Chapter 2

Baron Siegmund von Auffenberg had returned from Munich, where he had had an interview with the Minister.

He had also seen a great many other people in the presence of whom he was condescending, jovial, and witty. His amiability was proverbial.

Now he was sitting with a gloomy face by the chimney. Not a one of those many people who had so recently been charmed by his conversational gifts would have recognised him.

The stillness and loneliness pained him. An irresistible force drew him to his wife. He had not seen her for seven weeks, though they had lived in the same house.

He was drawn to her, because he wanted to know whether she had heard anything from that person whose name he did not like to mention, from his son, his enemy, his heir. Not that he wanted to ask his wife any questions: he merely wished to read her face. Since no one in the vicinity had dared say a word to him about his son, he was forced to rely on suppositions and the subtle cunning of his senses at ferreting out information on this kind of subjects. He did not dare betray the curiosity with which he waited for some one to inform him that his hated offspring had at last come to mortal grief.

Six years had elapsed, and still he could hear the insolent voice in which the monstrous remarks were made that had torn him from the twilight of his self-complacency; remarks that distressed him more than any other grief he may have felt in the secrecy of his bed chamber and which completely and forever robbed him of all the joys of human existence.

“Dépêche-toi, mon bon garçon,” screeched the parrot.

The Baron arose, and went to his wife’s room. She was terrified when she saw him enter. She was lying on a sofa, her head propped up by cushions, a thick Indian blanket spread out over her legs.

She had a broad, bloated face, thick lips, and unusually big black eyes, in which there was a sickly glare. She had been regarded as a beauty in her young days, though none of this beauty was left, unless it was the freshness of her complexion or the dignified bearing of the born lady of the world.

She sent her maid out of the room, and looked at her husband in silence. She studied the friendly, Jesuitic wrinkles in his face, by virtue of which he managed to conceal his real thoughts. Her anxiety was increased.

“You have not played the piano any to-day,” he began in a sweet voice. “It makes the house seem as though something were missing. I am told that you have acquired perfect technique, and that you have engaged a new teacher. Emilia told me this.”

Emilia was their daughter. She was married to Count Urlich, captain of cavalry.

In the Baroness’s eyes there was an expression such as is found in the eyes of some leashed beast when the butcher approaches, axe in hand. She was tortured by the smoothness of the man from whom she had never once in the last quarter of a century received anything but brutality and scorn, and from whom she had suffered the grossest of humiliations—when no one was listening.

“What do you want, Siegmund?” she asked, with painful effort.

The Baron stepped close up to her, bit his lips, and looked at her for ten or twelve seconds with a fearful expression on his face.

She then seized him by the left arm: “What is the matter with Eberhard?” she cried; “tell me, tell me everything! There is something wrong.”

The Baron, with a gesture of stinging aversion, thrust her hands from him, and turned to go. There was unfathomable coldness in his conduct.

Beside herself with grief, the Baroness made up her mind to tell him, for the first time in her life, of the thousand wrongs that burned within her heart. And she did: “Oh, you monster! Why did Fate bring you into my life? Where is there another woman in the world whose lot has been like mine? Where is the woman who has lived without joy or love or esteem or freedom or peace, a burden to others and to herself? Show me another woman who goes about in silk and satin longing for death. Name me another woman who people think is happy, because the devil, who tortures her without ceasing, deceives them all. Where is there another woman who has been so shamelessly robbed of her children? For is not my daughter the captive and concubine of an insane tuft-hunter? Has not my son been taken from me through the baseness that has been practised against his sister, and the lamentable spectacle afforded him by my own powerlessness? Where, I ask high Heaven, is there another woman so cursed as I have been?”

She threw herself down on her bosom, and burrowed her face into the cushion.

The Baron was surprised at the feverish eloquence of his wife; he had accustomed himself to her mute resignation, as he might have accustomed himself to the regular, monotonous ticking of a hall clock. He was anxious to see what she would do next, how she would develop her excitement; she was a novel phenomenon in his eyes: therefore he remained standing in the door.

But as he stood there in chilly expectancy, his haggard face casting off expressions of scorn and surprise, he suddenly sensed a feeling of weary disgust at himself. It was the disgust of a man whose wishes had always been fulfilled, whose lusts had been satisfied; of a man who has never known other men except as greedy and practical supplicants; of a man who has always been the lord of his friends, the tyrant of his servants, and the centre of all social gatherings; of a man before whom all others yielded, to whom all others bowed; of a man who had never renounced anything but the feeling of renunciation.

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

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

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

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

The Baron did not move.

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

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

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

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

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

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