her eyes were so clear and bright and different. Like a child's
that is listening to something, and is going to be frightened. She
was always listening--and waiting--for something else. I tell you
what, she was exactly like that fairy in the Scotch song, who is in
love with a mortal, and sits by the high road in terror waiting for
him to come, and hearing the plovers and the curlews. Only
nowadays motor-lorries go along the moor roads and the poor thing
is struck unconscious, and carried into our world in a state of
unconsciousness, and when she comes round, she tries to talk our
language and behave as we behave, and she can't remember anything
else, so she goes on and on, till she falls with a crash, back to
her own world.'
Hannele was silent, and so was he.
'You loved her then?' she said at length.
'Yes. But in this way. When I was a boy I caught a bird, a black-
cap, and I put it in a cage. And I loved that bird. I don't know
why, but I loved it. I simply loved that bird. All the gorse, and
the heather, and the rock, and the hot smell of yellow gorse
blossom, and the sky that seemed to have no end to it, when I was a
boy, everything that I almost was MAD with, as boys are, seemed to
me to be in that little, fluttering black-cap. And it would peck
its seed as if it didn't quite know what else to do; and look round
about, and begin to sing. But in quite a few days it turned its
head aside and died. Yes, it died. I never had the feeling again
that I got from that black-cap when I was a boy--not until I saw
her. And then I felt it all again. I felt it all again. And it
was the same feeling. I knew, quite soon I knew, that she would
die. She would peck her seed and look round in the cage just the
same. But she would die in the end. Only it would last much
longer. But she would die in the cage, like the black-cap.'
'But she loved the cage. She loved her clothes and her jewels.
She must have loved her house and her furniture and all that with a
perfect frenzy.'
'She did. She did. But like a child with playthings. Only they
were big, marvellous playthings to her. Oh yes, she was never away
from them. She never forgot her things--her trinkets and her furs
and her furniture. She never got away from them for a minute. And
everything in her mind was mixed up with them.'
'Dreadful!' said Hannele.
'Yes, it was dreadful,' he answered.
'Dreadful,' repeated Hannele.
'Yes, quite. Quite! And it got worse. And her way of talking got
worse. As if it bubbled off her lips. But her eyes never lost
their brightness, they never lost that faery look. Only I used to
see fear in them. Fear of everything--even all the things she
surrounded herself with. Just like my black-cap used to look out
of his cage--so bright and sharp, and yet as if he didn't know that
it was just the cage that was between him and the outside. He
thought it was inside himself, the barrier. He thought it was part
of his own nature to be shut in. And she thought it was part of
her own nature. And so they both died.'
'What I can't see,' said Hannele, 'is what she would have done
outside her cage. What other life could she have, except her
bibelots and her furniture, and her talk?'
'Why, none. There IS no life outside for human beings.'
'Then there's nothing,' said Hannele.
'That's true. In a great measure, there's nothing.'
'Thank you,' said Hannele.
There was a long pause.
'And perhaps I was to blame. Perhaps I ought to have made some
sort of a move. But I didn't know what to do. For my life, I
didn't know what to do, except try to make her happy. She had
enough money--and I didn't think it mattered if she shared it with
me. I always had a garden--and the astronomy. It's been an
immense relief to me watching the moon. It's been wonderful.
Instead of looking inside the cage, as I did at my bird, or at her--
I look right out--into freedom--into freedom.'
'The moon, you mean?' said Hannele.
'Yes, the moon.'
'And that's your freedom?'
'That's where I've found the greatest sense of freedom,' he said.
'Well, I'm not going to be jealous of the moon,' said Hannele at
length.
'Why should you? It's not a thing to be jealous of.'
In a little while, she bade him good-night and left him.
VIII
The chief thing that the captain knew, at this juncture, was that a
hatchet had gone through the ligatures and veins that connected him
bleeding ends of all his vital human relationships. Why it should
be so he did not know. But then one never can know the whys and
the wherefores of one's passional changes.
He only knew that it was so. The emotional flow between him and
all the people he knew and cared for was broken, and for the time
being he was conscious only of the cleavage. The cleavage that had
occurred between him and his fellow-men, the cleft that was now
between him and them. It was not the fault of anybody or anything.
He could neither reproach himself nor them. What had happened had
been preparing for a long time. Now suddenly the cleavage. There
had been a long, slow weaning away: and now this sudden silent
rupture.
What it amounted to principally was that he did not want even to
see Hannele. He did not want to think of her even. But neither
did he want to see anybody else, or to think of anybody else. He
shrank with a feeling almost of disgust from his friends and
acquaintances, and their expressions of sympathy. It affected him
with instantaneous disgust when anybody wanted to share emotions
with him. He did not want to share emotions or feelings of any
sort. He wanted to be by himself, essentially, even if he was
moving about among other people.
So he went to England to settle his own affairs, and out of duty to
see his children. He wished his children all the well in the
world--everything except any emotional connexion with himself. He
decided to take his girl away from the convent at once, and to put
her into a jolly English school. His boy was all right where he
was.
The captain had now an income sufficient to give him his
independence, but not sufficient to keep up his wife's house. So
he prepared to sell the house and most of the things in it. He
decided also to leave the army as soon as he could be free. And he
thought he would wander about for a time, till he came upon
something he wanted.
So the winter passed, without his going back to Germany. He was
free of the army. He drifted along, settling his affairs. They
were of no very great importance. And all the time he never wrote
once to Hannele. He could not get over his disgust that people
insisted on his sharing their emotions. He could not bear their
emotions, neither their activities. Other people might have all
the emotions and feelings and earnestness and busy activities they
liked. Quite nice even that they had such a multifarious commotion
for themselves. But the moment they approached him to spread their
feelings over him or to entangle him in their activities a helpless
disgust came up in him, and until he could get away he felt sick,
even physically.
This was no state of mind for a lover. He could not even think of
Hannele. Anybody else he felt he need not think about. He was
deeply, profoundly thankful that his wife was dead. It was an end
of pity now; because, poor thing, she had escaped and gone her own
way into the void, like a flown bird.
IX
Nevertheless, a man hasn't finished his life at forty. He may,
however, have finished one great phase of his life.
And Alexander Hepburn was not the man to live alone. All our
troubles, says somebody wise, come upon us because we cannot be
alone. And that is all very well. We must all be ABLE to be
alone, otherwise we are just victims. But when we ARE able to be
alone, then we realize that the only thing to do is to start a new
relationship with another--or even the same--human being. That
people should all be stuck up apart, like so many telegraph-poles,
is nonsense.
So with our dear captain. He had his convulsion into a sort of
telegraph-pole isolation: which was absolutely necessary for him.
But then he began to bud with a new yearning for--for what? For
love?
It was a question he kept nicely putting to himself. And really,
the nice young girls of eighteen or twenty attracted him very much:
so fresh, so impulsive, and looking up to him as if he were
something wonderful. If only he could have married two or three of
them, instead of just one!
Love! When a man has no particular ambition, his mind turns back
perpetually, as a needle towards the pole. That tiresome word
Love. It means so many things. It meant the feeling he had had
for his wife. He had loved her. But he shuddered at the thought
of having to go through such love again. It meant also the feeling
he had for the awfully nice young things he met here and there:
yes, he could fall in love with half a dozen of them. But he knew
he'd better not.
At last he wrote to Hannele: and got no answer. So he wrote to
Mitchka and still got no answer. So he wrote for information--and
there was none forthcoming, except that the two women had gone to
Munich.
For the time being he left it at that. To him, Hannele did not
exactly represent rosy love. Rather a hard destiny. He did not
adore her. He did not feel one bit of adoration for her. As a
matter of fact, not all the beauties and virtues of woman put
together with all the gold in the Indies would have tempted him
into the business of adoration any more. He had gone on his knees
once, vowing with faltering tones to try and make the adored one
happy. And now--never again. Never.
The temptation this time was to be adored. One of those fresh
young things would have adored him as if he were a god. And there
was something VERY alluring about the thought. Very--very
alluring. To be god-almighty in your own house, with a lovely
young thing adoring you, and you giving off beams of bright
effulgence like a Gloria! Who wouldn't be tempted: at the age of
forty? And this was why he dallied.
But in the end he suddenly took the train to Munich. And when he
got there he found the town beastly uncomfortable, the Bavarians
rude and disagreeable, and no sign of the missing females, not even
in the Caf� St�phanie. He wandered round and round.
And then one day, oh heaven, he saw his doll in a shop window: a
little art shop. He stood and stared quite spellbound.
'Well, if that isn't the devil,' he said. 'Seeing yourself in a
shop window!'
He was so disgusted that he would not go into the shop.
Then, every day for a week did he walk down that little street and
look at himself in the shop window. Yes, there he stood, with one
hand in his pocket. And the figure had one hand in its pocket.
There he stood, with his cap pulled rather low over his brow. And
the figure had its cap pulled low over its brow. But, thank
goodness, his own cap now was a civilian tweed. But there he
stood, his head rather forward, gazing with fixed dark eyes. And
himself in little, that wretched figure, stood there with its head
rather forward, staring with fixed dark eyes. It was such a real
little MAN that it fairly staggered him. The oftener he saw it,
the more it staggered him. And the more he hated it. Yet it
fascinated him, and he came again to look.
And it was always there. A lonely little individual lounging there
with one hand in its pocket, and nothing to do, among the bric-�-
brac and the bibelots. Poor devil, stuck so incongruously in the
world. And yet losing none of his masculinity.
A male little devil, for all his forlornness. But such an air of
isolation, or not-belonging. Yet taut and male, in his tartan
trews. And what a situation to be in!--lounging with his back
against a little Japanese lacquer cabinet, with a few old pots on
his right hand and a tiresome brass ink-tray on his left, while
pieces of not-very-nice filet lace hung their length up and down
the background. Poor little devil: it was like a deliberate
satire.
And then one day it was gone. There was the cabinet and the filet
lace and the tiresome ink-stand tray: and the little gentleman
wasn't there. The captain at once walked into the shop.
'Have you sold that doll?--that unknown soldier?' he added, without
knowing quite what he was saying.
The doll was sold.
'Do you know who bought it?'
The girl looked at him very coldly, and did not know.
'I once knew the lady who made it. In fact, the doll was ME,' he
said.
The girl now looked at him with sudden interest.
'Don't you think it was like me?' he said.
'Perhaps'--she began to smile.
'It was me. And the lady who made it was a friend of mine. Do you
know her name?'
'Yes.'
'Gr�fin zu Rassentlow,' he cried, his eyes shining.
'Oh yes. But her dolls are famous.'
'Do you know where she is? Is she in Munich?'
'That I don't know.'
'Could you find out?'
'I don't know. I can ask.'
'Or the Baroness von Prielau-Carolath.'
'The Baroness is dead.'
'Dead!'
'She was shot in a riot in Salzburg. They say a lover--'
'How do you know?'
'From the newspapers.'
'Dead! Is it possible. Poor Hannele.'
There was a pause.
'Well,' he said, 'if you would inquire about the address--I'll call
again.'
Then he turned back from the door.
'By the way, do you mind telli
ng me how much you sold the doll
for?'
The girl hesitated. She was by no means anxious to give away any
of her trade details. But at length she answered reluctantly:
'Five hundred marks.'
'So cheap,' he said.' Good-day. Then I will call again.'
X
Then again he got a trace. It was in the Chit-Chat column of the
M�nchener Neue Zeitung: under Studio-Comments. 'Theodor
Worpswede's latest picture is a still-life, containing an
entertaining group of a doll, two sunflowers in a glass jar, and a
poached egg on toast. The contrast between the three substances is
highly diverting and instructive, and this is perhaps one of the
most interesting of Worpswede's works. The doll, by the way, is
one of the creations of our fertile Countess Hannele. It is the
figure of an English, or rather Scottish, officer in the famous
tartan trousers which, clinging closely to the legs of the lively
Gaul, so shocked the eminent Julius Caesar and his cohorts. We, of
course, are no longer shocked, but full of admiration for the
creative genius of our dear Countess. The doll itself is a
masterpiece, and has begotten another masterpiece in Theodor
Worpswede's Still-life. We have heard, by the way, a rumour of
Countess zu Rassentlow's engagement. Apparently the Herr
Regierungsrat von Poldi, of that most beautiful of summer resorts,
Kaprun, in the Tyrol, is the fortunate man--'
XI
The captain bought the Still-life. This new version of himself
along with the poached egg and the sunflowers was rather
frightening. So he packed up for Austria, for Kaprun, with his
picture, and had a fight to get the beastly thing out of Germany,
and another fight to get it into Austria. Fatigued and furious he
arrived in Salzburg, seeing no beauty in anything. Next day he was
in Kaprun.
It was an elegant and fashionable watering-place before the war: a
lovely little lake in the midst of the Alps, an old Tyrolese town
on the water-side, green slopes sheering up opposite, and away
beyond a glacier. It was still crowded and still elegant. But
alas, with a broken, bankrupt, desperate elegance, and almost empty
shops.
The captain felt rather dazed. He found himself in an hotel full
of Jews of the wrong, rich sort, and wondered what next. The place
was beautiful, but the life wasn't.
XII
The Herr Regierungsrat was not at first sight prepossessing. He
was approaching fifty, and had gone stout and rather loose, as so
many men of his class and race do. Then he wore one of those
dreadful full-bottom coats, a kind of poor relation to our full-
skirted frock-coat: it would best be described as a family coat.
It flapped about him as he walked, and he looked at first glance
lower middle class.
But he wasn't. Of course, being in office in the collapsed
Austria, he was a republican. But by nature he was a monarchist,
nay, an imperialist, as every true Austrian is. And he was a true
Austrian. And as such he was much finer and subtler than he
looked. As one got used to him, his rather fat face, with its fine
nose and slightly bitter, pursed mouth, came to have a resemblance
to the busts of some of the late Roman emperors. And as one was
with him, one came gradually to realize that out of all his baggy
bourgeois appearance came something of a grand geste. He could not
help it. There was something sweeping and careless about his soul:
big, rather assertive, and ill-bred-seeming; but, in fact, not ill-
bred at all, only a little bitter and a good deal indifferent to
his surroundings. He looked at first sight so common and parvenu.
And then one had to realize that he was a member of a big, old
empire, fallen into a sort of epicureanism, and a little bitter.