 
 tender and young with equally young and tender 
 green peas enhanced with a sauce of apricots and 
 oysters a la moselle had all been submitted, 
 approved, served, and devoured. The waiters 
 bowed with the beautiful concoction of Venus before 
 the guests, a stimulating savoury which appeared 
 to be made of pistachio nuts and thin slices of curried 
 ham, but which tasted as strange and delicate as 
 the perfume of an exotic China rose. The luncheon 
 party chattered, gormandized, and roared with 
 laughter. The summer sun poured down upon the 
 awning. Iced champagne stood in pewter buckets, 
 the bottles decently attired in white cloths to 
 prevent the waiters from getting chilblains. The 
 ladies helped themselves to wild strawberries out 
 of little silver baskets. They put strawberries into 
 their champagne so that they bobbed like pieces 
 of red amber upon little golden ponds. The noise 
 and gaiety of the party distressed the grave English 
 family who sat at the next table, and caused them 
 to say, " What terrible manners these Germans 
 have ! " They turned away when Tarquine opened 
 her handsome mouth so wide that the little straw- 
 berries could roll into it with the champagne. 
 
 " Strawberries ! " said Martin, who was becoming 
 in a better and better humour ; and the others — 
 that is to say, Konstanz, Huchner, Susie Meyder, 
 Gaiya Salviati and Fritz Zeiss — all went off into 
 roars of laughter over the very miproper joke they
 
 BERLIN 211 
 
 all knew about strawberries. Konstanz particu- 
 larly winked at Gaiya, whom he loved equally well 
 with Lottie and Beda, if not with half a dozen others. 
 Tarquine moved her vivacious feet in glee under the 
 table, and the calves of Martin's trousers assumed 
 the aspect of whited sepulchres. Off the stage she 
 was one of those energetic Dianas who destroy, 
 rend, break, or upset whatever they come m contact 
 with. Her chief charm as an actress was her bound- 
 less vitality and her irrepressible liveliness. 
 
 " Listen ! " she cried, holding up her spoon with 
 the remnant of her hot-ice in it and waving it 
 rhythmically in the air : 
 
 " So schon ist doch der Sanger ! " 
 
 she sang softly, as the orchestra, at a whisper from 
 the Herr Restaurantkeeper, struck up Martin's 
 song. It was repeated three times. The gay com- 
 pany paid compliments to the hero and drank to 
 the success of his new opera " The Maidens of 
 Weimar," which was going to be produced that 
 evening. For that matter it was already an assured 
 success, and the hilarity of the party was greatly 
 due to the fact that they were all going to benefit 
 by it. All the guests in the restaurant ceased eating, 
 and enquii-ed from the waiters who the person with 
 the black moustache might be. On learning who 
 he was, several of them stood up to get a better view. 
 
 The orchestra ceased playing and turned to look 
 at the hero with whom it felt that it was one. 
 
 Suddenly the composer stood up and turned livid
 
 212 MARTIN SCHtlLER 
 
 He swore the most terrible oath, blasphemed God 
 and insulted the Emperor, then strode down the 
 steps into the glaring sunshine and vanished down 
 a side street. 
 
 The company was astonished. The waiters and 
 some of the guests ran to the steps in order to see 
 what had become of him. A taxi-man driving past 
 opened his door and indicated that they should go 
 with him in pursuit. Three of them did, but they 
 never saw Martin Schiiler again. 
 
 Nothing serious had taken place. Martin had 
 merely heard, like a faint echo of the orchestra, 
 what seemed to him the miserable chime of a hurdy- 
 gurdy grinding out his over-sung song. Instantly 
 he had had a clear vision of his young God-inspired 
 self gazing out over Heidelberg, and his soul cried 
 aloud with nameless execrations that he had 
 betrayed himself to shame.
 
 CHAPTER XXII 
 
 NIGHT was falling over Berlin when Martin 
 returned to his house. He was physically 
 and mentally ill. Where he had been or 
 what he had done all day he could not remember. 
 His mind was filled with the recollection he had of 
 Tarquine as she appeared at the last rehearsal in 
 short chiffon skirts and a hussar's coat. The 
 memory of this and of the fact that his music had 
 been played upon a hurdy-gurdy revealed to him 
 the baseness of what he called his self-betrayal. 
 The best emanation of his brain during the last 
 five years was suitable for a street organ. Ever 
 since he had last seen Steinbach a suspicion had 
 arisen in him from time to time that his life was not 
 as it should be, and yet the success he had had and 
 the pleasure he gave flattered him, and he reassured 
 himself that all was right with him. Nevertheless 
 the new force or the old force, the suspicion of him- 
 self, or the dawning realization of his power, or 
 whatever it might be, had caused him recently to 
 become uneasy and on the look out and to indulge 
 more frequently in sharp, loud accesses of bad 
 temper. Now, as he stood in the middle of his bed- 
 room in the attitude of thinking and perplexity, 
 
 213
 
 214 MARTIN SCHt)LER 
 
 he began suddenly to shake and became beside 
 himself. He seemed to see all his friends arrayed 
 against him, pointing the finger at him and saying 
 " That man is a failure." He hid his face in his 
 hands as he stood there in the dim white twilight, 
 a black shadowy figure amidst the white walls of 
 his room. A furious desire to shoot himself or to 
 plunge at once into a personal revolution seized 
 him. He longed to wage civil war against himself, 
 to immolate, to annihilate everything of him. He 
 threw himself upon his bed and wept extravagantly. 
 His soul raged against his soul. The blood boiled 
 in his veins and rushed to his head, his heart accele- 
 rated, he choked and was desperately sick. He 
 flung himself upon the floor and lay for a long time 
 in an agony with his teeth clenched, his brows con- 
 tracted, his lower jaw protruded. Tears streamed 
 from his eyes and with his hands he caught the 
 leopard skin rug in a fierce grasp. He lay still in 
 the madness of degradation, and swiftly all the 
 things he had ever done passed through his mind, 
 tinged, stained, and ruined with futility. He fell 
 into a nightmare of horror, in the middle of which 
 his secretary came into the room. When Wolf saw 
 him upon the floor he gave a low cry — ^he thought he 
 saw a murdered man. Instantly Martin sprang up, 
 anger and passion running like a storm of fire through 
 him. 
 
 " Go out of my sight ! " he shouted in a transport 
 of fury, neither knowing or caring what he said. 
 " Go ! You foul snarer, you beast of the earth ! "
 
 BERLIN 215 
 
 His heart trembled, his body shuddered : he thought 
 he saw in his secretary an incarnation of his degra- 
 dation. Delighted also to be able to make some 
 sensitive creature suffer, he sprang upon him as he 
 cowered against the wall and struck him furiously. 
 " You coward ! you beast of the earth ! " he howled 
 again, " you reptile ! Your insignificance shrivels 
 you in your miserable skin." Martin struck him 
 again. " You loathsome hypocrite. Thank your 
 God I have no weapon. If I had a weapon I would 
 kill you as Saul killed David— transfix you to the 
 wall — smash out your brains. Time-server ! 
 Escape now, escape," he cried, swaying back from 
 the wall and making with his hands the movements 
 of strangling. " God in hell, escape or I shall 
 choke you with my naked hands ; the sight of you 
 is intolerable." 
 
 Wolf slid to the door and Martin lunged again 
 and struck him in the back of the neck. Wolf 
 reeled and nearly fell backwards, but managed to 
 gain the door. Streaming with blood he disappeared 
 through it. His dismay as he heard Martin turn 
 the key in the lock caused him to huddle himself 
 upon the ground. His natmre was revolted because 
 he had not struck back, but one does not strike a 
 superior officer, one does not strike God or Martin 
 Schiller. 
 
 " The fool ! " said Martin to himself smiling, 
 " the fool ! He thinks I am mad. He will probably 
 fetch the police." He flung himself upon his bed 
 in the hope that despair would again fasten down
 
 216 MARTIN SCHULER 
 
 upon him and blot out his abominable feelings, but 
 it did not. He felt calmer, but he also felt that 
 if anybody turned the handle of his door he would 
 open it, drag him in, and kill him. Soon he slept, 
 but his dreams were uneasy. Leopards pervaded 
 a green atmosphere. Discontent, despair, and 
 anguish drifted together in an indefinite sea, where 
 there were ridges of green and parts of leopards, 
 anguish and despair revolving together in an 
 uneven movement.
 
 CHAPTER XXIII 
 
 HE was to have taken Sophie to the theatre 
 to hear his new piece. He was to have taken 
 her out to dinner first — to have brought her 
 flowers and petted and spoiled her. They were 
 to have had a happy evening teasing one another 
 with pleasantries of which they never got tired. 
 She waited a long time for him. She lay upon the 
 sofa of her boudoir. She was not angry because 
 Schiiler did not come : she was afraid. She dared 
 not go out alone because she knew that if he found 
 her gone he would be in a mad rage. She had no 
 idea what kept him, but she dared not go and see 
 if he was ill till he sent for her. Her fears were not 
 deep enough to make her cry. She did not cry 
 easily ; perhaps her feelings were never very strong, 
 or perhaps she was philosophical. She lit a cigarette 
 and drank some coffee. 
 
 At ten o'clock she established herself at the 
 window, and, standing there holding apart the 
 sulphur-coloured ciurtains, she looked like a beautiful 
 picture by some French follower of Whistler. 
 The tones of pale sulphur and delicate pearl-pink, 
 shadowed with grey by the bright blue dusk of 
 the evening, the long chiffon dress that hung straight 
 
 217
 
 218 MARTIN SCIItlLER 
 
 upon the floor, the white ermine coat unmarred with 
 black flicks of tails, showed beautiful and soft as 
 a picture upon a flat surface in the light of the shaded 
 lamp. Her delicate right hand had upon it the 
 black and white ring that Martin had given her. It 
 looked like the exotic signature of the artist. There 
 was nothing real about her. Frequently she was 
 unreal : a fairy princess. To-night she was at the 
 zenith of her beauty. Physically, in her beautiful 
 pale clothes, she was a faultless dream, reminding 
 one of the most perfectly grown malmaison carna- 
 tions, of pearls without flaw, of ivory carved into 
 eastern houris with black onyx hair. She was an 
 object of art. 
 
 When it was quite dark Martin awoke and imme- 
 diately took his hat, unlocked the door, and hurried 
 do\vn into the street. It was half past eleven. 
 The lights in the street were brilliant. He turned 
 into Unter den Linden and walked rapidly under 
 the emerald green trees that seemed in the powerful 
 light of the overhead lamps to be made of jewels. 
 He passed the gay cafes where everything was glar- 
 ing vermilion and bright yellow and dark green, as 
 if they were cafds on the stage. Above him 
 stretched the dark purple impassive sky, around him 
 was noise and laughter and brilliance. There was 
 no sympathy in anything. When he was brilliant 
 he was the god of brilliancy ; when he was alone 
 in the forest he was the god of the night ; but to- 
 night he was alone in the brilliance. He walked
 
 BERLIN 219 
 
 on to the gateway that seemed to be the gateway 
 of life, and went under it as if he were returning 
 to hell. All the dramatic feelings of which he was 
 capable rose in him. He longed to create a sensa- 
 tion, to die of an attack of the heart under the arch 
 of the gate, to go mad and rave screaming down the 
 Linden, to have wings and be carried upon them 
 up into the sky out of life and the desperate state 
 he was in. He felt himself sinking in a sea, and 
 nothing, he assured himself, nothing in the world, 
 could raise him out of it. 
 
 Soon he found himself entering Sophie's house, 
 ascending her stairs, and going into her boudoir. 
 The light and the sweet perfume made him feel 
 tired. 
 
 Directly he appeared she ran to him and threw 
 herself into his arms. He did not know what to do 
 with her. He wanted to behave so as to make 
 himself feel happy and to remove the despair 
 out of his heart. The soft feeling of her clothes 
 soothed him a little : to gather fur and satin 
 and chiffon under one's hand gives at least a sense 
 of physical well-being. When he had moved his 
 hands about on her a little he thought he would 
 speak. 
 
 " I am done for." He seemed to have said 
 something like it before. Everything seemed a 
 reiteration. His life was stirred into a whirling 
 pool ; events were now in the future, now in the 
 past. 
 
 " Oh! how? "
 
 220 MARTIN SCHULER 
 
 " How ? How should I know." 
 
 Sophie's heart sank — evidently he was madly 
 angry. 
 
 " Was the play not well received ? " 
 
 " I have not been to the play. My heart is 
 broken : I am dead : I am a writer of opera bouffe." 
 
 " But " 
 
 " I tell you I am dead. Take your arms from 
 me : I am a corpse." 
 
 She did not move. 
 
 " Forsake me, I say : all have." 
 
 Still she did not move. 
 
 He thought how splendidly devoted she was. She 
 herself neither believed what he said nor saw any 
 reason to desert him. She had no idea what to 
 do and was moreover frightened. She liked to 
 hold him for protection. 
 
 She put her face up and kissed him. 
 
 He buried her in his arms, and, picking her up, 
 put her on the divan and threw himself beside her 
 
 She loved him very much just then : all her 
 excitable emotions were satisfied. He began to 
 breathe heavily and to sob. 
 
 " Tell me," he said, " I am dead." 
 
 She stroked his head. " No, no." 
 
 " Tell me I am a failure." 
 
 " What ! " she whispered ; " why, you can do 
 anything in the world." 
 
 " How can you tell ? " 
 
 " I know." 
 
 " How do you know ? "
 
 BERLIN 221 
 
 " Because I know." 
 
 He raised his head and looked at her. 
 
 " Tell me what I am to do." 
 
 " To be brave." 
 
 " How am I to be brave ? " 
 
 " To go away." The time-honoured remedy was 
 the only suggestion she could make. 
 
 " To go where ? " 
 
 " To the Black Forest." 
 
 He began to tell her about his life. He kept her 
 awake and talked to her until morning dawned. 
 He told her the most exaggerated story of his past, 
 which was far different from the truth, in which 
 he had suffered a thousand dramatic and awful 
 moments, and been tortured and made happy beyond 
 the lot even of mythical beings. He gave her an idea 
 so terrible of his sufferings as a youth born to genius, 
 of his betrayal — as he called it — by Steinbach, of 
 his destruction — as he imagined it to be — by Hella, 
 that her imagination was stirred and all those little- 
 used forces of thought in her took from his grotesque, 
 magnificent recital enough fire to kindle in him a 
 flame of hope, a desire for the future, and a will to 
 be more wonderful than anybody that had ever lived 
 in the whole world. At cock-crow he left her and 
 went away to be by himself in order to dream that 
 he was young and that all that he had just said 
 existed only in his imagination. Unfortunately, 
 his flame of hope was not very strong : his defeat 
 was heavy and smothered it into grey smoke. It 
 lay and smouldered for a long time, and neither
 
 222 MARTIN SCHtlLER 
 
 Sophie nor Wolf had any power to cheer him from 
 the deep depression and loneliness that came over 
 him, or to draw him out of the muddy fen of misery 
 that he had fallen into.
 
 SCHWARZWALD
 
 SCHWARZWALD 
 CHAPTER XXIV 
 
 MARTIN SCHtJLER left BerHn on the 13th 
 of July in his automobile. He felt no regret 
 as the car carried him for the last time down 
 Unter den Linden. Again the past was closed down 
 by a departure. He sat alone in his blue Mercedes 
 thinking of nothing, dreaming of nothing, but he 
 was experiencing the whole of the rest of his Ufe. 
 What he saw as the automobile and his past hfe 
 grew further apart, he afterwards realized. The 
 rain was pouring down in torrents ; the heavy 
 drops pattered on the leaves. The words 
 " Unter den Blattem " came into Martin's mind- 
 " Blattern," short and sharp and hard, was repeated 
 a thousand times by the dripping trees. It might 
 mean something, it might mean nothing ; but 
 whatever its significance, Martin never forgot it, 
 and one may now hear, if one thinks fit to go to 
 those rare performances of Schiiler opera, " unter 
 den Blattern," " unter den Blattem, Blattern, 
 Blattern, Blattern," repeated mercilessly through 
 a whole episode by the violins. 
 
 For hours he lay in the car physically at ease 
 in the luxury of solitude. Wolf, Sophie, and the 
 
 225 
 15
 
 226 MARTIN SCHtJLER 
 
 rest of his paraphernalia were in the train. He 
 thought of them for a minute, as if they were a 
 couple of boxes, and then sohtude came back Uke 
 a refreshing dream. He dozed and slept in that 
 luxurious car, cut off from the entire universe. 
 
 They drove through Dresden ; the houses passed 
 by him rapidly with the rain and the trees and the 
 pedestrians, Uke false objects in a mise en scene. 
 The whole of Germany seemed to be swimming in 
 rain. The rain beat fiercely upon the car and 
 splashed and spat round the wind screen upon the 
 unfortunate chauffeurs, for Herr von Schiiler never 
 went a long distance without two, so that when one 
 was exhausted the other could take his place. As 
 dusk came on it became impossible to see the road 
 with the screen shut, so Bergensen, the Swedish 
 mechanic, opened it, and the rain cut and drove in 
 upon their faces. Schiiler lay comfortably upon 
 the mauve corduroy divan, his dinner case and 
 tantalus open beside him. Drops of rain splashed 
 into the car from time to time, through the slit 
 of open window. The condition of the weather 
 filled him with absurd joy. The chill, heavy wet- 
 ness of the atmosphere, the dark gloom of the sky, 
 gave him a memory of Schiilersholm, on lake Titter- 
 see, where in the morning he would find himself. 
 In his mind he cried to Thor and Wodin and 
 the Norse gods of violent nature to let loose the 
 fountains of heaven and pour upon the earth an 
 exceptional deluge of rain. 
 
 The endless motion of the car ceased at some
 
 SCHWARZWALD 227 
 
 point in the night, and Schiiler awoke to the fact 
 that the world had ceased to go round and that death 
 is a negation of movement. Voices were talking 
 to the chauffeur. In a few minutes Martin put his 
 head out of the window and said : 
 
 " Who is this ? \\Tiere are we ? What is the 
 matter ? " 
 
 " Regensburg, Herr Count, Regensburg — the 
 authorities of the bridge." 
 
 " Ah, Regensburg," said Martin, and got out. 
 It was about half -past eleven o'clock at night. 
 A 'group of men came round him at a respectful 
 distance. 
 
 " Water was necessary, sir," said the French 
 chauffeur ; " also to cool the car ; also the authority 
 of the bridge." 
 
 " Ah, the sacred stream ! " said Martin, advancing 
 to the group of people. " Permit me, I would 
 like to look over." 
 
 " This is a very old bridge," said one man. 
 
 " Very old, very old," said three or four others. 
 
 " It is still raining," Martin answered. 
 
 " But not as before," said the police official. 
 
 Martin had on only a thin lounge suit and no hat ; 
 upon his feet were thin shoes. 
 
 " What do you think of the river, Prince, if one 
 may interrogate ? " said a bold late diner-out. 
 
 " It seems very black, " said Martin, who was 
 aware that the river was the highway of Europe 
 to Constantinople. 
 
 Somebody lit a newspaper, and when it had flared
 
 228 MARTIN SCHtJLER 
 
 up let it fall over the black chasm of the bridge 
 The river was too murky to give a reflexion. 
 
 " That is very beautiful," said Martin, as the 
 newspaper sailed slowly downwards like an angel 
 of heaven into hell. 
 
 " Your car is ready, sir," said the French 
 chauffeur. 
 
 Martin still lingered at the corner of the bridge, 
 looking down into the abyss. After a few minutes 
 he said: 
 
 "On it comes from under, and hangs like hair 
 upon the piers, and streams longer and longer till 
 it grows to the sea." 
 
 " Yes," said the man next to him : " it is always 
 the same water under this bridge ; we love it, it is 
 so familiar : 
 
 " Our water is so familiar. 
 Thou art my under- and my over-going. 
 
 "Not a rhythm to admire, Herr Count." 
 
 Martin leant over the parapet. His eyes were 
 accustomed to the dark. He could see streaks of 
 the onflowng river. 
 
 " What is your over-going? " he said to the man 
 who had spoken to him. 
 
 The man, who was young and had the silhouette 
 of one given to thinking, made a gesture with his 
 hands to represent the bridge and the river. " At 
 right angles," he said, " at right angles over and 
 under, onwards with motion and onwards without 
 motion, but both of them are permanent. The
 
 SCHWARZWALD 229 
 
 ripples round the pier change very little ; they only 
 change to become what they have been before. 
 The road over the bridge is the same : mend it, 
 mend it, and the same holes reappear. It is all 
 based on the fundamental structure and the 
 mathematical idea. Everything is based on the 
 philosophical notion : that and the mathematical 
 idea are one." 
 
 Martin put his hands on the parapet and stretched 
 his arms so that he stood upright. He looked at 
 the would-be philosopher and said, " Over and 
 under in opposite directions : there you had a true 
 thought ; that is the sort of thing I admire, but I 
 myself never illustrate glimpses into eternity. 
 Over and under in opposite directions is enough ; 
 I shall sleep well to-night. Thank you ; we have 
 something in common." 
 
 The man who had spoken felt ashamed of himself, 
 as if he had made an object of the description called 
 applied art. 
 
 Martin moved and began to get into his car. He 
 felt as Napoleon felt when he got into his carriage 
 after a successful battle. He looked at his watch 
 as Napoleon frequently looked at his : his head 
 down, the timepiece in his right hand. 
 
 " Twelve," he said, and an idea came into his 
 head. 
 
 " You Regensburgians," he said, " you are a little 
 behind Berlin." 
 
 " Indeed," said the police constable, " the clocks 
 will strike midnight soon."
 
 230 MARTIN SCHtJLER 
 
 Martin took his foot off the step. 
 
 " Does the river cease flowing at midnight ? " 
 he said. 
 
 The police official answered without being able 
 to help himself. " But no, time does not matter 
 to it." 
 
 Martin got into the car. " Good-bye," he said 
 to the pedestrian crowd. " To the Schwartz 
 Wald," he shouted to the chauffeur. 
 
 " Adieu, Herr Diavolo ! " said a voice. 
 
 Martin looked out again. " Auf Wiedersehen ! " 
 he cried, and everybody roared with laughter except 
 the philosopher, who was trying to remember the 
 exact words he had used to this prince of darkness, 
 in order that while singing his own praises he might 
 not quote by mistake portions which he wished to 
 forget. 
 
 The car left Regensburg. Martin felt the approach 
 of the mountains and forests. After midnight the 
 rain began again to pour in fierce torrents. As 
 they left Regensburg he heard the hour of night 
 echo from a hundred chimes. The clock in the 
 interior of the car answered irritably and electri- 
 cally with twelve wearisome small pings. 
 
 " You beast ! " said Martin, kicking its face till 
 it broke " you unsymphonic parasite ! " He laughed 
 to himself and rolled himself into comfort on his 
 couch. 
 
 The car advanced southward in that intense 
 black night. The French chauffeur had in his mind 
 the whole of the road from Berlin to his destination.
 
 SCHWARZWALD 231 
 
 Its chief contours, towns, and proportions were 
 present to his sight. Like a narrow white nerve 
 in the darkness of the night it lay before him, and 
 his senses were all of them aware of the familiarity 
 not only of the part he had just traversed, but of 
 the part he had yet to traverse. He was interested 
 in the Grand Prix. He insisted upon driving the 
 whole way in order to establish a record, and the 
 Swedish mechanic, who preferred slumber and occa- 
 sional sweet draughts from a bottle of cognac to 
 straining his eyes and establishing records, made 
 no objection. 
 
 In the woods below Regensburg, Martin opened 
 a window of the car. He sat close beside it and 
 allowed the wetness to strike his face. The woods 
 stood silent in the merciless downpouring of the 
 rain. Black and dark were the caverns of the trees 
 under the boughs; a wind stirred, and in a long 
 series sounds of scattering drops ran from end 
 to end of the forest roads. The wind passed, and 
 again all was silent and still, save for the endless 
 unrhythmic pattering of the rain. 
 
 The motion of the car was swift, and Martin felt 
 in it like some vague adventurer of dreams. They 
 passed through the woods where in the twilight of 
 evening evil beings hunted the white hart with 
 hideous cries and with savagery caught late-stray- 
 ing village girls for a prey ; where charcoal-burners 
 dwelt in huts, and in the evening hours gradually 
 became transformed into beneficent old dwarfs, 
 who, with leafy heads and eyes inherited from fauns.
 
 232 MARTIN SCHULER 
 
 pried about to guard late goers ; where, in height 
 of moonlight nights, fairies streamed in wreaths 
 among the boughs singing small drunken chanties 
 and making lovers who heard them mad with 
 their sounding honey and music-making flowers. 
 They passed through glades where in the depth of 
 night darkness lay deeper than in the shadow of 
 the trees, where the sound of human foot, or the 
 chime of bells, or fairies, or any of those things 
 particularly loved by man, have never been heard or 
 seen. It is the open spaces of the forest that are 
 fearful. Here there is a void that seizes upon the 
 heart and makes the mind stop. The wanderer 
 shrinks back into the shadows where it is warm, and 
 there are rough trees which respond to the sense of 
 touch. 
 
 To-night no ghosts or fairies, beasts, magicians 
 or late travellers were on the prowl. The rain killed 
 ev^ery thing supernatural with its wetness. The 
 hills with their castles, the terraced vineyards near 
 the villages, the small churches and wooden houses 
 filled with little people of the size of matches, were 
 still, silent, and asleep. In his imagination this was 
 Martin's view of the world. He sat at the \\dndow 
 as the car drove past hill and village, over bridges 
 and again into the woods, and felt that the world 
 was on a very small scale. 
 
 The French chauffeur had much the same view, 
 except that for him everything was further reduced 
 in order to accommodate itself to the dimensions 
 of his half-inch ordnance map.
 
 SCHWARZWALD 233 
 
 Martin slept for a few hours again, and when he 
 awoke the heavy rain had ceased to fall. The car 
 was winding up the steep roadways of the Hartz 
 Mountains. It was still dark, but the chill air of 
 dawn filled all the valleys, and a wan reflexion of 
 the coming day was cast up from behind the eastern 
 horizon. Martin pulled the rugs closer round him 
 and changed his position, in order to be able to see 
 the rising of the sun. It was as natural for him as 
 it is for most living things to keep himself towards 
 the sun. Last night he had sat looking out of the 
 car in the direction of the west and at dawn he 
 changed his position automatically eastwards. 
 
 The car came out in a clearing of the forest, where 
 the timber had recently been felled. The logs still 
 lay upon the ground. The pine trees stood round 
 in a wide circle mourning their companions' fall, 
 in the pale light of dawn Hke soldiers upon a battle- 
 field. 
 
 Slowly the sky became greyer and the forest soft 
 and dark, but not with the black darkness of mid- 
 night. Everything was unsubstantial, decomposite, 
 like a soft lithograph, like a world of millions of 
 dimly coloured chalk specks set together in flat 
 masses : the darkest green forest, the fog-coloured 
 grass that in the widening light became tinged with 
 green, the road an indefinite soft pale streak, the 
 fallen logs shadowy corpses in faint red uniforms. 
 Over all hung the heavy grey clouds that in the 
 west were still black with night and in the east faded 
 into the day.
 
 234 MARTIN SCHULER 
 
 Again the car went into the pines. The road 
 wound up a steep place in the hills, and when it 
 came out upon a crest the day was near at hand. 
 The light came at long intervals in jerks, as if thin 
 films slipped off the face of the unrisen sun from time 
 to time. A breeze passed over the earth and died 
 away. Martin leant out of the window. The dawn 
 had come. The forest became substantial, the grass 
 was full of grass blades, the road of stones. In the 
 east a long yellow rent appeared in the clouds, which 
 began to move towards the west with those curious 
 flat, stiff movements of the beginning of the day. 
 The rift widened and showed the blue of heaven. 
 Very slowly the clouds crept away from the light, 
 like a host of old whales, and half the vault of 
 heaven became opened in the clear upward light 
 cast by the rising sun. The turning of the earth 
 became perceptible as it rolled over into the east, 
 and Martin felt the instinct of nations to climb up 
 the world westward, so as not to be pitched into the 
 abyss. The colours of the earth revived, birds 
 chirped and moved, and a perfectly clear cold atmos- 
 phere descended from the height of the morning 
 upon the forest. Martin sighed ; his soul filled 
 with the perfection of that new day, unwarmed 
 yet by the passion of the sun, unwearied with the 
 consciousness of existence. He stopped the car 
 at a high place, and got out to enjoy the sensations 
 of the early hour. He was stiff and tired with 
 sitting, but presently he regained his suppleness, and 
 went towards a place from whence sixty or seventy
 
 SCHWARZWALD 235 
 
 miles of country could be seen in all directions. 
 He turned himself slowly round like the hub of a 
 wheel, and swept a gigantic circle with his gaze : 
 such is the power of the human mind, that he saw 
 in that one turn all and everything contained in a 
 circle nearly four hundred miles round. The black, 
 wet night was crawling to the western rim, while 
 in the east the silver of the sun's first rays was 
 striking upward into a sky of amethyst and water- 
 green where small yellow and rose clouds drifted 
 like falling flowers. The whole expanse of heaven 
 was in fairest light. 
 
 Before the gilt sun came up Martin returned to 
 the car : he had no desire to see the red husband of 
 dawn ravish her beauty. The instant of the day's 
 perfection was so short that he wished to prolong 
 it by shutting out its decay from his sight. The 
 car drove on, and he slept again like a drunken 
 white carouser on his way home from a feast. His 
 head sunk on his breast, his hands lay on each side 
 of him at the ends of his loose arms, the fingers curled 
 inwards and upwards as if they held vanished rose 
 leaves ; his feet were crossed, his knees wide apart, 
 and an odour of dank human breath, of cigars and 
 wine hung about him. For all that his face had 
 the expression of a sleeping child, with pursed lips 
 and drooping lashes, and his dreams were foolish, 
 charming, and fairy-like.
 
 CHAPTER XXV 
 
 ONE day Martin Schiller sat alone in his beauti- 
 ful villa upon the shores of lake Tittersee. 
 Sophie von Sebaltz had returned to Berlin, 
 and he felt relieved. Although it never occuiTed 
 to him that he was tired of her, for she made no 
 demands upon him even if she gave him nothing, 
 he had a sense of freedom now that she was out of 
 the house. He looked grave and serious, and 
 thought that now at last leisure was his in which 
 to consider where to turn and what to do. The 
 do\\aifall of his conceit had at last brought all the 
 rubbish in his mind away with it. He was now 
 proud and humble, competent and mature. 
 Although he had never lacked competency there 
 had always been a certain air of easy success about 
 him. He had looked successful ; now he no longer 
 did. 
 
 The study that he sat in had been designed for 
 him by Frederich Morgensohn and carried out by 
 the Arthouseconstructors Company. Nothing in 
 it was incongruous. Upon the black and gold 
 furniture were black and purple cushions worked 
 by a clever woman, the artist employee of the 
 company, in bunches of conventionalized sweet- 
 
 236
 
 . SCHWARZWALD 287 
 
 Williams of a Teutonic Poiret stamp. A black aiid 
 gold chessboard pattern embellished the frieze, 
 and the walls were decorated with alternating panels 
 of gilt paper and art trees. The black wood writing- 
 table, inlaid with a sylvan episode in keeping with 
 the trees, held a large photograph of Frau von 
 Sebaltz, especially taken at Schiller's request. 
 Across it was written " To my dearest friend ! ! ! " 
 followed in the German manner with several excla- 
 mation marks. The composer of three successful 
 light operas sat contemplating it without seeing it. 
 
 The weather was calm, still, and mysterious. 
 Long clouds lay invisibly in the heavens and gave 
 them a funereal darkness. Pale primrose sky 
 showed here and there in streaks. Outside the 
 house, everywhere and in all directions, were the 
 gloomy trees of the Black Forest. They crawled 
 from south and west, north and east, over mountains 
 and valleys, round lakes and along rivers. It 
 seemed that they were all walking to the beautiful 
 villa, to see what Herr von Schiiler intended to do 
 with himself. An atmosphere as of something 
 extraordinary pervaded everything. The house 
 had no garden, but an artfence of heavy and simple 
 design kept the trees from stepping upon the little 
 villa and crushing it to death. 
 
 Martin got up and went to the drawer in which he 
 kept interesting objects referring to the past. He 
 sought in it a few moments, and took out the 
 manuscript of the peahens. It was still tied with 
 the piece of string put round it by Werner. To
 
 238 MARTIN SCHULER 
 
 his knowledge no hand had ever undone the knot 
 since Werner made it. Feeling a little sentimental 
 and a little curious, he put the bundle of yellow 
 paper to his nose. It had the pleasant odour of old 
 books. He smelt it again, and the smell made him 
 desire to open it. Very cvuious, he took the yellow, 
 frayed bundle to the wTiting table and unfastened 
 the string. The sheets, which were folded over 
 lengthways, still lay together from the long habit of 
 nine years. He ran his hand up the inside of the 
 middle crease to flatten them out. Werner's hand- 
 wTiting, neat, small, and professional, lay before 
 him. It was so many years since he had seen it 
 that he had no recognition of it. It was not familiar 
 and roused no feelings, but the fact of holding it in 
 his hand made him recollect how much his technique 
 had grown since those old days, what power and 
 what mastery he had acquired over the hundred or 
 so notes in human circulation, what delicious har- 
 monies he had since discovered. At the same time 
 he seemed to feel that in former times he had had 
 a purer inspiration, a clearer sense of poetry, a finer 
 charm, a greater intellectual sincerity than had 
 ever beautified any of his mature scores. 
 
 He sat and looked across his large writing-table 
 out of the window in a dream. It was the first time 
 he had ever experienced a clear vision of the past, 
 or had sought to remember anything out of it. 
 Up to now the present and the future had been 
 sufficient for him. He had never yet drawn upon 
 his resources : he had taken everything out of the
 
 SCHWARZWALD 239 
 
 air, out of his friends, out of the incidents of his 
 life as they occurred. 
 
 In a short time he began to read the manuscript 
 of the peahens.
 
 CHAPTER XXVI 
 
 MARTIN put down the manuscript and lay 
 back in his chair ; the force of the inspira- 
 tion removed his thoughts; and he felt 
 a contraction in the front part of his head. 
 He shut his eyes, hunched up his shoulders, 
 and threw his body violently forward so that his 
 elbows rested on the table. He covered his eyes 
 with one hand and ran the fingers of his left hand 
 up into his forelock, so that the palm supported 
 his head, and with the thumb and little finger 
 spanned his forehead and felt the contour of his 
 brows. The shape of his head was exceedmgly 
 pleasant : at each temple it was flat, and from there 
 curved upward and outward to form the square of 
 his forehead. He thought that creation was in 
 the forehead ; he could feel the effort of imagination 
 between his eyes ; from there backwards to points 
 above his ears he had the sensation of creation. 
 
 He did not think out what use he should make of 
 the manuscript ; he felt that he wished to conceive 
 something magnificent, something that should be 
 the outcome of all his experience, finely constructed 
 upon intersecting arcs or upon converging lines or 
 upon curves of balance. He gave himself a climax, 
 
 240
 
 - SCHWARZWALD 241 
 
 a point, and again shut out the light with both his 
 hands. After a few minutes he felt a motion rise, 
 burst, and break into a million falls. He had con- 
 ceived his idea. It was not expressible in words. 
 His throat was tight, his brain contracted, the 
 muscles at the side of his jaws were distended in 
 the effort of clenching his teeth. He opened his 
 eyes and, without thinking or flickering his eyelids, 
 took some lined paper and began straight away to 
 note down the beginning of an opera in music. He 
 put it all down. Very slowly he set the idea that 
 came out of his mind straight down on paper with 
 immaculate notation. He paused frequently, his 
 eyes half shut as if he were focusing something, 
 but he had not a single image or sound in his head. 
 His hand obeyed some unknown force in his mind 
 that had its seat in the middle of his brows, and drew 
 pains from the sides and back of his head. After a 
 time his consciousness returned and he began to 
 think. 
 
 "The Opera House is large; it will be full of 
 spectators. There will be a large orchestra and 
 a large stage. I myself am in the centre box ; 
 there are lights, there are natural limitations " ; 
 and his well-trained brain began to control the force 
 of his intellect and to keep before him every detail 
 of a finished production. From that moment he 
 wrote nothing without having always before him the 
 whole of the finished production. He himself was a 
 spectator of his own work. He had never heard 
 it before, and knew nothing of it except the tendency 
 i6
 
 242 MARTIN SCHt)LER 
 
 until he actually put his hand on the paper. Then 
 the substance slowly came into being, with the 
 utmost labour of imagination, but perfect in so far 
 that what he wrote needed almost no correction. 
 
 Never in his life did he think out anything the 
 day or week before he wrote it. After the idea had 
 been conceived — sometimes as a faint beating of the 
 heart, sometimes as a moment of amazement over 
 a combination of colours, sometimes as a vague 
 dream inspired by two thoughts, a few words, the 
 leaves of a tree or a picture — ^he let it vanish until 
 the materials for writing were at hand. He knew 
 that to write directly from inspiration was the only 
 true method. To write from memory of the 
 thoughts of inspiration was to lose the force, the 
 genius and beauty of the conception. " I might as 
 well copy another man's work," he said to himself. 
 
 After five hours, dazed and half blind, with the 
 vision of an opera house full of wings, scenery, 
 dressing rooms, orchestra, and seats still perfectly 
 distinct in his mind, he put down his pen The first 
 episode was finished — ^the opening of the whole thing 
 was written down : grand, subdued, mysterious, 
 and vague, with a vagueness that was definitely 
 constructed. The beginning of a new opera had 
 been made. His eyes stUl half shut, Martin got 
 up and went to the window, saw nothing from it 
 but blue lines, and walked round the room, pausing 
 now and then to put his hand on some piece of 
 furniture and support himself. Soon he threw him- 
 self into a chair and, shutting his eyes, lost himself
 
 SCHWARZWALD 243 
 
 again in the depths of a black night. Unconsciously 
 he felt his head, of which he had become enamoured, 
 and, assuming one after another a variety of 
 attitudes, went through perfection in ecstasy and 
 darkness. Probably a spectator would have laughed 
 to see him take up those marvellous attitudes, 
 unless he had been a genius also. Each one con- 
 tained an idea of the true line inspired by the extra- 
 ordinary completeness of his unconscious thought. 
 
 Presently he came to himself and a long wave of 
 joy flooded his heart : he was young again, he was 
 twenty, but full of experience, omniscient, and 
 powerful. The wild force of his imagination drew 
 him out of himself, and he was compelled to go out 
 of the house down to the lake to stand, silent and 
 exulting, and watch the evening fall. The uneasi- 
 ness that from time to time had disturbed his charm- 
 ing efforts of the past nine years, his comprehensive 
 observation and his technical perfection, and the 
 last terrible catastrophe of realization, broke in 
 upon him and tore the exultation out of his heart. 
 
 " I am complete and done for," he cried, and, 
 going quickly indoors again, shouted for Wolf. 
 
 Wolf hurried to him instantly. 
 
 " Wolf," he said, taking hold of his coat fiercely, 
 " look at that, look at it ; inform me if there is any 
 hope." Wolf looked at the fragment, but not 
 having the power of imagining the nature of a 
 mountain from a small stone off it, was bewildered. 
 
 Martin came towards him again, and again seized 
 his clothes.
 
 244 MARTIN SCHCLER 
 
 " What ! " he shouted, " what ! Have you not 
 formed an opinion ? " 
 
 As quickly as lightning Wolf put an expression 
 of awe upon his face and, turning round, said : 
 
 " That is magnificent." 
 
 " Do not judge me by the old rubbish," cried 
 Martin ; " do not lie to me." 
 
 " It is wonderful," answered the secretary, who 
 had a very high power of simulating enthusiasm. 
 
 If Martin had been in a less wild state he would 
 have seen through him, but instead he appeared 
 satisfied, and stretching his arms wide said : 
 
 " It is simply beautiful. It is my boyish concep- 
 tion. I have recaptured it : in those days I was a 
 genius. Werner's poem has preserved me for 
 myself. I never read it until now." 
 
 Wolf gazed at his master with worship. 
 
 " Oh, Wolf ! " he cried, picking up the manuscript 
 of the peahens and thrusting it under the secretary's 
 nose, " smell it, smell the musty leaves. How 
 long have they lain in the drawer ! God in hell ! 
 I can remember all those old days. Help me, dear 
 Wolf. The little episode of nine years is over. 
 Wolf, Wolf, do you help me ! " Wolf's eyes shone 
 with genuine and perfect adoration, and he said 
 with overflowing tears in his voice, "How wonderful 
 you are." 
 
 Martin knelt upon the writing-chair, and set 
 his face close to Wolf's, who instinctively stroked 
 his hair. 
 
 Martin, whose eyes were full of a curious inhuman
 
 SCHWARZWALD 245 
 
 light, said, "Keep my feet upon the earth for me, 
 even if my head is among the stars." 
 
 Never in all his life had Wolf seen anything to 
 be compared with Martin's expression : it drew the 
 whole of his soul out of him into his face. With a 
 most extraordinary uplifted heart he looked straight 
 into Martin's eyes with all his devotion and humility, 
 and understood the power of his master's genius. 
 
 " The stars are effervescent round my head : I 
 hear them bubbling in my ears. Oh, Wolf ! " he said, 
 " how marvellous are the true far wanderings of 
 a young man, and the mad dreams of our youthful 
 years. I am now returned to the dawn of my life. 
 I was a wonderful young man, but I am not going 
 to be less wonderful nor less beautiful now. The 
 dreamer and the experienced cynic are here 
 together ; I know all, I can do everything. It 
 takes a hfetime to perfect a work of art such as I 
 have dreamed of." 
 
 The emotional crisis was over. Wolf stood 
 patiently listening to what might be said, and 
 Martin, taking up the manuscript again, said, in a 
 matter-of-fact voice : 
 
 " I am fortunate ; Werner caught me and pre- 
 served me in this lyric." He smelt it again, as if 
 it contained all the perfume of the woods of 
 Heidelberg, and the smell of himself in his one- 
 and-twentieth year.
 
 CHAPTER XXVII 
 
 THAT night after dinner Martin went out. 
 He seemed to disappear into the forest. 
 When he had gone Wolf could not believe 
 that he would ever come back, and walked in a 
 nervous rage from the top of the house to the bottom. 
 It seemed to him that no person intimately associ- 
 ated with Martin Schiiler could possibly avoid 
 becoming enslaved by him. He went into the art 
 study and arranged those papers which he knew 
 were not sacred, he went into the dressing-room and 
 hated the valet who looked after the clothes. He 
 walked into the bedroom. A large portrait of 
 Sophie von Sebaltz stood on the table beside the 
 peasant art bed. Another, more elaborate, tinted 
 after the photographer's idea of colour, hung on the 
 bare wooden wall surmounted by an old laurel 
 wreath, a remnant of the gala performance of 
 " The Saddest Singer." He stood a moment beside 
 the table in the window where the personal knick- 
 knacks lay, and desired very much to take away 
 something as a memento, for he knew that it was 
 very unlikely that Martin would ever give him 
 anything. 
 
 His simple personality was capable of very strong 
 
 246
 
 SCHWARZWALD 247 
 
 feelings, and in particular he had the bitterest sense 
 of rivalry. He hated Sophie with the whole of his 
 emotion of hate. She seemed neither good nor 
 beautiful to him : he thought her on the contrary 
 selfish, spoilt, petty, and vain. Although he hated 
 fiercely, in the silence that he had so much of, all 
 Martin's friends except the Countess Ardstein, he 
 very much wanted a companion to whom he could 
 communicate his sentiments and who would share 
 them. At the art villa his passion of jealousy was 
 three times fiercer than in Berlin. His position in 
 Berlin was so inferior to that of Schiiler's other asso- 
 ciates that it seemed irrational to be over angry, 
 but here he felt himself proprietor of loneliness, and 
 any third person whose pi'esence made his absence 
 from the dinner-table and the private smoking- 
 room necessary was a maddening intruder. He 
 spent a great deal of his time with Martin, who 
 found loneUness, in those moments when he was 
 not at work, very unpleasant. 
 
 He sat down in a chair in his master's room, and 
 asked himself if there had ever been so extraordi- 
 nary a person as Martin Schiiler, one whose brutality 
 was absolutely negatived by the most wonderful 
 charm ; for he seemed to him to be the most charm- 
 ing and fascinating man that could possibly have 
 existed. Wolf's face lost its look of everyday life, 
 and all that was best in him came to the surface : 
 such small share of divinity as he had made a 
 faint halo in the dusk of the room. He was very 
 tired. The demand made upon him that evening to
 
 248 MARTIN SCHt)LER 
 
 simulate enthusiasm seemed to have taken his 
 vitality. He was uneasy when he thought of that 
 manuscript downstairs. He could not believe, in 
 spite of his belief in its creator, that it was 
 anything rare. His imagination could not create 
 extraordinary phantoms of unproduced works. 
 He had to see the whole to believe in it. 
 
 He sat in the chair upstairs lost in thoughts 
 which were human and simple. His hands were 
 folded in front of him, his face stuck forward, his 
 head a little on one side. The muscles of his face 
 were relaxed as if in sleep. Presently he got up, 
 shook himself like a dog, and went downstairs 
 again. Martin was standing in the doorway that 
 led out of the house. At any rate he had come back 
 this time. 
 
 Martin turned round as he heard his steps, and 
 said : 
 
 " You read pleasantly. Wolf ; read to me. Let 
 us sit here and read." 
 
 Wolf went towards the door of the smoking-room. 
 
 " What do you prefer ? " he said. 
 
 Martin walked over to a cane chair and sat down. 
 
 " Something soothing, something accommodating : 
 Ibsen, I think, or Hans Andersen's Fairy Tales." 
 
 Wolf was not in the mood to smile at the idea 
 hat Rosmersholm or Hedda Gabler were particu- 
 larly soothing : they seemed soothing to him, 
 because he understood Martin's meaning. He went 
 into the library and came back with seven or eight 
 volumes. He sat down.
 
 SCHWARZWALD 249 
 
 " You do not like Tolstoi ? " he asked, bending 
 over the pile of books which he had put on the floor. 
 
 Martin had lit a cigarette. " What, for 
 instance ? Tolstoi seems to have written about a 
 thousand books." 
 
 " ' The Cossacks,' " said Wolf, picking up a small 
 volume. 
 
 " Is it soothing ? " 
 
 " Yes " — Wolf was conscious of altering the mean- 
 ing of words — " it is soothing." 
 
 "Very well"— Martin lay further back in his 
 chair — " but first I choose to be read the Ice Maiden. 
 That is what I have been thinking of all day." 
 
 What had occurred to him in the forest Wolf 
 could not guess, only he had a sensation that 
 Martin was changed, that he had ceased to be a 
 man of the world. It was not because he asked for 
 fairy stories to be read to him that he seemed 
 changed ; it was partly because his manner was 
 different and his appearance a little less brilliant. 
 He seemed to have become less hard, less vivacious, 
 less energetic. It would have surprised Wolf, but 
 he could not have said why, if Martin had broken 
 into one of his frequent irrational bursts of sarcasm, 
 or said anything witty. A vague fear seized upon 
 him that he was ill, and he could hardly induce 
 himself to find the pages of the Swiss story. 
 
 " Well, the Ice Maiden, my old Wolf," said Martin 
 impatiently. " Read slowly the descriptions of 
 the scenery, especially those parts referring to the 
 Bernese Oberland. I shall never go there again.
 
 250 MARTIN SCHtJLER 
 
 I believe it is seven years since I was there. Have 
 you been to Switzerland ? " He spoke slowly, 
 and seemed tired and dreamy. 
 
 " I went once when I was at Cambridge in 
 England, for winter sports," answered Wolf, and 
 he got up to turn on the electric light. 
 
 " Leave them a little longer," said Martin ; and 
 Wolf sat down again patiently. 
 
 " You have never been there in June ? " 
 
 " Never." 
 
 " You have never smelt the torrent of the Jung- 
 frau swollen with melting snow, nor seen the flowers 
 in the woods at Interlaken ? " 
 
 " No." 
 
 "Nor ever sat behind the monastery church with 
 your girl ? I had a girl in those days." 
 
 Wolf, whose heart had frequently been touched, 
 was sympathetic ; he agreed with Martin's unspoken 
 thought that Sophie was not to be classed with 
 the girls of romance. 
 
 " I was a fool," continued Martin ; " I loved to 
 the exclusion of everything else : I certainly wasted 
 a whole year on love." 
 
 Wolf moved a Httle nearer to him ; it was ghostly 
 and queer in the darkness of that forest house. 
 Reminiscences always made him apprehensive of 
 phantoms in which he did not believe. 
 
 " I do not care for any of that sort of thing now. 
 I find my heart is as cold as water. Affection and 
 sympathy are worth passion a thousand times 
 over; passion is nothing unless you are twenty.
 
 SCHWARZWALD 251 
 
 Now read to me, read to me ; read with a shaded 
 light that I may lie in the dark, and know again the 
 whole of those days at Lauterbrunnen and beside 
 Lake Thun." 
 
 Wolf did as he was told and began to read, and 
 Martin, having Ut a cigar, lay back into the brown 
 shadows and fell to dreaming of his new work, 
 until the murmuring sound of Wolf's voice sent 
 him to sleep. 
 
 Never again did he discuss himself with anybody : 
 introspection and self-dissection were not proper 
 to him.
 
 CHAPTER XXVIII 
 
 THE next morning Martin was himself again, 
 spruce, well-brushcd, and handsome. The 
 night had been passed in pleasant slumber. 
 At ten o'clock he sat down again to continue his 
 work of the day before. He worked all day. That 
 evening he rolled about on a couch unable to find 
 repose. He was exhausted. The following morn- 
 ing he rose dazed, and, scarcely troubling to eat, 
 went straight to his writing. Again he wrote all 
 day and part of the night. For two months he 
 wrote incessantly, taking hardly any sleep, eating 
 when he could reach food with his hand, and put 
 it into his mouth without thinking. His eyes 
 became glazed and he spoke to nobody. Wolf kept 
 his friends away from the villa, and had the pleasure 
 of warning Sophie not to come near the place, as 
 Martin would not see her. For two months Martin 
 refrained from human intercourse, for two months 
 the trees of the forests saw nothing of him ; his 
 spare moments were spent upon his bed, which he 
 had had carried into the art study, the rest of the 
 day in dreaming and putting down notes. 
 
 His nights were passed in exhausted sleep full 
 of dreams and visions. Frequently he found him- 
 self lying upon a black rock at the bottom of a well 
 
 aS2
 
 SCHWARZWALD 253 
 
 of flames a thousand feet high. They flared upward 
 from under the rock like long vermilion grass and 
 went higher than he could imagine into the cold 
 air of night. He lay awake in the dark and watched 
 them around him, straight up like walls, moving 
 like the swift ground under an express train, but 
 always perpendicular. He had the sensation of 
 being pale and white, and of feeling his body with 
 pity. He was sorry for himself. He raised his 
 head a little and the flames vanished, the cold 
 night came round him and he shivered. He wanted 
 the blessed flaring upwards to begin again, to charm 
 away the still, horrible silence of the room. He lay 
 down again, and no sooner was he comfortable than 
 an irresistible thought came to him, and he was 
 forced to get out of his bed, turn on the electric 
 light, and, blinking with the glare, sit down at his 
 table and write until the light had become pale 
 in the flooding sunshine of morning. Time passed 
 rapidly. Three hours were like three minutes, 
 and at the end of a day he could not understand 
 why he felt so exhausted, because it seemed to him 
 that he had neither made an effort nor worked 
 hard. 
 
 Sometimes he fell asleep at his writing-table about 
 two o'clock in the afternoon ; sometimes he would 
 look for Wolf, and sit in his company without say- 
 ing a word until Wolf became morbid and felt 
 creepy. Sometimes he rushed to his library and, 
 taking twenty books of the most varied description, 
 would lie upon his bed looking at them. Books of
 
 254 MARTIN SCHtLER 
 
 pictures he particularly favoured, but also books 
 of travel, catalogues, dictionaries, and biographies. 
 Poetry he did not read. It might be said that he 
 had never read a word of poetry. What he found 
 in those books one cannot say : mere words, mere 
 sights, mere isolated sentences probably caught 
 his eye and stimulated his imagination. Kaul- 
 bach's illustrations of Goethe's works pleased him. 
 He would sit for hours looking minutely into the 
 engraved photograph facsimiles. Whether he found 
 rest in the carefully drawn pictures of heroines, 
 complete with the most accurate accessories, or 
 whether he found romance in the beautiful young 
 women and the god-like young men, it is impossible 
 to judge. He gazed most frequently upon the 
 representation of a princess playing chess. The 
 young man standing in the shadow of the curtains 
 with his arms folded seemed to him a prince. 
 He adored the shepherd in the second plate, pursuing 
 the angry shepherdess, and the lovesick Dorothea 
 embracing her lover in the vineyard. His mind was 
 entranced and delighted with the completeness 
 and quality of the whole volume of plates. He had 
 no idea to what the pictures referred ; he never 
 read the text accompanying them, much less the 
 works of Goethe. Each picture for him was a story, 
 wonderful and perfectly satisfactory. Probably 
 he did not know bad art from good, certainly he 
 would have found Greek vases detestable : repre- 
 sentations of voluptuous nature, bright colours, 
 beautiful finish, this was his idea of what pleased
 
 SCHWARZWALD 255 
 
 the eye. Probably he himself was able to supply 
 all the elemental necessities of his music, the balance 
 and the restraint, and looked to outside things for 
 an idea of technical finish, of natural beauty and 
 romance. 
 
 Kaulbach's pictures satisfied some need ; he 
 got from them something perfectly necessary. 
 Poetry or high art would probably have surfeited 
 him, he found no need to seek expression of those 
 things in admiration, he neither knew nor did not 
 know that his work, as he put it down, possessed 
 certain qualities. He was not conscious whether 
 it answered the requirements of the most exalted 
 art. Never having considered these things he knew 
 nothing about them. His one idea was a slow 
 upward motion bursting at the end into a million 
 falls. Like the clear picture of the finished produc- 
 tion, the idea remained in his head the whole of the 
 two months. One day he worked for twenty hours, 
 till the whole of his blood seemed to be breaking 
 away out of his body. At the end of that time he 
 finished the end of his last idea, and sat for some 
 minutes in dazed silence. 
 
 Suddenly, in spite of his haggard appearance, a 
 look of youth came over his face, and leaping up 
 he went into the forest. He went a long way, and 
 at the end lay down and slept. Joy filled him. He 
 slept in the midst of joy. The first terrible and great 
 effort towards a fine work had been made — the con- 
 ception had become an infant. He had it now in 
 his arms, as it were. Without considering the days
 
 256 MARTIN SCHtJLER 
 
 ahead of him, he lay under the pines in the satis- 
 faction of a glorious accomplishment. 
 
 The following day Martin spent in tying together 
 his sheets of manuscript, and in making delicate cor- 
 rections with the most careful writing. His writing 
 as a rule was horrible, but he made those correc- 
 tions in a hand as beautiful as a child's in its tenth 
 year. Afterwards, with pleasure as childish as 
 his writing, he cut out the superfluous portions of 
 Werner's poem with brackets of red ink. With a 
 feeling akin to sacrilege, that he enjoyed very much, 
 he made marks on Werner's manuscript. He never 
 marked books ; he thought it a useless habit, and 
 had not personally sufficient courage to do it. He 
 made two holes in the side of his papers and threaded 
 through them a piece of scarlet ribbon off an old 
 box of sweets. He then with care put the manu- 
 script of words upon the top of them, and tied them 
 round with some string. The accumulated mass of 
 rubbish on his table covered with scribbles, sketches, 
 blots, and false starts he swept on to the floor, 
 and putting the bundle of papers in a special drawer, 
 rang for his valet. When the man appeared, he 
 said, " Tidy the room." 
 
 Then he went into the outer room and, calling 
 to Wolf, who thought that his life would end in 
 the silence of that house, surprised him by shouting, 
 " Order me the car : I am going to Berlin."
 
 CHAPTER XXIX 
 
 HE drove straight to the house of the Countess 
 von Ardstein. She was fortunately in. 
 " My dear," she cried, as he ran to em- 
 brace her, " how delightful to see you ; how ill 
 you look." 
 
 " I do not feel ill," answered Martin, kissing her 
 again. " I have come to tell you good news." 
 
 For some reason unknown to herself she was 
 startled. She put up her hand in apprehension, and 
 stood for a second held by a fear. 
 
 " What is it ? " she asked, and looked round at 
 an old family portrait for the sake of companionship. 
 
 Martin unbuttoned his great-coat, with the Astra- 
 khan collar, and from the inner breast pocket 
 produced the tidy packet of white papers. His 
 heart seemed to dance all over him as he held it 
 out to her. She did not take it, but looked at him. 
 He appeared to be laughing. 
 
 " Take it," he said; " it is the idea of my new 
 opera ; it is ancient and new and sacred to me " 
 
 The Countess understood why she had been 
 frightened. The news was evidently something 
 out of the way and terrifying. 
 
 17
 
 258 MARTIN SCHULEIl 
 
 " It is yours for twenty-four hours," he said; 
 "at the end of that time I am going back to my 
 home." 
 
 Up till then his house in the Black Forest had 
 never been considered as a home. 
 
 She untied the string, staring at him, and repeated 
 twice : ' My dearest." 
 
 "Don't lose the leaves of the written portion: 
 I have a very great sentiment about it." Martin 
 evidently did not consider the notation of the music 
 as written. 
 
 Countess von Ardstein burst into tears. She had 
 no reason for crying except a sensation of amaze- 
 ment. Martin had never had a very great senti- 
 ment about anything before. That, however, was 
 not what caused her to weep, but she remarked it. 
 The room seemed filled with a peculiar kind of smoke, 
 and a soundless vibration hit against her ears, as 
 of one shouting so slowly as to cause no actual noise. 
 She had the sarne feeling as a distant spectator 
 suffers between the sight of an axe striking upon a 
 tree and the hearing of the sound of the blow. She 
 took a lace handkerchief out of a flowered ribbon 
 bag and wiped her thin nose. Her lorgnon caught 
 in her sleeve as she raised her arm, and tore a bit 
 off a lace frill. 
 
 She looked very old suddenly to Martin : at 
 least seventy years old, and he, on the contrary, 
 felt eighteen. 
 
 " What is the matter ? " he said tenderly. 
 
 " My dear boy," answered _^the Countess with a
 
 SCHWARZWALD 250 
 
 vulgar sniff, " I do not know. 1 think you are 
 extraordinary. Last time I saw you with your 
 mistress you were a gay man of the world. I 
 could have some fun with you. Now, my dear 
 lad, you remind one of a genius," 
 
 The Countess had not, to her knowledge, seen a 
 genius, but she spoke as if they were a class which 
 she inspected from time to time, 
 
 " Well, read it," said Martin after a minute, in 
 some irritation, " even if you sit up all night, and 
 afterwards speak to nobody of it, unless it is to 
 Hirchner, Read it, get somebody to play it, play 
 it yourself. I am going to Sophie. To-morrow 
 night at this time I will call for it." 
 
 He disappeared. Countess von Ardstein sat 
 up all night obediently. 
 
 Martin himself went to Sophie's house. She was 
 giving a dinner party. He ordered the servant 
 to show him into the dining-room. There every- 
 body sat feasting. Several people rose as he entered, 
 and cried, " Hoch ! there is Martin Schiiler." 
 
 Sophie, whose back was towards the door, jumped 
 up in a passion of irrational fright. Martin, still 
 buttoned up in his great-coat, came a step into the 
 room. Sophie put down her napkin, and with the 
 other hand pulled the skirt of her dress a little out 
 of the way of her feet, and with a graceful and sudden 
 movement ran towards him, and put her arm round 
 his neck. 
 
 She kissed him and began making small noises 
 not unlike a cat.
 
 260 . MARTIN SCHtJLER 
 
 " You delicious creature ! " he murmured. Her 
 physical movements always enraptured him. 
 " What are you doing here ? " she asked ; " what ? " 
 
 He led her to the table, and taking the chair next 
 to her, which had been vacated by a charming young 
 man of twenty, sat down beside her and held her 
 hands. 
 
 " I have come to Berlin for one night," he 
 answered. 
 
 " How pale you are," she said, looking at his face, 
 still frightened. " Why, you are completely 
 changed. The look in your eyes is quite changed. 
 My dearest Martin — I do not believe that is your 
 name." The young man who had vacated the chair, 
 and who was standing behind it, leant a little for- 
 ward and said : 
 
 " It is nice to see you again, Herr Schiiler. Berlin 
 has lost something by your departure." 
 
 Martin looked up at him, and the young man felt 
 extremely foolish and small. The look of openness 
 and power in Schiller's face made him take a step 
 back. 
 
 Sophie pressed his hands, and asked him whether 
 he was glad to see her, and he whispered that he 
 would be glad to see her alone. By some means 
 she made a sign to Count von Hansen, and got him 
 to whisper to the guests that their early departure 
 would be tactful. As dinner was at an end, they 
 rose and silently went out of the room. 
 
 Sophie began to tremble, and said : 
 
 " What is it, Martin, what is it ? "
 
 SCHWARZWALD 261 
 
 "Nothing," said Martin, taking her in his arms. 
 " Let us go to bed ; I want you." 
 
 In the middle of the night he said : 
 
 " I am never coming back to Berlin ; I am going 
 to work at my villa ; I am probably going to work 
 for years. You will come to me when you feel 
 inclined, will you not ? " 
 
 Sophie stroked his face and kissed him. She was 
 not frightened of him any longer — the renewal of 
 their former relationship had taken away her fear ; 
 on the contrary, she felt that he was making a 
 demand upon her and asking something that he 
 was half afraid he would not get. Like many women 
 whose minds are not very great, she imagined that 
 persons who asked things of her were less than she. 
 
 " My dear," she said therefore, " I will always be 
 near you when you want me." 
 
 He fell asleep, but she turned herself over and 
 over, and failed to understand the curious lightness 
 of her body. She seemed to be a skin filled with 
 air. The truth was that her melodramatic fright 
 of the evening having been dissipated, she now for 
 the first time completely ceased to fear Martin, 
 and with the end of her fear came the end of her 
 passion. She liked brutes of men, and was not 
 addicted to looking after little boys. The senti- 
 ments attached to the thought of being the faithful 
 mistress of the strange man beside her were strong 
 enough however to make her willing to go to that 
 villa in the forest and look after him from time to 
 time. The compensating joy of proprietorship
 
 262 MARTIN SCHULER 
 
 almost made up for the lost joy of being passionately 
 desired. Thus Sophie approached as near as she 
 was able to the tranquil pleasures of marriage. 
 
 The next day Martin ordered her to come with 
 him to the Black Forest. In the evening they got 
 in his car and drove to the house of the Countess von 
 Ardstein. Martin left Sophie outside, and ran 
 upstairs in his overcoat without a hat as he had 
 done the evening before. 
 
 The Countess was in. She looked as if she had 
 been crying all night. He went up to her and, feel- 
 ing extremely uneasy, said, " Well ? " and put out 
 his hand. 
 
 She put out her hands and, gathering herself 
 together, went up to him and shook her head in 
 amazement. He laughed and repeated " Well ? " 
 She went back to a table, and took the papers out 
 of a drawer. They were still in immaculate order. 
 She seemed to be trying to speak. He had 
 never seen her moved with feeling before. He 
 was very self-conscious. 
 
 He took the papers from her and buttoned them 
 in his coat. To the Countess five minutes seemed 
 to have elapsed since he gave them to her. 
 
 He put a bitter expression on his face and said 
 with a cynical smile : 
 
 " Well, are they not good ? " 
 
 " Do not ask," said the Countess, making a pitiful 
 face at him, and again turning away. 
 
 He walked after her, and took her by the shoulders.
 
 SCHWARZWALD 263 
 
 " You know ! " he cried roughly, turnmg her 
 round. " I command you to speak to me." 
 
 " Wonderful," she gasped. 
 
 He took her in his arms and kissed her a thousand 
 times. 
 
 " I trust you," he said, and left her. He went 
 away without turning back, and she stood in the 
 middle of the room dumbfounded with her good 
 fortune.
 
 CHAPTER XXX 
 
 IN the year nineteen hundred and thirteen 
 Martin Schiiler fell ill. The strain and 
 anxiety of his work upon the opera had 
 brought him to such a state of ill-health that he 
 was unable to bear the cold weather of the winter. 
 He fell ill in January. He had spent the day roam- 
 ing about the forest, where everything was as silent 
 as death, where everything was covered with the 
 white, hard snow. In the morning he set out across 
 the lake, where the snow lay in one white clean 
 sheet. His foot sank in it at every step, but with 
 monotonous going forward he crossed to the far 
 side. The long string of his footmarks lay behind 
 him. He left the open and went in under the trees, 
 where the ground was bare of snow except small 
 patches. There had not been enough to cover the 
 trees, and the ground beneath them. Small drifts 
 ran up to the trees here and there. He had expected 
 the forest to be warm : it was cold with a coldness 
 that ate into his heart. He became absolutely 
 cold. He had expected it to be sheltering and 
 friendly : it was silent, still, and strange. The whole 
 of the world was dead. He wandered aimlessly 
 and miserably about without thought, without hope, 
 
 264
 
 SCHWARZWALD 265 
 
 without will. The peahens were one effort from 
 completion. He could not make it. For two 
 months he had been unable to add a single phrase 
 to his opera ; for two months he had been as empty 
 of genius as other men ; he was merely a corpse, 
 barely sustained by life. He put his hand out to 
 touch the trees, but they were cold ; he stooped 
 to touch the ground, but it was cold as the grave. 
 The warm soft smell that he had expected was not 
 there among those boughs. He had come out for 
 understanding and companionship but found none. 
 The people indoors were of no use to him. There 
 they sat like painted figures, and did not in the least 
 understand how empty and how exhausted he was. 
 He was more exhausted to-day than he had ever 
 been in the whole of those long four years. After 
 every effort of a few days he had lived weeks in 
 stupid, blind indifference, broken by a craving to 
 be physically violent and by fierce childish tempers. 
 To-day he had no desire for anger, no desire to hurt 
 and kill ; even the desire to break the bonds of 
 human limitations that had maddened him to rage 
 in his former long days of misery did not strike him. 
 He felt weary and his head was full of a sickness 
 and of a dull eternal pain ; to himself he seemed 
 surrounded by a nauseating flat stretch of mud 
 to which there was no limit. His eyes were blank, 
 his brows lowered upon them in a frown, his nostrils 
 contracted, and his face sucked in at the cheeks. 
 Sometimes he opened and shut his mouth, as if 
 he had a taste of something upon his lips. He was
 
 26G MARTIN SCHtJLER 
 
 botli hopeless and degenerate, he had lost his look 
 of strength, and wore instead a childish look of 
 wretchedness and despair. He had come out with- 
 out an overcoat. He stood as long as twenty 
 minutes at a time, examining nothing, with his eyes 
 towards the ground. As the day advanced the 
 sky became more leaden and the frost more keen. 
 Nothing moved. It seemed as if the world were 
 very close up under the clouds, and had ceased to 
 go round. The long black and white landscape, 
 in which everything seemed wooden, small, and close 
 at hand, was mere long white ridges of snow and 
 black patches of trees. The trees were so black 
 that only where they stood isolated from the mass 
 of the forest could their forms be distinguished. 
 Towards three o'clock, about the time when the sun 
 would have set, Martin came out again upon the 
 lake in a gloomy place where the trees grew close 
 down to the edge. A few flakes of snow fell slowly 
 down out of the sky ; few, silent, and steady ; they 
 seemed more inevitable than death, more weird 
 and foreboding than the howl of wolves, more 
 sinister than ravens. He walked a few steps out 
 upon the snow-covered ice, and heard a long, thin, 
 siren cry of the wind vibrating upon the taut frozen 
 air. The snowflakes gathered around him. He 
 could still see the locality of his home : towards this 
 he began to walk. The snowflakes thickened, the 
 wind veered round a quarter of the compass, and 
 came from due north. It quickened. The siren 
 cries from behind him ceased and the wind blew
 
 SCnWARZWALD 267 
 
 up iiito his face. It was bitterly cold, colder than 
 before. The snow hit his face like wool and suffo- 
 cated him ; with his hands up before him, he 
 struggled through the thick drowning snowfiakes 
 towards the vUla. No step seemed to bring him 
 any nearer ; he thought he was in the same place, 
 lifting his feet up and down. 
 
 At last, after an hour, he found himself at the 
 further bank, and turning instinctively to the right 
 presently came to his little landing stage. 
 
 The inside of the house was warm and pleasant ; 
 a log fire glowed, the lamps were lit, and everything 
 was prepared for the evening. To Martin it looked 
 strange. The fire seemed without animation, the 
 lamp to be flat and not the author of the light. 
 Sophie in her long soft scarlet gown made by Madame 
 Lucile, her cheeks red with the heat of the fire, 
 her eyes and her sapphire rings black and sparkling, 
 seemed a painted image. Wolf in his tweed jacket 
 and flannel trousers looked like a husband in a play. 
 Their clothes seemed as out of keeping with reality 
 as stage clothes usually do. 
 
 "Those two have had a quarrel," said Martin 
 to himself ; " why does the wife dress herself above 
 her station ? " 
 
 Suddenly they both looked up at him where he 
 stood, wet, pale, and shivering. They ran to him ; 
 Sophie embraced him in spite of her beautiful dress. 
 He was taken to the fire, kissed, petted, scolded, 
 and given hot coffee. His clothes were taken off, 
 and Sophie wrapped him in a soft warm rug.
 
 268 MARTIN SCHULER 
 
 " I would like my bed in here," he said. 
 
 In ten minutes he found himself lying in the 
 middle of a wonderful warmth, staring at Sophie 
 and at Wolf. What were they doing ? How did 
 Sophie know when milk was boOing, or the right 
 way to put the sheets } She must be his mother. 
 Yes, that was it, she was his mother. She sat staring 
 into the fire all night so it seemed to him, always 
 in her red dress : all night or a hundred nights, 
 he could not tell which. 
 
 Up and down his mind surged. His hands became 
 larger than his body. The people in the room 
 became as small as pins. He had an idea that he 
 was staring into a doll's house where everything was 
 strong-coloured and perfectly clear. All the objects 
 in the room were focused as if seen in a diminish- 
 ing glass ; each stood out clear and separate. 
 Martin's eyes had the glazed look of fever : the 
 softness of his surroundings had gone with the 
 softness of his eyes. 
 
 In the middle of a night he called to Sophie and 
 Wolf, and asked them whether they thought he was 
 going to die. He himself was convinced of it. He 
 told them exactly how terrible he felt, how lonely 
 and deserted. His tongue seemed to be loosed by 
 fever. 
 
 " And," he added, " not all your kindness, not 
 all that you can do, nothing that you can think of 
 stirs in me the slightest feeling. I do not care for 
 you, I feel nothing pass from you to me. I want to 
 find somebody to gather me who is stronger than
 
 SCHWARZWALD 269 
 
 I am. I want somebody to take me and hold me 
 upon their arms and make me happy. I want to 
 be held in the dark warm arms of somebody omni- 
 potent, who will drive away all these ghosts. I 
 used to think that mothers were like that when I was 
 a little boy. Do you know, I used to cry when I 
 found my mother was not omnipotent, not all-loving 
 and all -forgiving." 
 
 Sophie leant over him and stroked his hair. 
 
 " No," he said, " it is no good — I am stronger than 
 you. I want to be taken away out of myself and 
 put to sleep. I am a barrier, I am on the outside, 
 and I know nobody who can keep the wind from 
 howling down my back. The abyss is just behind 
 me and all of you are pushing me into it. If only 
 I could die. I am dying, I am sure I am dying, 
 I am sinking into softness. Sophie and Wolf, I am 
 going down ! "
 
 CHAPTER XXXI 
 
 FOR nearly five months Martin lay in his bed 
 in a weak state, half between sleep and wake- 
 fulness. He slept nearly the whole of the 
 time. Several times he tried to convince Wolf 
 that he was about to die. He had never been ill 
 before. Sophie believed him, and lived in a con- 
 tinual series of frights until she began to see that 
 he knew nothing about himself and was getting 
 better. 
 
 His personality during the whole of his illness 
 seemed large, vague, and shadowy. He seemed to 
 spread out over the whole house, and to loom up 
 like a large shadow cast by a candle on a wall. 
 Wolf liked nursing him, and so did Sophie after a 
 fashion ; she had never done anything useful before. 
 They neither of them dreamed for a moment of 
 letting a professional nurse into the house. 
 
 One day in May, Sophie sat sewing at the window ; 
 she had put on a beautiful white muslin dress with 
 frills edged with dark blue thread. She never failed 
 to look as exquisite as if she were attending a ball. 
 Upon the back of her chair hung a large leghorn hat 
 with dark blue silk ribbons. She clothed herself 
 well, partly to please Martin, and partly because she 
 
 270
 
 SCHWARZWALD 271 
 
 could not help it. From time to time she put down 
 her sewing and looked out across the lake. The 
 water was black and still as a mirror, and the day 
 calm and beautiful. 
 
 Sophie sighed. She was thirty years old. There 
 were still ten years of good life before her. Life 
 in that villa, in spite of her real devotion to Martin, 
 did not agree with her. Frequently she walked to 
 the other side of the lake to stare at it, and to stare 
 at its reflexion ; when she had stared she came back 
 and sat down in it. That was as near as she ever 
 got to deep philosophical thinking, to asking the 
 question of her existence. She sat sewing an under- 
 garment more to kill time than because she liked 
 it. She was herself in the villa, and she did not 
 like it. In Berlin she manufactured herself out 
 of the attitude of the many people around her, and 
 out of events. Here she was without people and 
 nothing ever happened. She was not very clever 
 at conjuring something out of nothing. 
 
 Martin turned over and spoke to her. 
 
 " What a pretty sight Sophie is." 
 
 " Am I, dear one ? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 Silence fell again. They had not been on very 
 good terms lately. Such terms as can exist between 
 an ill man and a well woman had not been alto- 
 gether pleasant. One of them found the other a 
 little tiresome. It was impossible to say which. 
 
 Martin spoke again. 
 
 " Sweet Sophie, am I very ugly ? "
 
 272 MARTIN SCHULER 
 
 " No, of course not." 
 
 " Do you care for me ? " 
 
 Sophie put doviTi her sewing and came to 
 him. She was moved. She bent over him and 
 played with him. He seemed a child although it 
 was thirty-four years since he had been born. 
 Presently he fell asleep and again silence fell over 
 the room. Sophie wanted a friend, she wanted to 
 see some other creature than the sentimental secre- 
 tary, who never let her do any of those things she 
 thought essential in moments of crisis. 
 
 She went to the window. She could see Wolf in 
 the garden tending a little rockery of Alpine plants, 
 which he had put together to pass the hours, when 
 there were no letters to be written and no battles 
 to be met. Wolf never fought a battle against 
 Martin ; he only endeavoured to keep his feet. He 
 was smoking a pipe and Sophie despised him. His 
 conversation bored her terribly. It was one long 
 reminiscence. The poor man had found nothing 
 new to talk about for four years. The only years 
 of his life worth living seemed to have been those 
 passed at Cambridge. The unutterable stupidity 
 of most of his actions there made her feel white 
 inside. She had no sense of the ordinary, the 
 normal, and the everyday. Wolf was ordinary and 
 everyday. His position in regard to Martin was from 
 his point of view a wonderful piece of luck. Actually 
 it was a calamity, it killed his personal life. He sat 
 in the grass of the garden, which was hardly yet 
 green with spring, holding an Alpine plant diction-
 
 SCHWARZWALD 273 
 
 ary. She saw him craw' on his knees and inspect 
 a gentian, finger a flowering moss, stroke a saxi- 
 frage. He was able to put his knowledge to no 
 use ; he was writing a little book on rock plants for 
 amateurs, with coloured photographic plates made 
 by himself. 
 
 Sophie got up, went out of the garden window, and 
 crossed the grass to the corner where Wolf and the 
 chauffeurs had created a false moraine. She wished 
 to see the gentian. She bent down beside Wolf and 
 said : 
 
 " How are your flowers ? " 
 
 Wolf looked up in delight. His labours had so 
 far passed unnoticed except by his subordinates. 
 He answered : 
 
 " Very well, thank you. Look at the beautiful 
 spiked petals of this gentian. It is a new kind from 
 a man I know at Schaffhausen. He makes expedi- 
 tions into the Alps for the originals." 
 
 " Can you not see him, alpenstock and all ? " 
 cried Sophie, " with fish basket and pressing book, 
 like the caricatures in Simphcissimus ! Picture 
 one — ^he sets out, bids farewell to gross wife and 
 family ; picture two — ^the edelweiss, and so on. Of 
 course he falls down a crevasse in the end." 
 
 Wolf laughed. His friend at Schaffnaiisen was 
 only an horticultural correspondent : he had never 
 seen hrni. When Wolf chuckled he sniggered and 
 shook all over because he was not at all accus- 
 tomed to doing it. 
 
 " Do you ever pick them ? " said Sophie. 
 i8
 
 274 MARTIN SCHt)LER 
 
 " That would be a very great shame," he replied; 
 " the plant is very delicate." 
 
 She felt a little sentimental this afternoon, prob- 
 ably because the air was warm and full of the tired 
 feelings of spring. She said : 
 
 " Does he care for flowers ? " 
 
 " I do not know. He used to have them at 
 Berlin." 
 
 They looked at one another, and Sophie laughed. 
 
 " There we two have been here for so long and do 
 not know any little thing about him. Could we 
 not dig up that blue thing and put it in a pot ? " 
 She felt very affectionate towards Martin and wanted 
 to pay him delicate attentions. 
 
 Wolf was delighted. He went indoors for a bowl 
 and quickly made a little rockery of glacier chips 
 and sand in it for the gentian. 
 
 Sophie held it up to her face and said : 
 
 " It is very pretty." 
 
 Like children they carried it indoors. Martin was 
 awake. 
 
 " Will this amuse you? " said Wolf, bending over 
 him ; " we thought you might care for it." 
 
 Sophie thought it was kind of Wolf to include her 
 in his speech. 
 
 Martin took it eagerly with a boyish gesture. 
 " How beautiful," he said, " how beautiful. I 
 believe if I could lie in the midst of flowers I should 
 recover. I have always been accustomed to flowers. 
 There are never any here in this house." 
 
 He put the bowl beside his pillow and lay on his
 
 SCHWARZWALD 275 
 
 iide for hours inspecting the very intricate arrange- 
 ment of the plant. 
 
 " This is better than one finds in Switzerland," 
 he said. 
 
 " It is an horticultural creation," answered Wolf. 
 
 Later on he said that the colour of the blue filled 
 his throat with something and that he felt madly 
 happy inside. He never wished to see anything to 
 do with music again ; he wanted to lie in the garden 
 and be happy. He thought the gentian reminded 
 him of his favourite Rudi : he loved everything 
 Rudi loved — Babette, the cat, mountain climbing, 
 chamois hunting, and the glacier of the Jungfrau. 
 He could see it now like a pale blue clouded emerald 
 glistening in her bosom. He had seen the Jungfrau 
 at night like a folded veil in the sky, pure white in 
 the moonlight, and in the shadows the colours of 
 the night sky. He kept the gentian pot close to his 
 eyes, for by half shutting his eyes he could turn the 
 bits of Alpine rock into peaks and the cracks between 
 them into ravines. There was one like the Matter- 
 horn. He thought he saw Grindelwald below him, 
 over the edge of his eye, as if he were lying down 
 upon a rock high above it and looking over. 
 
 Sophie watched him. 
 
 " What are you playing at ? " she said after a 
 long time of silence. 
 
 " My dearest," said Martin looking round, " come 
 and look at the Matterhom . " 
 
 He made her bend over him, and put her eye down 
 by the pot. She could faintly see the mountain.
 
 276 MARTIN SCHULER 
 
 " You darling child," she said, suddenly overcome 
 with a revelation of understanding, " you darlingkin, 
 you Martin ! " 
 
 " Am I your child ? " Martin turned over towards 
 her—" am I ? " 
 
 " Yes," she answered, smothering him with kisses, 
 " you are the dearest in the world." 
 
 He pulled himself up under her arms, and let 
 his cheek lie in the warmness of her neck. 
 
 He began to talk again. 
 
 " How small everything is, and lovely ; how soft 
 like the little birds. You smell sweetly to me like 
 the sweetest honey. Your sldn is soft like little 
 birds' feathers. I think you are my nest, my 
 mother, my charming mother." He pushed his 
 face closer into her arms and sighed. " Am I too 
 old and rough to love all your faithfulness to me ? 
 How patient you have been, how good. I would 
 like to put flowers round your hair. Darling 
 Sophie, I am thirty-four : am I too old to feel the 
 sweetness of love ? I never knew anything so sweet 
 and pretty as your breath. I will never be cruel to 
 you again ; I will always love you most tenderly, my 
 little lamb. Tell me I am your little one too." 
 
 " You are my httle one." 
 
 "But" — Martin moved in the bed — "I must 
 finish those peahens. My peahens must be finished. 
 Your Httle boy is lost without them." 
 
 " You shall, you shall," cried Sophie, who was full 
 of tears. All the shortcomings of her life were 
 being forgiven. " You shall indeed finish them."
 
 SCHVVARZWALD 277 
 
 " When ? " he cried, " when ? I must know." 
 Sophie looked wildly up for inspiration. 
 " Next year," she answered, " in the spring." 
 Martin believed her. He lay down in bed again, 
 
 and, turning over, went to sleep with her hand in 
 
 his.
 
 CHAPTER XXXII 
 
 MARTIN SCHUlER gradually recovered 
 from his illness and began to go about 
 again. His health continued to be bad ; 
 he suffered from his old pains in the stomach and 
 from a weakness of the heart, brought on by so 
 much leaning forward over a writing-table. He 
 always wrote with the edge of the writing-table 
 pressed against his breast below his heart. 
 
 He looked old and sallow and slow. His figure 
 had lost its beautiful grace. He seemed less tall 
 and thicker. His vitality seemed to have gone 
 altogether. Through the summer he wrote scarcely 
 anything at all, and never said a word about his 
 opera. 
 
 He finished and elaborated a little army of 
 songs and boudoir pieces from ideas that had fallen 
 off the peahens, and wrote, in imitation of the 
 successive masters, a musical revue which he called 
 " Bachravcllianstiicke." " Bachravellianstiicke " 
 had a great vogue. It was certainly brilliantly 
 clever. His little army sold well and was edited 
 in various Albums which were given to the young 
 to get to Parnassus upon. 
 
 Sophie frequently went to Berlin, and he seemed 
 
 378
 
 SCHWARZWALD 279 
 
 uneasy when she was away, although he never 
 said that he missed her. It probably never occurred 
 to him that he had not everything he wanted. 
 Wolf read to him every evening ; he read the 
 " Ice Maiden " of Hans Andersen seven times 
 and "The Cossacks" twice. Martin liked "The 
 Cossacks." He shared the forest feeling and 
 the charm of the large beautiful heroine in the 
 pink shirt with the hero. He thought the pink 
 shirt must be pleated in a thousand pleats with a 
 pale green edge. Frequently he was moody and 
 ill-humoured, but Wolf was blind to everything in 
 his master but his divinity. The large divinity of 
 Martin filled the whole forest, just as Wolf's small 
 divinity had once filled a small circle round his 
 head. Wolf's adoration for him was beyond the 
 reach of thought. When he sailed upon the lake 
 alone in his skiff, Wolf stood on the shore like a 
 dog watching him the whole of the time. He would 
 see him lean over and look down into the water 
 for his Ice Maiden, and he knew he was seeking 
 inspiration. The water was clear upon the surface 
 and dark and green below. Frequently Wolf 
 feared he would fall over the edge of the boat 
 and drown. 
 
 Sometimes Martin went by himself into the woods, 
 as in the old times. He was quiet by himself, 
 and melancholy ; he hardly thought at all, and 
 wandered among the trees with the quiet resignation 
 of a monk. They showered their silver light upon 
 him as he walked below in the dark and beautiful
 
 280 MARTIN SCHtlLER 
 
 green shadows. He used most frequently to go 
 to those parts of the forest where the trees were 
 very old and tall, where their sumptuous boughs 
 hid the sky in a heaven of green clouds. Here the 
 romances of the world seemed to have come to- 
 gether, the ghosts of all the fairies and lovers that 
 had ever lived. Adam's form of red clay stole 
 softly with an ivory Eve about the tall pillars of 
 the trees — Venus herself, marble and everlasting, 
 surrounded by a thousand Cupids like the dream 
 of Titian held herself upon a rock under the canopy 
 of pines. All the Pans, shepherds, fauns, and 
 nymphs of men's innumerable thoughts passed 
 riotously by after a Dionysius. Fairies and heroes, 
 princes and princesses, and every happy and more 
 romantic form of imaginary being, could be seen 
 there riding down the glades. 
 
 Martin stood upon a knoll and watched them. 
 He was looking for his prince and his romantic 
 notions in the past, but they all lay in his own 
 manuscript awaiting the last act of creation: 
 unborn and in the future. 
 
 Day followed day, and all the time he waited in 
 a negative and hopeless state that was neither 
 happy nor unhappy for some unforeseen event to 
 come down upon him like golden rain, and fill him 
 with a blind, raging energy.
 
 CHAPTER XXXIII 
 
 COUNTESS VON SEBALTZ took a house 
 in Munich, and at this house she deter- 
 mined to make Martin pass the winter. 
 She utterly refused to live at Tittersee, cut off from 
 the world in a forest of snow. 
 
 One afternoon when November had come again 
 she sat dreaming in front of the fire in the sym- 
 pathetic art study of the villa. The fire glowed 
 upon her lovely violet dress, and cast her shadow 
 upon the ceiling, large and dark. Martin was 
 standing at the ^vindow humming an indefinite 
 melancholy song. Outside, the first snow of winter 
 was beginning to fall thin and slow over a black 
 landscape. It was almost dark. 
 
 Presently Martin turned and looked at her. 
 His satisfaction in the colour of her dress gave him 
 a moment's happiness ; a gleam shot through him 
 and faded away. He came forward and touched 
 the silk. She seemed more wonderful to him than 
 she had ever done in all her days. Since the moment 
 of his convalescence, when he had depended upon 
 her, she had become for him something quite 
 extraordinary and different from before. Once 
 he had loved her because her gaiety and beauty 
 
 281
 
 282 MARTIN SCHULER 
 
 had been the gaiety and beauty that were necessary 
 to him. WTien he no longer wanted any of those 
 things, but deep understanding, he had found 
 nothing in her. He did not cease to love her after 
 a fashion because any change of emotion in the 
 terror and agony of creation had never occurred 
 to him. After his tenderness towards her during 
 his recovery he had created for himself something 
 new in her. She had accepted it and allowed it. 
 It was not beyond her power. He loved tenderly, 
 without passion, for the first time in his life ; for 
 the first time in her hfe she had been tenderly loved 
 by somebody who depended upon her. As far as 
 she was able she appreciated it. Frequently he 
 raged at her, but his rage had lost the terrifying 
 vividness of his former rages. He no longer flashed 
 hghtning at her and made her think he was insane. 
 
 To-day he touched her silk dress and loved her. 
 She was considering how she could induce him to 
 leave Tittersee, for she understood that if he were 
 to fall ill there she would not be able to stay away. 
 She was too conventional to desert him, and not 
 strong enough to shift the burden he had put upon 
 her off her shoulders, and yet the thought of the 
 next winter was as hateful to her as the thought of 
 hell. She turned sick at the idea, and her whole 
 body felt unutterably weary with the uneasy fear 
 of another long imprisonment. 
 
 The magnificent house in Munich was already 
 furnished and the fires every day burnt brightly 
 on the hearth ready for his reception. Aired
 
 SCHWARZWALD 283 
 
 linen was already laid upon the bed and flowers 
 put on the table. 
 
 Martin threw himself at her feet, and, laying 
 his head in her lap, began crying for nothing, like a 
 child. She began to stroke his hair and the back 
 of his neck where his brain ended ; she could see 
 the movements of his shoulders under his coat. 
 She put her hand on his coat : it was warm and 
 rough and entirely opposed to all the silken smooth- 
 ness of her own personal life. Becoming 'senti- 
 mental, she thought of all the differences she knew 
 between men and women ; they were hot many, 
 but on the other hand she did not recognize any 
 Ukenesses. Men and women were therefore utterly 
 different for her upon a few generalizations. She 
 pitied Martin ; she was convinced that the pea- 
 hens were waste paper, that his work was a failure, 
 and that there was absolutely nothing in the idea. 
 She had not the least glimmering of understanding 
 of anything except of the management of men and 
 of social success. 
 
 She began to talk to him as if she were telling him 
 a story. 
 
 " I have taken a house in Munich, It is furnished 
 and warm. There is a big room there with blue 
 silk curtains and a fire. It is a very fine house, 
 the kind of house I know that you will like. You 
 will feel comfortable and happy and better there. 
 Perhaps the peahens are there, perhaps they are 
 perching on the walls waiting for you." 
 
 Martin put his arms round her waist and looked
 
 284 ]\IARTIN SCHULER 
 
 up at her. He shook his head miserably from side 
 to side and said : 
 
 " But, no, they have gone a very long way away 
 from me. They have altogether flown away to the 
 moon, or to Jupiter." 
 
 " It is comfortable and warm," repeated Sophie ; 
 " my Martinkin, let your small Sophie show it to 
 you." 
 
 Their intimacy had not failed to produce famiUar 
 conversation between them. 
 
 " My small girl," said Martin affectionately, 
 " I will come and have a look at it." 
 
 Sophie had the sense not to move immediately : 
 she fingered the frown upon his forehead, and wiped 
 his tears with her handkerchief. 
 
 " My ancientkin must come with me and let 
 Sophie show it to you ; it would please her so much." 
 
 She continued to play with his face. He kissed 
 her fingers. 
 
 " Describe it again," he said, " and I will think 
 about it." 
 
 "It is in the Konigstrasse. From the balcony 
 of your room you can see the Palace. The bed- 
 room is a small room at one end ; I had it made 
 gold and pale blue for you, because you Hke bright 
 colours." 
 
 Martin rose ; warmth seemed to have come 
 into his life ; he felt a desire for luxury ; the art 
 study seemed dirty and worn. 
 
 " Get my coat," he said ; " 1 will go." 
 
 Sophie ran and told the chauffeur, who was
 
 SCHWARZWALD 285 
 
 drinking coffee in the kitchen, to get the car. She 
 ran into the kitchen herself. Everything had been 
 prepared for two days for instantaneous departure ; 
 she knew how much a moment's delay might mean 
 to her arrangements. She ran to her room and put 
 on a small cherry-coloured hat with a cherry-coloured 
 sparrow in flight upon the top. When she heard 
 the car she flung herself into an ermine coat, and, 
 screaming at the valet, hurried him down with 
 Martin's black felt hat and large military coat. 
 
 In a minute she ran down herself, and, creating 
 purposely an air of excitement, bustled Martin into 
 the car. They got in. The snow was now falling 
 fast. The car moved away from the house and soon 
 turned into the road to Munich. When the white 
 Rolls-Royce had slipped away from sight Wolf 
 put the mass of luggage upon the old Mercedes 
 to follow after. 
 
 When the car had got well past the railway station, 
 Martin put his hand on Sophie's and said : 
 
 " I know what it was that I suffered from. That 
 house was too small to finish the peahens in." 
 
 With that the car sank slowly down to Munich 
 out of the cold world of snow and pine trees and 
 black winds.
 
 CHAPTER XXXIV 
 
 THE house in the Konigstrasse was a 
 marvel of simple beauty, such as the 
 French and Viennese alone understand. 
 It was furnished without the aid of any art furnish- 
 ing company. Here, in a lofty room, large enough 
 for a queen's antechamber, decorated with stately 
 curtains of blue silk and beautiful plaster moulding, 
 furnished with a vast polished wood writing-table, 
 an orange brocade divan, several chairs, and a full 
 sized grand piano. Count von Schiiler finished his 
 best and most beautiful work. That winter he 
 had received the Nobel prize, because the world 
 thought his day was over, and that having brought 
 gay happiness to millions of human beings, he 
 deserved the reward for benefiting mankind. 
 The Emperor gave him a Countship, partly to thank 
 the Swedish nation, and to show that he himself 
 patronized the arts. The change of place and 
 the accident of pubUc honour had a great effect 
 upon him, as it frequently has upon sensitive people. 
 All of the past four years Martin Schiiler left 
 behind him at his villa by the lake ; he took 
 away nothing with him except the manuscripts 
 of the peahens. For the first weeks that he spent
 
 SCHWARZWALD 287 
 
 in his new and beautiful home he sat still and 
 silent, seeing nobody but his secretary and his 
 friend, and going out infrequently to look at the 
 city. At the end of three weeks he roused himself, 
 hired a music secretary and a copyist, and began to 
 make the final effort necessary to the accomplish- 
 ment of his task. He sat at work for weeks together. 
 His health got worse every day, but every day as 
 the years fell upon him — for in a week he lived a 
 twelvemonth — he became more calm, more dis- 
 passionate, patient, and kind. He sat steadily 
 writing and gazing into the past. His creative 
 intellect was at rest ; his selective intellect, his 
 extraordinary technical powers which throughout 
 all his work had been amazing, and his memory, 
 alone were at work. He wrote entirely from the 
 memory of his dreams, and from the copy of those 
 visionless thoughts that in the past years had with 
 pain and labour expressed themselves under his 
 hand. The vision of his peahens was far-off and 
 dark, as if reflected in the water of the lake, but he 
 had not the slightest difficulty in perceiving it, 
 in hearing those few sounds that he still wished to 
 hear. He worked with a sense of co-ordination and 
 of artistic balance, he was making of his absolute 
 genius a perfect and supreme expression. Through- 
 out the days of his creation he had thought mainly 
 of the life, yet always of the form. When the form 
 lay ready under his hands for the last compression, 
 he thought mainly of the form, yet always of the 
 life. As before the form had been continuously
 
 288 MARTIN SCHtlLER 
 
 before his eyes, so now the hfe was continually 
 in his mind. 
 
 Everything was smooth and easy, for the selective 
 power was one of those gifts with which he had been 
 born. 
 
 In March he sat for another three weeks doing 
 nothing but stare into the fire, and from time to 
 time call to the secretaries. They came frequently 
 and showed him copies of the score. He would 
 not allow a blemish or a correction to spoil those 
 sheets. They thought him very fussy and tiresome. 
 For three weeks he sat and shuddered by the fire, 
 wrapped up in a rug with a large cat upon his knees. 
 He shuddered, not from cold but from weakness 
 and fatigue. Wolf had found the cat straying 
 upon the stairs, and Martin had appropriated it. 
 Wolf wanted the cat himself as a pet, but he gave 
 it up to Martin, whom he felt that he had lost 
 altogether that winter. 
 
 At the end of this time, Martin's chief secretary 
 came to him with a clean bundle of manuscript 
 and said, " That is all, Herr Count." 
 
 Martin wrote his name upon the first and last 
 sheets and ordered him to ring the bell. When the 
 footman appeared, he said, " Tell all to come." 
 
 While they were coming he took from his pocket 
 Werner's old manuscript and his own first draft 
 that he had made five years before in the villa. 
 He had a vision of the villa standing upon the March 
 snows among the trees of the forest like an empty 
 box.
 
 SCHWARZWALD 289 
 
 The servants all appeared, following Wolf and 
 Sophie, who thought that he must be going to die. 
 
 There he sat with the cat upon his knees, looking 
 quite different from his former self — gentle, kind, 
 and simple. When Sophie came to him he took 
 her hands, and, looking down at his manuscript, 
 which was beside him on a chair, said, " It is 
 finished." 
 
 An emotion carried her away, and, communicating 
 itself to Wolf, left them both speechless and still. 
 
 Martin evidently did not notice it. 
 
 He turned his head to the servants and said in 
 slow and emotional tones, " I have finished my 
 work to-day ; do you all finish yours and take a 
 holiday. May you all be blessed." 
 
 The butler smiled at the footman, shrugged his 
 shoulders, and looked at the chef. They knew 
 perfectly well that to forsake the house all at once 
 for a day's joy was impossible. 
 
 In a minute Martin said : 
 
 " And now I want the car ; I want to go to the 
 photographer's ; I want to go out to a cafe ; and do 
 you, cook, make me a feast for Friday for twenty 
 persons." 
 
 He took Sophie and Wolf with him in the car, 
 and carried the cat in his arms, who, with sleepy 
 superiority, was not in the least affected by any- 
 thing that went on. 
 
 After visiting a photographer's they went to 
 tea at a new and fashionable caf6, where everybody 
 stared at them, and particularly at Sophie, who wore 
 
 19
 
 290 MARTIN SCHULER 
 
 as usual the most beautiful clothes. After this 
 they went to an exhibition of paintings in a curious 
 black and white gallery, where each picture was hung 
 in a panel of fluted grey silk. Before some were 
 little statuettes upon white wooden pedestals, 
 before others painted wooden flowers in painted 
 wooden bowls, A peasant Madonna had imitation 
 candles dripping simulated wax on each side of 
 her. 
 
 Martin liked this exhibition ; he thought it 
 extraordinary that people could do such wonderful 
 things, for it was years since he had seen anything 
 of the kind. 
 
 Upon Friday night he gave a dinner party, to 
 which he invited from Berlin the Countess von 
 Ardstein, Hirchner, and Konstanz, together with 
 many of his old friends. To his great joy his 
 photographs came back at five o'clock, and he spent 
 an hour fussing over their choice, and tying them 
 up with white paper and ribbons to give to his 
 guests. He made the cook tell him all there was 
 to eat, and the butler all there was to drink. He 
 ordered a grotesque amount of flowers and tokens 
 of sweets from the best shops. 
 
 That night, at the beginning of dinner, he pre- 
 sented the finished score of his peahens formally 
 to Sophie, who pubhcly kissed it amongst a thousand 
 hand-shakes, glass-raisings, and compliments. 
 Everybody was ecstatic over the photographs. 
 
 " Am I not a magnificent old fellow ? " cried
 
 SCHWARZWAID 291 
 
 Martin. The guests all agreed, and his long health 
 was drunk. 
 
 " May you live for ever and ever," cried Sophie 
 with dramatic feeling, and everybody echoed, 
 " Yes, for ever and ever, our immortal singer." 
 
 They cried this rather because they loved him, 
 and because the atmosphere suggested it, than 
 because they at all suspected what the peahens 
 were like.
 
 CHAPTER XXXV 
 
 ON June ist, 1914, Martin Schiiler's opera 
 was produced at the Berlin Opera House. 
 It is remarkable that it was exactly the 
 right length. It needed no adaptation or dis- 
 embowelling to speak of. All his friends were 
 wild about it ; the actors, the orchestra, the scene- 
 shifters, although they did not understand it any 
 more than his friends, caught the enthusiasm. 
 Perhaps Hirchner and the Countess von Ardstein 
 alone had an idea of what it meant. 
 
 Count von Schiiler was present at the First Night. 
 He sat in a box hung with laurels and roses. His 
 hair was oiled, his hollow cheeks and rigid jaws 
 were clean-shaven, and he wore a new evening 
 suit with a soft linen shirt and a velvet coat. On 
 his left breast was a decoration, on his marriage 
 finger was a ring set with an emerald surrounded by 
 brilliants. This ring had been given to him by Hella 
 von Rosenthal. He had recently begun to wear it 
 again. His heart was void. The peahens were no 
 longer his ; they had flown out into the world. 
 
 In the front corner of the box sat Sophie von 
 Sebaltz, at the back stood Wolf ; on either side of 
 Martin sat two of his friends talking to him. 
 
 " Ah," said Konstanz, the man at his left hand, 
 
 292
 
 SCmVARZWALD 298 
 
 " have courage, dearest friend. The most beautiful 
 work in the world will stir their hearts to hell 
 depths and heaven heights." 
 
 Hirchner sat at Schiiler's right side with one hand 
 on his shoulder and the other grasping his right 
 hand so that the ring on the marriage finger cut 
 his palm. He secretly feared that " The Peahens " 
 was above the heads of the general public, but he 
 said in rolling accents : 
 
 " It is going to be wonderful, glorious, colossal, 
 an ever-to-be-remembered, altogether magnificent 
 success. Ah, look at the faces turning their eyes 
 upon you ! You are recognized. Permit us to 
 support you, dear friend, you must stand." 
 
 Cheers filled the Opera House. Like a child 
 Schiller did as he was bidden. He stood erect 
 in the box and bowed, supported by his friends, 
 who only half rose in order to give him the 
 supremacy in height. Everybody shouted and 
 clapped. He had been a great favourite in the 
 old days. Sophie clapped also. Wolf let his 
 nature out in one loud shout. 
 
 The orchestra began the overture. With the 
 first notes the group in the box melted away to 
 the corners. Countess von Ardstein bustled in 
 and sat down. Sophie sat in the front corner of 
 the box in a flame-coloured dress of gauze. She 
 looked as lovely as she had ever done. She leant 
 very much on the front of the box and let her right 
 arm He over the edge. She gazed straight down 
 at the dark people below her : with her fingers
 
 294 MARTIN SCHtLER 
 
 she played with her pearl. She felt very lonely- 
 She wished Martin would put out his hand to her 
 or touch her. There she sat reclined in a beautiful 
 pose staring down into the abyss. She had not the 
 slightest idea that anything was being performed. 
 
 Wolf stood at the back of the box, his attention 
 riveted. It seemed to him as he gave himself 
 to the music that the light upon the stage came 
 out of Martin's mind like a searchlight, and, 
 widening out over a piece of heaven, concentrated 
 itself again in his own brain. He thought that if 
 Martin had not been there the whole spectacle 
 would vanish, and the sounds of music drop to 
 silence. Hirchner sat beside him with his legs 
 crossed, looking like a man of the world, but his 
 mind was soaring to the highest heights, and he felt 
 that he had been born only to hear the wonder of 
 that night. The Countess kept her eyes fixed on the 
 back of Martin's head. Konstanz saw his soul swim 
 like a golden carp in the fish ponds of Elysium. 
 
 Count von Schiiler himself stared at the stage, 
 his whole nerves supporting the whole of the per- 
 formance. Every slight technical mistake broke 
 something in him. During its progress he suffered 
 everything that he had ever suffered during his 
 labours on it, and went again through every ecstasy, 
 through every disappointment ; as the acts fol- 
 lowed one another he held his heart still for the 
 climax. His beautiful and perfect work ravished 
 his soul out of him ; he never had heard or seen 
 anything to be compared with it ; it exceeded his
 
 SCHW^ARZWALD 295 
 
 dreams ; all the loveliness of his whole life was there. 
 Once he smiled at his young Wagnerian dreams 
 and saw a bridge, slender as a rainbow, stand over 
 his life from his twentieth year till now. He went 
 back seven years to the top of the bridge and 
 looked down at Leipsic and Berlin and the Black 
 Forest, The millions of episodes of his life lay 
 below him. He was thousands of hours above 
 them In the air. " Here am I," he thought, " and 
 I have safely crossed by this bridge ; how slender 
 and how beautiful and how white. I have made it 
 and it is my own support. I suppose it was neces- 
 sary for my body to go by land ; only at the end 
 can we cross by the complete bridge back to the 
 beginning," He looked down the far side towards 
 Heidelberg. Under the far end of the bridge 
 flowed the Neckar. He saw the pavilion upon the 
 castle hill shining with electric lights. For some 
 time he stood up there upon the top of the bridge 
 in contemplation of the beauty of the universe ; 
 he understood all creation and the smallest actions 
 of living things. Suddenly he found himself sitting 
 in a box at the Opera House of Berlin, It was 
 the last act. He was awaiting the sensation of 
 the million falls that he had so often had. Un- 
 fortunately the actors were not quite up to their 
 task. They failed to produce the true, the absolute 
 sensation. The audience also did not appreciate 
 the climax. The orchestra alone carried themselves 
 away by their own playing. Hirchner moved, his 
 heart torn out of his body by the marvellous
 
 296 MARTIN SCHtlLER 
 
 perfection of the music ; Wolf wept, amazed at the 
 incomprehensible before him ; Sophie dreamed, still 
 leaning in her corner, of things she did not know. 
 
 As the last chord sounded. Countess von Ardstein 
 touched Hirchner and Konstanz. They looked at 
 Martin, electrified at her contact. Martin had 
 risen and was leaning forward with his hands 
 upon the edge of the box ; he seemed to be about 
 to speak, but sank again heavily into his chair. 
 Hirchner half sprang to his feet. The Countess 
 detained him. Sophie was staring blankly at 
 Martin. She alone could see his face. Absolute 
 silence fell over the theatre. Sophie shrank back 
 into the curtains and raised her hands in an action 
 of self -protection. In a few seconds the audience 
 began to go quickly out of the theatre and every- 
 body knew that Martin Schiiler was dead. 
 
 His body was taken home to the house of the 
 Ardsteins and laid upon a bed. He lay in the centre 
 of a scene that he would have appreciated. The 
 rest of Wolf's life crouched in a black stricken form 
 beside the bed. Sophie, to whom nothing was 
 comprehensible, wept by him, supported in the 
 arms of Hirchner. Konstanz and the Count von 
 Ardstein stood in the background with the Countess, 
 who was playing with her lorgnon. In the silence 
 and the pale light of the breaking day all those 
 people felt that they had now for ever finished with 
 life and that with the first gleam of the rising 
 sun they would all vanish away. 
 
 Printed in Great Britain by Jarrold &■ Sons, Ltd., Norwich.
 
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