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FABER 
 OR 
 
 Phir LOS Tv eARS 
 
By Jacob Wassermann 
 
 THE WORLD'S ILLUSION, 
 2 Volumes 
 
 THE GOOSE MAN 
 GOLD 
 FABER, OR THE LOST YEARS 
 
FABER 
 OR 
 u LOST YLARS 
 
 BY 
 JACOB WASSERMANN 
 
 AUTHORIZED TRANSLATION BY 
 HARRY HANSEN 
 
 
 
 ‘ale 
 
 | NEW YORK! 
 HARCOURT, BRACE AND COMPANY 
 
COPYRIGHT, 1925, By 
 HARCOURT, BRACE AND COMPANY 
 
 PRINTED IN THE U. S. A. BY 
 THE QUINN & BODEN COMPANY 
 RAHWAY, N. J 
 
YO 
 
 Kg 
 YA 
 
 “ 
 
 As 
 ge 
 
 gr Selected for Hum 
 
 ites 
 
 hal 
 Art 
 ‚Proservston Proje 
 
 FABER 
 
 OR 
 
 THE LOST YEARS 
 
 I 
 
 FABER arrived on the evening train in his native city, 
 where he had been active as an architect until the war 
 broke out and he became a prisoner in its first month. 
 Since then five and a half years had passed. 
 
 With him travelled several comrades, like himself 
 the last stragglers among those returning home; com- 
 moners like himself, but unlike him so agitated during 
 the final stages of their journey that they talked in 
 disconnected sentences like men sick of a fever. As 
 they had telegraphed home upon leaving the ship they 
 were sure of being received by their relatives and 
 friends. Although ordinarily reserved, they plunged 
 into excessive sentimentality when they spoke of wife 
 and child, mothers and sisters, and even of houses and 
 rooms. Faber remained silent in a sort of unfriendly 
 fashion. One of them asked him: “Will your wife 
 
 Rn 5 
 
 > 
 
 616096 
 
FABER 
 
 
 
 his*hand coolly to his fellow travellers of many months 
 and left unobtrusively with his little wooden chest. 
 He caught only a hurried passing glimpse of the noisy 
 greeting that awaited them. 
 
 With his cap pulled far down over his forehead he 
 left the station as one who fears that he may be rec- 
 ognized. At the Square he stood undecided, then 
 hesitatingly continued on his way. He reached a 
 street which contained numerous second-rate hotels. 
 He entered one and demanded a room for the night. 
 A dirty waiter led him into a miserable room that 
 smelled of badly washed linen and air that had not 
 been changed for days. He threw open the window 
 and sank fatigued into a chair. The sultry sky of a 
 July evening blazed over the near-by roof. Through 
 the imperfectly closed door of the adjoining room he 
 heard whispering voices and from time to time a 
 woman’s laughter. 
 
 He rose, paced up and down, then washed his face 
 and hands, and thus noticed an unpleasant palpitation 
 of his heart, ich was not new to him. This evil 
 had become chronic in his body since his terrible flight 
 from Siberia to Peking. Then he again seated him- 
 self at the window with his head in his hands, and it 
 
 
 
FABER is 
 
 
 
 
 
 seemed as if he was trying to determine 
 entered this hotel and why he wished to s 
 untidy room. Whenever the laughter of the 
 next door rang out he wrinkled his forehead. 
 gave his facé the expression of a suffering child, 
 
 In the house opposite, a gloomy lodging for tenants, 
 a few rooms were lighted up. He became aware of 
 an old man with spectacles, who was reading a news- 
 paper, and the curly head of a little girl, which ap- 
 peared and disappeared at intervals. In another room 
 a woman was engaged in folding reams of coloured 
 paper. 
 
 “Impossible to remain here,’ he said to himself. 
 He pulled on his coat and stood for an instant thought- 
 fully at the door. As the laughter burst forth once 
 more he left the room as if filled with disgust and 
 went down the stairs and out into the street. He 
 looked up the facade of the opposite house: the lighted 
 rooms were now high above him. He smiled with a 
 sort of astonishment. Then he felt his breast with his 
 hand; the palpitation of his heart had stopped. 
 
 Only a few people met him. Even the taverns were 
 
 empty. Here and there old men and women sat before 
 
 
 
8 FABER 
 
 lamps. Only men who have become the victims of an 
 unsatisfied fantasy gaze like this, until finally they be- 
 hold reality. And everything that he saw was ugly, 
 dirty and commonplace. 
 
 He was driven forward without definite volition on 
 his part; his step lacked the rhythm that a destination 
 imparts. From streets filled with traffic he passed 
 again into quieter ways, and thus reached a square 
 with a church whose pure lines and harmonious pro- 
 portions had been familiar to him since his childhood. 
 Tranquillity came over his features as his eye grasped 
 the Gothic figures and ornamentation and moved up 
 the spire, which had the whiteness of charred bones. 
 That the church was not his goal was soon evident, 
 although its loveliness, forgotten by time, must have 
 filled him with courage for his undertaking. 
 
 After brief deliberation he turned toward a building 
 standing about one hundred paces away; the gate was 
 still open, the entrance hall still lighted; after the 
 same deliberation’ he knocked at the porter’s window 
 and asked, with affected carelessness in his voice, as 
 one for whom the answer is of no consequence, 
 whether Doctor Fleming still lived there and was at 
 home. The man nodded to both questions and then 
 followed him with a suspicious glance as he climbed 
 
 
 
 
 Faber rang aßthe familiar door a 
 
FABER 9 
 shuffled toward him, the bolt was carefully drawn back 
 and in the crack of the door appeared the familiar face 
 with the chubby cheeks; strangely aged, however, with 
 lightened hair and sharpened chin. Faber stepped 
 out of the shadow and removed his cap. 
 
 Eyes unnaturally small and continually blinking be- 
 hind thick lenses of eyeglasses measured the late 
 caller. A sharper scrutiny, a flash of recognition 
 and astonishment caused the tiny eyes to disappear 
 completely behind the thick lenses and the spongy 
 pouches of the cheeks. 
 
 With a composed greeting Faber stepped across the 
 threshold. From the first moment there was some- 
 thing artificial and studied in his whole attitude of 
 retaining his self-possession. 
 
 The walls of the narrow anteroom were filled with 
 books from floor to ceiling; thus also were the two 
 rooms on the court, which served as bedroom, lava- 
 tory and kitchen. The books, thrust closely together, . 
 disguised every bit of wall; books and periodicals lay 
 on tables and chairs, on the floor and on the stove, 
 on the bed and on the window sills. There was left 
 hardly any air'to breathe or room to move about in. 
 
 
 
 It was the lodging of a man who lived in books, with 
 
 
 
 
 books and from books. a 
 F as if to himself. No dou! 
 of the picture, at the famil 
 
 
 
 
 
 + 
 
 at 
 
10 FABER 
 
 Fleming’s appearance and the strange circumstance 
 that he had actually arrived. But his dull brown eyes 
 became serious again and he stared at the floor almost 
 without seeing when Fleming began to talk in a voice 
 that was remarkably clear for a man. 
 
 Whatever did not Fleming say in his precipitation! 
 What did he not ask! And how he exerted himself 
 in repeating again and again the same questions and 
 exclamations! He pressed his hands together, rubbed 
 his fingers together, bent his head now to one side, 
 now to the other, pushed his spectacles up on his fore- 
 head and then down again on his thick nose, and spoke 
 with increasing agitation and incitement, the more so 
 because Faber made no attempts to discard his affected 
 and carefully planned calmness. 
 
 Naturally he wanted to know first of all how long 
 since Faber had returned. Only yesterday he had 
 visited Martina, he said, and Martina had no inkling 
 of him. The last card from Faber had arrived six 
 weeks ago, since then they had not heard from him. 
 As a matter of fact he had contented himself for the 
 last year and a half with writing postcards. For 
 what precise reason? Everything so disconnected, so 
 casual, almost strange; Martina had not known what 
 to think of it. 
 
 Faber remained silent. 
 
 While he shuffled up and down in his tattered felt 
 
FABER II 
 
 slippers and occasionally measured him timidly from 
 the side, Fleming lamented: “We simply could get no 
 information. Your mother visited the ministries and 
 the embassies day after day. Clara’s husband tele- 
 graphed three times to the exchange commission, all 
 in vain; nobody was able to tell us where you were 
 secreted. But all that, no doubt, has been told you. 
 Now you are actually back with us! And you call on 
 me, old Jacob Fleming. That is lovely, that pleases 
 me. But do sit down, my dear fellow; why are you 
 still standing?” | 
 
 With breathless activity he lifted a pile of books 
 from a chair and Faber sat down. As he remained 
 silent, now as before enigmatically silent, Fleming 
 found himself impelled perhaps by fear, perhaps out 
 of his divined tactfulness, to continue his flood of 
 words. “Well, how did you get along?” he inquired 
 gently, his ten fingers pressing his chin; “you will call 
 that a foolish question, and you are right. We at 
 home finally lived on as we always did, even though 
 the face of the world has taken on an insupportable 
 aspect. Yes, it has that, you may well believe me, a 
 detestable, hypocritical face, especially in the opinion 
 of a man of my type. What did Martina say when 
 you arrived so suddenly? What did she do in her 
 happiness? My God, how often we spoke of you, 
 how many evenings we sat together and thought of 
 
12 FABER 
 
 you. And the child, Christopher—how did he strike 
 you? He isa chip of the old block; now that I look 
 at you I have to smile at the resemblance. You know 
 that we are great friends, he and I? After the death 
 of your father he would take walks solely with me. 
 It must be a peculiar sensation to see again as a nine- 
 year-old the son you left at three. How did he con- 
 duct himself? Did he know you? Why don’t you 
 answer? Do say something .. .” 
 
 Faber said finally, with his eyes on his knees: “I 
 arrived only two hours ago. I notified no one and 
 have seen no one, neither Martina, nor the child, nor 
 my mother, nor my sister, nor any one else.” 
 
 The trace of an unhealthy blush disappeared from 
 Fleming’s round cheeks and they became the colour 
 of dough. He stuttered; finally his jaw dropped and 
 one saw gaps and gold crowns in his teeth. | 
 
 “Tt is as I tell you,” Faber nodded; “don’t ask me, 
 I can explain nothing to you. Give me a bite to eat, 
 anything, I am hungry.” 
 
 Fleming persisted for a time, then went hurriedly 
 and clumsily into his bedroom. There Faber heard 
 him murmur, walk about and clatter among the dishes; 
 a few minutes later he brought a metal tray on which 
 he had fairly neatly and appetizingly placed bread, a 
 few cuts of smoked ham on a plate, a carafe of water 
 and a glass. He cleared a second chair of books and 
 
FABER 13 
 
 brochures, sat down opposite Faber, and with hands 
 that betrayed his uneasiness watched the latter greedily 
 gulp bread and ham and thereupon drink the whole 
 carafe of water without making use of the glass. 
 
 “Now let me rest up for an hour,” Faber pleaded, 
 and looked about the room. He discovered the loung- 
 ing chair covered with shabby leather, which also had 
 a contrivance for reclining in it, walked over to it, 
 threw himself down with a deep sigh and closed his 
 eyes. 
 
 Fleming did not let his perturbed look leave him. 
 Eyes could hardly contain an expression more reveal- 
 ing of helplessness and care. He knew sufficiently 
 well that it would be impossible under any circum- 
 stances to get this obstinate and extraordinarily close- 
 mouthed person to talk so long as he did not wish to. 
 After a short time he saw that Faber had fallen asleep. 
 
II 
 
 HE now had leisure to observe his face. He became 
 convinced that it was the same handsome face of ten 
 and twenty years ago, the characteristic Faber face, in 
 which gentleness and severity, noble stock and untamed 
 instinct, crowded one another closely. All four chil- 
 dren had belonged to this type. 
 
 A certain line between the eyebrows struck his no- 
 tice, a deep furrow such as one finds in a dog. But 
 in that he could read nothing, see nothing, guess 
 nothing. 
 
 For many years Jacob Fleming had the habit of 
 keeping a record of his contacts and experiences with 
 humankind. He was interested in the events that 
 make history, and in the possibility of uncovering 
 analogies entangled and obscured by time. Among his 
 papers, just as in police headquarters or a secret service 
 office, there could be found exhaustive documents and 
 clippings about persons with whom he was intimately 
 associated. When he had lost sight of this or that 
 one for a long period he looked back in his memo- 
 randa and by a learned synthesis tried to construct 
 their further fate from the notes at hand. Often 
 good fortune attended him and he hit upon the truth. 
 
 He possessed among others a detailed memorandum 
 
 14 
 
FABER 15 
 
 on the Faber family, with which he had become asso- 
 ciated more than eighteen years ago as tutor and ad- 
 visor. He had merely to put his hand into a drawer 
 to have the written data before him. Opening it 
 softly he turned to one of the last pages and read the 
 following passage: 
 
 “What will become of Martina without Eugene? 
 How will she exist? The question suggests itself 
 tentatively in view of his absence, which may last for 
 months; but what will happen if he does not return, 
 if he dies in battle—which God forbid! It is just as 
 impossible to imagine his existence when separated 
 from her. It cannot be denied—and circumstances 
 have proved absolutely—that these two beings not only 
 seem to have been destined for each other since eter- 
 nity, but also have formed a complete unit ever since 
 they met, in their most impressionable years, and can 
 only be considered as one. Everybody perceives this, 
 even the stupid and careless, and the thought that the 
 future may hold a catastrophe for them fills one with 
 terror.” 
 
 Again and again his glance returned to these lines, 
 and after reading them he raised his nearsighted eyes 
 timorously to the sleeping man. Then he again began 
 turning the leaves, read a page here, another there, and 
 one could see by the expression on his face that much 
 of the past revived in his memory. 
 
16 FABER 
 
 Strange house, strange agglomeration of human 
 beings. Parents who voluntarily relinquished their 
 authority over their children: children for whom the 
 words obedience and discipline were ridiculous sounds. 
 No regulation, no order, no harmonious proportion, 
 no religious ties nor deep piety; everything based 
 solely on accidental agreement and mutual understand- 
 ing determined by mood and choice. Various anno- 
 tations indicated the discontent of the writer with the 
 views ‘and living conditions that he found here and 
 the pains he took to find some reason for them, or 
 some excuse in the general tendency of the times. 
 
 Dr. Faber, a popular physician, had Slavic blood in 
 his veins from his mother’s side, whereas through his 
 father he was descended from an old south German 
 family of patricians. Anna, his wife, also had mixed 
 blood, her father having been a Scotch immigrant in 
 Hanover. She was likewise the restless element of 
 the house; she dominated it, laid stress on the rights 
 of the individual and decided the way he should go. 
 As champion for the rights of her sex she engaged 
 in public work, directed a periodical for women, or- 
 ganized women’s clubs and spoke at assemblies; even 
 in the home circle she preferred expressions and pe- 
 riods with which she was accustomed to create enthu- 
 siasm in masses of listeners, and she liked to intoxi- 
 cate herself with the passionate character of her own 
 
FABER 17 
 
 speech. Dr. Faber gave her free rein in every par- 
 ticular and, far from underrating her rather noisy 
 and varied activity, showed, in his quiet way, an almost 
 childlike admiration for her strong character and her 
 untiring idealism. The historian often expressed his 
 respect and partiality for this man, whose distinction 
 and calm patience stood in happy contrast to the haste 
 and bustle of all men who surrounded him. He liked 
 especially a certain reserve, unusual in the mature 
 member of a practical profession, which provided a 
 happy background for his words and acts and led 
 those with whom he dealt to give themselves freely, to 
 act, as it were, always in the open. Fleming never 
 heard him grumble or engage in unfriendly criticism. 
 Although like most physicians he possessed a sarcastic 
 and deeply sceptical nature, he never permitted him- 
 self to judge a man unsympathetically, not even when 
 he had suffered injury at his hands. It even happened 
 that he allowed his children to correct him, when in 
 their view he had mistakingly favored such a person; 
 he then showed respectful attention toward his children, 
 which the historian described with badly disguised 
 disapproval. 
 
 Fleming discovered with grave concern that the 
 ‘doors of the house were open to every one. It was 
 difficult for him to assemble his students, and the 
 
 numerous outside influences proved an interruption, in 
 
18 FABER 
 
 spite of the children’s talents and their eagerness to 
 learn and to accept. Every one found welcome and 
 shelter, whether they were seeking sanctuary or in 
 need of entertainment, poor devils without lodging or 
 intellectual idlers who wanted to gossip far into the 
 night and dreaded the trip home. Sometimes Anna 
 Faber and her children moved to the chamber in the 
 attic, while persons almost strangers used the bed- 
 rooms. “An unfortunate conglomeration,” Fleming 
 once complained in his book. “At nine in the evening 
 they eat dinner; guests are still arriving at midnight 
 and demanding advice, more or less urgent, and sup- 
 port for their various ideas and occupations. To 
 think of putting the children to bed is then out of the 
 question; they want to know, see, and hear everything, 
 and are initiated into everything. Surprises of a se- 
 rious nature are not lacking: day before yesterday I 
 found Clara asleep in a wardrobe.” 
 
 They lived from hand to mouth; were in debt to 
 merchant and grocer, butcher and baker, without this 
 causing any concern to Anna Faber. Dr. Faber was 
 not able to meet this confusing expenditure with the 
 returns from his practice, because he accepted no 
 money from most of his patients. Months often 
 passed before they paid Fleming his salary; but as it 
 was taken for granted that he would wait, and no ex- 
 cuses were made, and no one doubted that he wished 
 
FABER 19 
 
 to share, not only every luxury, but also every want of 
 this family, Fleming suppressed all feeling of dissat- 
 isfaction, especially as he became more and more at- 
 tached to his pupils, and particularly to Eugene, the 
 third in age. 
 
 Thereupon his apprehensions regarding their future 
 and development grew. Unrestrained liberty of action 
 often gave the appearance of dissoluteness. Whatever 
 they undertook—whether they engaged in a scuffle, a 
 pleasure that even Clara did not forgo, or one or the 
 other suddenly disappeared for days from the presence 
 of the teacher and governor, to bob up again late at 
 night, filled with tales of secret adventure, tattered 
 and dirty—all this was tolerated by their mother and 
 eventually commended. She said that she wanted to 
 train her children to be spiritually independent. Flem- 
 ing was eager to know what she meant by that, and 
 when he dryly rejected her extravagant explanation, 
 Dr. Faber joined in and suggested in good-natured 
 irony that although she had admonished her children 
 against snap judgment when they were still in the 
 cradle, she did not yet believe in judgment. She 
 raised a threatening finger, but he looked down from 
 his lean height on the plump and fiery little woman 
 with friendly tolerance. 
 
 One evening a violent dispute over viewpoints arose 
 between the two. Karl, who was reaching the end of 
 
g 
 + 
 
 20 FABER 
 
 his seventeenth year and pursuing a definite aim in 
 life, had told his father that he meant to study bac- 
 teriology. Dr. Faber made known his disapproval 
 with striking severity. It appeared that not only did 
 he consider an academic career undesirable for one of 
 his sons, in view of the fact that it could give him no 
 economic security and protection, but that he had other 
 reasons for opposition which he failed to disclose, but 
 which, as Fleming surmised, were rooted deep in his 
 nature. In a hidden corner of his mind he cherished 
 a secret hatred against learning. Anna therefore took 
 sides with her oldest son all the more vehemently. She 
 surpassed herself in flowery periods and declared that 
 to divert a young man from the path that his inner 
 self showed him was a crime of which she would not 
 be guilty and from which she wanted to keep the 
 atmosphere of her house unsullied. Dr. Faber was 
 silent at that. A much later entry by Fleming at this 
 point of the report remarked: “How much better if 
 he had only spoken and come out against this mis- 
 fortune, of which he may have had some forebod- 
 ing!” 
 Although in this case conditions as well as indi- 
 viduals are viewed through the eyes of a third person 
 with a ratler narrow viewpoint, the fact remains that 
 Anna Faber exérted a baneful a on her“ ehil- 
 dren, despite her passionate friendliness and her un- 
 
 » 
 
 “ 
 
 
 
FABER . 21 
 
 bounded love for them; in the case of one of them, 
 the weak and romantically inclined Roderick, who was 
 a year younger than Karl, her influence was obviously 
 detrimental. This was also the cause of numerous 
 earnest arguments between her and Fleming, which 
 gradually lost their character of disinterested opposi- 
 tion, and brought about a rupture at the beginning of 
 the fifth year of his relations with the house, when 
 two different events, coming at the same time, sud- 
 denly alienated him completely. 
 
 At that time the Fabers employed a pretty maid, a 
 happy, lively child hardly seventeen years old. After 
 a period the girl lost her cheerful mood and when 
 Anna Faber one day anifably asked why she grieved 
 she confessed that she was pregnant. Her despair 
 was increased because she feared the anger of her par- 
 ents, who were simple and strait-laced working people, 
 living in a suburb. Her confession disclosed that 
 Roderick had betrayed her, and’ when the lad was 
 questioned by his mother he did not deny the accusa- 
 tion, but treated the whole matter from the standpoint 
 in which he had been brought up—considering it as 
 an annoying but nevertheless natural episode. Anna 
 Faber adopted the same viewpoint, took the frightened. 
 young maid, who» was almost dying from? disgrace, 
 most considerately under her wing, goin her and 
 released her from all’ arduous work, moreover took 
 
 “ 
 
“a9 FABER 
 
 her into the family circle and without pride of place 
 or secret reservations treated her as her own daughter. 
 
 At about the same time there died a friend of Dr. 
 Faber, a sculptor named Wiedmann, leaving orphaned 
 and wholly destitute his only daughter Martina, of 
 the same age as Clara. Martina had no relatives, no 
 home, no shelter; Dr. Faber did not hesitate long, but 
 brought her to his children, with whom she was to 
 grow up from that time on. 
 
 In this way the family was increased by two, and 
 the son’s sweetheart ate at the same table with the 
 daughter of the house and the other sons, and the 
 
 . Stranger, Martina. This troubled Fleming, whose 
 mental attitude was middle-class. "He might have 
 accepted the situation as he did other cases were it 
 not for a circumstance that antagonized him too much. 
 The. pregnancy of the little maid was talked in 
 unusual coolness and in detail before every one; when- 
 ever a difficulty about her future position came up it 
 was discussed by all, both Dr. Faber and the fourteen- 
 year-old Clara taking part. Views were exchanged on 
 the future relations of Roderick to the girl, the time 
 of her confinement was computed, the question whether 
 the child would be of male or female sex was con- 
 
 „sidered and names were proposed which it should bear 
 " in one case or the other. Fleming was not only hurt 
 almost unbearably when he observed the blushing, em- 
 
FABER 23 
 
 barrassed face of the young servant, but so greatly 
 pained by the presence of Martina that at times he had 
 difficulty in suppressing a desire to take her by the 
 hand and lead her away. She sat there silent, her 
 hands in her lap, her head slightly bowed in roguish 
 fashion, listening with staring eyes and wavering be- 
 tween a smile and shocked curiosity. 
 
 The notes revealed that the innate sweetness of the 
 girl had a clearly recognizable effect on Fleming. He 
 ‘never mentioned her without adding a word of admi- 
 ration; even the magic bond which already united her 
 and Eugene in the early years, was detected by Flem- 
 ing’s clear sight when it was unnoticed by others and 
 unknown to themselves. Once he recorded that never 
 in his life had he met any one so like a flower and so 
 genuine down to her inmost self; opinions such as 
 these make comprehensible the resoluteness with which 
 he opposed Anna Faber. One day he told her frankly 
 that he could not accept any further responsibility for 
 the education of her children; besides, Karl and Rod- 
 erick had been attending the gymnasium for a year 
 on his advice; the time had come likewise for Eugene 
 to enter the technical high school, as he wished, and 
 to exchange the dangerous hothouse atmosphere of 
 private instruction for work together with boys of the 
 
 same age, which should both polish and harden him. * 
 
 As for Clara, it was his conviction that she needed not 
 
 “a 
 
24 FABER 
 
 his, but feminine guidance. Therefore he considered 
 himself superfluous and ready to leave. The family 
 contradicted him energetically; Dr. Faber said they 
 had become entirely too used to him to think of losing 
 him. Karl and Roderick begged him to stay, Eugene 
 became angry, Clara mocked at his peevish scrupulous- 
 ness; every day his decision was attacked anew, but 
 Fleming merely shook his head. When finally Anna 
 Faber, having become impatient, demanded in her 
 brusque manner the real reason of his disloyalty, as 
 she called it, he considered it his duty to tell her the 
 truth. He explained that he did not tolerate her views 
 of life, nor her pedagogical principles, nor her attitude 
 as wife and mother. If there was one thing on which 
 he could not bring his views to agree with hers, it 
 was the lack of erotic discipline, and the departure 
 from custom and social tradition, which she, boastful 
 of her own absolute power, treated almost frivolously. 
 He recognized in such conduct merely the roots of 
 incurable evils and did not wish to be an accomplice 
 any longer. 
 
 At first Anna Faber laughed whole- neal then 
 she became insulting; one word called forth another 
 and the result was that Fleming left the house that 
 same day. Fleming had described the scene between 
 himself and Anna in his notes with all details, espe- 
 cially those which emphasized her blindness, and he 
 
FABER 25 
 
 had not forgotten to mention that as, hot with anger, 
 he left the room, Martina and Eugene came toward 
 him hand in hand and watched him silently, the lad 
 reproachfully and proudly reluctant, the gracious girl 
 with that roguish wide-eyed astonishment which always 
 forced him to lower his eyes before her. He again 
 emphasized the conviction that came to him at this 
 excited moment like a joyous revelation, that these 
 two beings apparently represented an alliance that 
 seemed to have been created and desired by Providence 
 itself. This actually became a symbol to him, and a 
 sort of creed that was strengthened during the rare 
 visits that he later made to the house, and whenever 
 Eugene and Martina came to him to pass an hour in 
 harmless gossip. 
 
 A few months after the disagreement he answered 
 a call to Rome and for one and a half years worked 
 in the Vatican library. During this time his relations 
 with his former friends were completely broken; even 
 communications stopped. When he returned about 
 the middle of the year 1909 he was asked to partici- 
 pate in an encyclopedia, and in order to do the work 
 within the time agreed upon he lived for weeks like a 
 recluse. One day a colleague from the seminary came 
 to him and related quite casually among other news that 
 the young Karl Faber had developed blood poison after 
 making a daring experiment with bacteria through in- 
 
26 FABER 
 
 jecting himself, and that he had died in twelve hours. 
 He had been buried the day before. 
 
 Fleming was shocked to the marrow. He left 
 everything in disarray and hurried to the Fabers, 
 wondering only how to excuse his apparent lack of 
 attentiveness. There he met a group of people, who 
 were gossiping about irrelevant topics. The doctor 
 greeted him with quiet heartiness, Anna pressed his 
 hand, inquired about his welfare, and continued a 
 conversation already begun. Every topic was dis- 
 cussed except that of the dead lad. No expression of 
 mourning or grief over the dead was apparent. 
 
 In this Fleming again traced the uncanny power 
 that went out from Anna Faber; her inflexible cour- 
 age, her belief in life and in herself, which nothing 
 could shake. Although she may be torn with grief 
 within she hides it under a cultivated ease and com- 
 pels her guests, her children, and her husband to look 
 on the past as if the death of a dearly beloved man 
 were not more than a little outing into the mountains. 
 It lightened Fleming’s burden considerably when he 
 found Martina in tears in an adjoining room, through 
 which he had to pass in order to reach that of Eugene. 
 
 He learns that Martina and Eugene are engaged. 
 The young domestic is no longer in the house, but her 
 child, the two-year-old Valentine, lives with the family 
 and is being brought up by Anna Faber. He asks for 
 
FABER 27 
 
 Roderick. Eugene shrugs his shoulders. His brother 
 has been away from his family for months and com- 
 pletely lost sight of. A very beautiful woman, known 
 in this city as an adventuress, had caught him in her 
 net, and while he was still sure that she loved him, 
 had left for foreign parts with a half-discredited 
 singer, first assuring Roderick in a deceptive letter that 
 he was her only passion. He moves heaven and earth 
 to discover her address; the trail leads to Paris and he 
 succeeds in getting enough money together—even the 
 mother adds a sum rather large for her means—and 
 he decides to hunt for the woman and to win her back 
 at all costs. He had never learned to give up anything; 
 he had been accustomed since a child to indulge his 
 romantic egotism and to oppose to the dictates of Fate 
 the pretended rights of his sovereign personality. 
 
 Fleming suspected the coming disaster. Everything 
 seemed set to hurl into the abyss a life that was hover- 
 ing over the edge of the precipice. At the turn of the 
 year came the report that Roderick had shot himself 
 in a little town on the sea in northern France. Anna 
 Faber and Eugene went there and brought back fhe 
 body. In his pocket was found an unmailed letter 
 addressed to the woman in question, from which it 
 was evident that he had lived with her in the mean- 
 time and that she had discarded him again in a most 
 humiliating manner. 
 
28 FABER 
 
 This time the blow hit the father severely; he was 
 almost a broken man. Anna remained unmoved. 
 She had, as she expressed it, lost the noblest gem out 
 of her crown. She was pleased to regard Roderick 
 as a martyr to love, a modern Abélard, and she de- 
 manded a blind worship of the idol from the two 
 children who remained with her, from her husband 
 and from Martina; while she taught her grandson, 
 the son of the domestic, to revere his dead father as 
 if the latter had won immortal fame. 
 
 In consequence Fleming attempted to hold inter- 
 course only with Eugene and Martina. His memo- 
 randa were reduced to brief comment on the happiness 
 of the two and how, as a sort of unorganized social 
 body, they represented a model community, a theme 
 which he varied with much satisfaction, and for which 
 the most extravagant words were not out of place. 
 Although he did not visit the young people frequently 
 when they founded their household two years later— 
 more out of fear of becoming burdensome than from 
 any other cause—he was able each time to record an 
 illuminating detail which demonstrated the complete 
 harmony of this marriage. Although he appreciated 
 Eugene’s calm and capable development, Martina 
 seemed to him the soul and the creative power in this 
 relationship. The qualities with which he credited 
 her were often so unworldly that he was compelled 
 
FABER 29 
 
 from time to time, after calmer consideration, to re- 
 vise his views and to correct his manuscript. Thus 
 he complained at times that she was hard to grasp. 
 She seemed to elude every serious situation as the 
 lizard escapes the grasping hand; thus with a joke, a 
 shrug, and a mocking laugh she slipped away from 
 much that she might eventually regret having over- 
 looked and left undone. 
 
 He watched over her during Eugene’s absence of 
 years as over a valuable possession. But solely from 
 a distance, and without her knowing it. He visited 
 her rarely in her house, at least in the first years. He 
 hoped she would call him. But she never called him. 
 When he came she was glad; when he remained away 
 she hardly noticed it. Later he visited the little Chris- 
 topher quite regularly, but chose the hours for that 
 purpose when he knew Martina was not at home. His 
 memoranda contained only meagre indications of all 
 this, and held not a syllable of observation or con- 
 
 versation. 
 
III 
 
 Ir was long past midnight when Faber awoke. He 
 stared for a while into space, then turned his head 
 toward Fleming and subjected him to a sharp scrutiny. 
 For several seconds they looked silently at one an- 
 other; finally Faber said: “You must tell me about 
 father’s death. I know practically nothing. Just the 
 brief report, months ago—nothing more. He reached 
 the age of fifty-six years. Few for a man with his 
 disposition. I always expected him to reach ninety, 
 One is never prepared to have a father die. A father 
 is like something eternal.” 
 
 “He had a very delicate constitution in spite of his 
 
 ’ 
 
 powers of resistance,’ said Fleming. 
 
 “He was never sick, so far as I can recall,’ Faber 
 continued. ‘Odd, that so many men die at fifty-six. 
 It seems to mark an epoch in physical existence. Of 
 what did he die? Was he aware of his approaching 
 death? Did he suffer?” 
 
 Fleming replied: “He had a degeneration of the 
 heart muscles with symptoms of uremia. I do not 
 believe that he deluded himself about his condition. 
 He had the faculty of understanding his own body, 
 and he was wholly at his ease up to the last moment. 
 
 30 
 
FABER 31 
 
 The evening before his death I sat for over an hour 
 at his bedside and we exchanged views on all sorts 
 of subjects. He said that some day when you re- 
 turned you would find it difficult to open all the rusted 
 locks with rusty keys. What he meant by that was 
 ‘not wholly clear to me.” 
 
 “So? Did he say that?” remarked Faber, looking 
 up with animation. ‘That seems clear to me with- 
 out further explanation.”’ 
 
 “Yes, yes, perhaps he meant our world as a whole,” 
 Fleming admitted; “he had become dreadfully pessi- 
 mistic about it. He said, for instance, that his life 
 revealed one great fundamental error; from the start 
 he had given all men a plus sign, rather than a 
 minus sign. It was his way of expressing himself— 
 what shall I call it?—a bit roundabout. But it is 
 pretty certain that life no longer amused him and that 
 he was peculiarly sensitive to certain persons. Shortly 
 before he became ill he was visited by a young lawyer 
 —a Dr. Emmerich—I do not know whether you know 
 him. Formerly he visited a great deal at your home; 
 in the last few years he had a hand in all sorts of 
 shady affairs and also became speedily rich. I ob- 
 served that your father became noticeably pale while 
 conversing with him; suddenly he left the room. Out- 
 side he had to vomit in disgust. He admitted to me 
 that this had happened to him frequently for some 
 
32 FABER 
 
 time; many persons and their talk filled him with in- 
 
 surmountable disgust. Then, too, he became more 
 
 and more serious. He was actually seen to smile only 
 
 when Martina came. When she entered the room his 
 
 face lighted up. Often she brought Christopher with, 
 her; then he was completely occupied and forgot his 
 
 illness.” 
 
 “Well, you surely have something to tell,” said 
 Faber, while the corners of his mouth twitched. 
 “That remark about the rusted keys gives me much 
 to think about. And how fares my mother? How is 
 she getting on? Father’s legacy cannot have been 
 large. She wrote me that she had moved to Clara’s. 
 Does that satisfy her? Can she find her place in an 
 unfamiliar household? Clara seems to have decided 
 quickly on marriage; so our wild pet has become tame? 
 And her husband—what sort of a man is he, this 
 Hermann Hergesell ?” 
 
 “T don’t associate with him,” Fleming replied, hesi- 
 tatingly. “He is the only son of one of our richest 
 manufacturers, Hergesell of the machine works—no 
 doubt you will recognize the name. He has no trade, 
 but is engaged in political activities on behalf of the 
 counter revolution. I don’t know Clara’s attitude to- 
 ward that, but I will admit that she has become tame. 
 She has two children to whom she devotes herself 
 exclusively, and whom your mother naturally spoils 
 
FABER 33 
 
 as much as she can. Beyond that Anna Faber is no 
 longer the woman she was. She too, like us all, has 
 paid her tribute to Time.” | 
 
 He paused, then his face darkened. “Why do you 
 want to know all this from me?” he continued. “You 
 will see her. Why do you inquire about your mother 
 and your sister? You are going to see them. You 
 ask about every one except Martina—why ?” 
 
 He rose, removed his glasses, passed his hand over 
 his eyes and groped for words with difficulty. “Why 
 are you here with me and not with her?” he asked 
 sternly. “What is the meaning of that? What has 
 happened between you? Do you know how Martina 
 has lived during all these years? How bravely she 
 fought her way through with her child? Circum- 
 stances became more and more straitened, and you 
 know she was accustomed to have a bit of beauty and 
 luxury about her. Christmas two years ago she told 
 me in her easy way that she had been compelled to 
 pawn the opal pendant that you gave her. She laughed 
 about it, but there was no laughter in her heart. And 
 then suddenly came this windfall in the sale of the 
 marble group. No doubt she wrote you about that. 
 It was the last work of her father and no one would 
 have believed that it would find a purchaser. But 
 there came the big public funds and the big surplus 
 ‘of money; people were eager to convert their paper 
 
34 FABER 
 
 wealth into tangible property and so the capitalist ap- 
 peared, in effect that lawyer, Emmerich, of whom I 
 told you, and he took Wiedmann’s opus for a sub- 
 stantial sum. That relieved Martina, and helped her 
 generously. No doubt you know all that.” 
 
 “Yes, I know that,” said Faber. 
 
 “And the rest, that about the Princess, naturally 
 you know that also.” 
 
 “Yes, I know that too,” murmured Faber, his head 
 bowed low. 
 
 “Tf I judge rightly she has known the Princess a 
 year and a half,” continued Fleming in a somewhat 
 uneasy tone. “Of course she has changed during this 
 time—that cannot be denied. The relationship or, 
 better yet, the service, the duty that she has laid on 
 herself, takes all her time. Beyond that there is the 
 Princess herself. She naturally exerts great influence 
 on Martina, tremendous influence. .. .” 
 
 “I think so too,” said Faber, darkly. 
 
 “In spite of that we would be greatly mistaken if 
 we thought that she had thereby sacrificed her liveli- 
 ness. And if any one should come and declare that 
 she had been disloyal to you even—what am I saying? 
 Loyalty!—I mean deep in her very soul—I would 
 tear his lying tongue out of his mouth, you may be 
 sure of that. You should have seen her when one of 
 your letters arrived, or merely a sign of life. What 
 
FABER 35 
 
 is the matter with you? What is happening to you, 
 my dear old Eugene?” 
 
 He had talked himself into such heat that he 
 clutched his throat with his hand because his breath 
 deserted him. In the meantime Faber had also risen 
 and was looking down at the floor with a perturbed 
 mein. After a silence that seemed endless he mur- 
 mured as if unwillingly: “You are a faithful friend, 
 Fleming, and you are right in everything you say. 
 But I can’t answer you. Yes, you are right,” he re- 
 peated even more softly, with a slight shrug of the 
 shoulders, “but there are things which cannot be 
 explained, no matter how much I should like to 
 speak.” 
 
 “The devil take such things,” cried Fleming, pacing 
 up and down and gesticulating convulsively. “Either 
 you are entirely insane or you are no longer the same 
 man and they have done something frightful to you, 
 the scoundrels.” 
 
 Faber let him rave on for a while, then touched him 
 on the sleeve; when Fleming calmed down he placed 
 both hands on his shoulders and gazed calmly at him 
 with his large, beautiful eyes. “Can you comprehend 
 how long a year lasts when one is alone?” he asked 
 with a wry smile. “Imagine it yourself—a single 
 year. And then multiply this horror by five. Every | 
 dream that you dream becomes an actuality, and the 
 
36 FABER 
 
 words that reach you from without have a signifi- 
 cance, an uncanny duplicity and penetration which 
 shatters every illusion.” He became silent for a mo- 
 ment, then continued in a changed tone: “Be silent, 
 Fleming. Don’t spread the news and don’t lose your 
 head over it. I am now going back to my room in 
 the hotel and get a good sleep for once.” 
 
IV 
 
 THE next morning Faber went to the house of the 
 building corporation, where he had formerly had his 
 offices. He spoke with one of the directors and con- 
 vinced himself that he dared cherish no hope of being 
 employed by the firm. It was true that its members 
 worked with foreign capital, but they used only an 
 insignificant number of salaried architects, and even 
 these earned very little. At this time of universal 
 calamity an independent venture was not to be 
 thought of. 
 
 He then sought out an architect who had been 
 friendly to him, and who congratulated him heartily 
 on his return, but who held out no better prospects, 
 although he gave him some useful hints about men 
 of influence to whom he should turn. 
 
 He then loitered about the streets until late in the 
 afternoon, and after moving in ever-narrowing circles 
 stood before the house that contained Martina’s habi- 
 tation and his own. An avenue of trees stood oppo- 
 site; he sat down on a bench and gazed up at the win- ~ 
 dows of the topmost story. It was a stately building 
 dating from the middle of the nineteenth century, free 
 from elaborate embellishment; the smooth walls were 
 
 37 
 
38 FABER 
 
 painted grey and the gable ends and window parts had 
 a harmonious effect. 
 
 Above, nothing was visible beyond immaculate cur- 
 tains and the reflected splendour of the evening sky 
 in the glass panes. Twilight fell; his gaze wandered 
 up innumerable times and down again to the street; 
 there he beheld a lad crossing the driveway to the 
 entrance, held by the hand of a young woman and 
 keeping up a lively gossip with his guide. Faber 
 gripped the bench with distorted fingers, then he 
 sprang up and dashed across. The two had disap- 
 peared into the house, so he remained crestfallen at 
 the door. Only after a long interval did he dare fol- 
 low them, and then once more he caught the clear 
 voice of the child high overhead. Again he paused; 
 then step by step he sneaked up the four flights and 
 stood silent as a thief before the apartment, support- 
 ing himself on the banister while listening intently. 
 Gradually the agitation died from his features; the 
 banging of a door and a peremptory call aroused him 
 and he retraced his steps. 
 
 Meanwhile Fleming had hurried to Clara’s home in 
 the morning and made his report to her and to Anna 
 Faber. The two women looked at him as if they 
 questioned his sanity, and Anna Faber made him 
 repeat every word that Eugene had spoken. There 
 were not so many that Fleming could not recall each — 
 
FABER 39 
 
 one. He expressed the opinion that Faber would 
 surely arrive in the course of the forenoon, and added 
 that he had lacked the courage to go to Martina. 
 Anna Faber wanted Martina to be informed by tele- 
 phone; Clara restrained her with difficulty, saying that 
 either he was already with Martina, in which case such 
 action would be foolish and superfluous, or he had not 
 yet made up his mind to go, in which event it would 
 be useless and premature to disturb her. 
 
 Fleming remained with the women until noon and 
 every time the doorbell rang Clara sprang up and 
 dashed out. Anna Faber found it difficult to restrain 
 her impatience; she proposed that they make use of the 
 police to locate the hotel where he was staying; hardly 
 had she been argued out of this when she herself 
 decided to go forth to search for him in the hotels 
 near the station, and when Fleming remarked that she 
 would have difficulty in finding him in even were her 
 quest successful, she sobbed and broke into wild de- 
 nunciation of the state of the world. Clara regretted 
 that her husband was away; she said he had left the 
 day before to visit a friend in the country. Fleming 
 did not share her regret, for Hergesell was almost a 
 stranger to him and he thought him unfitted to help 
 because he was also a stranger to Eugene. 
 
 Throughout the afternoon Anna Faber sat at the 
 table with her head in her hands. After brooding for 
 
40 FABER 
 
 hours in silence she turned to Clara with the remark: 
 “Ts it possible that he has such:a bad conscience, such 
 fear, that he is afraid to meet her face to face, her 
 and me?” 
 
 Clara, who had been taking long steps up and down 
 the room, made a grimace as if she had been doused 
 with cold water. “You mean, perhaps, that he has 
 bought himself a Chinese wife?” she asked, smiling 
 roguishly. ‘Don’t let us build romances, Mother—the 
 reality won’t support it.” 
 
 It was nearly nine o’clock in the evening when he 
 finally arrived. Anna Faber threw herself about his 
 neck with a cry. He had to disengage himself from her 
 with gentle firmness, but did not hide his emotion. 
 Clara dropped her voice in amusing fashion and re- 
 marked that she thought he had considered his ap- 
 pearance for a long time from every standpoint. She 
 then kissed him like a comrade and scrutinized him 
 carefully from head to foot. 
 
 When Anna Faber had composed herself sufficiently 
 to ask him questions and he had explained that he 
 had already dined, he knew that the dreaded cross- 
 examination was bound to come. He felt it suffi- 
 cient to shrug his shoulders, and his expression and 
 glance betrayed so much uneasiness and disturbed 
 thoughts that Anna gave up her attempts for the time. 
 He related this and that about his crossing on the 
 
FABER 41 
 
 American ship, also touched on his experiences in the 
 months before, but for the most part uttered only in- 
 complete sentences, which always sounded as if he 
 regretted having begun them. He said he had for- 
 gotten the art of conversation. His mother stroked 
 his hand; he withdrew it slowly from her; obviously 
 he was uncomfortable under her penetrating, inquir- 
 ing gaze. The taciturnity of his sister seemed to con- 
 fuse him no less; this was suggested by his roving eye. 
 
 But Clara had made her decision. “I will leave you 
 together for a while,” she said, nodded to Eugene, and 
 departed. In the hall she threw a light mantle about 
 her and left the house. In the vestibule she came upon 
 Fleming. “Eugene is here,” she called to him. “I 
 am going to Martina to bring her back. She has to 
 be told, and the telephone won’t do.” Fleming ap- 
 proved her errand and accompanied the hurrying 
 woman to Martina’s house. 
 
 Eugene asked his mother: “Are Clara’s children 
 already asleep?” 
 
 Anna replied that the children were with Herge- 
 sell’s parents in the country; they were splendid girls, 
 one blonde, one dark, of the Faber stamp. 
 
 Faber inquired further how Valentine, Roderick’s 
 ‚son, had developed. 
 
 Anna Faber’s face became clouded and Eugene ob- 
 served that he had touched a wound. He wanted to 
 
42 FABER 
 
 speak about something else, but Anna bent forward 
 and asked searchingly: “And don’t you want to know 
 how your own child is?” 
 
 Eugene was silent and tried to force a smile. 
 
 “You withhold yourself even from your mother 
 after these years of absence, years of such sorrow— 
 that is the bitterest thing that could happen to me!” 
 exclaimed Anna Faber. 
 
 “Be patient, Mother,” said Eugene, with a concilia- 
 tory gesture, “I must first collect myself. I have to 
 discover first where I stand and whether I still belong 
 in your world.” He got up and walked around the 
 room, scrutinizing pictures, vases, and glass. Anna 
 followed him incessantly with her eyes. 
 
 “Can you tell me what this affair with the Princess 
 amounts to?” he remarked in a voice that sounded 
 cold, while he examined a little ivory figure with ap- 
 parent interest. “I ought to be better informed than 
 I am, as she is discussed in practically every one of 
 Martina’s letters. But I cannot picture her to myself. 
 Perhaps you will help me do that. Is she really such 
 an extraordinary woman as Martina describes her, 
 something almost like a holy woman?” 
 
 Anna Faber shrugged her shoulders. “A holy 
 woman—not bad,” she replied in a derogatory man- 
 ner. “It’s possible that she is a holy woman. So 
 much the worse.” 
 
FABER 43 
 
 “How do you mean that: ‘So much the worse’ ?” 
 
 “Tt will do you no good to ask about the Princess,” 
 muttered Anna Faber. “I am practically alone in my 
 view. As it happens I do not know the woman per- 
 sonally, for I associate with people only rarely, and I 
 hear also that she is not what one calls sociable; on 
 the contrary she seems to play a trifle the part of the 
 aloof Unknown and appears only to a few favoured 
 ones among her male and female followers. Martina 
 denies that she has a following. Martina also says 
 that she teaches nothing and demands nothing, no 
 vows or anything of that sort. Also there are no 
 pupils and no adepts. Well, what then? you ask. But 
 you are answered by silence, haughty silence, as if 
 you are not worthy to speak of the woman.” 
 
 “Surely you merely imagine that, Mother,” said 
 Eugene, in conciliation, and his voice betrayed how 
 eager he was to hear more. 
 
 Anna Faber continued with mounting agitation: 
 “Everything I hear about this woman and everything 
 I learn about her doings and her activity goes against 
 my nature, as if some one had stepped up to me and 
 said: “You and your whole life and your whole work 
 have been merely a lie and a grimace.’ My feelings 
 revolt. You comprehend that.” 
 
 Eugene had withdrawn into a corner of the room 
 that lay in deep shadow, as if he wanted to make him- 
 
44 FABER 
 
 self invisible. “No, I don’t comprehend that, Mother,” 
 he replied with gentle impatience; “you will have to 
 explain more explicitly. I can make nothing of such 
 comparisons. Let us stick to facts. Is it true that 
 this woman has given an entirely new foundation to 
 ever so many lives? A new spiritual or social foun- ~ 
 dation, perhaps even a religious one—I don’t know 
 for certain; I am guided merely by Martina’s com- 
 munications. On the one hand they are very precise. 
 Precision is one of her great virtues, but on the other 
 hand she is being influenced so continuously that she 
 does not know when she overstates or colours her 
 facts. Persons on the outside are said to be often 
 unable to notice that such a change has come about in 
 her, a transformation of her whole self and character, 
 and this, you may well believe, is chiefly what interests 
 me. I should like to have a reply from you on that 
 point, for if this is actually so, then we may conclude 
 that it must be due to the peculiar power this woman 
 exerts, a power that is to be feared and in contrast to 
 which a few other circumstances, such as the fact that 
 she has given up her station in life and the privileges 
 of her birth, do not count. That may be due to clever 
 calculation, acting, or exaltation—what you will. Only 
 the one thing is pertinent.” 
 
 He had spoken with extraordinary deliberation and 
 
FABER 45 
 
 every sentence sounded as if he had prepared it a long 
 time ago and had tested its significance in secret again 
 and again. Anna Faber could hardly wait in her 
 eagerness to reply. “I don’t know,” she cried, and 
 rose abruptly, pushing her chair from her. “I did 
 not investigate it and don’t bother myself about it. 
 True or not, it remains objectionable.”’ 
 
 “Objectionable? And how, Mother?” 
 
 “Yes, objectionable. The turning from the beautiful, 
 stately, simple things, to preserve which I and others 
 like me made their sacrifices long ago. The world has 
 become a dark place, my son. The spirit has abdi- 
 cated and gone down into the grave. And now ghosts 
 are having their uncanny rites. Hypocrisy and ma- 
 terialism are at work shamelessly destroying what we 
 built up so patiently with our heart’s blood. Sad 
 indeed are the ravages of time in the souls of men— 
 who will doubt it? Not that we lived wholly in the 
 garden of Eden in former years, but in that day, if 
 you became desperate, there were always a few good 
 fighters left who would take sides with you against 
 the enemy. What has become of them? There is not 
 one left. They have gone down into the abyss and 
 he who pronounces the word ‘Freedom’ runs the danger 
 of being stoned. I ought to defend myself. I can do 
 so no longer. I am tired, I am old, I have to stand 
 
46 FABER 
 
 aside and witness how my seed is ground down into 
 nothing.” She walked about with short, powerful 
 steps and covered her face with her hands. 
 
 “Naturally, Mother, we are sitting around on 
 broken columns,” came the calm voice out of the 
 shadow; “it is useless for you to try to fight against 
 everything in general. You are also unjust when you 
 blame the individual for the wreck of your life hopes. 
 Has Martina complained to you about the Princess ?” 
 
 “That I do not recall,” replied Anna Faber. “I be- 
 lieve we had a short argument once, I felt myself 
 bound to warn her. I don’t remember how the con- 
 versation started and what the outcome was. It was 
 about the time when Faith entered her house. I 
 warned her against certain sectarian and clandestine 
 activities and against certain personalities whose sole 
 aim is to draw young persons into their sphere of 
 influence and kill them spiritually.” 
 
 “Well, and what did Martina say to that?” 
 
 “I don’t remember now what she said. It seems 
 to me that she actually said nothing. She looked at 
 me and smiled. She is so rarely susceptible to argu- 
 ment. When she has chosen her path she looks neither 
 left nor right. Yet it is a secret to no one that she 
 has fallen into this woman’s power, body and soul, 
 and is still her victim. We saw it happen with horror 
 and could do nothing against it. Just what you will 
 
FABER 47 
 
 do about it is your affair. My instinct tells me that 
 you face a very difficult task. Better get ready for a 
 fight. If you need me, call me.” 
 
 “Thank you, Mother,” said the cold voice. ‘I hope 
 that I won’t need you.” 
 
 He came out of the corner and murmured con- 
 temptuously: “Fight? No. I don’t intend to fight. 
 Who fights over such an issue is defeated at the 
 start.” 
 
 In order to avert a reply he turned his head and 
 asked: “Where is Clara?” 
 
 His mother, still struggling with her feelings, looked 
 at him in confusion; thereupon he stepped to the door, 
 opened it and cried: “Clara!” His voice held a note 
 of fear. He went out into the hall and cried: “Clara!” 
 A girl came out of the kitchen and stared wonderingly 
 at him. He came back into the room and said to his 
 mother: “Clara must have gone out. Where has she 
 gone?” 
 
 Anna Faber came toward him with a gentle gesture, 
 but he stepped aside and turned to the door of the 
 adjoining room like a fleeing man; he entered that 
 and when his mother followed him he entered a second 
 room beyond it and said: “If you two have set a trap 
 for me you will have to answer for it to me.” Anna 
 Faber turned on the light so that he could at least see; 
 fear and dismay were pictured on his features and his 
 
48 FABER 
 
 look seemed to plead: hide me. Just then both heard 
 the door of the hall open, and heard Clara’s voice, and 
 one other. Eugene remained standing, put his hands 
 to his face, and began to tremble; but Martina was 
 already entering, smiling a smile that was both tim- 
 orous and cheerful; slender, much more slender and 
 taller than his memory had pictured her. She wore 
 a white straw hat trimmed with roses above her ash- 
 blond hair and with her inexpressibly graceful stride 
 she stepped toward him, 
 
V 
 
 SHE embraced him gently; she kissed him gently; she 
 drew him under the light and looked at him and 
 laughed. Her eyes were wet, and with a perplexed 
 expression she stammered a few words. “Everything 
 is ready for you,” she said, “just come home, come 
 home with me.” She turned to Anna Faber and to 
 Clara, whose attitude of suppressed emotion height- 
 ened her embarrassment, and asked in her bell-like 
 voice, which trembled a bit, and with the touch of 
 dialect that her speech contained: “Is it not urgent for 
 him to go home at last? Don’t you think he has 
 wandered around in the world long enough?” 
 
 She did not wait for a reply, and probably did not 
 want any; she locked her arm in his and, laughing 
 again as if the humour of the situation was irresist- 
 ible for her, and yet with a strange light in her eyes, 
 she shook him out of his perturbed gaze and his un- 
 natural frigidity. Before he knew how, they were 
 out-of-doors and on the street. And she laughed, and 
 in doing so bent forward to look into his face, search- 
 ing to discover with what expression he received her 
 laughter, whether he recognized it again, or whether 
 he was still undecided and lost in thought, as before. 
 
 49 
 
50 FABER 
 
 She walked rapidly; now and then she stopped and 
 caught her breath. There was nothing more captivat- 
 ing than her walk; holding her pretty little soubrette 
 nose high in the air and her left arm pressed closely 
 against him, she began to talk, and it might have been 
 expected that she would talk about Christopher—his 
 life, his character, and his deeds. 
 
 The boy must be an unusually original fellow, to 
 judge by her description; or was it by design that she 
 told only of events that permitted her to keep her 
 words flowing in a lively channel? But perhaps not; 
 she seemed so full of her subject, and her joy in telling 
 was sincere. He was a solitary sort with leanings 
 toward anarchy; he was deeply at odds with the world 
 but mostly quite satisfied with himself. But his dis- 
 affection made him attempt to accomplish something; 
 he became a savior of the world who began with the 
 destruction of everything that came into his hands in 
 order to declare later that it had been defective. He 
 was devoted to musing in quiet, but also possessed a 
 foolish boastfulness; he not only found something to 
 mend in all the tangible and visible things, but in a 
 tricky way he was even ready to make suggestions to 
 God. Yes, he was one of the self-righteous of this | 
 earth, a malcontented philosopher, but despite that no 
 stay-at-home, far from it; his tendency to breakneck 
 climbing exercises made him the despair of his teachers | 
 
 
 
 | 
 | 
 
FABER 51 
 
 and governors; besides he had a coarse partiality for 
 all sorts of worms and crawling things—maggots, 
 centipedes, spiders, and snails, of which he brought 
 home great heaps, coming reeking with dirt and 
 odours, the horror of his mother and his loyal aid, 
 Faith. 
 
 He is discovered playing theatre in a near-by barn 
 —he alone; and he alone is prince and magician, 
 general and good fairy, and the orchestra in addition. 
 He wakes up in the middle‘of the night and finds his 
 hair hanging dishevelled in his face; he turns on the 
 light, takes the scissors aid in exasperation cuts off 
 his locks. He imagines that he can fly; climbs one 
 day on the roof of the house and to the consternation 
 of passers-by waves his arms in the air. He wishes 
 to train angleworms and like a simpleton tries to pour 
 moonlight into a medicine flask. He gets wildly en- 
 raged at men who use specific expressions in their 
 speech and gives all household utensils—chairs, tables, 
 clocks, stoves, chests—mongrel names of his own 
 invention. | 
 
 They had already reached the dwelling and Martina 
 was still telling stories. She opened the door and led 
 him in, first into Christopher’s bedroom. She turned 
 up the night lamp and drew Faber to the bed. She 
 was still enjoying herself, always, however, with that 
 Strange light in her eyes, while she pointed to the 
 
52 FABER 
 
 firmly doubled little fists that lay on the coverlet. 
 Faber was moved; his lips trembled. He bent down 
 and kissed the boy on his moist forehead. ~The lad 
 opened his eyes, but closed them again at once, and 
 turned on his side with grunts of displeasure. Faber 
 went into the next room. The big lamp over the table 
 was burning. He sat down. Martina had followed 
 him, and now she seemed to become conscious for the 
 first time that he had not yet uttered a syllable. This 
 caused a pallor to spread over her cheeks and she di- 
 rected her deeply penetrating look at him. But the 
 inner tenseness and emotion which had made her grow 
 pale passed and she said in lively fashion: “Well, shall 
 we drink a glass of wine together on your return? I 
 have a bottle of old Bordeaux which was intended for 
 this moment. Will you?” 
 
 She left the room and in a short time returned with 
 the uncorked bottle and two goblets. She filled 
 the glasses and raised her own. Leaning toward him 
 and touching the rim of his glass with her own, she 
 said with a sweet smile, while her eyes dropped: “To 
 the future, Eugene.” 
 
 “Yes, Martina, the future,’ he replied, and both 
 drank. 
 
 “Now I have really heard your voice,” said Martina 
 laughingly, as she seated herself near him and grasped. 
 his hand. He gladly permitted her to do so and 
 
FABER 53 
 
 meantime he gazed at her own, gazed at it with a 
 peculiar seriousness, as if to determine whether it was 
 the same hand that he had known so well. Then his 
 eyes roamed over the room and remained riveted on 
 a certain spot between the doors. Martina’s picture, 
 which he had drawn in pastel, formerly hung there. 
 “What has become of the picture,” he asked; “why 
 did you remove it?” She blushed. “I removed it 
 long ago,” she replied; “I don’t remember for what 
 reason. Oh, yes, Christopher did not like it; he cried 
 Over it once and said that my face was not so green 
 and so yellow as that.” She leaned her cheek against 
 his shoulder as if seeking pardon and beneath the cloth ° 
 his arm vibrated from her soft laughter, this peculiar, 
 half ironical, half fervent laughter, which was an un- 
 fettered expression of life itself; defence, flight, con- 
 cealment. As if hurt thereby he asked whether she 
 still found things of the world so amusing. She 
 looked up at him with wrinkled forehead, but looked 
 down again at once and thoughtfully shook her head. 
 Just then the telephone rang outside. Eugene was 
 astonished, for it was nearly midnight. Martina hur- 
 tied out; he heard her speak hastily into the trans- 
 mitter in a voice that he thought changed, colourless; 
 there was question of a conference at a very early 
 morning hour and an important decision; Faber rested 
 his head on his hand. When she returned, her expres- 
 
34 FABER 
 
 sion showed an effort to forget the interruption, but 
 she sat down on another chair, far from Eugene. She 
 called on him to drink and he sipped dutifully at the 
 wine. Martina wanted to know a great deal about his 
 former life, especially what his letters had not reported 
 to her, but his meagre answers gave her no satisfaction. 
 
 When she saw him so little disposed to speak she 
 soon took charge of the conversation and reported 
 about herself. But the telephone bell rang shrilly for 
 the second time; she arose without any sign of annoy- 
 ance or impatience and over the telephone gave an 
 address which plainly had been demanded of her. She 
 begged him almost humbly for forgiveness when she 
 re-entered the room, and continued with her story. She 
 passed from one thing to another, from adventures to 
 persons, from a difficult situation to an amusing en- 
 counter ; she described a day with its hurry and unrest, 
 its fulness of men and fulness of occupations; then 
 again an hour of rallying; a talk with a child, a trip 
 on a rainy day, a meeting with Anna Faber, adven- 
 tures with old friends and with new ones, some going 
 far back, some more recent; the praiseworthy, dis- 
 creet, and cheering efforts of Jacob Fleming; every- 
 thing in one colourful medley, disconnected and frivo- 
 lous, as if the bitterness of life had long ago lost its 
 tang and the harshness of fate could no longer affect 
 a nature like her own. And in between she hurried 
 
FABER 55 
 
 into an adjoining room to procure chocolate which she 
 offered Eugene; she went to a spray of orchids stand- 
 ing on a round table in a corner and inhaled the odour 
 while lost in contemplation; she stepped to Eugene’s 
 side and stroked his hair with a gentle hand. 
 
 No doubt she observed the dark amazement in his 
 eyes and how deeper shadows spread more and more 
 over his features as the night progressed. It was thel 
 
 amazement of a man who sees events transpire just as | 
 he feared they might during a period of oppressive | 
 
 melancholy ; amazement at its realization, at the agree- | 
 
 ment of fiction and actuality, knowledge and intuition. | 
 
 But even in Martina’s eyes, wholly aside from her 
 exhaustion, there was such amazement, a regretful, 
 painful, and yet even reciprocal amazement, of mixed 
 surprise and sorrow, and all her laughter and smiles 
 could not convey the illusion of ease which she was 
 trying so hard to convey. Finally she glanced at her 
 wrist watch and remarked that it was time for sleep. 
 Faber became very pale and looked expectantly at her. 
 Looking down at her folded hands she informed him 
 with childlike eagerness, as if she had carefully thought 
 out everything that might minister to his comfort, 
 that she had had the former guest room put in order 
 for him weeks ago. He nodded and smiled as if grate- 
 ful and they walked down the corridor together to the 
 door of the room. Here Martina threw her arms 
 
 1 
 
 } 
 
56 FABER 
 
 around him and kissed him and softly said good night 
 and left him. But after entering the room Eugene 
 stood, at first as if stunned; then he threw himself on 
 the bed and buried his face in the pillow. 
 
VI 
 
 HE awoke at dawn after a short, deep sleep and 
 hearkened to the confused commotion of the house. 
 Thereupon he was overcome by a disquieting sensa- 
 tion, as if some one had entered the room while he 
 was still sleeping. He raised his head and actually 
 beheld a little fellow standing at the door and looking 
 fixedly in the direction of the bed with an expression 
 of curiosity, spite, and deviltry in his wide-open grey 
 eyes. Faber uttered a happy exclamation and extended 
 his arms for the lad. The latter came toward him 
 -with grave earnestness and said quickly, at the same 
 time obviously steeling himself against the inward 
 emotion that affected him: “I don’t like very much to 
 see a man lie in bed.” 
 
 Faber had to laugh; he took the boy’s hands and 
 drew him toward him. “Why don’t you like it?” he 
 asked. | 
 
 “Grandfather also lay in bed during the daytime 
 and then he was dead. Besides, it’s so womanish.”’ 
 
 “Do you know who I am?” asked Faber, when he 
 had kissed him heartily, almost passionately, on both 
 cheeks and on both eyes. | 
 
 “Yes, I know,” replied Christopher emphatically, 
 
 57 
 
58 FABER 
 
 “and I’m glad to have a father once more. Just to 
 be with women gets tiresome. And the other fellows 
 have no respect for one, either.” 
 
 Faber held the child in his left arm and he sub- 
 mitted only gradually to the gentle embrace, as if in 
 forgetfulness. “Do you still remember me?” he con- 
 tinued, hungrily sniffing the odour of the boy’s hair, 
 which was different from that of six years ago. 
 
 Christopher looked at him sharply and shook his 
 head. “No,” he said thoughtfully, “but I am satisfied 
 with you. We will get acquainted. I hope you don’t 
 have so much to do as mother has.” 
 
 “Has mother much to do?” 
 
 “I should say so! She is away the whole day, 
 often also evenings and on Sunday too. Only Faith 
 is always here. She is very dear, is Faith.” 
 
 “Good,” said Faber, ‘‘we’ll see whether we can get 
 along together. But you must not lose patience, for, 
 you understand, I have not associated with boys for 
 many years.” 
 
 Christopher nodded. ‘‘Now I have to go to school,” 
 he explained, resignedly. “In the afternoon I am 
 free; then you will tell me your adventures. Yes?” 
 
 Faber promised to do so. 
 
 He dressed slowly. In wardrobe and commode he 
 found clothing and linen at hand; everything neat, 
 everything in its place as if he had departed yester- 
 
FABER 59 
 
 day. Martina had left the house at an early hour; 
 she sent him word by Faith that she would return at 
 noon. The happy look radiating from the messenger 
 and the charming resolute manner in which she gave 
 him her hand in welcome caught his eye. She was 
 fairly tall, of the brunette type, unusually attractive in 
 carriage and manner and might be about twenty-six 
 years old. 
 
 He knew from Martina’s letters that she had been 
 in the house about ten months. In October of the 
 previous year Martina had written that the Princess 
 had made her acquainted with a young woman who 
 was without friends or occupation, and that at the 
 request of the Princess she had taken Faith into her 
 home. What constituted the difficulty Martina did 
 not say, and in a later letter she acknowledged freely 
 that she did not know and that there was an unspoken 
 agreement between them to leave it unmentioned. As 
 the Princess was carefully informed about Faith’s 
 past Martina could be at ease, especially as the young 
 girl had won her full confidence. And again in 
 another letter she had touched on the duality of 
 Faith’s position, for despite the friendship that united 
 them many delicate situations came up. To pay her 
 friend was out of the question; Faith was poor, yet 
 she considered herself wholly reimbursed by the 
 Shelter Martina afforded her and proudly and anx- 
 
60 FABER 
 
 iously avoided every discussion of money and finan- 
 cial matters. And her tasks were heavy; not only had 
 she taken complete charge of Christopher, whose at- 
 tachment she had won, but the management of the 
 little house had been turned over to her, and Mar- 
 tina could devote herself with a clear conscience 
 to the duties and obligations that now took up her 
 day. 
 
 This much, therefore, Faber knew. 
 
 As he sat at the breakfast table and let his glance 
 wander in melancholy fashion about the room he was 
 again struck by the vacant spot between the doors 
 where Martina’s portrait had hung many years ago; 
 more clearly than in the evening he observed the 
 darker square on the blue wallpaper. Faith entered 
 to clear the table; he asked her about the picture. She 
 looked up and seemed surprised. “The picture of the 
 Princess?’ she asked. “No,” he replied, “I mean the 
 picture of my wife, a pastel portrait in a black frame.” 
 Surprise spread over Faith’s features. “Oh, that!” 
 she said, reflecting. “I have never seen that here on 
 the wall; it hangs yonder in your chamber, where your 
 notebooks and drawing boards are preserved.” Faber 
 looked as if to say that he found the banishment com- 
 prehensible. “Of course it is no masterpiece,” he re- 
 marked. “I painted it myself, you understand, and 
 in painting I am a hopeless dilettante. Will you be 
 
FABER 61 
 
 so good as to hand it to me?” Faith said she would 
 do so gladly and went out. 
 
 After a few minutes she returned, dragging the pic- 
 ture, which was fairly heavy; Faber relieved her of 
 it, carried it to the window and regarded it. “Well, 
 yes,” he ened with elevated eyebrows; “yellow— 
 green—it is true, and yet—” He turned to the silent 
 Faith and said: “You referred to another picture, the 
 picture of the Primcess. Was that hanging there? 
 And why is it no longer there?” 
 
 “I don’t know that,” Faith replied, shaking her 
 head slowly. “It hung there until a few days ago. 
 A pencil sketch; only the head; a good work, so far 
 as I understand it, and the only picture of her that 
 we know. I don’t know why Martina has removed 
 it. Oddly enough, I did not even miss it.” 
 
 “And what has become of it?’ Faber inquired 
 
 tensely. 
 “Yes, what has become of it?” replied Faith, with 
 her index finger caressing her chin, “Wait! Per- 
 
 haps it is in Martina’s bedroom, in the clothespress. 
 It seems to me that she spoke about the glass being 
 broken.” Again she went out and actually returned 
 after an interval with this picture. It was practically 
 as big as the other and also in a black frame. She 
 placed it against the table and said: “Correct, the 
 
 glass is broken.” 
 
62 FABER 
 
 Faber did not catch her words; his eyes concen- 
 trated at once on the face of the woman, which now 
 appeared before him for the first time. 
 
 It was a face well fitted to impress the observer, 
 whether or not he knew whom it represented. 
 
 The woman seemed to be about sixty years old. 
 Her head was covered with a hood and thereby re- 
 minded one of a nun or an abbess, but the edge had 
 a fringe of lace, which doubtless pointed to worldli- 
 ness and permitted a glimpse of her plain, parted hair. 
 The face, extraordinarily narrow, showed lines of ap- 
 pealing gentleness, and every feature—brow, cheeks, 
 mouth, chin, and the position of the eyes—was so 
 thoroughly regular that one might suspect the portrait 
 painter of having improved on nature because he could 
 not capture it. But this was contradicted by the fact 
 that the expression of the features gave the picture a 
 convincing likeness to life. The face was covered 
 with a certain serenity as with a transparent veil, an 
 expression of contemplation mingled with pain and 
 madonna-like nobility, so that there came about a 
 floating interplay of contrasts, what she perceived 
 being obliterated by what she feared, and destiny 
 moulding the features so that the pencil of the artist 
 found itself so helpless that both the eye and the 
 imagination became undecided and sought support in 
 
 the realm of experience. 
 
FABER 63 
 
 Faith’s glance travelled from Faber to the picture, 
 from the picture to Faber, and it seemed as if she 
 sought eagerly and excitedly to discover the effect 
 that it had on him. “It does not give the right im- 
 pression,” she said. “Her personality is lacking. The 
 smile is lacking. This woman has teeth like a seven- 
 year-old girl, and when she smiles her pale face 
 is suffused with rose. This always astonishes every 
 one.” 
 
 She could not wait for Faber’s reply, in the event 
 he was moved to make one, because the doorbell rang. 
 In her stead Jacob Fleming entered the room trans- 
 figured, with hands outstretched. Faber greeted him 
 in friendly fashion, but distracted. His attention was 
 still held by the picture. After he had exchanged a 
 few superficial remarks with Fleming he indicated 
 the sketch with a nod of his head and asked: “Now 
 what is your opinion of the lady?” 
 
 Fleming pursed his lips, removed his glasses, wiped 
 them ostentatiously with a corner of his handkerchief, 
 and finally replied: “There is something in your atti- 
 tude that challenges me to offer a criticism. But you 
 are knocking at the wrong door. Probably you have 
 ‘been told things that do not sound plausible. Does 
 not the face please you? The picture is lifelike, very 
 lifelike. As if she were alive, as we are wont to 
 
 Say.” 
 
64 FABER 
 “Why all this?’ Faber interrupted him testily. 
 
 “Answer me freely and direct.” 
 
 “Yes, if that were so easy,” parried Fleming. 
 “What is my humble opinion to you? You can ask 
 twenty men and every one will give you a different 
 reply. The reason is probably that all twenty will be 
 below the level. I have to fear the same thing. A 
 man gets to feel dwarflike, like a four-year-old chap 
 who cannot see the objects on the table and so stands 
 on tiptoe.” 
 
 Faber made an impatient gesture. “Extravagance,” 
 he murmured. “I grew up with extravagant state- 
 ments. You will remember we used to call it ‘stepping 
 on the pedal’ when my mother got into the superla- 
 tives. But you were always rather a composed person 
 and no friend of the loud pedal. What has brought 
 you to such giddiness ?” 
 
 “Giddiness ?” cried Fleming, amusingly embarrassed, 
 “Tt’s not a question of giddiness. I have never been 
 giddy my life long, my good Eugene. You are get- 
 ting provoked at an innocent man, really.” 
 
 “Don’t let us quarrel,’ said Faber, appeasingly. 
 “Short and sweet: You know the Princess?” | 
 
 “Yes, I know her. That is to say, I have talked 
 with her two or three times, and I have been present 
 three or four times when she talked with others. To 
 
FABER 65 
 
 a certain extent I am a part of the edifice. I have 
 been a teacher there for several weeks.” 
 
 “Where ?” 
 
 “Why, where Martina is also. In the Children’s 
 City.” 
 
 “Children’s City? Is that what you call it?” 
 
 “Yes, we call it that.” 
 
 “As you know the woman you must be able to tell 
 me who she is and what she is like.” 
 
 Fleming moved perplexedly in his chair. “Natu- 
 tally,” he stammered; “at least to some extent. Only 
 I don’t comprehend—” But Faber’s darkening face 
 frightened him and he continued hastily: “I merely 
 doubt that I will be able to satisfy you in personal 
 matters. You no doubt know that she comes from 
 one of our oldest noble families. Recently a man 
 who is a competent genealogist assured me that she 
 is related to and kin of all the European courts and 
 dynasties, the fallen as well as those still in power. 
 But I am an old democrat and this does not impress 
 me. We know almost nothing of her past. There is 
 a report that about her thirtieth year she lived for a 
 long time as a novice in an Ursuline convent and that 
 then, for some reason or other, she withdrew. It is 
 said that fateful experiences called her back to the 
 world, but as I remarked, we know nothing about that. 
 
66 FABER 
 
 We are also not clear about her financial circumstances. 
 One branch of the family is rich; that to which she 
 belongs is said to have become impoverished. But this 
 does not prevent her from disposing continuously of 
 considerable means. It is true that the community has 
 halfway presented her with the ground and the bar- 
 racks, but merely their bare upkeep demands large 
 sums. She contributed her own possessions up to the 
 last cent, but that was a mere drop in the bucket. The 
 situation is this: friends back her up. For these 
 friends the matter must constitute an unusual case. 
 Nobody knows them, nobody names them. Usually 
 money for this sort of institution is raised by capi- 
 talists with philanthropic views; often they are good 
 people, often less good, often social pioneers, often 
 opportunists and people salving a bad conscience. In 
 this case they are unseen and nameless patrons, or an 
 organization of patrons with a centralized power. She 
 carries herself as if she were a delegate, the commis- 
 sioner of an order as secretive as it is far-reaching. 
 The whole matter is full of mystery. This applies 
 to its character, its goal, and its direction. Ac- 
 cording to my view religious currents come in here; it 
 resembles a great work of regeneration under a mys- 
 terious dictatorship. But you cannot see through it. 
 You can merely trace something new, something that 
 
 is different from everything heretofore. You observe 
 
FABER 67 
 
 how carefully I express myself. Yet in spite of all 
 my circumspection I must not ignore the fact that 
 every one, or practically every one who enters the 
 magic circle, admits without further ado that he has 
 become witness to something wonderful, something 
 emotionally moving.” 
 
 Fleming became silent and looked with blinking eyes 
 at Faber, who was sitting at the opposite side of the 
 table and drumming nervously on its surface. “Con- 
 cede that as a stranger I may be permitted to be 
 sceptical,” he said with an expression of coldness and 
 aversion. “What do I actually know about you? 
 Hardly more than you know about me, and that is 
 mighty little. I have not yet met any one who was a 
 man so built that I might cherish hope for myself or 
 for you or for the whole species. As for what hits 
 us in the eye, it reminds me of the action of a search: 
 light; look at such an instrument close at hand and 
 it becomes a miserable glowing stump in front of a 
 concave mirror and we are chagrined because we let 
 it blind us. Admit it, you may well admit it.” | 
 
 Fleming shook his head reproachfully. “There is 
 no occasion to speak about searchlights,” he said. 
 “Everything is very clear. What happens is common- 
 place and self-evident. How it is done is another 
 matter. I don’t know whether you are accurately in- 
 formed. It happens to be a Children’s City. Chil- 
 
68 FABER 
 
 dren between five and fourteen years old. Fatherless, 
 motherless, father- and mother-less; deserted by par- 
 ents; abused by parents and governors; sent out upon 
 the streets and injured by neglect; caught up by the 
 police; begging, half starved, and already initiated into 
 crime; no phase is lacking. I won’t speak of the ar- 
 rangements; I know that Martina has described them 
 to you in detail. And probably also the special service 
 of information, in which she took part during the first 
 days. Day after day and night after night tested, 
 tried men, women, and young people wander through 
 the haunts of misery, collect information in buildings 
 and homes, serve at the public offices, at the railway 
 stations, and in the streets. Thus likewise in a num- 
 ber of cities. Superfluous to tell you about this 
 labyrinth of horror; whoever lives bears part of the 
 load. To come back to the Princess, I must state that 
 her physical make-up is the most delicate possible, her 
 accomplishment, on the other hand, of such a char- 
 acter that no one knows how she is able to dispatch 
 the work. So much for Number One. Number Two 
 —and for this I can bring the support of a whole line 
 of persons—a most unusual magic radiates from her, 
 of a sort that even I, Jacob Fleming, who sit here and 
 am unable to give an account of it, could not avoid. 
 That cannot happen often in a lifetime.” 
 
 He stopped and drew his hand across his forehead. 
 
FABER 69 
 
 “Did I get into forbidden channels again?” he asked 
 with friendly anxiety. “What the devil, dear fellow!” 
 he exploded suddenly. “Why make a face like an 
 examining lawyer? Am [I to blame because the woman 
 is something singular? Yes, something most singular, 
 something extraordinary, perhaps something great.” 
 
 “We cannot permit ourselves to speak of greatness 
 here,’ said Faber, with pained and bitter expression. 
 “In this manner it is not permitted. You bestow 
 honours rather quickly. Show me the great man so 
 that I may bow down before him, but show him to me 
 so that I will not have to view him through the spec- 
 tacles of false enthusiasm, or as Charitas posing in 
 the limelight. Produce him, produce him! I know 
 none; I see none; I see merely the puny, the stupid, the 
 wicked. I see nothing of greatness; I trace nothing 
 of greatness; I only know force and theft. Yes, force 
 and theft are being committed here, are being com- 
 mitted against me!” 
 
 He yelled the last words and jumped up. Fleming 
 gazed at him in consternation and arose likewise in 
 order to appease him; in attitude he was the personi- 
 fication of terrified questions. But Faber was him- 
 self horrified. For a second he closed his eyes, then 
 placed his arm about Fleming’s shoulder and said 
 hastily: “Nothing. Pardon. I am _ unaccountable. 
 I’ve got a damned muddled brain. You must have 
 
70 FABER 
 
 forbearance. Sit down, my dear fellow. Tell me 
 more. Tell me more about the woman. True, you 
 also find there’s magic in it? Now see, that interests 
 me and nothing else. So tell me: What constitutes 
 the magic?” 
 
 “I am surprised,’ Fleming replied with hesitation; 
 “T am greatly surprised that you did not seek this of 
 Martina, or will not seek it of her. I wanted to say 
 that before. Martina is no doubt best qualified for 
 that. For many hours of the day she is in the im- 
 mediate presence of the Princess. None is given such 
 preference. For this reason she is envied by every 
 one. No one can give you a better explanation. Why 
 don’t you ask her?” 
 
 “I will explain that to you,’ said Faber with a 
 faint-hearted look, “but not now. Another time. 
 Don’t put me off any longer, Fleming, I beg of you: 
 What constitutes the magic?” 
 
 “What constitutes the magic?” reiterated Fleming, . 
 and wrinkled his forehead in distress. “That is dif- 
 ficult to describe. How shall one describe that—the 
 magic influence that a person wields? If you would 
 let me think it over for two, three hours, so that I 
 might make note of a number of circumstances, I 
 might possibly hit on something acceptable, that will 
 stand scrutiny. I will try it, for your sake; I will 
 make the effort. Think of a pair of eyes, quiet, large, 
 
FABER 71 
 
 serious eyes, as in a newborn child. You know, new- 
 born children have such a primitive look. Well, im- 
 agine this look. When this glance strikes you, you 
 get the feeling that you are being awakened from 
 sleep. You imagine that you have overslept, are being 
 awakened, and feel dreadfully ashamed. Furthermore, 
 think of a sort of naturalness that makes you feel 
 somewhat ticklish. You are so surprised that you feel 
 ticklish. Have you ever made this discovery? Now 
 and then you meet a man so natural that you feel as 
 if you had been shown the solution of a difficult prob- 
 lem in chess over which you had pondered stupidly 
 for weeks. To think you were so dense, and the 
 solution so simple! Added to that imagine a smile— 
 but how shall I describe a smile? That is wholly im- 
 possible—a delicate and confiding smile it is, timorous, 
 as if to say, ‘Pardon me for living,’ and behind that, 
 behind the smile glows a calm, deep power—a calm, 
 deep spiritual power.” 
 
 ‘With little shuffling steps he paced the room, re- 
 turned, sat down again, and continued in a helpless 
 manner: “But I am already at the end. Does all that 
 make you any the wiser? MHardly. I could take 
 another tack; could describe all sorts of little scenes 
 to you. Picture to yourself: ten thousand children! 
 Much happens there to create talk. There fate spins 
 her skein, there passions are in tumult, there the world 
 
72 FABER 
 
 forces an entrance and unloads its evil, its ignorance 
 and corruption. Take merely an example. Here 
 comes a filthy drunkard who wants his little daughter 
 back; he needs the child; it must cook; the mother lies 
 in the hospital and so on; all lies. In reality he beats 
 the little one unmercifully when she does not bring 
 home enough money from begging trips. The wild 
 fellow must be tamed; he smashes some window panes, 
 flourishes a knife, and demands the Princess—she is 
 called that also by the people. He is led to the Prin- 
 cess, for she has given orders that any one who de- 
 mands, no matter who, is to have access to her. The 
 fellow reels in—I happened to be present by chance— 
 he yells, curses, jeers, wants the child. She listens to 
 him; she lets him rave for a long time; then she ap- 
 proaches him, puts a hand on his arm, talks with him 
 very confidently and amiably, as with any one of us; 
 the monster becomes dumb, becomes dumb and stares 
 at her, at first in shamefaced wonder, then aggrieved 
 and dispirited; stares and stares, turns about, reels 
 out; outside he leans against the wall and begins to 
 sob. Now, Eugene, you must see that in order to 
 know how one person may prevail over another ; words 
 and explanations are of no avail; you have to see it 
 with your own eyes.” 
 
 Faber was long silent. Finally he said with gloomy — 
 obstinacy: “So be it. I will take it for truth and 
 
FABER 73 
 
 actual fact. But that does not improve my situa- 
 tion. On the contrary it makes it worse.” 
 
 “Your situation?’ Fleming asked, astounded. “How 
 your situation? What has that got to do with what 
 the Princess is, or is not?” 
 
 Faber bent over the table, clutched Fleming by the 
 wrists and whispered with a raucous voice and a threat- 
 ening look: “I suppose you can’t contain yourself any 
 longer for curiosity? You smell secrets and would 
 like to get me to talk, yes?” 
 
 Fleming hid his displeasure. He shook his head 
 and gazed compassionately at Faber. 
 
 “But there are no secrets,’ muttered Faber, and the 
 expression of his features became more and more hate- 
 ful. “If you had eyes you would not need to sneak 
 about like a cat around hot porridge. You people are 
 not clairvoyant; you don’t touch what does not touch 
 you and when no one calls you hear nothing.” 
 
 _ He stared sadly down before him. Fleming sighed 
 and made as if to take his leave, but not very earnestly. 
 Faber held him back with a pleading look, which was 
 sven more puzzling than his ill-natured attack. “You 
 have asked me,” he began again, “why I want you, 
 instead of Martina, to tell me what I want to know.” 
 His voice suddenly had a gentler tone. “Did you think 
 t was so simple? Martina did write me enough about 
 he Princess. In the last two years I have received 
 
 
 
74 FABER 
 
 twenty-two letters from Martina, and sixteen deal al 
 most exclusively with the Princess. Martina is nc 
 stylist; she often hits the nail on the head with he: 
 remarks, but what she writes is born of the momen 
 as the moment determines it. We were never really 
 limited to the written word. Writing was always usec 
 sparingly between us. Likewise certain aspects of the 
 spoken word. I believe that like the peasants we man: 
 aged to understand each other with three hundrec 
 vocables.” 
 
 “That is true, Eugene, that is certainly true, 
 
 ” criec 
 
 Fleming, nodding energetically. “You lived togethe: 
 so mute, you two, that I might say it was actually <¢ 
 dumb show. It would seem to me that you neve! 
 carried on elevated conversations, as they are called 
 never engaged in comment about one another and Got 
 and the world. You spoke only of actualities, mos 
 modestly about facts and events. That is true; at tha 
 time it did not occur to me; now that you mention it 
 it is so true that it makes me laugh.” 
 
 “You see,” replied Faber, thankful for this ac 
 quiescence; “how could I come abruptly and star 
 to cross-examine some one? I could ask casually 
 What sort of compatriot is this person? What kim 
 of clothes does she wear? What did she say yesterday 
 when this and that happened? But hardly: What sor 
 of human being is she? That would have been going 
 
FABER 75 
 
 much too far. Martina would have looked curiously 
 at me. I might as well ask: How do you feel toward 
 ne? That would appear rather senseless to her: How 
 lo you feel toward me? Do you understand at last, 
 Fleming?” 
 
 5 | 
 
 “Yes, I understand you thoroughly,” said Fleming, 
 vith an expression as if each of Faber’s words were a 
 evelation to him. 
 
 “She does not reflect on what sort of human being 
 
 ’ 
 
 nybody is,” continued Faber in a strange, instructive 
 one; “she has to experience that. When she has ex- 
 jerienced it, she knows it, not as an idea, but as a pic- 
 ure. But pictures cannot be communicated, as you 
 ‘ourself were compelled to admit a short time ago. 
 Yow if I were to ask her to give me a picture, that is, 
 0 put into words what lives inarticulate within her, I 
 vould not only be making a brutal attack on her per- 
 'onality, but the result would be that she would no 
 onger see the picture and instead would give me all 
 orts of useless fabrications.” 
 
  Fleming’s eyes became round as saucers behind the 
 anses. Although he had asserted that he understood in 
 ‘etail, he seemed to have grasped only dimly what was 
 aking place, and what moved this man to make these 
 onfessions, which came obviously only by a great 
 fort. “But you say that Martina wrote you a num- 
 er of letters about the Princess,” he remarked timidly. 
 | 
 
76 FABER 
 
 Faber smiled as at a child’s question. ‘Martina’s 
 letters are Martina’s letters—nothing more,” he re- 
 marked dryly. ‘Facts, nothing but facts. Where she 
 has been. Who has visited her. What has happened. 
 What the Princess said, did, wished, planned. All this 
 naturally with reference to me, at least so it seems, 
 She takes for granted, and may well do so, that what 
 she embraces and experiences so heartily will affect me 
 in like manner. She forgets that I am counted out. 
 She forgets it, and will not hear of it. She perceives 
 it and lets the subject drop. But I knew that some- 
 thing so close to me as the breath of my body had 
 gone out of my life. Since I became aware of that 
 I have not been able to breathe so freely as before, 
 There is something torturing about it, something 
 dreadfully torturing. A sick man gets a certain amount 
 of peace when he learns the name of his illness. Man 
 must be able to identify his illness, else he becomes 
 morose or even worse. Some of those who returned 
 home found themselves brutally deceived. They had 
 been cheated, they had been robbed of their plighted 
 loyalty; the wife had taken a lover, several lovers; 
 had even married again, because she thought her hus- 
 band dead; that is something tangible and one knows 
 how to behave. The poor devil can break the furni- 
 ture, can shoot, can cut somebody’s throat—but I? 
 
FABER 73 
 
 What can I do? I don’t even know what is going on, 
 nor whether I have the right to complain.” 
 
 “Listen, Eugene, in the end those are mere figments 
 of the brain,” Fleming said to him with cordiality. 
 “Would not the simplest thing be for you to go to the 
 Princess and talk with her? Then you would see how 
 juickly these empty bubbles would burst.” 
 
 - “T have nothing to say to the Princess,” said Faber, 
 sruffly. “I have nothing to do with her. I have to do 
 only with the shadow that she throws, which darkens 
 averything that was once bright in my life.” 
 
 _ Voices sounded; the door opened and Martina stood 
 yn the threshold. Behind her stood Faith, holding a 
 great bouquet of roses that Martina had brought. 
 Snowing that she had the roses made Martina’s face 
 ‚ven more radiant than usual. 
 
 _ She was amused when she saw the two men con- 
 ‘ronting one another in earnest attitudes. Her anima- 
 ion led her to break forth into ringing laughter, into 
 which came a note of embarrassment when she observed 
 he pictures that had been placed against the wall, that 
 if the Princess and her own. 
 
VII 
 
 It was twilight; Faber was holding the boy on his la 
 and telling stories. The eager eyes loosened a tongu 
 that had been under a ban of silence for years. Chris 
 topher hardly dared close his eyes, lest he should mis 
 something if he did not keep his glance riveted withou 
 a break on the mouth of the story-teller. 
 
 Faber did not touch on the unedifying monotony 0 
 prison life; nature provided enough material to sat 
 isfy a taste for the horrible and the fantastic. T 
 hear about wolves that roamed the unending plain 
 of snow in murderous droves was a fairy tale. The 
 powerful streams, green under their ice; villages burie 
 in the earth, their site marked only by a few piles o 
 the plain; forests, with fastnesses that no hunter dare 
 penetrate, and that stretched hundreds of miles up t 
 the polar sea. When the snow melts all the land! 
 flooded; one has to move about in a boat for week 
 before finding a landing. Blue-grey lies the water, th 
 wild geese travel north, herons dart down and tak 
 their food out of the flood. The nights are ofte 
 beautiful as they stretch out toward infinity, with stat 
 
 
 
 embroidered so closely together and the Milky Wa 
 like a silver carpet: from out of the distance comes 
 78 
 
FABER 29 
 
 nelancholy song: a bird of the night careens in the 
 ir. There the traveller wanders gladly, if he can, if 
 eisfree..... 
 
 But Christopher wants to hear adventures. He has 
 een told about his father’s flight; he wants to hear of 
 i from himself. A boy has to make use of his oppor- 
 nities when he possesses a father who has experienced 
 hrilling events and who has not acquitted himself 
 adly. But this is no longer easy for Faber. Yet, he 
 ties it, and it sounds well to Christopher—the tale of 
 fe secret conspiracy and the bribes, of how a China- 
 ian was bought in order to procure clothing; the hor- 
 ible and pleasant waiting for the hour of the night 
 iat had been agreed on; the highly exciting flight in 
 ae darkness, crawling on all fours, wading through 
 ‘wamps, hiding in the underbrush at the slightest noise, 
 bliterating all tracks at approach of day and lying ina 
 tied-up water hole covered with sand and brush until 
 ightfall—all this is amazing enough to make the lis- 
 ner want to shout, and there is an added tang in 
 
 
 
 nowing that others who attempted to escape earlier 
 vere followed with dogs, dragged back and shot. 
 
 
 
 Faber, fallen under the spell of reminiscence, paints 
 range landscapes as if in a dream, with senses sharp- 
 aed a thousandfold by his loneliness. In the mean- 
 ime Faith has entered the room, has seated herself 
 (aietly at the window and is listening. Faber’s voice 
 
 OO eee 
 
80 FABER 
 
 undergoes an imperceptible change, as if a certain in 
 fluence has been exerted on him, which nevertheles: 
 he does not wish to throw off. So he continues, dream 
 ily recreating Asia’s measureless wastes in half-audibl 
 words, so that Christopher has to listen keenly in orde: 
 not to lose a syllable. The untrodden grass wildernes: 
 and the fear of meeting nomadic hordes; the pathles: 
 mountains, rising sheer and yellow; the need for avoid 
 ing the road of the caravans; the robber bands that in 
 fest the cliffs; the sparse settlements guarded by fero 
 cious dogs who tear to pieces any one who approaches 
 how the fugitive was directed to a merchant in th 
 village, who is to become the guide; how soldiers ar 
 searching the neighbourhood for fugitives, and he 1: 
 hidden for nine days in a damp cellar inhabited by rats 
 One night he is again on his way; the land stretche, 
 wide and mysterious before him; all colours strik 
 terror and all forms seem out of the world of imagina 
 tion. After a march of many hours he comes to i 
 temple lighted with paper lanterns; the earth seems t 
 heave marvellously in the purple darkness; it looks lik 
 a sea that is moved by the wind, but turns out to bi 
 human bodies, the praying and the penitent, all lyin 
 stretched out, so far as the eye can reach. When thi 
 morning dawns three enormous figures come down th 
 hill: are they increased to such horrifying size by th 
 pale half-light, or are they actually giants? They seen 
 
FABER 81 
 
 like coloured clouds and wear embroidered garments; 
 their faces appear cruel, with their listless eyes of jet, 
 and they march as if blind. Who may they be? And 
 another day the fugitive arrives at a city where the 
 houses cling to a cliff three thousand feet high; the 
 streets are like ladders; unspeakable commotion goes 
 on in them; boats without number lie on the stream 
 below; on one of them stands an unchained lion; on 
 another lie shackled slaves like bundles of bananas. 
 Faber wears a Chinese dress; he follows his leader up 
 ‘the streets of steps through the swarming of children 
 and animals and shops and carts. Suddenly a man 
 dashes toward him with a drawn sword, no doubt one 
 who has recognized the stranger despite his disguise, 
 but a white-bearded old man comes by and raises his 
 arm with a commanding air; he beckons the stranger 
 ‚to follow him, and they pass into an unusually beau- 
 ‚tiful house, where he feeds and cares for the tired 
 guest, providing solicitously for his needs, healing his 
 wounded feet, silently, gently, and in friendly fashion. 
 | Then comes a trip of many days down the great stream 
 in a bark, down to the sea, and in the great city on 
 the sea, the most magical of all cities, the fugitive waits 
 ‚month after month and thinks of his native land, and 
 ‚of Christopher. 
 _ Suddenly he arose, put down the child, and left the 
 ‚room. Christopher looked regretfully after him. He 
 
82 FABER 
 
 went to Faith at the window, where it was still light; 
 the room was dark. In his big grey eyes she saw 
 pride, apprehension, and unrest. With a distracted and 
 aimless gesture she ran her hand over his hair and 
 while turning up the light she sighed softly. Soon 
 Christopher was busily engaged in making an automo- 
 bile out of chairs placed together, and using an old 
 rubber ball as a horn, he made ugly alarm signals. A 
 little later the vehicle became transformed; it turned 
 into a Chinese river boat carrying shackled warriors, 
 and when Faith arrived with supper and reminded him 
 that it was time for bed, she found him sitting on 
 board deep in thought. With a furrowed brow he 
 asked her: “Do you think father is glad to be back 
 with us? When a man has had such wonderful experi- 
 ences he can hardly be satisfied at home.” 
 
 “Yes, he can,” replied Faith. ‘Those wonderful ex- 
 periences often sound a great deal more remarkable 
 than they actually are. I am certain that he is glad 
 to be here.” 
 
 “Tf he goes away again he will have to take me with 
 him,” said Christopher, determined. “He can always 
 use a squire. I merely have to find out whether he 
 thinks I am strong enough. Then we can overthrow 
 all the Chinese.” 
 
 “Yes, you ought to do that,” added Faith. “No 
 doubt they are real dangerous people.” | 
 
FABER 83 
 
 “Not all, but most of them, don’t you think?” 
 
 “Naturally not all; so far as I know there are pious 
 and wise men among the Chinese.” 
 
 “And some a thousand years old?” 
 
 “Yes, even a thousand years old.” 
 
 “Don’t you think that father often looks as if he 
 were a thousand years old?” 
 
 “How so? I did not find him so.” 
 
 “T can’t explain it. He seems that way, so old, so 
 very old. Does he please you?” 
 “Oh, yes, I am well pleased with him.” 
 - “Would you like to become his slave ?”’ 
 “Slave? But we don’t have slaves.” 
 “Here, no, but if you went to China you could be- 
 ‘come his slave. I would be the squire and you the 
 ‘slave. Lovely, what?” 
 
 
 
 _ “And your mother? What would become of her?” 
 | “Tl have to think it over. Perhaps she will follow 
 ‘us, when she sees that we are in earnest.” 
 
 _ “What do you mean by that: ‘we are in earnest’ ?” 
 _ The lad was silent, glanced up slyly at Faith, and 
 shrugged his shoulders. Faith closed the conversation 
 with a glance at the big clock and Christopher had to 
 
 capitulate to the hour. 
 
 
 
VIII 
 
 FABER paced back and forth in his bedroom, picked up 
 a book, put it down, and again paced back and forth. 
 He opened the door leading to the hall and listened, 
 then opened the window and looked down on the streets 
 in the dusk. The row of trees opposite rustled in the 
 rain; the distant whistle of a locomotive drifted up on 
 the damp air. As if he had made a daring decision 
 he quickly left his place at the window, crossed the 
 living-room and hall and entered Martina’s bedroom. 
 Here he turned on the light and looked about him. 
 He knew all the objects in the room, but it seemed 
 that he had forgotten them in his long absence and 
 now wanted to compare the reality with his remem- 
 brance. In a large oval frame over the bed hung the 
 photograph of Martina’s father; an earnest, almost ill- 
 tempered looking man with a white moustache that 
 gave his face something of a distinguished expression. 
 On the lower part of the picture he had written in a 
 large hand these lines out of the Metamorphoses of 
 Ovid: Et documenta damus qua simus origine nati. 
 Faber had once taken exception to it, finding it rather 
 too harsh to be placed over the shrine of lovers. 
 
 The blue silk dress that she had worn the day before. 
 84 
 
FABER 85 
 
 lay on an armchair covered with blue cretonne. He 
 ran the tips of his fingers over it and bent down a bit 
 to sniff the odour that must have come from her person. 
 A pair of white leather boots stood halfway under the 
 bed ; one was buttoned, the other not—this dissimilarity 
 amazed him. He walked to the dressing table and sized 
 up the objects that lay on the glass plate; the powder 
 box with its enamel design; the oblong manicure box 
 of tortoise shell; the hand mirror set in ivory with the 
 artistically chiselled handle; the perfume bottles on their 
 silver trays; in a silk pillow stuck the gem with Mar- 
 tina’s head in profile, made by a young Roman friend 
 nine years ago—and now he was dead. 
 
 Everything was familiar to him; there was nothing 
 new there; he looked everything over carefully. Then 
 he again looked about him in the room and made a 
 gesture as if warding off an unwelcome thought. Just 
 ‘then the door opened and Faith entered. It was her 
 duty to clean the room. She stood motionless with 
 ‘surprise. “I was looking for something,” murmured 
 ‘Faber, awkward in a lie, and passed her with evident 
 hostility. “T thought you had gone out,” said Faith. 
 ‚He shook his head and replied that he intended to wait 
 for Martina. Martina would be home late, replied 
 Faith, as she drew the curtains; did he not wish to 
 ‘dine? Just then they heard a key in the main door 
 ‘and Martina’s voice. Faber remained standing in the 
 | 
 
 | 
 
 | 
 | 
 
 | 
 
86 FABER 
 
 corridor behind the curtain which closed off the living- 
 rooms. It was dark here: he again found himself in 
 the position of a thief caught in the act. 
 
 A young man and woman had come with Martina. 
 The young man turned over to Faith a portfolio filled 
 with writings, which he had been carrying; to the 
 woman, who looked like a corpse, Martina gave a docu- 
 ment which she procured from her desk in the living- 
 room. When both had left she called a number on 
 the telephone and merely spoke the words: “The inci- 
 dent is closed.” Faith helped her with her mantle; 
 Martina grasped Faith’s hand and whispered to her in 
 an excited fashion. Although her voice was low 
 Faber heard what she said. “Most horribly beaten. 
 Beaten until bruised. Nine poor offspring. You can't 
 picture it in your'wildest dreams. A real den of thieves, 
 The Princess is completely broken. What did you say? 
 Yes, they are safe now. The beast is in custody. Nat- 
 urally a cripple factory, exploiting sympathy. What 
 a night, Faith, unthinkable, terrible!’ The whispers 
 became more subdued; finally Faber heard the ques- 
 tion: “Is Eugene in?” 
 
 He just had time to walk into the living-room be- 
 fore Martina saw him. She entered and greeted him 
 contentedly. Her manner was changed so much that 
 he was shocked; she was transformed into a cheerful 
 person. What he had caught and observed of her when 
 
FABER 87 
 
 ‘he was in the corridor was the opposite of what she 
 
 
 
 ‘showed now. Perhaps another side of her nature, 
 which had been imprisoned, had been released. He was 
 not able to explain it. He seemed to feel a discontent 
 deep down in his heart while she pretended to scold 
 him because he had not yet dined. She said that she 
 had dined two hours ago. In order to divert blame 
 from Faith Eugene declared that he had intended to 
 go out, but had decided not to, on account of the rain. 
 ‘Martina and Faith conferred about what should be 
 prepared for him, and Faith proposed eggs with fresh 
 
 
 
 green lettuce. In the event Herr Faber agreed, she 
 added, giving him a peculiarly warning look, which 
 ‘Faber did not understand. Martina thought it amus- 
 ing that she called him Herr Faber; she looked almost 
 ‘anxiously at this distinguished gentleman and laughed 
 loudly. She had to admit that he could be treated 
 formally so far as Faith was concerned. She would 
 join him at the lettuce, she said, but it would have to 
 be sweetened: she craved sweets that were sour and 
 
 
 
 sour things that were sweet. 
 And she laughed. 
 
 When Faith had gone she related that she had been 
 asked about Eugene by a number of persons. The 
 Princess sent her greetings. He thereupon reported 
 how he had passed the afternoon with Christopher and 
 while he spoke she seemed to become more and more 
 
88 FABER 
 
 care-free. Faith came with the dishes prepared. Mar- 
 tina complained that the rain had given her damp feet, 
 and Eugene knelt down to unlace her shoes. With 
 confidence she presented one foot and the other and 
 Faith brought the leather slippers. While they were 
 both at table she thought of a new complaint and 
 laughed at her troubles; her hair felt very heavy and 
 she still had work to do; would Eugene allow her to 
 let down her hair? The weight of it had tired her a 
 great deal recently. She pulled the pins out of her hair; 
 the brown deluge fell rustling upon her shoulders. 
 While he ate without a word she chose lettuce leaves 
 out of the salad dish and amused herself at her bad 
 manners, as she called them. Eugene asked what work 
 she meant to do so late in the evening; she replied that 
 she had to prepare a report, the items of which she had 
 discussed with the Princess and which she dared not 
 forget. 
 
 “I am going to try to get myself a position, 
 
 99 
 
 said 
 Eugene. | 
 
 Martina observed that he did not need to hurry, for 
 rest could not harm him. 
 
 “What rest do I need?” he replied. “Six years lie 
 behind me like a black holocaust. If I do not wipe them 
 out now I will never get rid of them. I have to 
 obliterate them.” 
 
 “Naturally you must get rid of them,” said Martina 
 
 ’ 
 
FABER 89 
 
 gently. “But do not force yourself. I will help you. 
 Ihave already made my plans.” 
 
 “You? What plans?” His glance travelled from 
 
 the open window where it had lingered to her animated 
 features. Martina smiled—her smile was a very dif- 
 ferent expression of vitality from her laughter, much 
 ‘more sincere—bent forward, touched the tip of his chin 
 | with her index finger, and asked: “Now then, Master 
 ‘Gloom, why so gloomy?” 
 _ He was silent. She rose, kissed him on the fore- 
 head, and went to her desk. Before she sat down she 
 ‘spoke, facing the wall as if from modesty: “It’s good to 
 have you back again, Eugene.” 
 
 “Ts it really?” he exclaimed in a choking voice in 
 which a hope strove for utterance. 
 
 “Yes, Eugene, so good—oh, so good!’ she cried, 
 emphasizing the little word fervently. 
 
 Then she laughed, this unusual laughter of shyness, 
 of defence against admissions or questions. She began 
 to write and asked him to be patient for an hour, but 
 he arose and went out, and, taking down hat and cloak, 
 said in desperation to himself: “Who can understand 
 that, who can understand that? ...” On the street 
 he was glad to have the rain in his face. He rushed 
 aimlessly forward, at times muttering disconnected 
 sentences, and after wandering about for half an hour 
 found himself in front of a café that he had fre- 
 
90 FABER 
 
 quented in former years, and so he entered. The room 
 was full of people, but he knew not one of them. For- 
 merly he had often sat here with friends, or rather with 
 sympathetic acquaintances, with whom he had profes- 
 sional interests in common, for he had possessed no 
 friends, at least no real friend since Martina had en- 
 tered his life. He looked eagerly about him to see 
 whether one of these comrades was present. His fea- 
 tures expressed a passionate wish to speak with some- 
 body, especially in the present hour, but there was no 
 one that he knew, and it seemed that the city had 
 produced entirely new people while he was away. So. 
 he left again, loitered around in the rain, wandered to 
 Fleming’s house, turned about, and reached home at 
 one o’clock. Martina was still sitting at her desk, pale, 
 tired, suffering; with lines of worry on her forehead 
 and a deep, sparkling look. She hardly glanced up, 
 indeed did not seem to have noticed that he had been 
 out. 
 
 He looked at her for a while; finally she laid aside 
 her pen. Then he said: “I don’t know what to make 
 of you, Martina.” 
 
 She raised her head in surprise. Then she shook 
 her head a little, coloured a trifle, but said nothing. 
 He closed the window, for the night was beginning to 
 get cool. He carried a chair to the stove, where he 
 
| FABER 91 
 
 ‘could sit behind her, and leaned his forehead against 
 the tiles. Silence filled the room and the house. 
 
 _ Martina turned about and observed him sitting 
 against the stove and said cheerfully: “Why are you 
 | hesitating ?” 
 
 Eugene, rising suddenly, asked in a tense voice: 
 “Are you still my wife, Martina?” 
 | When Martina saw his pale and distorted face she 
 approached him and gazed in growing astonishment, 
 her eyes gleaming darkly in the shadow. But there 
 was not only amazement in her eyes, but also anxiety 
 which was born a long time ago and had been latent 
 and now seemed to have been awakened by a mental 
 shock. “I don’t understand what you are asking,” she 
 “murmured with bowed head. 
 
 “Then we probably don’t understand each other,” 
 he replied, “or rather you no longer know anything 
 ‚about you and me.” 
 
 _ She raised her hands pleadingly. Every finger 
 “begged him to desist. But he continued obstinately 
 and passionately: “I feel as if I am in a dark cellar, 
 Martina, and I don’t know where the stairs are or 
 where the window is. I grope and grope, but touch 
 nothing but the dead wall. Don’t you understand? 
 ' You say it is good to have me back. No one who 
 knows you could disbelieve you, least of all myself. 
 
92 FABER 
 
 But what is the good of it, tell me, if I have lost you? 
 Don’t you understand now?” | 
 
 “Lost me, Eugene?” she stammered, shaken. “How 
 can you speak so to me?” She threw her arms about 
 him imploringly. His coldness disheartened her. She 
 seized this word “lost” and spoke some confused words 
 that had no tangible meaning. Indecision and con- 
 fusion were pictured on her pretty face, besides the 
 last flicker of a timorous smile. He recognizéd that 
 there was no course to pursue except to cross-examine 
 as a judge would, this dumb soul, buried and hidden 
 away far below the surface; that he must put question 
 after question, draw out one syllable after another, 
 merely to find common ground for himself and her and 
 a path to take. 
 
 Had she been glad of his coming? 
 
 She answered with a look of reproach. 
 
 Had a little fear entered into her joy, any sort of 
 fear? 
 
 She nodded—anxiously, trembling, shy wonder at 
 such a faculty for divination. 
 
 But what? What had she feared? 
 
 She did not know. 
 
 Was it likely that her service, her tasks out yonder, 
 the person of the Princess, the demands from that 
 quarter, had so filled her up that they had displaced 
 all other thoughts and feelings? | 
 
FABER 93 
 
 Filled her up, yes; through and through; completely. 
 ‘But she had always thought of him, she had always 
 concerned herself about him unchangeably. 
 
 Then what in God’s name did she fear? 
 
 She did not know. 
 
 _ He fell into dark reflection. Then he began again, 
 ‘even more penetratingly. Had it been her object at 
 ‘any one time to deny him love? 
 
 She had never had such a thought. 
 
 Had any other person ever tried, openly or secretly, 
 to get her to do so? 
 
 “Who would have been so foolish?” was her reply. 
 
 He wanted her to reflect; there were so many ways 
 in which an outside influence could act on a nature that 
 had become undecided or perturbed or confused. 
 She shook her head. 
 | He would ask something else, not did she mean to 
 deny him her love, but did she mean to deny him her 
 ‘body: had this been her will and her wish? 
 
 Again pained amazement on Martina’s part. Did 
 she deny him the least of anything? Did it seem so 
 to him? If so he did her a grave injury. Never did 
 she deny him anything, even herself. Deny him—no, 
 surely not. She became silent in fear. 
 
 _ “What then, Martina? What then, if not denying?” 
 
 She was silent. Silent, and the riddle became more 
 
 and more difficult to penetrate. 
 
 | 
 | 
 
IX 
 
 In the next few days Faber was pre-empted by his 
 family, that is to say chiefly by his mother, who en- 
 forced her prerogatives ruthlessly. She simply came 
 for him, and when Christopher was at home took him 
 along without giving heed to Faith’s protests. She 
 sent word to Martina to follow, but Martina did not 
 appear, and it became difficult for Anna to disguise 
 her bitterness. 
 
 Alert and active as she was, she had already provided 
 a position for Eugene. She had a wide acquaintance 
 among persons of influence; her persistence never 
 weakened before opposition, and many people favoured 
 her solely because her name was associated with mem- 
 ories of fighting and resistance. Thus she had suc- 
 ceeded in obtaining for Faber a fairly well paid posi- 
 tion as inspector at the work of rehabilitating neglected 
 public buildings. He was to take up his task in Sep- 
 tember. | 
 
 Martina considered this no disadvantage for the 
 plan she had hinted at and which she now disclosed 
 to him; she cherished the fervent hope that he would 
 act as architect for the proposed buildings in the Chil- 
 dren’s City. Eventually it would be not solely a ques- 
 
 94 
 
FABER 95 
 
 tion of temporary barracks but permanent houses in a 
 style conforming to their uses. Faber said neither yes 
 nor no; he remained cold and silent, while Martina 
 eagerly explained the advantages and possibilities to 
 him. 
 
 _ As a matter of fact he did not seem pleased when 
 any one became actively interested in his behalf and in 
 his future. Even when his mother, beaming with joy, 
 told him of the success of her efforts, he thanked her 
 but half-heartedly. Anna did not think ill of him for 
 this, although her son-in-law Hergesell, who was pres- . 
 ent by chance, made a wry face and regarded his 
 brother-in-law with cold disdain. Faber’s glance in 
 reply held no good will; the two had not yet reached 
 the stage of intimacy that Anna took as a matter of 
 course and had often urged, to Clara’s ironical amuse- 
 ment. 
 
 _ Hergesell, who was but a little over thirty, was a 
 historian of art and belonged to an exclusive circle 
 of professors and young scholars who had become de- 
 flected from the paths of learning and the work of 
 peace. » They had set as their task the revivifying of a 
 patriotic spirit and were now engaged in a passionate 
 fight against the prevailing forms of government. 
 ‘They were as little deterred in their clandestine and 
 refined manner from making use of hatred and incite- 
 ment as were the tribunes of the people in their dirty 
 
» 
 
 96 FABER 
 
 and coarse way. The influence that they exerted wa 
 almost irresistible among the youth, and without ques 
 tion corrupting, for they reduced great figures anc 
 noble ideals to the level of abettors and accomplices it 
 their political plans and utopias and knew how to giv 
 the appearance of definite accomplishment in their pro 
 nouncements, which were built up on art and legend 
 philosophy and history. Hergesell had an unrespon 
 sive nature and had absorbed and pondered a. grea 
 deal, which spared him the task of learning by observa 
 tion and experience. Before entering this circle ly 
 possessed the pleasing charm of a blond, blue-eyet 
 youth, which remained with him up to his twentietl 
 year, as well as a clean and well ordered mind, thr 
 product of excellent breeding and care-free circum 
 stances ; but slowly, and as if under inexorable pressure 
 he had become hardened, narrowed, and ossified. He 
 regarded Eugene Faber as his opponent from the firs 
 moment; before they had exchanged a word he adoptec 
 the attitude of the patrician against the plebeian, the 
 established and magnanimous man against the man wh¢ 
 comes from the outside and makes demands—demands 
 of whatever nature, one knows not what—and wh¢ 
 forces himself and his dark and probably destructive 
 forces on a docile community. And so matters stood 
 although neither word nor conduct gave any inkling 
 of it. 
 
FABER | 97 
 
 Faber had not expected to find his sister extremely 
 happy in the married state, but what he observed never- 
 theless disappointed him. Everything in the house gave 
 the impression of solid affluence, and from his attitude 
 of constant observation one gathered that out of this 
 re drew certain conclusions that made him sad and 
 yerhaps even sympathetic. Clara might have felt this, 
 yut she was far from willing to start a discussion with 
 ı man who so clearly expected an explanation or a de- 
 ‘ence. On the contrary, the sarcasm with which she 
 reated Eugene was even more biting than that which . 
 he ordinarily employed toward human beings. 
 
 One evening they were alone and the conversation 
 lrifted to her early youth. Eugene reminded Clara of 
 he foolish pranks she had engaged in: how she had 
 mce walked to Venice like a journeyman with a pack 
 m her back; how one moonlight night she had 
 lunged, fully attired, into the pond of the palace in 
 der to pick water lilies and how, wet to the skin and 
 vith the yellow flowers in her dripping hair, she had 
 aarched through the streets at the head of her friends, 
 inging songs; and how, when still a child, she had 
 hown her fighting spirit by taking the part of a Jewish 
 id who was being persecuted by a wild horde with 
 tones. “You laid about you with your fists and your 
 
 ace was covered with blood when you returned home— 
 
 | 
 
 © you remember ?” 
 
98 FABER 
 
 She recalled it. With her look becoming darkh 
 defiant she glanced down and said ironically: “Yor 
 are trying to tell me that the Clara of that time hac 
 a great idea of herself, are you not? You mean he 
 demands on people were inexorable and, no matter hoy 
 foolish she acted, none dared approach her too near 
 You mean to tell me that she was not there to be way 
 laid, even if she played the role of the vagabond ?” 
 
 He stared silently before him without answering. 
 
 Clara continued with challenging mockery in he 
 manner: “You move about like one who finds some 
 thing rotten in the state of Denmark. Clearly some 
 thing is rotten, my dear fellow. But what are yot 
 going to do about it? Are you going to come here & 
 a rebel? On your face there is always written: ‘Yor 
 don’t please me any longer, you are thoroughly antt 
 pathetic tome.’ I can understand that. Only ask your. 
 self how we are to remedy things. In spite of thai 
 we are making an effort to cover the worst of ow 
 shame. For instance, there is our nephew Valentine 
 You don’t know a thing about him yet. You merely 
 have to mention his name and mother begins t 
 tremble.” ' 
 “What is wrong with him?” inquired Eugene. 4, 
 
 “Spoiled,” said Clara, contemptuously. “You re 
 member that he was the apple of mother’s eye. So he 
 became spoiled. Mother told him so often that a bort 
 
 
 
FABER 9 
 
 Faber is not an ordinary mortal, especially when he 
 has the good fortune of being illegitimate, that the 
 young man naturally trimmed his sails accordingly. 
 We were all out of the ordinary—you and me, Rod- 
 erick, Karl—have you already forgotten that? All 
 
 
 
 models with special privileges, but never able to prove 
 our title so well as he. Moreover, we were bred and 
 intended to be two-legged exhibits, who should show 
 the citizen-swine how retrogressive they are with their 
 morality, their catechism, and so forth. Do you find 
 that we have done anything with our gifts, my dear 
 brother ?” 
 
 Eugene was silent. 
 
 
 
 “And coming back to the aforementioned spoiled 
 child, we were and are by contrast pure little angels 
 who exist for God’s pleasure. How much easier it 
 
 
 
 was for parents in ancient times! When such a child 
 turned out wrong they put him outside the door with 
 
 1 powerful curse and declared him dead. To-day we 
 ‘ight for his soul, even when there is as little soul ob- 
 
 servable as in a herring. This promising young man, 
 
 ifteen summers old, passes his nights in champagne 
 
 
 
 vars, partly as dancer—you can imagine what sort of 
 lances he does—partly as barkeeper. You must know 
 that heaps of money can now be earned in that way. 
 He lived with us up to a month ago; mother and I 
 
 sheltered him and actually succeeded so well that Her- 
 
100 FABER 
 
 mann learned nothing of his lascivious life. But when 
 he came home one morning recently in a cocaine stupor 
 my husband ejected him. Where he has lived since, 
 we don’t know. From time to time bad eggs come here 
 to ask for him, also a certain sort of women, or a 
 tailor with an unpaid bill. Mother is torn by despera- 
 tion and worry, although she tries to hide it from us, 
 and I suspect her of using her spare time in attempts 
 to locate his lodging. She still believes in him. Deep 
 in her heart she is convinced that this monstrosity is a 
 Prince Henry who plays his jolly pranks with all sorts 
 of Falstaffs and Pistols until his coronation. Mother 
 accepts from life only what she is disposed to take, 
 She is to be envied.” 
 
 “You are severe, Clara,” said Eugene. 
 
 “Thank God! Were I soft I should long ago have 
 been ground to powder,” was the brusque answer. “It 
 was always my fate to collide with people; for that ] 
 need a hard crust.” She arose, walked to the window, 
 and spoke without turning. “I misused my youth 
 badly, that’s the reason. I pushed my horizon out toc 
 far. Suddenly I became dizzy. When you become 
 dizzy you clutch at something for support. You don't 
 have time to reflect when you get dizzy. Let us close 
 the subject. Leave me in peace.” 
 
 Several times when Faber was leaving his sister’s 
 house he met a Jesuit priest on the stairs, a man of 
 
FABER IOI 
 
 middle age whose calm and discreet face impressed 
 him. Once Clara was just accompanying him into the 
 anteroom when the priest arrived; Clara introduced 
 them to one another. “Father Desiderio, this is my 
 brother,’ she said, and her voice suddenly sounded 
 tired and subdued. Eugene’s inquiring glance passed 
 from sister to priest; each had the suspicion of a 
 smile. 
 
 In the course of a week he visited his mother and 
 sister almost every day, although his attitude betrayed 
 that he did not feel himself at home or at ease in any 
 way, especially not when Hergesell was present. The 
 latter marked this and one evening after dinner he 
 complained to Anna and his wife in a haughty tone 
 about it; he said he was not accustomed to have some 
 
 ‚one come to his house to find him onerous. 
 
 _ Clara replied, shrugging her shoulders: “Neither is 
 _he drawn to me or to mother. The urge he feels drives 
 him away from his home. He would like to get away 
 ‚ {rom himself best of all.” 
 
 “That may be so,” Hergesell agreed; “his is an exist- 
 ‘ence torn up by the roots. Where does he belong? 
 He does not know. Where is his innate sense of duty? 
 ‚He has none. Our world is full of his sort of people 
 just now, and most of them need only a slogan and 
 ‚they become—well, exactly what they happen to be.” 
 | “Strange, how well you understand poor Eugene,” 
 
102 FABER 
 
 said Clara with a clouded face, while Anna looked si- 
 lently at her son-in-law. 
 
 “We see it every day. Just look about you,” said 
 Hergesell in his mild, almost boyish voice. “The un- 
 productive spirit, the spirit of negation, that is the evil. 
 Man wants to be free; he refuses to wear fetters—very 
 good. But there are fetters which man himself has to 
 adopt if he does not want to become a formless and 
 soulless solitary living a life of chance outside the 
 eternal laws and orders. I know people who merely 
 smile when one speaks of national unity, of the Ger- 
 man nation, perhaps, and the German idea, the same 
 persons who are thrown into foolish ecstasy when they 
 merely hear the word humanity. Humanity—that has 
 become little by little the excuse for spiritual dissipa- 
 tion, a tricky medium for all sorts of incendiarism and 
 treason. Be not indignant, Clara, because I say so, 
 and I beg mother’s pardon if I make bold to say so, 
 for you Fabers have always had a fateful leaning to- 
 ward—what shall I call it—toward an irresponsible 
 community of interests, toward a democracy without 
 real background or vision. I believe that this attitude 
 is taking bitter revenge on Eugene. He does not stand. 
 his ground. He is not a man who would. Heisa 
 man who flees.” | 
 
 “What trash!” Clara grumbled. She had lighted a 
 
 taper in order to seal a letter. “Democracy? Trash. 
 i 
 
 
 
| 
 | 
 | 
 | 
 
 | FABER 103 
 “What is the object of your explanatory lecture? To 
 shatter wholly the feeling we have for Faber? Do 
 ‚let us vegetate for a little longer, even if in our bad 
 democratic fashion. We do not like commands. We 
 do not like to be called to account. We do not have 
 ‘such strict convictions. We are not so thoroughly 
 ‚sure of ourselves—or of you. We are modest per- 
 sons.” She extinguished the taper while Hergesell 
 regarded her sidewise in astonishment. 
 
 _ Anna Faber walked restlessly up and down. When 
  Hergesell had retired to his study she came to Clara 
 ‘with a face of pallor and said: “He is right on one 
 ‘point: Eugene is a man who flees. That came home 
 to me because it happens to be true. What will come 
 of it? Speak, Clara—you are clever, you see things as 
 they are. Am I to lose this son likewise? Have I 
 already lost him?” 
 
 _ Clara toyed with the wax. Her lips were firmly 
 pressed together. 
 
 Anna grasped her hands so violently that the wax 
 ‘fell to the floor. “What is wrong with him?” she 
 urged. “You know. What sort of misfortune threat- 
 ‘ens him? What must we do to avert it?” 
 
 — “Don’t exaggerate so, Mother,” Clara replied in- 
 voluntarily. “Those are such harsh words. Misfor- 
 tune: I know of no misfortune. It seems that he and 
 ' Martina do not agree as they did formerly. . Some- 
 
104 FABER 
 
 thing between them seems to have changed. Why not? 
 We all have to leave the Garden of Eden some time, 
 in this way or that. What do you mean by that: to 
 lose your son? You no longer have a son when he is 
 thirty years old and his life is entirely different from 
 your own. If you speak of a misfortune I can think 
 of only one: that you are unable to withdraw your hand 
 from him. A mother must learn to remove her hand 
 / from her children.” 
 
 Anna Faber regarded her daughter speechlessly. She 
 shrank back, groped for a chair, let herself sink heavily 
 down in it and whispered: “That sounds almost as if I 
 had committed a crime against you children. . . .” 
 
 Clara shrugged her shoulders. “That is much too 
 strong,” she said in her deep voice, and took up the 
 
 wax again. 
 
x 
 
 In the meantime Eugene waited. And in waiting he 
 assumed the attitude of the tired swimmer who de- 
 pends on a powerful wave to carry him to shore. While 
 fleeing from his home life he may have imagined that 
 decisive circumstances were working a transformation 
 there. But it was not certain that he had hopes in 
 that direction. On the whole his personality had an 
 oppressive and destructive effect. He made it plain 
 that he resented every sort of scrutiny and every kind 
 act done in his behalf. Whenever Faith asked his 
 needs or wishes he gave short and ill-tempered replies. 
 He made no attempt to hide the fact that her calm, 
 penetrating glance made him as uncomfortable as did 
 the worried, questioning look of his mother. Occa- 
 sionally he appeared at Fleming’s, sat there awhile, be- 
 gan a conversation of no consequence and then sud- 
 denly decided to leave in a hurry. It even seemed to 
 cost him an effort to occupy himself with Christopher ; 
 there was entirely too much natural curiosity and re- 
 proachful wonderment in the clear eyes of the child. 
 It also irritated him that he must first turn to the 
 vigilant Faith whenever he wanted the boy for a few 
 
 hours to himself. One day when he was complaining 
 105 
 
106 FABER 
 
 ill-humouredly about this to Fleming and the latter was 
 at a loss for an answer, Faber added, as a sort of in- 
 voluntary explanation: “Tell me, where shall I go with 
 him? Shall I go promenading? I can do that no 
 longer. That is one of the strange things that happen 
 to one in the Far East—you cannot go promenading 
 any longer. You laugh? But is not this habit, which 
 in Europe we call promenading, much more laughable? 
 A man makes nature the object of his pleasure and 
 conquers it by moving his legs in a hygienic manner.” 
 
 “Well, now!” said Fleming thoughtfully. “What 
 is the matter with you, my dear fellow? What are you 
 doing? Do you really despise us so much as that? 
 Do you despise everything—your mother’s love, your 
 father’s achievement?” As Faber remained silent he 
 added gently: “I am sorry for you, Eugene. You 
 seem to me like some one whose thoughts and words 
 and wishes and actions have been so dammed up that 
 his head is almost bursting. Don’t hurt yourself, my 
 good friend. Remember, a European is still some- 
 thing beautiful and noble—when he happens to be one, 
 nota bene. Do we not carry in our blood two thou- 
 sand years of learning and art and many thousand years 
 of aspiration? Aspiration is not Asiatic.” 
 
 “That may be so,’ murmured Faber, and waved 
 his hand as if he wanted to dismiss a picture from his 
 sight. He arose, crossed the room, halted before Flem- 
 
FABER 107 
 
 ing, and said, while his look wandered aimlessly : “Per- 
 haps I am deceiving myself. Perhaps I have become 
 some one else and only I alone do not know it. Per- 
 haps she is no longer the same woman and every one 
 knows it but me. One should be able to determine 
 that. If only we could see ourselves for one second 
 with the eyes of others! But as that is impossible we 
 get everything wrong.” 
 
 “T don’t understand what you are thinking of,” said 
 Fleming. 
 
 bd 
 
 “It is unnecessary,’ “said Faber eruffly, and turned 
 
 away. And, still looking away, he spoke: “Last night I 
 had a dream. .. .” 
 
 Fleming, who was looking up at him, noticed a 
 shudder go down his back. “Tell me your dream,” he 
 begged. 
 
 But Eugene grasped his hat and departed. 
 
 “No good can come of that,” said Fleming to him- 
 self, and then, turning to his notes, he resumed his in- 
 terrupted work with a sigh. 
 
 That same evening Faber waited at the stopping 
 
 point of the street car for Martina. For an hour and 
 
 
 
 a half he paced back and forth between an advertising 
 bulletin and a lamp-post, and nineteen cars passed down 
 the lonely street before she finally arrived on the twen- 
 
 _ tieth. She was surprised to see him, but she took him 
 to task. She said that by waiting for her he gave her 
 
108 FABER 
 
 no pleasure; it would embitter him against her and she 
 herself would lose her freedom. 
 
 “Freedom ?” he repeated softly, offering her his arm. 
 “Ts that worth so much to you?” 
 
 “Tt is everything,” she replied, without hesitation. 
 
 He said that the streets of a city at night had some- 
 thing terrible about them; the idea that she might be 
 alone on the streets at night had been one of the most 
 painful thoughts that had come to him these past years, 
 tormenting him more than ideas of illness or actual 
 danger. She laughed softly to herself and leaned her 
 cheek lightly against his shoulder. “Foolish Eugene,” 
 she said. “If only you knew what paths I have taken!” 
 
 “So you see I knew it,” he replied. “One feels it, 
 deep down inside. The fact that our outside senses do 
 not know it is merely laxness on the part of our 
 nerves.” 
 
 Upon entering the room Martina spied most beau- 
 tiful flowers, roses and orchids. He had chosen them 
 carefully with a knowledge of her preferences and had 
 tied them in bouquets with much taste. She was again 
 surprised, and it seemed that her dejection because of 
 his restlessness, his aimlessness and instability, which 
 she had felt all these days, was forcing her to speak. 
 She was not able to explain the transformation to her- 
 self in any way and one could see in her face that 
 
FABER 109 
 
 fear dominated her, no matter what direction her 
 thoughts took. 
 
 Faber on the other hand waited with a sort of hun- 
 ger for the outburst of pleasure that he had been ac- 
 customed to see when he brought her flowers. In those 
 days it was always an occasion, the signal for a festival. 
 And now? She touched a Malmaison rose with caress- 
 ing fingers and held her head bowed down. She 
 thanked him in a whisper. Was there about her some- 
 thing of the expression of a debtor who is being pressed 
 for payment and does not know in what coin to pay ?’— 
 who is afraid to ask for a respite, although it is of 
 great importance that such respite be given him? 
 
 Eugene brooded over it, but did not comprehend. 
 
 It turned out, however, that she was unusually tired 
 this evening. She was scarcely able to hold herself 
 upright and even conversation was difficult for her. 
 She sank down in the fauteuil and asked him to pull 
 down the hanging lamp so that the light would not 
 blind her, and closed her eyes. He knelt down to re- 
 ‘move her shoes and she let him do so. He drew the 
 pins out of her hair, released the coiffure and let the 
 golden-brown flood fall carefully over the back of the 
 chair. She permitted this and with eyes still closed ex- 
 tended her thin, cool hand, to which he pressed his lips. 
 He asked if she would not like a cup of tea. She 
 
110 FABER 
 
 nodded. It was already late, past eleven o’clock, and 
 Faith had gone to bed, so he went into the kitchen, 
 placed water on the gas flame, searched for the tea 
 container and prepared tea after the fashion he had 
 learned in China. He carried the teapot into the room, 
 gave Martina the filled cup and held the saucer while 
 she drank in little sips, smiling and still keeping her 
 eyes closed. 
 
 Then he sat down near her and grasped her hand. 
 “Just see how you are wearing yourself down,” he be- 
 gan, and patted the back of her hand continuously. 
 “Pretty soon nothing will be left of Martina. Your 
 cheeks are sunken already; there are one, two, three 
 lines of care on your forehead, and your lips, once so 
 red, are nothing to brag of any longer.” 
 
 “Then I must have become a sad-looking scarecrow,” 
 said Martina, as if in sleep. 
 
 “Tell me, Martina, how you would like to have me,” 
 he continued, with the utmost flattery. “Speak freely. 
 I will be guided by your words.” 
 
 Martina turned her face toward him without open- 
 ing her eyes. “Can any one be something else than he 
 is?’ she asked, and her pale cheeks flushed with colour 
 that fled as quickly as it came. “How do you think you 
 were? How do you think you ought to become? Have 
 I complained about you? After all, we are grown up. 
 Each of us has his way to follow.” | 
 
\ 
 FABER III 
 
 “No, Martina, not that,” he interrupted, pleading. 
 “T want to get beyond the misunderstanding of which 
 neither of us knows what it is really about. To do that 
 we have to find a point where the paths cross. Then 
 we can either walk together or . . .” 
 
 “Or?” she inquired tensely, and opened her eyes for 
 the first time. 
 
 “Or separately. Certainly in no case can we go on 
 as we are doing now—meeting daily for a single in- 
 stant where the paths cross, one tired to exhaustion, 
 the other martyred by his thoughts. And when I say 
 that I will become what you wish of me, no matter 
 what price you ask, no matter what the sacrifice, then 
 naturally I mean likewise that you will make a corre- 
 sponding concession to me, a sacrifice—the price, in 
 fact that I am worth to you.” 
 
 Martina looked at him in amazement. Her eyes 
 seemed to have something starlike about them, so far 
 away they seemed, so scintillating in their tranquil- 
 lity. Suddenly she shook her head vigorously and said 
 in a colourless voice: “No. Don’t ask it. No. 
 No,” 
 
 Faber turned pale. But he kept her hand in his and 
 continued to caress it. “And what if I serve you with 
 all my power?” he continued. “What if the sound of 
 _ your footstep becomes as welcome to me as the peal 
 
 of bells on a feast day to a pious man? What if I am 
 re 
 
112 FABER 
 
 attentive and watchful as never man was attentive and 
 watchful before? What if I honour you as a princess 
 and reach out for your look and await your very 
 breath as a leaf seeks out the light? What if I direct 
 all my efforts to getting rich and doing everything to 
 alleviate the suffering of human beings and to increase 
 the happiness of children which you, in spite of all your 
 effort and work are not able to do? Not even then? 
 Stop, stop—don’t speak just yet. Let me add that these 
 words cannot be repeated, no more than the hour in 
 which they are spoken, no more than the urge which 
 brings them forth now, but will not fashion them a 
 second time. And also let me tell you that all these 
 words have hurt the magic bond of our love, in which 
 we lived so long, you and I, that we begin our rela- 
 tions anew stained by a blemish that cannot be re-. 
 moved. What have you to say in reply?” 
 
 Martina raised her hands, took hold of both his 
 shoulders, looked firmly into his eyes, and replied: “I 
 cannot do it.” 
 
 “And why not, Martina?’ came the question, dull 
 and lifeless from his lips. 
 
 “Why not? That I cannot tell you. If you don’t 
 feel it now as you feel my arms and my breast, then I 
 cannot tell you.” | 
 
 He clutched her wrists and pressed them as in a vise. | 
 “How do you mean that?” he muttered, troubled. 
 
FABER «113 
 
 “Oh, God!” she sighed. Her head sank to the arm 
 of the chair and she wept. 
 
 The few minutes that passed were an eternity. Faber 
 released Martina from his grasp and averted his face, 
 saying: “If you only knew how feverish I am, and how 
 cold!” 
 
 She sat bolt upright and pressed her hand against her 
 mouth. Sitting thus, she looked at him. 
 
 “T must tell you about a dream I had last night,” he 
 said. 
 
 She made room in the seat. “Come here,” she said 
 eagerly, “close to me and tell me your dream. Come, 
 my dear one, very close to me.” She put her arms 
 around his neck, put her head on his breast, and lis- 
 tened. He began: 
 
 “I was sitting in a sailors’ wineroom in a harbor city. 
 Round about me were a lot of dissipated, dissolute ob- 
 jects, men and women. Nobody paid any attention to 
 me, but I knew that if I made the least movement, or 
 spoke only a syllable, they would attack me. But why 
 was I in this wineroom, in which everything was so 
 sad and so infamous? Because I had sunk down as in 
 deep water, and only one thought came to me: Never 
 again will you rise to the surface, for you have lost all 
 that is sweet. Ridiculous, it was exactly this word: 
 sweet. You have lost what is sweet, the voice cried 
 within me, and you cannot imagine with what force. I 
 
114 FABER 
 
 have never before thought of such an expression; noth- 
 ing like this has ever happened to me outside this 
 dream. You must know that this sweetness took the 
 form of something very definite: it seemed to come 
 to me as a silver-white lizard. I was so filled with my 
 desire for it that I threw myself flat on the floor, 
 pressed my face against the dirty boards and remained 
 lying there amid the turbulent laughter of the whole 
 vicious crew, while I dug my finger nails into the wood 
 and bit my lips until they bled. Thereupon one of the 
 women came toward me, the most horrible and lustful 
 of them all; in mockery she bared her bosom and there, 
 between her breasts, glittered the silver lizard exactly 
 as I had pictured it in my terrible vision. I knelt down 
 before her; she grinned like a witch and began moving 
 backward with the animal held aloft; I, in my fear 
 and desperation, could not reach the silver-white sym- 
 bol, and, hemmed in on all sides by the beings in that 
 narrow room, I began to creep after her on all fours, 
 just like an animal, until the hooting and the howling 
 became more and more intense and finally roused me 
 out of my sleep.” 
 
 There was a pause, and then Faber said, hardly 
 audibly, “It seems to me such a dream should hardly 
 ever be told.” 
 
 Martina stared before her for a long time in deep 
 thought. Then she folded her hands about his head, 
 
FABER 115 
 
 looked earnestly and tensely into his eyes, and said: 
 “Come to me in five minutes.” Then she rose and 
 went into her bedroom. He waited there motionless; 
 not a muscle moved, not even an eyelash twitched. And 
 when he rose to follow her he breathed a sigh of libera- 
 tion, as if fetters had suddenly been taken away. 
 
 And after their bodies had been joined together, 
 after lips had been loosened from lips, a silence fell 
 between them, which increased in intensity and gloom 
 from moment to moment and enveloped them like a 
 cloud. Faber had turned his face to the ceiling; his lips 
 remained half open, his eyes stared immovably and on 
 his features seemed written: “Is it possible? Can it 
 really be?” Martina lay in a heap on her side, holding 
 her head between her naked arms; in her eyes was a 
 hint of shame which dared not come into the open, 
 whereas her clear brow reflected the sorrow of a woman 
 who has found irrevocable verification of her fears and 
 ‘apprehensions. 
 
 Tt te A 
 
XI 
 
 FABER arose and sneaked like a miscreant out of the 
 room. Upon reaching his chamber he enveloped him- 
 self in a lounging robe and took a position in the dark- 
 ness near the window. For a while he drew signs and 
 words on the pane with his finger, then sat down on 
 the edge of his bed, spread his fingers wide apart and 
 stared dumbly into the darkness. When dawn arrived 
 he was still sitting motionless on the same spot. 
 
 Later, as he lay with wide-open eyes, he heard Mar- 
 tina’s voice in the corridor, then Christopher’s clear 
 voice, asking for him; then the voice of Faith, calling 
 something to the boy from the stairs in a cheerful 
 tone. Then he heard Faith and Martina talking to- 
 gether and the clatter of dishes—ostensibly they were 
 at breakfast; then Martina departed. 
 
 It was a day of rain. Faber attempted to occupy 
 himself with his drawings, but could not concentrate 
 on one sheet; he seized first this, then that, got up 
 again and again and walked through all the rooms. 
 He rummaged in drawers and cupboards, found a 
 bottle of cognac, took it into his room, and interrupted 
 his work again and again in order to pour a drink. 
 
 He left the house before dinner, dined in a little tav- 
 116 
 
FABER 117 
 
 ern, then sat down in a café and gazed through the 
 misty window pane out on the street—thus passed 
 hour after hour. When twilight came he went to 
 Fleming. “We are going to be a bit jolly to-day, 
 Fleming,” he told him; “I need you. I am going to 
 hunt myself a little silver-white lizard.” 
 
 “You seem to have cheered up considerably, my 
 
 ’ 
 
 dear fellow,” replied Fleming. “How do you imagine 
 you are going to be jolly, and especially with me? 
 And what sort of an animal is it that you are going 
 to hunt for?’ He was disturbed, for Faber’s face 
 bore an expression of insolence and ill-tempered spite. 
 
 “Don’t ask, simply don’t ask. We are going to 
 take a little slumming tour, that’s all. First let me lie 
 a few hours on your bed—it’s a bad habit of mine to 
 take my siesta at your house—and then we will start.” 
 _ Fleming, who almost had a mother’s instinct for 
 Faber, saw how things were with him. He did not 
 first try to dissuade him from his scheme, did not 
 attempt to oppose him, but decided to stay by his side. 
 Perhaps he could thus prevent a misfortune. From 
 ‚time to time he went softly into the bedroom and 
 
 
 
 
 gazed at the features of his friend, who was lying in 
 a deep sleep. “It would be best if he slept on until 
 morning,” he said softly to himself. But that hope 
 was not to be fulfilled. 
 
 The events of this night were entered by Jacob 
 
118 FABER 
 
 Fleming in his notebook while he was still under their 
 spell, and in view of his love of truth and conscien- 
 tious observation no more is needed than to follow 
 his statement, for without comment or criticism it 
 remains wholly objective. The statement reads as 
 follows: 
 
 When Faber awoke he again talked in rather silly 
 fashion about the silver-white lizard; I told him to 
 cease his talk if he would not explain what he meant 
 by it. He thereupon urged our going, and on the 
 street explained that he wanted to visit the so-called 
 Fortuna bar, where, so he had heard, they still enter- 
 tained with nude dancers and similar comedy. I was 
 shocked, for I had never visited such a resort before 
 in my life, but in the face of his obvious agitation it 
 would have been useless to attempt to divert him; so 
 I resigned myself to the unavoidable, merely remark- 
 ing dryly that such places invariably demanded a high 
 toll and to my notion he was not exactly swimming in 
 wealth. He replied that he had money enough, in 
 fact that his purse was still full of dollars left over 
 from his trip, and boasted most intolerably about it. 
 At first they did not want to admit us to the bar be- 
 cause we were not in evening dress, but Eugene be-! 
 came so insistent, meanwhile using a deal of English 
 slang, that they did not dare turn him back, fearing 
 
 
 
FABER 119 
 
 perhaps that they had to do with a foreigner who was 
 probably ready to pay well for his insolence. Eugene 
 immediately ordered champagne, which he gulped like 
 water. I had to join him, or at least pretend I did, 
 and although he was calm enough at first I became 
 more and more anxious, for his expression augured 
 nothing good. Moreover, the repulsive music, the 
 odour of perfume, the heat, the glaring, lustful, and 
 coarse faces of the men and women that I saw round 
 about me, had a depressing effect on me, and when in 
 addition I thought of Martina I could hardly trust my 
 reason. But why speak here about myself; I am here 
 the least interesting; let it suffice that I cudgelled my 
 brains to discover for what reason Eugene had forced 
 me to become a companion and participant in his doings. 
 There was nothing about me to lead him astray or 
 suggest these actions. He referred to the matter later 
 on, but not sufficiently to clear things up for me. 
 
 Among the women whose sad task it is to arouse 
 the sensuality of a horde of pleasure-seekers was one 
 who was undeniably beautiful—black-haired, with a 
 dazzling skin and a seductive figure and, so far as I 
 can judge, a most skilful dancer. Her pirouetting 
 and leaping made one dizzy, and after each of her 
 performances, which could hardly be called decent, the 
 half-drunken auditorium relaxed. Eugene did not 
 remove his eyes from her. After an hour I asked him 
 
120 FABER 
 
 timidly whether we ought not to leave because it was 
 late; he laughed in my face. The girl on her part 
 had become aware of Eugene’s attentiveness; doubt- 
 less he was one to please her, big and handsome as he 
 is, with his pale, suffering expression and his thick, 
 chestnut-brown hair. She began gradually to devour 
 him with her eyes; during an intermission she ap- 
 proached our table, and as if an electrical current had 
 passed through both they immediately began to talk 
 together in a half confidential, half feverish manner. 
 The girl wore nothing but a thin veil across her body; 
 around her forehead was a string of pearls, presumably 
 artificial. I must admit that she laughed and smiled 
 in a way that took one’s breath and her broken and 
 slangy German augmented the unhealthy spell that she 
 diffused. Moreover, Eugene began to talk English 
 with her at once, but such confounded pidgin English 
 that I hardly understood any of it, although I speak 
 English very fluently. I was completely forgotten, 
 not even present so far as those two were concerned. 
 After a time Eugene arose with her; she had men- 
 tioned an exotic dance that he knew; Eugene had 
 always been an exceptional dancer, but the idea that 
 he meant to exhibit himself shamelessly in this room 
 with a dissolute girl to satisfy the appetites of these 
 people was more than I could take calmly; with look 
 and gesture I begged him to abstain; he pushed me 
 
FABER 121 
 
 back with his arm. They danced; it was a repulsive 
 dance, cynical and orgiastic, accompanied by music 
 that seemed like the crash of broken glasses and the 
 howling of hyenas, and when they returned to the 
 table amid the echoing bravos and the clamour of ap- 
 plause they sat down with their hands entwined. Sud- 
 denly I observed that the girl was throwing covetous 
 and admiring glances at the sapphire ring Eugene 
 wore on his finger. I knew that Martina had given 
 him this ring just about ten years before. I can 
 hardly describe my sensation when he removed his 
 ring in order to place it on the finger of this female. 
 And she—she asked whether she might not keep it; 
 thereupon he whispered something in her ear. I could 
 no longer control myself. “Eugene!” I cried, as a 
 warning. He looked boldly at me and remarked, with 
 an expression like that of a man half insane, that he 
 was giving her the ring merely as a loan; to-morrow 
 he would return and redeem it, as if it were in pawn. 
 These words he translated for her; she laughed and 
 embraced him. At that moment his face turned ashen 
 grey. With an expression of disgust, so intense that 
 I have never before seen it on a human countenance, 
 he pushed the girl so rudely from him that she had to 
 seize the edge of the table to keep from falling; she 
 coloured; the uncontrolled amazement in her eyes be- 
 ‘came transformed into indescribable hatred; had she 
 
122 FABER 
 
 possessed a knife she certainly would have stabbed 
 him, for such creatures have a dangerous passion. 
 The incident aroused comment; people crowded around 
 us; the girl raised her arm and made some remark in 
 a hoarse voice. As the clasp had come loose from 
 her veil she stood there completely naked. Eugene’s 
 head was bowed dejectedly; upon being asked to pay 
 his bill he handed me his bill-fold; suddenly a negro 
 appeared on the scene and escorted us out with a threat- 
 ening look. I stammered: “The ring, Eugene, for 
 God’s sake, the ring!” He answered with an angry, 
 deprecatory gesture. He himself and everything about 
 him seemed to me more incomprehensible than ever. 
 We marched through the empty streets in the night. 
 A clock struck three. In the neighbourhood of the 
 Law Courts building we entered a dark side street and 
 came upon a wineroom that was still open or had been 
 reopened for the new day. Eugene drew me in with 
 him. A few questionable guests sat at the wooden 
 tables under a dim light; two or three of them had 
 fallen asleep. We sat down in a far corner and 
 Eugene demanded cognac. I begged him earnestly 
 not to drink the fusel oil that was served here, but he 
 gave no heed. For a time he sat in silence and drank 
 the hellish stuff, of which a whole bottle had been 
 placed before us; a thin trickle of perspiration became 
 noticeable on his forehead. Suddenly he turns to me 
 

 
 | 
 | 
 
 | 
 
 FABER 123 
 
 and says: “Well, you were a witness. No one can 
 accuse me of having been indifferent to the lady. 
 Damned pretty lady. She could eat through ten of 
 me, ten spick and span, and start all over again with 
 a fresh appetite.” He wiped his brow with his hand- 
 kerchief. “What do you mean?” Iask. “You don’t 
 mean to say that she was a lady?” He laughs. 
 “Don’t be provoked, my virtuous Fleming,’ he re- 
 plies. “I mean simply that J am no empty husk. I 
 could have matched her to the last. As for her, she 
 knew I was not a dead one. She suspected what a fire 
 I could have kindled in her, and she in me; yes, even 
 in me. You saw that.” I shrug my shoulders and 
 reply: “Yes, I did.” He continues darkly: “You are 
 on the wrong track, old Fleming, if you think you 
 must treat a woman like that with pharisaical con- 
 tempt. She is wise to the marrow of her bones and 
 Nature tells her no lies. She knows what a woman 
 must know in order to slip through the slimy hands 
 of males and come out more or less unharmed, and 
 you may be certain that once she casts a glance at any- 
 body she is sure of herself and of him. Then the 
 slogan is: Give nothing for nothing, and much for 
 
 much, and when the heart is involved give—under cer- 
 tain circumstances—everything. That’s how things 
 stand.” To which I respond: “Very well, but is it 
 
 your duty, and worthy of you, Eugene Faber, to carry 
 
124 FABER 
 
 her colours? Perhaps there are others who can do 
 her justice, others who can dig in the slime for pearls. 
 But not you. And you know why not.” He looks at 
 me silently for a while and then asks: “Do you believe 
 me, Fleming?” I cannot contradict him, for he is the 
 most honourable of men, incapable of misrepresenta- 
 tion. “Do you believe me?” he continues, bending 
 forward over the table so that I am able to look into 
 his serious brown eyes. “Do you believe me when I 
 tell you that in all these years I have not touched a 
 woman, not even in my thoughts?” I nod. “And 
 you don’t suppose there has been any lack of oppor- 
 tunity or incentive? The world is wide and life is 
 very varied, yet everywhere the same blood runs 
 through men’s veins. And yet not a fibre in me 
 caught fire, in spite of what the mind imagines and 
 fever digs up out of our animal nature. Don’t let us 
 speak about it. Presumably you have never thought 
 about that in your complacent wisdom.’ “No,” I 
 reply, “I have never thought about that.” “Good, 
 that’s what I wanted to hear,” he replies. “And now 
 listen carefully and, if you can, piece this together for 
 yourself; I grasp the goblet, the goblet is full of wine, 
 famished I put it to my mouth and drink and drink, 
 and suddenly discover that it does not slake my thirst; 
 a cold shudder runs through me and suddenly I know 
 that what I am drinking is empty air. How is that 
 
FABER 125 
 
 possible? Perhaps thus: The hand that gives you the 
 goblet is compassionate, you understand, only compas- 
 sionate; nothing else of what you imagined, not even 
 impatient to drink with you, merely compassionate.’ 
 And compassion, Fleming, is the last thing in the‘ 
 world that I want when I come with my whole heart | 
 and soul.” Again he wipes the perspiration from his 
 forehead and I, unhappily, do not understand. It 
 seems to me that he has poured down too much of the 
 vile spirits and that his mental powers are in a mist. 
 Upon observing my astonishment he laughs a short 
 Taugh and then sinks again into brooding silence. I 
 ‘succeed in getting him to leave only after an effort. 
 
 Outside, dawn was breaking; he said he would 
 rather not go home, could he sleep in my house? So 
 ‘we went to my house and in the emergency I pre- 
 ‘pared a bed for him on the sofa. Half undressed, he 
 ‘threw himself upon it and fell immediately into a deep 
 sleep, which lasted fourteen hours without interrup- 
 ition. I myself could rest very little; first of all, be- 
 “cause my day begins without a break at the same time, 
 and then because the events occupied me entirely too 
 “much to let me close an eye. Although I found upon 
 prolonged reflection that many of Eugene’s words 
 were no longer so enigmatic to me as at first, and 
 that they disclosed to me, as if through a cloudy 
 mist, the demoralizing fight of two souls, I am still 
 
126 FABER 
 
 for the most part as much at a loss as before. It 
 seems beyond question, not only that Eugene’s equi- 
 poise has been disturbed, but also that events have 
 taken place which remain hidden from me and which 
 he cannot or will not tell me about. In the meantime 
 I have learned that Martina has gone to England with 
 the Princess, leaving on the afternoon before Eugene 
 came to me and without saying farewell to him. The 
 decision had to be made within an hour; the resolu- 
 tion was made at four o’clock, and at six passports 
 and tickets were ready. I hear that the business con- 
 cerns important conferences with the directors of the 
 mission; the Princess, who naturally did not wish to 
 travel alone, chose Martina as her escort, and the 
 latter was said to have been so happy about it that the 
 letter she left for Eugene was composed of only a 
 few sentences thrown together in the greatest haste. 
 Unfortunately by such rash actions she increases the 
 tenseness of a situation already dangerous, and any 
 one who does not know her as I know her may well 
 doubt the permanence of a tie that I consider unbreak- 
 able from a metaphysical standpoint, no matter how 
 much practical observers and amateur psychologists 
 may shake their heads over it. 
 
XII 
 
 WHEN Faber reached home at about nine o’clock in 
 the evening Faith gave him Martina’s letter. Mar- 
 tina’s departure—he was not prepared for that. His 
 face turned deathly pale. He said nothing, so Faith 
 left the room. He took the letter once more in his 
 hand and unintentionally counted the words—those 
 few words. The tone of the letter was frankly affec- 
 tionate; among other things he read: “You well know 
 “what it means to me to have the Princess wholly to 
 myself for once.” The letter closed as follows: “It is 
 ‘not yet certain how long we will be away, in no case 
 longer than ten days. Faith will provide everything 
 for you; my two men could not be better taken care 
 | of. Farewell. Your Martina.” “Your” was under- 
 lined twice. 
 
 He sat with his head resting on his hands when 
 "Faith returned and inquired whether he needed any- 
 | thing. He asked for black coffee. After a short in- 
 terval she brought the coffee, spread the cloth and put 
 ‘down the cup almost noiselessly. She was not only 
 quiet, but also gave the impression that she wanted to 
 be invisible. She wore a simple black house dress and 
 
 a snow-white apron. Her features also attracted the 
 127 
 
128 FABER 
 
 eye because of something clean in them, even scoured; 
 the look she gave him from under her peculiar thick 
 eyebrows, which had a suggestion of fantasy in their 
 upward swing, was calm, with no glimmer of com- 
 passion, in fact no emphasis on presence or self- 
 consciousness. 
 
 “Did you wait for me last night after Martina 
 left?’ asked Faber. 
 
 “Yes, I stayed up until nearly twelve,’ 
 
 ’ 
 
 she replied. 
 “T did not want you to get the letter so impersonally; 
 I intended to give it to you myself. But you did not 
 come home.” 
 
 Here was no undertone of blame or inquiry, merely 
 fact. He was silent. When she turned to leave he 
 said: “Wouldn’t you like to keep me company a 
 little? Perhaps you will also drink a cup.” 
 
 “Gladly,” she said, brought another cup, sat down, 
 and filled it. He glanced at her hands, which were 
 very well formed; narrow, somewhat bony, with 
 sharply tapering fingers and a pleasing economy of 
 movement. He shook his head and spoke as if to 
 himself, still gazing at her hands. “I have had the 
 feeling until now that you are avoiding me. And not 
 only that, but as if you were doing it in an unfriendly 
 way. Perhaps I was mistaken?” 
 
 “Yes. You were mistaken in that,’ was the dry 
 answer. 
 
FABER 129 
 
 “So much the better. No one wants to start ill 
 feeling in a member of the same household. But I 
 am obstinate. Strange people confuse me. The 
 stranger irritates me, so that I say ‘No,’ even when I 
 should say ‘Yes.’ Mistrust lies in my nature like the 
 germ of a chronic fever. In practically all my dreams 
 I am unjustly persecuted.” 
 
 “Odd. But you had such a happy youth,” said 
 Faith. 
 
 “Happy? <A silly word—happy. No one should 
 describe another’s condition as happy. Who knows of 
 another’s happiness? Happy youth. . . . Well, let us 
 see. We had liberty, more than we craved. We were 
 even reared without religion, so that our spirit might 
 not be hampered. Finally, religion demands submis- 
 ‘sion before a god or a dogma. And we were to be 
 spared such submission. And because they had such 
 ‚fear that we might be hemmed in, and such eagerness 
 ‘to clear all obstacles out of our way, and convinced 
 ‚us with such thoroughness of the omniscience of our 
 own selves, none of us could hurry fast enough to 
 forge his own chains, each in his own way, the very 
 chains from which we had been protected with so 
 much care and worry. One of us bled to death for 
 ‚his learning, in his first intoxication; the second de- 
 ‘Stroyed himself for the sake of a bad woman; the 
 third sold herself into a loveless marriage and is now 
 
130 FABER 
 
 trafficking with the church—and I? My formula is 
 not so simple. It is hard to discover. I won't even 
 attempt to.” | 
 
 Faith listened in rapt attention, her face shining as 
 if from an inner light and her eyes never leaving 
 him. No doubt this readiness and eagerness to listen 
 spurred him on. He began to tell her about his child- 
 hood. Urged on by her animated eyes, he spoke of 
 events and feelings that he probably recalled now for 
 the first time. He said that as a boy he had been so 
 lacking in human sympathy that he got a sort of 
 lascivious pleasure out of exposing the weaknesses of. 
 men to himself and others; no achievement com-, 
 manded his respect, and his first word, his first im- 
 pulse, had always been to mock. He and his brothers 
 and sisters made it a practice not to believe, not to 
 admire, and not to acknowledge, and when they were 
 hardly able to read properly they prepared a satirical, 
 periodical, to which each contributed caricatures or 
 parodies every week. Once a priest had come to their 
 home to deliver a message to his father; the parents 
 being away, he had engaged pleasantly in conversation 
 with the children, of whom Karl, the oldest, was then 
 twelve years; in a short time they had treated the good 
 
 
 
 priest, who was well along in years, to such a mass of 
 blasphemies and indecencies that he had crossed him- 
 self continuously and at last taken to flight, accom- 
 
 | 
 
FABER 131 
 
 panied by the shrill laughter of the four. The mother 
 had amused herself royally at this incident and swept 
 aside his father’s timid scruples. Once his father re- 
 ceived from one of his friends the gift of a lovely old 
 painting, which gave him a great deal of pleasure and 
 which he hung in the living room. The man in question, 
 who had given the painting to his father, was ob- 
 noxious to Eugene and Clara for some reason or 
 ‘Other; he was a boastful, silly, and gossipy fellow, 
 ‘whose decency and friendly disposition the father 
 
 
 
 ‚often had to defend against the two. But they nursed 
 their ineradicable hatred, and one day when they were 
 ‘alone in the house, as was so often the case, they made 
 
 | 
 
 use of the opportunity, took the Flaubert-gun which 
 ‘Karl had bought for himself, and made the oil paint- 
 
 
 
 ing on the wall their target until it was as full of 
 holes as a sieve and completely destroyed. These were 
 ‘not solely foolish and undisciplined boys’ tricks; they 
 | 
 
 (were more, much more, and with a penetrating ex- 
 
 
 
 pression Eugene drove home his words: they were akin 
 ‘to the rioting of lawless groups. For in this case, 
 and in every similar case, there was never any thought 
 ‘of punishment or admonition. The most that happened 
 ‘was cross-examination and criticism. This patient 
 temporizing, this indulgent comprehension and consid- 
 ‘eration, was a constant incitement, smothered all 
 
 ‘warnings of conscience, and undermined all restrain- 
 
 
 
 | 
 | 
 1 
 | 
 
132 FABER 
 
 ing bulwarks. He especially found himself drawn 
 more and more into wild and irresponsible actions of 
 spite through this, as if there were within him a secret 
 will and a wish to strike against opposition that would 
 finally overcome forces that were running wild so 
 disastrously. He recalled that as early as seven years 
 of age he had lied passionately whenever the owner- 
 ship of personal possessions came into question, not 
 as the result of teaching and example, or the comment 
 of adults and external influences; no, rather from his 
 inner promptings, from his inner impulse toward de- 
 struction and revolt. He had plunged into paroxysms 
 of anger when any one near him declared that he 
 owned this or that object or possessed this or that 
 thing; he was then impelled solely by the desire tc 
 take this from him or at least to challenge the owner- 
 ship, and in many instances like this he and his 
 brothers and sisters came to fights not wholly harm- 
 less. Once when Roderick had received a watch for 
 his birthday he rushed upon him with a knife, robbed 
 him of his watch, and then threw it out of the window 
 
 
 
 to the street, in order that it might not belong to any 
 one. He recalled that one of his father’s patients, 2 
 merchant, who had been coming regularly for some 
 time, was suspected one day of perpetrating petty 
 thefts in the anteroom. Now an album was missing 
 then a bronze figure, then again a porcelain dish 
 
FABER 133 
 
 When his parents discussed the matter and considered 
 the advisability of informing the police he flew into 
 violent opposition and decided on the foolhardy plan 
 of not only warning the man but also taking money 
 secretly from his father and giving it to the thief. He 
 did both and later confessed this to his father. He 
 still remembered clearly the tragic helplessness in his 
 father’s face; then he suddenly regretted his act and 
 in his way of always going to extremes he threw 
 himself down and sobbed. All that seemed long ago, 
 said Eugene, with melancholy reflection, but in truth 
 it was very near, even contemporary, for it had be- 
 come thoroughly a part of him. When a mature man 
 speaks of his childhood he sees the distant past flit by 
 like a shadow, miraculously shortened, he might say; 
 but when he lives it, it extends over unending num- 
 bers of days and nights; he found that childhood par- 
 ticularly was the longest, the most retarding, and in 
 development the most cruel of all the ages of man. 
 Where the thirty-year-old man experiences a moment 
 of darkness, or dejection, of criminal impulse, the lad 
 feels himself damned for eternity; for him the hour: 
 has much more weight and an importance that cannot 
 be estimated in comparison. He did not wish to look 
 back, but when he did it seemed to him that he had 
 followed a cold, bare, fearfully lonely path without 
 hope of turning about or finding a way back, going 
 
134 FABER 
 
 blindly and wildly toward destruction; but at the mo 
 ment when he felt that the whole world was lost tc 
 
 
 
 him he had met Martina. 
 
 He stopped and Faith did not interrupt his silence 
 Her eyes were lowered, her expression showed intens« 
 reflection; with her right hand she broke up bits o! 
 biscuit on the tablecloth. 
 
 “Without Martina I go back to the old, cold, bare 
 path,” he said, after a long pause. “In these six 
 years I have seen this secret danger grow and could 
 not defend myself. It was like the darkness that 
 comes slowly down over you. For seven years I had 
 known the light of day, and when I had to leave her 
 the light began to fade even then. And then again 
 seven years—they will be over soon.” A deep ver- 
 tical furrow showed on his forehead. “I suppose you 
 think me a sad caricature, a man who depends so ex- 
 clusively on his love for his wife. You think so, 
 don’t you?” 
 
 Faith slowly shook her head. 
 
 “But it is not that,” he continued; “love, that does 
 not signify anything.” He was silent again for a 
 while, then he asked suddenly : “How did you actually 
 get acquainted with Martina—under what circum- 
 stances? Can you tell me that?” 
 
 Faith reddened quickly. Immediately afterward all 
 colour left her face. “I would have to go back too 
 
FABER 135 
 
 far for that,’ she replied softly. “It presupposes too 
 much of my life.’ 
 
 “Pardon me,” Faber said, somewhat shocked; “I 
 don’t wish to appear indiscreet.” 
 
 She made a gesture of aversion. “There are things 
 that call for nothing but silence. But that is never- 
 theless possible. When I first saw Martina I was lying 
 in a hospital. The Princess had sent her to me. I 
 was very ill at that time, suffering more from the 
 loss of a will to live and go on than anything else. 
 Also my heart was not acting very well, but my phys- 
 ical distress was of the least importance. The Prin- 
 cess had known me long, knew my name and my 
 past life, and naturally knew what she was about 
 when she caused Martina to visit me. If there is a 
 remedy for an ailing human being she will find it, no 
 matter what turn fate has taken. She is inspired. 
 She conjures up the picture of a man—his suffering, 
 his acts, his guilt; she imagines the most unattractive 
 portrait of him and forms her judgment, which seems 
 to come from on high and sounds like a divine revela- 
 tion. I still recall how the door opened and Mar- 
 tina entered. My first feeling was one of astonish- 
 ment. How is it possible, thought I, that something 
 so radiant still exists in the world, in this world? She 
 seats herself at my bedside, she speaks, she takes my 
 hand, she laughs, she is gentle, and after a quarter of 
 
 | 
 
136 FABER 
 
 an hour I seem transformed. There was a stone in 
 my breast, my whole inner self had turned to stone; 
 suddenly it moved away and life began again.” 
 
 Faber drank in the serious and emphatic words that 
 came from her lips. “I can well believe it,” he mur- 
 mured, and placed his folded hands on the table. 
 
 “At that time I did not have the least desire to 
 enter into friendly relations with any one again, not 
 the very least,” Faith continued, and Faber observed 
 that she spoke of this period only with an effort, over- 
 coming a deep reluctance; “I can’t describe how I felt. 
 I simply did not want to make the effort any more. 
 I was in dread when the day dawned after any of the 
 countless sleepless nights; the striking of every hour 
 terrified me. Martina took me out of all this. A new 
 world suddenly opened for me and bade fair to make 
 me forget the old. Yet nothing really happened. 
 There was no direction, no plan, no discussion, no 
 preconsidered action; it merely came about because she 
 is without guile, wholly innocent through and through, 
 and because everything she says and does comes out 
 of the nature of things, so that one never doubts, 
 never resists; such an apparition was wholly new to 
 me. Later, when I was already settled in this house 
 and had need of a few new dresses and lingerie she 
 went with me to the shops, and when, on several occa- 
 sions, I had to consult public officials about my papers 
 
FABER 137 
 
 she made this an outing; we traversed the street laugh- 
 ing like schoolgirls; I suddenly found it a pleasure to 
 buy a dress and a hat, and the police officer, who 
 would have been sullen had I come alone, was agree- 
 able and courteous because she stood by my side. 
 People adapt themselves to her; they hide their evil 
 qualities from her; no liar can tell a lie when she 
 looks at him. And she does not know this—she is 
 always innocent. I have been living with her many 
 months and yet she has not asked once about my past, 
 not even with a look. She takes you into her confi- 
 dence and is content with you as you are. She does 
 not deceive herself; tangible things do not deceive 
 Ber.” 
 
 “Yes, that is true, she is like that, exactly like that,” 
 said Faber, with a brooding expression. “She never 
 asked you questions—yes, that is the actual Martina. 
 You could have given me nothing more characteristic. 
 She is without curiosity almost to a laughable degree. 
 She carries it so far that she forgets to ask about 
 things—actually forgets—which would be both impor- 
 tant and useful for her to know. I often became dis- 
 tressed years ago because she never asked about any- 
 thing. One might imagine that she was not interested 
 in any one, not even in those who were closest to her.” 
 
 Faith smiled. “Without curiosity, you call it,” she 
 remarked; “that is something most unusual in a 
 
138 FABER 
 
 woman. But it comes from the fact that she knows 
 nothing about convulsion, Nearly all people to-day 
 act convulsively. She is free from it, she is never 
 under a strain, and he who is not under a strain is 
 naturally also not curious.” 
 
 “But didn’t you hope she would ask?” Faber in- 
 quired. “Did not her reticence seem lack of interest 
 to you? Surely one redeems oneself when one can 
 confide in a friend.” 
 
 “No, I did not want that,” Faith replied softly. 
 “Why uncover the past when it is so dark? By being 
 near Martina and with her I became more and more 
 calm; it seemed sometimes as if the horror had hap- 
 pened to me in a former life. When I am alone for 
 a longer time, of course everything comes back to 
 me, and then I know it actually happened, and hap- 
 pened to me.” 
 
 She raised her look and met his. They gazed at 
 each other, each occupied with his own fate. It was 
 unusually quiet in the house and on the street. Only 
 a light rain trickled almost imperceptibly on the win- 
 dow panes. But when one listened for a time it took 
 on the sound of heavy knocking. 
 
 “Did you ever hear the name of Henry Kapruner ?” 
 Faith asked suddenly, with a changed, hoarse voice 
 and without turning from his look. 
 
 He reflected. Yes, he had heard the name. Did 
 
FABER 139 
 
 she refer to the revolutionist and radical prophet? 
 He had read of him in foreign newspapers. “He was 
 shot, if I recall rightly,” he added. 
 
 “Shot? No. Killed. Massacred.” She was as 
 white as the table linen. She dropped her eyes and 
 after a while said with difficulty: “I am his widow.” 
 
 She became silent and Faber did not dare to break 
 her silence. He gazed at her nervously moving hand 
 and waited. It seemed that something was urging 
 her to speak and that by mention of the name she had 
 already gone too far to retrace her steps. It seemed 
 also that the frankness with which Faber had spoken 
 of his boyhood years had stirred the desire in her to 
 reciprocate his confidence. 
 
 And so, speaking in a pleasant though sombre tone 
 and in an even rhythm, she began her story. 
 
XIII 
 THE STORY FAITH TOLD 
 
 “I was born in a middle-sized North German town 
 and passed part of my childhood and youth in south- 
 ern Germany on an estate belonging to a brother of 
 my mother. It was a large and beautiful estate, in 
 extensive wooded and hilly country. My father came 
 from a Junker family, that is to say, from the lesser 
 nobility; his rank as officer raised him to the ruling 
 caste. He could consider himself a patron of the 
 town, and this position, which he assumed, was 
 granted him. I saw constantly only men who de- 
 meaned themselves before him or who flattered him. 
 When he met no opposition he was an agreeable and 
 polite man, although distant and formal. 
 
 “My mother was of much nobler birth than he, 
 Every moment of her life gave proof of her descent 
 from an ancient house and a lineage historically 
 famed, which had fought for the faith in the eastern 
 provinces in ancient times and had produced men of 
 undying renown. My father respected her pride of 
 birth and in the family circle treated her with rather 
 formal distinction. I mentioned before that my rela- 
 
 tions to the Princess went back far; the Princess is a 
 140 
 
FABER 141 
 
 relative of my mother several degrees removed and 
 my mother had never forgiven her for stepping out 
 of her sphere of exclusiveness and making herself 
 common with the people, as she expressed it. In my 
 childhood I heard a great deal said about the Prin- 
 cess, but solely derogatory, even among the relatives 
 in South Germany; but when, at about my fifteenth 
 year, I had an opportunity of seeing her, I was greatly 
 struck by her beauty and gentleness and began to 
 doubt much, although timidly and almost uncon- 
 sciously. She had come because my mother had de- 
 manded it. My mother wished to see her once more. 
 She was ill and expected to die. 
 
 “I do not think we were poor; certainly we were 
 not rich. ‘ Jewels and furnishings had been handed 
 down for hundreds of years. Our mode of life might 
 have been said to fit our station. This was deter- 
 mined by irrevocable forms and laws. It laid down 
 tules for every individual, affecting what he said and 
 what he did. None could say or do anything not 
 expected of him. Social intercourse developed accord- 
 ing to a program. Judgments on men and events 
 always seemed dictated by a higher authority. To 
 oppose this was impossible. To express an opinion 
 that was not the opinion of all would have caused the 
 greatest consternation. The relatives in the south 
 were slightly more liberal, but actually so only in 
 
142 FABER 
 
 words, in expressions, and in the quickened tempera- 
 ment; the fundamental note, when I come to think of 
 it, was in harmony with the same rigidity. The mood 
 was better, and laughter came more easily. To me it 
 was as different as day and night. 
 
 “Naturally when one is brought up in such an 
 atmosphere it becomes difficult for the mind to under- 
 stand that there is such a thing as a different custom 
 and a different life. How can it be discovered? It 
 does not exist in the imagination, and the will is 
 wholly suppressed. To-day I know. To-day I know 
 that I was a marionette up to my twentieth year, for 
 then ideas first came to me and the old clock would no 
 longer keep time. That is to say, there arrived some 
 one who took the wheels apart, cut the strings and 
 looked inside to see whether it actually contained a 
 human soul. Up to that time my whole existence had 
 been made up of—what shall I say?—Jiving under 
 restraint. Every wish was impeded by restraint. All 
 thoughts were by compulsion, all intercourse was by 
 compulsion, every conversation was a ceremonial rite. 
 When alone I was in an unfathomable empty space, 
 almost gruesome; when among people I was in an 
 iron cage. And all without knowing it, which gives 
 everything a ghostly cast, despite the fact that I at- 
 tended balls and the theatre, indulged in sports and 
 talked about the future and my hopes. You turn. 
 
| FABER 143 
 
 around on the same spot, and people remark, ‘That is 
 a lovely view,’ and you reply, ‘Yes,’ and strike an atti- 
 tude of rapture, and he who stands behind you, who 
 “holds the strings in his hands, keeps watch to see that 
 you do not go one step too far, so that your rapture 
 “does not exceed the proper measure. I recall the 
 “terror I experienced when some one described a new 
 book to me, or merely mentioned its title—a strange 
 feeling of terror such as comes when you are used to 
 sleeping behind barred doors and suddenly hear some 
 one draw back the bolt. You are always trembling; 
 there are railings right and left wherever you go; be- 
 yond is the Unknown, the Danger, the Unfettered. 
 Thus you experience nothing, and apprehend nothing, 
 you do not even hear or see; all the senses are im- 
 prisoned, and thus thousands exist, and exist even now. 
 In time, and very, very slowly, came a thought that 
 disturbed me: I am not really myself, I am a dif- 
 ferent ‘I,’ perhaps not that of a human being, but the 
 ‘T’ of a shadow or an idol. And I asked myself 
 logically: where am I, and who am I, if my ‘TI’ does 
 not belong to me, if I am the ‘I’ of my father, and 
 my mother, and my relatives and my ancestors? That 
 was actually the beginning of confusion or secession, 
 as you will. 
 “Tt was soon after I became twenty years old that 
 I travelled again to the estate of my relatives in order 
 
144 FABER 
 
 to pass the summer and fall there. To forget thi 
 summer is hardly possible, for it was the one during 
 which the war broke out. I had not a trace of am 
 inkling or expectation of that and I knew nothing o: 
 world affairs; I was merely pleased with the less re 
 stricted life in the country. In the first days I ever 
 made all sorts of plans with my cousins; there were 
 three sisters between sixteen and twenty, so that I was 
 the oldest. All three were pretty and clever girls 
 although decidedly haughty ; they considered any mem- 
 ber of the middle class a being of second rank, and 
 once I overheard an old master craftsman, whose 
 greeting they had scarcely acknowledged, say behind 
 their backs: ‘Dear God of mine, it seems you must 
 have made the likes of me on the eighth day.’ I got 
 along excellently with them, chiefly because I pos- 
 sessed the faculty of never taking sides and always 
 adopted a friendly attitude. 
 
 “Our favourite visit was to a tenant who lived 
 about half an hour from the manor house and who 
 had instituted a kennel of pedigreed dogs, all huge 
 bulldogs. We girls were on good terms with the ani- 
 mals, of which there were six, or eight the last year, 
 for we knew practically all since birth and each one 
 of us had a dog that she preferred and that was par- 
 ticularly devoted to her. We often moved over the 
 countryside with the whole pack; a beautiful sight it 
 
FABER 145 
 
 
 
 was—the dogs obeying on the instant, and the young 
 women in white dresses; then we would rest, with the 
 
 
 
 dogs around us, one at the feet of his mistress, another 
 with his head in her lap, a third before her in a ma- 
 
 jestic pose. I can still see the animals, with their dark 
 
 
 
 attentive eyes and their powerful, supple bodies; some- 
 nervously with low growls, while their lips trembled. 
 The tenant never neglected to warn us to have a care 
 and keep two of the dogs, of whose disposition he 
 was not confident, in leash; in spite of the fact that 
 
 times I was almost frightened when they started up 
 
 
 
 we moved within an area surrounded by fences it hap- 
 | pened at times that strangers strayed into it—some- 
 thing that might easily produce a catastrophe. But of 
 ‘this we had gradually become wholly oblivious. One 
 day when we were gossiping while camping under the 
 willows near the stream my dog gave a warning noise. 
 I ordered her to desist; but she sprang up and took 
 several tremendous leaps toward the wood. Two, 
 three of the other dogs follow barking; before we can 
 gather our wits a horrible cry rings out; we dash to 
 the spot; there lies a man: the dog has felled him to 
 the ground and has already lacerated his shoulder and 
 the upper part of one arm. We stand paralyzed by 
 terror. I am the first to seize the dog and drag him 
 away; my youngest cousin runs to the water and 
 moistens her handkerchief; another tries to stop the 
 
146 FABER 
 
 flow of blood with moss; the third hurries to the 
 tenant’s house for help, for the man has become un- 
 conscious. Men-servants arrive with a litter; the in- 
 jured man is carried to the tenant’s house; the physi- 
 cian is called and he directs that the dog be examined 
 and binds the wounds of the badly injured man. It is 
 his verdict that the injury is not mortal, but that the 
 recovery will take weeks, provided always that the dog 
 is not suffering with rabies. This was not likely, and 
 it turned out later that the dog was not affected. It 
 would have been both difficult and ill-advised to trans- 
 port the injured man into the city; and as ordinary 
 comforts were not available at the tenant’s house he 
 was carried into the manor house the following day 
 at the order of my uncle, so that he might be nursed 
 and given the Pasteur treatment there. My cousins 
 and I visited him alternately, for we felt guilty toward 
 him, and I even more than the others; we learned that 
 his name was Kapruner and that he was a private 
 tutor who had been living in the near-by town for the 
 last few months; he was a man in the middle thirties, 
 and when I saw him for the first time and felt his 
 penetrating look upon me while he asked a few ques- 
 tions in an unconcerned and friendly fashion, I felt 
 myself become strangely disturbed and must have con- 
 ducted myself like a very foolish girl, for he smiled 
 
FABER 147 
 
 continuously, although I knew that he was suffering 
 severe pain. 
 
 “I expected that the man who had nearly bled to 
 death through our carelessness would stay in the 
 manor house and be nursed there until he was on a 
 fair way to recovery; this was both stated and de- 
 cided on. But on the third day the motor ambulance 
 came from the city and removed the patient, who was 
 still suffering from a severe fever. I was greatly 
 _ astonished by this; I asked the cause of the change in 
 plan. My cousins shrugged their shoulders, as much 
 astonished as I; my aunt answered evasively and at 
 a loss; I turn to my uncle, and his face reflects a 
 peculiar bitterness. He does not wish to answer me; 
 but I persist; thereupon he declares unwillingly, and 
 with a show of reluctance, that he has discovered only 
 to-day that Kapruner is an individual of bad repute. 
 “How so?” I ask, horrified. But he does not wish to 
 give me any further explanation. I persist. Such 
 obstinacy on my part is new even to me. He finally 
 explains to me that Kapruner has been occupied for 
 years with the production and dissemination of revo- 
 | lutionary writings; he is a destroyer of youth and a 
 | poisoner of the mind, an enemy of society and of the 
 | state, and any one who respects his station cannot 
 tolerate a man of this character for a single day in 
 
148 FABER 
 
 his house and in the neighbourhood of his family. All 
 this sounded trumped up to me and had something 
 of an undertone of cowardice which did not escape 
 me. Later on I often observed this sort of cowardice 
 under similar circumstances. My brooding over what 
 I had heard brought me nothing, for I did not asso- 
 ciate it with any idea. But two facts seemed to me 
 incontrovertible: First, the face and the personality of 
 the man did not seem compatible with the report of 
 his evil practices; secondly, the act of turning a man 
 in such a dangerous condition out of the house was a 
 cruelty that could not be justified. The» more I 
 weighed the two matters, the more uncertain I be- 
 came. My uncle had even given strict orders against 
 our making inquiry about Kapruner’s condition; he 
 could not have conducted himself worse if his house 
 had sheltered a patient with a contagious disease. It 
 came about that a university professor from the city 
 paid a visit to my relatives; during a favourable mo- 
 ment I found an opportunity to speak to him alone and 
 asked him about Kapruner; I encountered the same 
 embarrassment, the same cowardice. When he had 
 overcome his astonishment at my question, he hur- 
 riedly stammered something like this: a man, perhaps 
 animated by the best of motives—he would not dis- 
 pute on that point—but certainly an irresponsible and 
 reckless fellow who was a danger to sacred institu- 
 
FABER 149 
 
 tions, one of those numerous modern agitators who by 
 speech and writing impair the structure of the state 
 that has been reared so painfully and for some reason 
 cannot be sufficiently checked by the universal ban 
 against them. He hoped before heaven that I had not 
 shown any sort of partiality to a character like this. 
 On that point I reassured him, but I was no longer 
 willing to depend on what somebody had heard or 
 said; during my first visit to the city I bought one of 
 Kapruner’s writings and read it secretly at night. It 
 was a social-political brochure, much too deep for my 
 understanding, but it made me feel, rather darkly, but 
 with more and more conviction during further read- 
 ings, that here fought an eloquent and upright spirit . 
 of tremendous importance, who was engaged with all 
 his powers and talents in lightening the burdens of 
 his fellow men. Suddenly I was overcome with anger 
 at the conduct of my relatives, and this increased hour 
 by hour. This happened all at once. I saw myself 
 equally guilty in a crime, worse still, in an indecent 
 and dishonourable undertaking. I did not want Ka- 
 pruner to believe that I was in agreement with my 
 telatives and that I had thoughtlessiy_ reconciled myself 
 to what had happened. So I wrote him, informed 
 him of my feelings, and begged him for a few lines 
 in reply, giving the address of the tenant, whom I 
 had first notified that I might call at his house for a 
 
150 FABER 
 
 letter. Kapruner replied in friendly condescension 
 but not without an air of bitter resignation. In con- 
 clusion he asked me to write him about myself; my 
 words had moved him; my conduct was so unusual 
 when compared with the temper of my surroundings, 
 that he almost felt sympathy for me. Thus we began 
 a correspondence. Each fresh letter from him re- 
 moved something of my hardened shell; each sent a 
 ray of light into the dark recesses of my heart; each 
 contained an idea that startled me. I had not the 
 faintest conception that such ideas existed, that the 
 world could be regarded from another side, that one 
 man could unlock so much for another. I saw my 
 dungeon; I was able to grasp the bars with my hands; 
 I recall that from now on I hardly slept or ate, so 
 thoroughly did these thoughts consume me. And 
 imagine my feelings when finally we saw each other, 
 and met, always secretly, in secret places of the coun- 
 tryside. To meet became a necessity for us; in the 
 meantime he had entirely recovered and his wound 
 had healed, although a lameness remained in his left 
 arm. He said that he had been able to keep the news 
 of his troublesome accident from his mother, as she 
 was visiting in her native province during his illness 
 and had returned only a few days ago; he shared the 
 household with her and had already told her about 
 me. What he told me about his mother was very 
 
 = = 
 
FABER 151 
 
 important, but did not strike me so; I was too eager 
 ‘to profit by his teaching, to bare my uneventful, nar- 
 row life to him, just as one avows sinful conduct in 
 the confessional. I feared greatly that I might be dis- 
 covered, although declarations of war and the tumult 
 of war filled the earth these very days and turned 
 suspicious eyes from me. My father arrived for 
 twenty-four hours; he noticed as little as the others 
 how things stood with me, so that I profited by the 
 universal confusion. I, too, was drawn into the mad 
 whirl by the wild intoxication and the lust for battle 
 all about me, by enthusiasm shown by men of the 
 highest and lowest rank, but Kapruner wanted me 
 otherwise. He was calm and cool, he alone, and once, 
 toward evening, as we walked through the woods he 
 spoke to me about it. I shall never forget the day and 
 the hour; it was on the fifth of September and the 
 whole landscape was bathed in a sunset red as blood. 
 He said that there was but one thing that he hated 
 with heart and soul, deep down to the marrow of his 
 bones, and that was force and might. And then in 
 his quiet manner he explained to me how all the mis- 
 fortunes of mankind originated in might and oppres- 
 sion, speaking in his der voice, which always stirred 
 a rumbling echo in h’, breast and which convinced 
 me without my he: “ig his words. Lies were born 
 from force and oppression, incessantly, undeniably. 
 
152 FABER 
 
 The whole history of mankind was the result of coer- 
 cion and force, a continuous succession of blood 
 sacrifices, battle atrocities, civil wars, executions and 
 murder in every form. Thousands always rose up 
 against a bringer of peace and a prophet of beauty and 
 happiness—preaching hatred and destruction, hatred 
 between peoples, race hatred, and what they lacked in 
 telling arguments they filled out with lies, nothing but 
 lies; they were filled and animated by nothing else 
 but greed, envy of competitors, and lust for power 
 and possessions. No great physician, no great in- 
 ventor, no great astronomer had ever enjoyed even 
 approximately so much veneration and fame as those 
 who goaded their fellow men into death by the mil- 
 lions, and any one who dared oppose this was silenced 
 and annihilated even in the memories of men. But 
 to fear such a fate was impossible, even if the wall to’ 
 be scaled reached as high as the heavens, even if one 
 sank up to the neck in the ruin wrought by fire and 
 destruction, started by force and lies. One must pro- 
 claim that all men are the children of God, equally 
 members of one body, and that one cannot rob, cheat, 
 and revile one’s neighbour without robbing, cheating, 
 and reviling oneself. It was necessary to live accord- 
 ing to the teachings of Christ, in the spirit and the 
 truth, not merely according to $he letter and the lie. 
 Yet for nineteen hundred years only solitary indi- 
 
| FABER 153 
 
 viduals had made the attempt or done it, and these 
 had suffered nothing less than the fate of Christ him- 
 self. For this reason every fifth man in our civiliza- 
 tion found his end in the poorhouse, or in the hospital, 
 or in the asylum for the insane, and in times of war 
 every third man fell on the battlefield or through star- 
 vation and epidemics. Something had to be done 
 about it, for with such a burden on his conscience 
 man could no longer live, nor breathe, nor laugh, nor 
 entertain happy thoughts. Work must be made inde- 
 ‘pendent of money, and there must no longer be judge 
 
 
 
 ‘or punishment; no one must seize possession of the 
 ‘body and soul of another; man must reach the state 
 that makes him see a bit of his God in another human 
 being and become always aware and vitally conscious 
 that he will make God suffer, when he lets the vilest 
 of his brothers suffer; that he will make God starve, 
 when he permits a child to starve. 
 
 “Thus he spoke to me, this outlaw, the man who 
 had been turned out of the house I lived in as if he 
 were afflicted with vermin. I took note of it, word 
 for word; I treasured it in my memory, and I know 
 that for me it will never grow old or fade. 
 
 “Meanwhile we had been seen together that day. 
 But this seemed so unlikely that it was not believed. 
 I was therefore watched and surrounded by spies, and 
 when they had become sure I suddenly discovered 
 
154 FABER 
 
 nothing but cold, antagonistic faces round about me 
 my cousins no longer extended their hands, my uncle 
 and aunt formally dropped their eyes when they saw 
 me, and even the servants looked shyly and darkly at 
 me. I learned much later that Kapruner, whose 
 former lapses would have been forgiven and forgotter 
 gladly had he held his peace, had made no secret of 
 his convictions, and in his overconfidence had put him- 
 self at odds with a whole nation. He had taken the 
 dangerous course of warning men against the uni- 
 versal madness and foretold its terrible results fot 
 Germany, for Europe and for mankind at large. He 
 was answered with anger and wrath. He no longeı 
 dared appear on the streets and, as I learned later, 
 fled to one of his friends, who had a lonely lodge 
 near by and kept him hidden for weeks. He left this 
 place of refuge only to see me and only his mother 
 knew where he was. On my part I suddenly saw 
 myself involved in his fate; I was expected to make 
 an explanation. I was not prepared for that; I did 
 not know what to say, what to do; should I defend 
 myself, should I accuse others? Against what should 
 I turn? Then one day my uncle, stern and drawn up 
 to his full height, asked me whether the facts meant 
 that I carried on relations with Kapruner. I had been 
 seen in his company not once, but many times; was 
 this true and, if so, how could I explain this incom- 
 
 
 

 
 FABER 155 
 
 srehensible conduct? I replied that it was true and 
 that I had nothing to explain except the one thing that 
 [ considered my fortune indissolubly bound up with 
 that of Kapruner. If the beams of the ceiling had 
 crashed down my relatives could not have been more 
 ıorrified. I looked into nothing but pale, distorted 
 faces. I must say in passing that up to that moment 
 [ had not formulated the thought that I spoke so 
 almly and confidently, not even a whisper of it had 
 yeen hinted at or discussed between Kapruner and 
 myself, and therefore I also did not know whether 
 ae wanted me as wife and companion. I had spoken 
 is a wife, and wholly against my intention. But their 
 looks and expressions drove it out of me as if by 
 command. Then the following happened. My uncle 
 decided that I should not leave my room until my 
 father had been notified and his verdict reached us. 
 When I tried to defend myself he ordered me locked 
 up. So that is the logic you use, thought I, and this 
 is your argument: Force. How truly Kapruner was 
 right! I had to submit. But after I had passed the 
 first night in the locked room and my agitation over 
 this insult had grown almost unbearable, I made plans 
 for flight. During the next night I made a rope out 
 of bed-linen and the cords of hangings and let myself 
 down from the window. With only a shawl about my 
 shoulders I walked three hours in the rain on the long 
 
156 FABER | 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 way to the city; at five in the morning I arrived a 
 the house of Kapruner’s mother. Her astonishmen 
 was no less than my anxiety and helplessness. I re 
 lated what had passed; she listened to me earnestly i1 
 silence. Then, after a while she told me that her sor! 
 had been unable to feel secure in his late asylum any 
 longer; the military authorities had intended to seiz 
 his person; two days before he had fled the country 
 she had been in the greatest anxiety up to two hour: 
 ago, wondering whether he had been able to pass the 
 Swiss border; at midnight she had finally received the 
 soothing news through a friend who had been taker 
 into their confidence. I became silent and brooded 
 Surely my situation was strange enough. Here I wa: 
 in the house of the mother of a man for whom I hac 
 just thrown away everything that means existence 
 and future to a young girl—family ties, feelings of 
 kinship, even what, according to middle-class standards, 
 is called honour. And I did not even know whether 
 this man was disposed to accept the sacrifice I brought 
 him in my outburst of emotion, and was without 
 means, without experience, without plans of action— 
 what was to become of me? I dared not even stay in 
 the house of Frau Kapruner; it would give my people 
 no difficulty to trace me thither; weeks might elapse 
 before Kapruner learned of my adventurous step and 
 his reply came, because the utmost care had to be exer- 
 
FABER 157 
 
 cised in written communication with him; whither, in 
 the meantime, was I to go? I was not even certain 
 xf him; that is to say, my inner voice encouraged me, 
 und even his voice spoke to me and approved what I 
 aad done, but I felt ashamed before this woman, to 
 whom I had probably exposed myself too naively and 
 inreservedly in the first rush of my feelings. Cer- 
 ainly I noticed that he had told her about me and in 
 uch a manner that I had no reason to tax myself 
 vith being importunate; her look scrutinized me to 
 he very bone; she caught up my every look and 
 ‘very movement and tried to fit them into a picture 
 
 bi me. I did not feel at ease with her and I could 
 
 
 
 levelop no emotion for her. She might have been in 
 he middle fifties and had once been beautiful; her 
 face still bore traces of it, but she had eyes deeply 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 faced, which always affrights me, and a sort of reti- 
 ence which numbed me. In order not to delay too 
 ong with all this, lest I do not complete my story by 
 lawn, I will say that I lodged the next few days in 
 . pension for strangers; there I telegraphed a request 
 or money to a cousin of my father who had always 
 hown me goodwill, asking for rather a large sum, 
 vhich I replaced a year later from out my mother’s 
 sgacy. Then I travelled into the border city, whither 
 ‘rau Kapruner also came, and where I received the 
 ırst news from Henry. This was just as I had un- 
 
158 FABER 
 
 consciously thought it would be, in spite of all my 
 fears, and as it should have been if what I had done 
 had been based on truth. He told me that he had 
 written me before his departure; that he had offered 
 me what I had peremptorily taken; that he regarded 
 me as his friend, his sister, his wife and well knew 
 what he took thereby upon himself: A greater duty 
 toward the world and a debt that he could never repay, 
 for he had never expected his hard fate to be softened 
 by a ray of happiness, whereas now all at once it came 
 to him in profusion. But I, too, was not to deceive 
 myself about what I undertook to do; the course that 
 he took offered his companion no joy or comfort, 
 hardly any rest, and it was a question whether the 
 great blocks that he pushed before him might not one 
 day slip back and crush him. He wrote me almost 
 
 
 
 daily now and every letter made me marvel at him the 
 more—at his courageous soul, his inexpressible strug: 
 gling, and what a friendly attitude he had toward all 
 men and how with childlike confidence he believed in 
 their goodness of heart. Three months passed and ] 
 could go to him and after three more months we mar- 
 ried. His mother came to live with us. It had nevet 
 occurred to him to leave her alone and to live with 
 out her, nor had such a possibility existed for her. | 
 
 “About this time Kapruner was engaged on a greal 
 
 
 
 work entitled ‘Villeinage and Ownership in State and 
 
FABER 159 
 
 Society.’ It was to present his view of the world and 
 the sum total of knowledge that had matured in him. 
 He used his evening hours and for the most part also 
 those of the night for this purpose; he needed only 
 little sleep; his day was occupied with personal activi- 
 ties. He won more and more repute; his ideas spread 
 and found adherents in all countries. Men came to 
 nim; they wanted to see him and hear him; they 
 drought messages, letters, resolutions, secret commis- 
 sions. There resulted meetings, discussions, confer- 
 ances, a widely disseminated correspondence, an infor- 
 mation service, the preparation of manifestoes and the 
 dpening of relations with the ends of the earth. We 
 ived in three fairly large rooms some distance out of 
 the city; his mother had smaller quarters for herself 
 mn the floor above. Often we did not have room 
 enough for the numbers of guests and those who came 
 ate had to wait until others had departed. There 
 ame journalists, authors, legislators, philanthropists, 
 yacifists, fugitives, deserters, and mediators from all 
 tations. Among these were people whose duplicity 
 was apparent, men who had betrayal written on their 
 foreheads and whose very greeting was deceitful; also 
 the curious, the gossips, and those pretending to be 
 mportant, as well as those who waited to see what 
 side the scales would favour so that they might be safe 
 ind bring their sheep into the fold; then there came 
 
 
 
 | E 
 
160 FABER 
 
 gloomy fanatics, people who preached an eye for an 
 eye and a tooth for a tooth, for whom things were not 
 yet bloody enough and who did not want to leave one 
 stone on another, and then those who made a business 
 of mending the world’s ills and wanted to make their 
 fortune out of the catastrophe—what faces, what an 
 atmosphere of deceit and trickery and illusion! The 
 few noble men and women were practically smothered 
 by this unclean mass. Among all these was none, male 
 or female, of Kapruner’s stamp, so modest and patient 
 and glowing with his gospel. I was often torn by 
 fear and anxiety and spoke of my fear, for there was 
 always an hour when we could be alone. But he ad- 
 monished me to think more liberally and to keep the: 
 whole idea in view; we were not there to change. 
 humankind, nor could this be done; we could merely 
 direct them and reinforce their will. He refused to: 
 
 take precautions and discriminations into considera- 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 tion, although he was under no illusion about the way 
 the questionable element increased in greediness around 
 him. Every great idea, he said, had its camp-fol- 
 lowers; the denser the morning mist, the more beau- 
 tifully the sun breaks through. As his importance 
 grew and his message began to awaken a stronger: 
 response, his disciples and sympathizers urged him to 
 appear among them as their leader when the time was 
 ripe, and this they expected soon; they felt that he 
 
FABER 161 
 
 must realize in action what his mind had conceived. 
 This he did not wish to do; he told them that it was 
 disastrous when a man like himself overstepped the 
 limitations Nature had laid down for him; such action 
 would turn good to ill. It was neither in his ability 
 nor in his nature; the thought was one thing, the 
 deed another. “All the same, I am not lost to you as 
 a martyr,’ he once cried laughingly, and I recall how 
 a chill passed over me at his words. On such occa- 
 sions he showed a charming goodness and consider- 
 ateness and to me his character appeared like a piece 
 of precious metal that does not lose any of its lustre 
 by the grasping of dirty hands. Such a human being 
 exerts a power, a constant magnetic spell if it may be 
 so called, and his presence alone is sufficient to lighten 
 the burden of life and make one face its tasks more 
 courageously. But very few understood this. After 
 I knew of his public declaration and denial a great 
 weight was taken from my heart, the more so because 
 I had been unable to speak on my own behalf lest it 
 appear that I wanted to keep him for myself and tie 
 him in my chains. Our bond was not built on that; 
 we were united under a higher law. But there were 
 other chains. Although it is very hard for me I will 
 
 
 
 now tell you how, nevertheless, he was drawn in 
 against his conviction and his deeper knowledge and 
 
 } 
 
 feeling, and pulled down into the burning pit, in which 
 
 | 
 | 
 | 
 | 
 
162 FABER 
 
 he was destroyed. It is hard to speak of it and to 
 disclose it in detail; there is a great deal of mystery 
 about it and much that had better not be brought to 
 the light of day. But perhaps it must be and in a 
 way I can even make things clear to myself by 
 doing so. 
 
 “I believe there are marriages in which husband 
 and wife become a unit without giving each other 
 more than themselves and the existence that they lead 
 in the world; I mean without a certain groping for 
 understanding and agreement and without the need 
 and the demand for continuous association—becoming 
 unified solely through the duties and tasks of every 
 day. I have already mentioned that the peculiar sort 
 of life that we led rarely permitted us to come to- 
 gether in peace. Kapruner divided his time between 
 his work and the people; he knew absolutely nothing 
 about economizing. I helped him as much as I could 
 and the months simply flew by us. Only the fact 
 that we knew we were one gave us security. The 
 only person to whom he daily devoted definite hours 
 was his mother. She expected and demanded this. 
 It had long been the rule with him, and aside from 
 the fact that it was likewise his habit and his wish 
 he did not dare to give it up. She had the greatest, 
 influence on him, but I was never wholly able to 
 visualize and discover the exact nature of this influ-. 
 
 | 
 I 
 
FABER 163 
 
 ence. He treated her with consideration and rever- 
 ence as if she were a divine being. He sought her 
 advice in all difficult matters and attempted nothing 
 without her acquiescence. He never contradicted her 
 and she was clever enough never to let serious differ- 
 ences of opinion and conflicts arise, and I often came 
 to the strange thought that by this action of not merely 
 not hindering him in his well-defined career, but sup- 
 porting him and urging him on, she had, in her deep 
 knowledge of his nature, instilled a feeling of obedi- 
 ence and gratitude in him, which he felt he had to 
 discharge in everything else that touched his life. It 
 certainly was a peculiar relationship, which constantly 
 kept me vacillating between amazement and an uncer- 
 ‘tain fear. From the beginning she acted peculiarly 
 
 passive toward me. It seemed as if she took me as a 
 
 “matter of course and that, having become convinced of 
 | my tractability, she probably told herself that I was 
 the most desirable comrade for him and the least dan- 
 | gerous daughter-in-law for her. It happened that I 
 became pregnant in the second year of our marriage, 
 | and from that time on the conduct of this woman 
 
 toward me changed. She showed an enmity that ter- 
 
 | 
 | 
 
 tified me. First she was mysterious and silent in her 
 reserved manner, then blunt and provocative. I could 
 ‘no longer please her. I was suddenly in her way. 
 
 
 
 She criticized my management, my attitude, my courtly 
 
 | 
 | 
 
 | 
 
164 FABER 
 
 manners, as she called them; everything I did was 
 wrong in her eyes, and she discounted everything I 
 said. I often noticed that her eyes followed me with 
 deep hatred and this caused me an uncanny feeling. 
 I actually fled to Kapruner; he tried to calm me and 
 attempted to explain the conduct of his mother as a 
 passing mood and mental disturbance, but his explana- 
 tions and consolations had a disheartened note which 
 frightened me still more. He showed me the gentlest 
 consideration during this time, took care to have me 
 spare myself, and read every wish in my eyes; but 
 even this began to torment me, for I told myself 
 that this would probably cause the woman to regard 
 me with bitter jealousy. I was robbing her of hours 
 that Henry had formerly given her; I was making 
 more demands on him than before, although uninten- 
 tionally, and I felt that she would hold this against 
 me. I told Henry of my thoughts, but he looked at 
 me earnestly and shook his head. What was the trou- 
 ble? Perhaps she feared an increase in our family 
 because of our rather meagre means. Perhaps she had 
 not taken this into consideration and now made me 
 responsible for increasing the burden of life. But 
 that was not the reason, at least that did not offer a 
 solution. At the beginning of winter I became seri- 
 ously ill. It was the illness which I had not yet over- 
 come three years later and which affected me most 
 
FABER 165 
 
 seriously at the time when the Princess brought me 
 here. The attack was sudden and continuous even 
 then and became so severe that I had to be taken to 
 a sanatorium. Kapruner did not leave my bedside for 
 many days; he himself nursed me and would see no 
 one except the physician. One night when I was suf- 
 fering from a high fever and was almost unconscious 
 the door opened and his mother entered. I seemed 
 to see Henry turn dreadfully pale and then I heard them 
 whispering together. Suddenly the old woman came 
 to my bed and looked at me. I had closed my eyes. 
 It seemed to me as if her look hurled me into a pit; 
 something disastrous happened to me; I had never 
 before experienced a similar feeling of fear. In the 
 midst of my fear and my fever I suddenly divined what 
 went on in the mind of this woman; I did not guess 
 it, I simply saw it as one sees a picture. The physi- 
 cians had exerted themselves to save the child and 
 there had been hope of this up to this night; one hour 
 after this woman had departed all hope was gone. 
 Perhaps she killed the little being in me with her eyes. 
 And this was the situation: She did not want a second 
 being to come between her and her son; she feared 
 that more than anything else in the world. She alone 
 hhad possessed him for thirty-six years and she could 
 not bear to share still more of him, to give up more 
 of him, to lose more of him. Possessed—it would be 
 
 
 
166 “FABER 
 
 impossible to use any other word; she had possessed 
 him; he was her beginning and end, the object of all 
 her thoughts, her light, her life, her everything; she 
 understood nothing but him, she knew nothing but 
 him, she felt only for him; to her all othef beings 
 were like stones, like shadows. This dawned on me 
 first as a presentiment; later when I spoke with 
 Kapruner about it and he in his desperation admitted 
 and verified it step by step I recognized the whole 
 extent of the disaster that still hung threateningly 
 over me. I learned from his reluctant words that she 
 had saved him, her son, for herself out of a marriage 
 with a vicious man after cruel fighting and years of 
 persecution; that she had lifted herself out of the 
 deepest poverty with a giant’s will-power, all for him; 
 that she had actually carried him through childhood 
 and youth with a gentleness and a dumb, ever-watchful 
 fear of need, illness, human beings, and life itself, that 
 even if he had been a heartless idiot he would have 
 been filled with utter amazement. Thus he spoke, and 
 thus he explained it to me, and I believed it, I knew it. 
 But what was to become of me? How could our life 
 together develop under these conditions? The actuality 
 surpassed my very worst fears. The woman no longer | 
 showed any reticence. Perhaps she had deluded her- | 
 self with the expectation that the relations between 
 Henry and myself would grow cold in time, and that 
 

 
 FABER® 167 
 
 he wouJd then return to her the more willingly, wiser 
 and robbed of his illusions. When this proved not to 
 be the case and she saw that Henry, on the contrary, 
 drew even closer to me and tried in every way to 
 make me forget my disappointment at the loss of the 
 child. Satanic instincts seemed to develop in her and 
 ‚she found no means too base for undermining my 
 ‘position and sowing discord. I will not go back to 
 lose myself in such petty and common matters; the 
 ugly innuendoes, the suspicions, the malevolent distor- 
 ‘tion of my words, the insults she cast on my descent, 
 using the term ‘aristocrat’ as if it were an expletive; 
 ‘the manner in which she belittled my flight from the 
 ‘home of my relatives; how every act met with spiteful 
 ‘criticism; how she cast suspicion on my steps, my 
 smiles, my weeping, my perplexity, my despair; how 
 she disparaged me before others, sneered at my awk- 
 -wardness in the household, stamped me as a spend- 
 ‘thrift and exaggerated every mistake and every false 
 step. And how Henry tolerated this and then again 
 rose up against it; how he tried to appease me and to 
 bring her to a reconciliation, and how, when driven 
 into a corner he neither could nor desired to turn 
 right or left—why call this in detail out of the memory 
 that has been so glad to forget it? I will merely 
 say this much, that I felt as if I were damned in hell 
 and that I determined to make an end of it. An in- 
 
168 FABER 
 
 significant incident brought about a crisis: I had for- 
 gotten one day to write an important letter that Henry 
 had dictated to me; a large number of people had been 
 present and in the difficulty I had mislaid the original. 
 When Henry asked me about this in the presence of 
 his mother I admitted it shamefacedly; the woman 
 came at me as she would at a servant caught in the 
 act of stealing; Henry tried gently to calm her and 
 plead with her for moderation; grumbling she left the 
 room. Indignation closed my mouth; I did not reply 
 to Henry’s attempts to appease me; justice and under- 
 standing seemed to me to be the least at stake here. 
 I went into my bedroom, packed up my belongings in 
 a hurry, returned to him and said that I intended to 
 leave the house. He looked at me speechlessly. ‘How 
 does force and oppression operate in our case, Henry ?’ 
 I asked him. ‘Is a man permitted to carry his love 
 so far that he drives the other into slavery? Does 
 love give one a right to hold others in bondage? And 
 if a son has been forfeited to his mother for all eternity, 
 is his companion then also to be delivered up without 
 protection? How is that compatible with your views 
 and with your life?’ I was very calm when I asked 
 him this and I saw in his face the fight that went 
 on within him. He gazed at me sadly and after a 
 while replied that he was well aware that we three 
 could not longer abide under the same roof and there- 
 

 
 FABER 169 
 
 fore he would make no attempt to persuade me to do 
 so. He proposed that I should take lodgings for a 
 time with friends and gave me the names and address 
 of these friends; in the meantime he would try to 
 _ clear the matter up in his own mind and prepare his 
 mother for separation from him, for there could be 
 no possible doubt in his mind that he belonged to me 
 and he hoped that I agreed with him. He then ac- 
 companied me to his friends, whom I knew only su- 
 perficially, and we talked about the future and how 
 we would arrange matters from now on. But every- 
 thing came about very differently from the way he 
 had plain lodgings with a married pair who lived in 
 had said and planned. He came on the third day; I 
 a Bohemian fashion; I felt as if I had been disowned. 
 He did not speak again of his promises and there was 
 something disturbed in his manner coupled with timid- 
 ity and consciousness of guilt; he left hastily after he 
 had been with me for an hour. On the same day he 
 wrote me a letter full of protestations that he missed 
 me, that no outside influence, no power on earth could 
 tear us asunder, that I was the only person indispensa- 
 ble to him spiritually and mentally, but that the course 
 of action which I had put before him and which he 
 himself had decided on meant a complete rupture with 
 his mother, with the result that he would not only lose 
 her but that, as he very well knew, she would be con- 
 
170 FABER 
 
 demned to despair and destruction. So he felt it but 
 natural and pardonable if he asked me for time; he 
 could not act precipitately and keep a clear conscience. 
 I asked myself: Why does he write me this? Does 
 he lack courage to tell me eye to eye of his wavering 
 and weakening? He came again, he came daily, but 
 it was a torture for me and a torture for him, in- 
 creasing with every visit. Each time he was more 
 excited, more passionate, more crushed, and more dis- 
 tracted. His state of mind drove him from his mother 
 to me, from me to his mother. He said I was unjust 
 to charge him with weakness of character, strength 
 was a relative matter and the strength of that woman 
 was tremendous and could hardly be estimated by an 
 ordinary man. I could not controvert this by any- 
 thing similar, no such obscure telepathy, and as I 
 perceived that this man, who was more dear to me 
 than anything, was being destroyed and poisoned by 
 this, that he would be completely lost in his confusion 
 between two persons to whom he felt himself equally 
 bound, I decided to abandon everything and to dis- 
 appear from the scene. I put my passports in order 
 and without having notified him or any one left for 
 Germany. I need not name the city, for I cannot bear 
 to have the name pass my lips, can hardly think 
 of it, for to me it is a place where fire and brimstone 
 comes down from the sky and men turn into fiends. 
 

 
 FABER 171 
 
 For two, three months I lived in the most restricted 
 circumstances, for I had very little money. I had suc- 
 ceeded in renting a studio, the former owner of which 
 had left for a year. I noticed nothing of what went 
 on around me and gave no attention to world affairs. 
 I was completely buried in myself. The war had 
 ended long ago and I noticed as if in my sleep that 
 ‘revolt was brewing everywhere; often when I went 
 out I heard disturbances, distant shooting, and saw 
 inflamed or frightened faces, and men dashed across 
 the noisy pavements at night, but I spoke with no 
 ‘one and read no newspaper. To be so alone is possible 
 only in a great city. 
 
 _ “One evening there is a knock on the door of the 
 ‘anteroom; I become frightened, call out and open, and 
 Henry stands before me. He pulls me back into the 
 ‘room, embraces me, falls down at my feet, . presses 
 his head into my lap and sobs. For God’s sake, what 
 ‘has happened? How changed he looks: tired, his fea- 
 tures jaded, his eyes flaming feverishly! What has 
 happened? He saw me on the street yesterday, fol- 
 lowed me, did not dare to come to me at once. It is 
 dangerous for me to go to any one, highly dangerous 
 for him, he groans. ‘How do you happen to be here?’ 
 Task. He has been here for many weeks. He has 
 united with the rebels and become one of their leaders; 
 they are now surrounded, a part of them captured, 
 
172 FABER 
 
 a part outlawed; the dream of apostolic leadership and 
 a change for humanity has ended and the awakening 
 is filled with horror. Why did you do that, Henry, 
 
 you—desert your colours, turn against your best con- 
 
 victions? He had not been himself after my flight, he 
 
 had been unable to be himself any longer; then he 
 
 had first felt and discovered what I had been to him, 
 and as if to justify himself against an overwhelming 
 
 fate he had gone into the fight to prove himself by 
 
 deed, to harden and cleanse himself or to go down 
 
 in it and thus make atonement. My departure had 
 also seemed to him a challenge to put his case before 
 
 a higher court and thus submit to a verdict from God. 
 And thus he had been crushed. But what next, 
 I ask him, what next? Before he can answer I hear 
 the tread of men on the stairs and then some one 
 pounds on the door with full force. “There they are,” E 
 said Kapruner. “Open, there is nothing else to be 
 done, they are on my track.” As I move to do so he 
 grasps my arm and says there is but one person who. 
 may be able to save him; and he gives me the name 
 of the Princess. I had told him once that she w 
 a blood relation of mine. She was in the city, he said 
 —lived in the cloister of the Ursulines and had wo 
 repute through widely extended personal service fo 
 many years, so that her word had weight with 
 parties. The tumult almost drowned out his last wor 
 
 7 
 
 
 
 
 
 
FABER 173 
 
 and as I turn to the door of the room and open it they 
 smash the outer door to bits. Five or six soldiers 
 with steel helmets and guns break in, sinister and dis- 
 orderly, followed by a lieutenant, a smart young fel- 
 low, and just behind him another man who seems to 
 be a higher officer but wears a sports costume and 
 carries a riding whip in his boots. ‘Handcuffs!’ yells 
 the lieutenant. The man in the sports costume walks 
 up to Kapruner and asks him who he is. He gives 
 his name, whereupon the man pulls out his riding 
 whip and hits him in the face. I cry out; the man 
 turns to me, he seems surprised, seems to know me 
 and to recognize me; I also feel that I have seen him 
 before but do not recall him. The more he looks at 
 me the more sure he seems of himself; naturally my 
 marriage had become a scandal and an ineradicable 
 shame for my family. As I stretch out my arms 
 pleadingly, pleading for Henry in my lack of suspicion 
 the lieutenant gives an order to one of the soldiers; 
 he comes toward me, obviously to take me into cus- 
 
 tody, but the other officer waves him aside, approaches 
 
 me and with an expression of cold contempt says with 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 a snarl that I must leave quickly and see to it that I 
 am not met again; he spares me because of my father, 
 whose name I have borne. Henry looks fixedly at me; 
 the mission he gave me sets me in motion; I push my 
 way through the people, fly down the stairs, past a 
 
174 FABER 
 
 sentinel who looks at me in confusion and moves as 
 if to raise his gun, and out on the street and into the 
 night. I run aimlessly in all directions. An automo- 
 bile crosses my path; I hail it, jump in, give the name 
 of the cloister and in a quarter of an hour am lying 
 on my knees before the Princess. I can no longer 
 tell how I reached her, who led me to her, what I 
 told the women and whether she was already in bed. 
 She sees me, hears me, and it seems as if we have 
 been together only the day before. She knows about 
 me, she knows about Kapruner, she knows of my fate; 
 it is not necessary to lose time in talk, for her whole 
 personality tells me that every second is costly. We 
 are back in the carriage. We drive into a barracks. 
 No one is able to give us information. It is past mid- 
 night and difficult to get any reports. We drive into 
 another barracks; into a third; we go to the police 
 headquarters, to the palace of justice, to the ministry 
 of war, with no result. Excited men everywhere, 
 nothing else. As we drive farther and farther, up one 
 street, down another, the Princess takes my head in 
 her arm; she says nothing, but her breath, her look, 
 her touch is like medicine, like something heavenly, 
 as if one can stand aloft and look down on one’s own 
 suffering and fear and realize that life and death are 
 no longer the important things. At three o’clock we 
 
FABER 175 
 
 meet a column with a colonel at its head, an escort for 
 prisoners. The Princess causes a halt; she knows the 
 colonel and he greets her respectfully; he names a 
 place beyond the city whence many disturbers have 
 been taken. Twenty minutes later we are there. It 
 is a large, dark court, lighted by a few lanterns. Be- 
 fore us is a flat wall where lie thirty or forty corpses. 
 Guns stand against another wall. Soldiers walk up 
 and down. All step aside as the Princess approaches 
 and some salute. She turns to a noncommissioned 
 officer. He shakes his head. Another steps up. 
 Kapruner? He is probably among those shot. A third 
 is better informed; no such honourable death was in 
 store for Kapruner. He points to a dark corner where 
 a mutilated human body lies, a formless, bloody heap 
 of flesh. Only the right hand remains whole. When 
 I had sunk down to the ground the Princess knelt down 
 beside me, bent over me and kissed my eyes. That 
 was the last thing I saw and felt; there was nothing 
 more for a long time. It was fortunate that con- 
 sciousness left me, for my next breath might well have 
 
 been that of a demented person.” 
 
 Faith became silent. At the last her voice had lost 
 all feeling. She now let her head sink low; her lips 
 were pressed together and her folded hands lay as if 
 
176 FABER 
 
 lifeless. Suddenly she moved convulsively and said 
 as she smiled absently: “It is late. We must get 
 some sleep. Good night.” She rose quickly and left. 
 
 Faber, however, remained sitting at the table for 
 
 more than an hour. 
 
XIV 
 
 As the following day was Sunday Christopher, upon 
 completing the tasks of the morning, repaired to his 
 father to take up with him various undecided matters 
 on which he had postponed discussion. In fact he 
 thought it necessary to clean the slate, because the 
 school recess was to end in a few days. First of all 
 he wanted to debate the question of the new landlord. 
 The house had been sold about two months before to 
 a Herr Schadenbach, a dealer in leather, who occupied 
 the apartment on the third floor beneath the Fabers 
 and for a prolonged period had lived there peaceably 
 with his family; however, since the acquisition of his 
 new honours, which came as the result of newly ac- 
 quired wealth, he had bothered the tenants in all sorts 
 of ways and disturbed their equanimity. Now he was 
 irritated by the beating of a carpet on one storey, then 
 by the playing of a piano on another; then water was 
 drawn too wastefully, or some one banged the doors; 
 again he found dirt on the doorstep or one of the 
 kitchen gods threw various objects out of the kitchen 
 windows. In short, he found constant opportunity for 
 complaining, and at times his rude voice could be heard 
 for half an hour in all the storeys. This irritated 
 177, 
 
178 FABER 
 
 Christopher. Herr Schadenbach stirred his ire almost 
 daily. He hated Schadenbach because of his arrogance 
 and his yelling. He had often consulted with Faith 
 about the matter, but Faith’s views were vacillating; 
 she was not certain about the basis of Herr Schaden- 
 bach’s encroachment, for encroachment it was, no 
 matter how one regarded it. Thus, with his resent- 
 ment unappeased, he appeared before his father. 
 
 He meant to find out, first, whether Herr Schaden- 
 bach was allowed to start such a disreputable commo- 
 tion when it is known that the mere purchase of a 
 house gives no one, not even fat and bearded men, 
 the right to mistreat the tenants; secondly, he wanted 
 to know how Herr Schadenbach could be reached, if 
 most people were cowardly enough to allow themselves | 
 to be so mistreated. ‘Reached,’ he said, and coming 
 from him this was a forceful and illuminating ex- 
 pression. And from his father he expected forceful 
 and illuminating advice. 
 
 But in this he was disappointed. Faber merely made 
 a few general comments of a social-critical nature, 
 from which Christopher concluded that his fund of 
 experience on this point was not very large. He mani- 
 fested merely conventional regret at this disagreeable 
 situation, considered for a time with a wrinkled brow 
 what was to be done next, and then passed to the next 
 of the problems that had been put to him. Namely this: 
 
FABER 179 
 
 whether an angleworm possessed two souls when cut 
 into two parts, in view of the fact that each part moved 
 itself independently, or four souls if quartered, or 
 whether angleworms possessed no souls at all and this 
 explained their careless attitude toward such drastic 
 operations? As for the soul, what was a soul? He 
 expected his father to explain what a soul really was. 
 
 Faber made a sincere attempt, but with little success. 
 Was it possible that human beings possessed souls, and 
 not apes? Or, if one conceded souls to apes, why not 
 to dogs? Or ants? Or a tree? Or a waterfall? 
 Where does the soul begin and where does it manifest 
 itself, prove its existence? Was it possible that Herr 
 Schadenbach had a soul and the horse in front of the 
 cart down below had none? Faber, cross-examined in 
 this categorical manner, could do no more than answer 
 with a fragment of popular philosophy thousands of 
 years old. Christopher could not comprehend this. He 
 sighed, walked energetically around the room, and came 
 to the third and last subject of his cogitation: Why 
 had his mother gone away? Why had she driven away 
 with the strange woman when she had a husband and 
 child at home? Were women permitted to go away 
 in this manner? Was there no law against it? Were 
 women then free? As free as men? Could they do 
 what they felt like doing, or was it that men did not 
 have the courage to tell them sharply what they could 
 
180 FABER 
 
 and could not do? That was what he wanted to know. 
 At these words Faith had entered bringing Faber’s 
 breakfast. She smiled almost imperceptibly, caressed 
 Christopher’s hair with her fingers in passing, and left 
 again. Faber gathered the boy in his arms and pressed 
 him to him. He was in the position of a man called 
 upon to judge a case in which he is himself the com- 
 plainant. The boy seemed to suspect the betrayal 
 through kindness that was being practised upon him 
 and so resisted the kindness. He looked attentively 
 at his father and then distorted his face into a cun- 
 ning grimace which gave him a comical resemblance 
 to Martina. Faber put him on the sofa beside him 
 and tried to divert him by telling stories. He told 
 about Malay pirates and Indian temple cities and the 
 primeval forests of Ceylon, but absent-mindedly he 
 made a few variations, so that Christopher found it 
 necessary to correct him. He was not displeased when 
 the boy informed him that he had been invited to take 
 dinner at his Aunt Clara’s. When Anna Faber came 
 later to call for her grandson Eugene closeted him- 
 self in his room and announced that he was not in. 
 He sat beside Faith at table during dinner. They 
 spoke about unimportant matters. After every ques- 
 tion and reply came a leaden pause. When he was 
 back in his room he tried to read, but could not collect 
 
 | 
 his thoughts and put the book aside. At four o’dlock 
 
FABER 181 
 
 he went to the Hergesell house to call for Christopher, 
 according to an agreement with Faith. He did not 
 meet his mother there. Clara informed him that of 
 late she disappeared for several hours every day: Clara 
 suspected her mother had discovered Valentine’s domi- 
 cile and was now putting in this time in great secrecy 
 with her adored little blackguard, for most of the time 
 she returned animated and in good spirits, often, how- 
 ever, in a sad and thoughtful mood. “Every day I 
 expect to hear of the catastrophe which that boy is 
 bound to bring about,” said Clara with her dry mock- 
 ery, and a group of parallel lines showing on her fore- 
 head; “the thing is getting tiresome and some solution 
 or other is to be hoped for. And what is my brother 
 doing?” she continued. “I notice he is making himself 
 scarce. Martina has gone to England, is the report. 
 It seems to me that little Martina is getting very busy.” 
 She regarded Eugene from one side with the attitude 
 of a cock while combing the hair of her eldest girl. 
 She had brought her two children back from the coun- 
 try the day before. 
 
 At home Eugene found a telegram from Martina in 
 which she announced her arrival in London. He sat 
 dull and dissatisfied at the window and watched the 
 twilight grow into dusk. He listened to the noises of 
 the city, flowing together in a dull roar; the peal of 
 bells, the rattle of wheels, voices, and footsteps. Chris- 
 
182 FABER 
 
 topher came and wished him good night. He looked 
 searchingly at his father, but this time suppressed his 
 inquiries. Not until Faith called him in to dine did 
 Faber rise. She left him alone during the meal. Later 
 she cleared the table in silence and at nine o’clock asked 
 him whether he wanted anything, while she remained 
 standing in the doorway. He said “No,” stopped, and 
 then half against his will the request for her to sit 
 down with him escaped him, for the whole day had 
 been so odious for him. 
 
 She said nothing in reply, but a few minutes later 
 came with her sewing—linen for Christopher which 
 needed mending. She sat down at the long side of 
 the table, just under the lamp, and placed thread, scis- 
 sors, and pieces of cloth before her. She wore the 
 black dress of the day before and a fresh white apron, 
 and about her neck was a black band from which hung 
 a black medallion with a tiny pearl. 
 
 Faber contemplated the hand moving up and down 
 like a machine while sewing. As yesterday this hand 
 aroused his curiosity as if it were in itself a being that 
 challenged his desire. 
 
 He spoke about Christopher and his impertinent way 
 of calling people to account and everywhere observing 
 all rules to the letter. If he continued to butt his head 
 against the world in this way he would soon be covered 
 
 with wounds. 
 
FABER 183 
 
 Faith concurred. She thought an only child was 
 always in danger of overdoing whatever he attempted. 
 He should have brother or sister; she thought this 
 would be good for him. 
 
 Yes, doubtless that would be good for him, admitted 
 Faber. He then inquired whether the boy had also 
 asked Faith the questions about his mother and her 
 departure. When Faith nodded he wanted to know 
 what she had answered. In fact, how was one to an- 
 swer him? He had to confess that he was left in the 
 utmost confusion. For that reason he was poorly 
 fitted to rear children; he lacked presence of mind, 
 something that an educator needs above all things. 
 
 Faith replied that he had naturally also cross-ex- 
 amined her, in fact again before going to sleep; the 
 matter seemed to occupy him a great deal. She had 
 told him that he could pass judgment on his mother 
 only when he was capable of understanding her actions, 
 and to do that he must acquire experience and culti- 
 vate his mind. Then she had to make him under- 
 stand what she meant by cultivating his mind; this had 
 proved rather difficult. But she had succeeded in mak- 
 ing him reflect. 
 
 About Faber’s expressive mouth came lines that 
 might signify all sorts of things: agreement, boredom, 
 disgust, even irony. He rose, went to the window, sat 
 down again, rose again, went to the stove, then seated 
 
184 FABER 
 
 himself in a chair that stood some distance from the 
 table, crossed his knees, and passed his hand over his 
 forehead. 
 
 Faith sewed calmly on and did not seem to notice 
 his nervousness. She took the thread in her mouth 
 and bit it off, at which her beautiful teeth, slightly 
 too large, became visible. She asked whether he had a 
 headache. 
 
 Not exactly a headache, he replied, but his head was 
 dull. The day had been filled with humidity; this dis- 
 agreed with him. Even now the air outside was like 
 that of an oven. 
 
 He rose again, stepped to the window, opened it, 
 and looked out. While his back was turned Faith’s 
 face bore an expression of deep reflection. When he 
 turned it again seemed wholly indifferent. 
 
 “Over yonder,” he said, “where the moonlight seeps 
 through, there is still a thick, fibrous cloud of mist.” 
 He closed the window. 
 
 “Are you then so sensitive to atmospheric influ- 
 ences?” inquired Faith. “Whoever is not hardened 
 to them has much to suffer.” 
 
 “It differs,’ Faber replied, while pacing back and 
 forth behind Faith’s chair, “and is determined by the 
 seasons. I give less attention to it in the spring than 
 
 in the fall. Nevertheless, a day like this one is a 
 horror from beginning to end. On a day like this” 
 
 | 
 | 
 
FABER 185 
 
 one should go to bed and not let it become a part of 
 one’s consciousness.” 
 
 Upon: noticing that it made her uncomfortable to 
 have him at her back he passed to the other side of 
 the table and there continued his walk. Finally he 
 again sat down in the chair opposite her, again watched 
 her busy hand and asked after a time: “What are you 
 mending? A shirt? It has been mended a great deal.” 
 
 “Naturally. What is to be done? The lad tears a 
 great many,” sighed Faith. 
 
 “Has he ever seen the Princess?” Faber asked sud- 
 denly, somewhat timidly, nodding his head in Chris- 
 topher’s direction. He cleared his throat noticeably, 
 as if it pained him to ask the question. 
 
 “Surely, several times already,” said Faith, As she 
 moved to pick up the scissors they fell out of her hand. 
 ‘Faber sprang forward and picked them up from the 
 carpet. Faith had also bent down and her hair touched 
 his cheek. “Thank you,” she said amiably. 
 
 Faber listened for a noise in the hall. “Did not the 
 telephone ring?” he asked. 
 
 Faith raised her head and listened likewise. “No,” 
 she said. Her glance struck his forehead, which ap- 
 peared to be full in the light. She observed that he 
 had a very attractive forehead, strong, angular, with 
 temples arched inward and of a feminine fineness. She 
 
 turned away immediately. 
 
186 FABER 
 
 “I often have hallucinations in my hearing, espe- 
 cially with regard to the telephone,” said Faber, dis- 
 contentedly. Then after a pause: “The first night it 
 rang twice. It was already past midnight and yet 
 some one had to confer with Martina.” He laughed 
 sharply and uneasily. It was also not quite clear why 
 he spoke about it. 
 
 Suddenly Faith asked in a casual tone and yet as if 
 she meant to put an end to this unnatural tension: “Did 
 Martina ever write you where and how she met the 
 Princess for the first time?” 
 
 She threw a lightning glance at him to gauge the 
 effect the question had on him, whether he would dis- 
 cuss it more in detail and whether she was affecting 
 him agreeably or not. There was a sort of tricky ex- 
 pectancy in her face, but she knew well how to con- 
 ceal it. 
 
 He seemed surprised, but would not let it be noticed. 
 Affecting a casual tone, he replied that he remembered 
 the letter, but thought that Martina had limited herself 
 to a mere superficial description. He had not remem- 
 bered the details, he recalled merely that they had met 
 by accident at a railway station. 
 
 Although this remark had a casual ring his voice 
 betrayed that he would be very loath to drop this sub- 
 ject again. Despite this he acted as if his interest was 
 
FABER 187 
 
 aroused by a little yellow moth flitting about the lamp, 
 and he even tried to catch it. 
 
 “Shall I tell you how it happened?” asked Faith. 
 “Perhaps that will give you something.” 
 
 “Please do, if it is not difficult for you,” he replied. 
 He rested his elbows on the table and his head in his 
 hands, as one who prepares for news that is arresting 
 but not unusually important. 
 
 Then Faith, at times interrupting her sewing, told 
 the following story: 
 
 Martina had been on an outing with Christopher. 
 It was in the wooded region; Faith could not name 
 the place, but knew that one had to pass several sta- 
 tions on the train. It was a holiday. Upon their 
 return in the evening there was a restless mob in the 
 station, for half the city had visited the country that 
 day. Likewise a thunderstorm burst the moment she 
 descended from the train with her child; the people 
 crowded around her and no one wanted to leave the 
 station. While she held the boy firmly by the hand 
 and pushed forward step by step the compact mass sud- 
 denly opened and she observed a group of people in a 
 circle, and in the middle of the circle a dignified, beau- 
 tiful, old woman whose manner and face immediately 
 interested her to the utmost. Round about her are 
 
188 FABER 
 
 children, ten or twelve girls, whom she is bidding good- 
 by, speaking to each in a calm, matronly fashion, un- 
 usually mild and amiable. It seems she is comforting 
 them, or encouraging them, or giving them words of 
 advice. Captivated by the appearance and the per- 
 sonality of the woman, Martina suddenly discovers 
 that Christopher is no longer at her side. She tries 
 to go back, but the wall of people bars her path; she 
 begs that they give her room; overpowered by fear she 
 becomes faint and falls. At that moment the woman 
 comes to her, asks questions, calms her, becomes con- 
 cerned about her, and as she moves forward with 
 Martina on her arm the people, who up to that time 
 have been so dumb and obstinate, draw back respect- 
 fully before every step, as if forced to give way by 
 an invisible arm that possessed occult powers. A nar- 
 row lane forms and they pass through; then they 
 observe Christopher, who is sitting on a cement jar 
 and staring fixedly up at the glass vault of the sta- 
 tion, on which the lightning flashes and the rain beats 
 down. Then the Princess brought Martina home in 
 her carriage. She remained with her until late at night. 
 
 “When she left,” said Faith in conclusion, “she had 
 
 discovered more about Martina’s carefully guarded in- 
 
 ner self than any other person, no matter how intimate, 
 
 had done in years.” 
 
 a” 
 
FABER 189 
 
 “H’m,” said Faber. 
 
 “And it was a critical moment for Martina,” Faith 
 added; “a turning point, so to speak.” 
 
 “So?” said Faber, laconically. Then somewhat 
 more tensely, while knitting his brows: “How so? 
 How a turning point? You mean the acquaintance 
 with the Princess? Naturally, that was a turning point. 
 I know that, unfortunately.” 
 
 “I don’t mean exactly that,” Faith replied softly. 
 “You misunderstand me. ‘This does not concern the 
 Princess.” 
 
 He was startled, but ostensibly did not wish to ap- 
 pear curious and therefore remained silent. Perhaps 
 he could not reconcile it with his pride; perhaps it 
 irritated him to admit that Faith, who was, after all, 
 a stranger in his eyes, knew more than he, who ought 
 ‘to have known everything about Martina; in short, he 
 ‘said nothing and again turned his attention to the 
 tireless little moth. After a while he said, trying to 
 assume a careless tone: “It would be good if we raised 
 the window a bit, don’t you think?” 
 
 “I have no objection,’ replied Faith. 
 
 He raised the window and for a change walked sev- 
 eral times around the table, with his right hand in 
 his pocket and clicking his keys. A petulant irritation 
 became more evident with every movement. 
 
190 FABER 
 
 “Do sit down,” Faith addressed him. “There is 
 actually no calmness in you.” 
 
 He obeyed, stared at her for a while, and said 
 “That medallion you have around your neck is very 
 pretty. Where did it come from?” 
 
 Probably he wanted to say something entirely dif- 
 ferent, for he did not even listen when Faith told 
 him that it came from her mother. 
 
 “You must remember,” he began suddenly, bending 
 animatedly over the table and extending his index fin- 
 ger, “that Martina was always a wholly unsocial being. 
 The other half, which runs around outside and pur- 
 sues its daily tasks, was so far removed from her that 
 she saw it only in caricature with all sorts of silly and 
 comical distortions. Her imagination could make noth- 
 ing of anonymous suffering. She did not have in her a 
 trace of a leaning in that direction. It would have 
 seemed the most absurd thing in the world to her to 
 be credited with that. And so it appeared to me—as 
 absurd as if we asked that moth up there to draw a 
 wheelbarrow.” 
 
 He threw a searching and mistrustful glance at 
 Faith. When she nodded in acquiescence he continued: 
 “A single incident, a catastrophe in which she had a 
 part, moved her, naturally. And very severely, so that 
 her whole organism was thereby thrown out of order. 
 Instinctively she then tried to protect herself against it. 
 
BPABLR! ° 191 
 
 When occasionally she experienced a disagreeable or 
 merely unpleasant dream she was in a sensitive and 
 depressed condition for a long time thereafter, and I 
 had to comfort her exactly as if the dream had in- 
 sulted her. Yes, that is how it was; she felt insulted 
 when she had a bad dream. I often made fun of this 
 characteristic. She was so constituted that she could 
 grasp only beautiful things, and when she wept it was 
 mostly only when something unexpectedly beautiful 
 happened to her.” 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Faith nodded again, becoming cheerful and almost 
 contented. This dissection of Martina’s character 
 seemed to give her a great deal of pleasure. Moreover, 
 she had a way of listening which increased the self- 
 possession of the speaker and made him seem clever 
 ind stimulating in his own eyes. 
 
 “I remember, for instance,” continued F aber, “that 
 once in the fall we undertook an outing in the moun- 
 ains. It was in south Tyrol. We came down from 
 the Valsugana toward evening; the broad valley with 
 ts vineyards and the stream—I think it was the Brenta 
 —lay bathed in the crimson flood of sunset; in our rap- 
 ure we lost our way and came unexpectedly into a 
 yark where the roses were as thick as strawberries in 
 ı clearing. An old Italian gardener came toward us, 
 sreeted us in the solemn and sincere manner of these 
 ‚eople, and led us through beautiful avenues; finally 
 
192 FABER 
 
 we reached a bosk, which appeared like a burst of 
 flame of a hundred colours. We had never seen any- 
 thing like it. Suddenly Martina threw her arms around 
 me and wept for joy and bliss.” 
 
 He halted for a few seconds as if he could not re- 
 linquish this picture out of the past. Then he con- 
 tinued: “So you see. There you have the proof. A 
 piece of music could affect her in the same way, or a 
 picture; on the other hand she never wept at human 
 suffering. Above all she would get cold, even to a 
 physical chill, and sometimes she would even be im- 
 pelled by an irresistible desire to laugh. Asa child she 
 was always compelled to laugh when a hearse with its 
 horses draped in black passed by. Strange, isn’t it?! 
 She told me that her father had an assistant or a pupil 
 who suffered from epilepsy; one day when Martina was 
 in the studio he fell from the scaffold and writhed in a 
 cramp; although she lost her breath in terror she 
 broke out into laughter. Later she felt ashamed and 
 could look no one in the eye. For months she had a 
 horror of the studio and would not enter it, but when 
 some one mentioned the epileptic she had to laugh.” 
 
 “T can well imagine that; I can actually see her,” 
 said Faith. 
 
 “T have always explained it to myself,” declared 
 Faber, with naive profundity, “by the fact that the 
 tragic and abnormal things in life were diametrically 
 
FABER 193 
 
 the opposite of her own make-up. Pardon me if I ex- 
 press myself in such learned and circumstantial terms, 
 but I would like to define this accurately. Therefore 
 her nature unconsciously defends itself against horrible 
 impressions and defends itself with the most extreme 
 methods. I could say a great deal more about it; I 
 could produce many proofs of the accuracy of my 
 views, but that is not necessary for you. From all 
 this you can picture to yourself how I felt when she 
 wrote me for the first time about her activities with 
 the Princess. I felt as if I had fallen from the clouds. 
 I could not get into my head the idea that Martina 
 not only seeks but actually finds happiness and salva- 
 tion for her soul in helping children. And I never 
 will be able to understand it. You must credit me 
 with that.’ 
 
 “Who tells you that?” asked Faith, quickly raising 
 her eyes to his and looking at him in amazement. 
 “How do you assume that she seeks happiness and 
 salvation for her soul in her work for the Princess? 
 That is absolutely false.” 
 
 “In how far is that false?” murmured Faber, aston- 
 ished. “Then what is the right view? What else does 
 she seek there? What other satisfaction can she gain 
 thereby ?” 
 
 “So you seriously held the view up to now that Mar- 
 tina joined the mission out of sympathy or a common 
 
194 FABER 
 
 love for humanity? or because of the idea? I must 
 admit that I hear this with consternation. You have, 
 as it happens, fallen into a strange error. No trace 
 of that; Martina wanted a profession. That seemed 
 unavoidably necessary for her existence.” 
 
 “A profession?’ stammered Faber, touched to the 
 quick. “In what way? And why?” 
 
 “In order to become independent.’ 
 
 “Independent? Independent of whom? Of me?” 
 
 “Perhaps. In order to have free disposition of her 
 own self in a material or any other way, in the event 
 this was necessary. This, after all, is extremely 
 simple.” 
 
 Faber stared at her with an expression hovering be- 
 tween a smile and a laugh, with his mouth open; an 
 expression of disbelief, mockery, and anger. 
 
 Faith did not seem to notice this. “What she needed 
 for that naturally was a woman like the Princess,” 
 she continued, “and tasks such as the Princess could 
 give her. She had to be present with her whole heart, 
 grasp a situation with confidence, and reach the con- 
 viction that she was useful, that she performed what 
 no one else was able to do and that inwardly she felt 
 herself rewarded.” 
 
 “Halt, halt, pardon me,” Faber interrupted impa- 
 tiently. “Precisely at the time Martina became ac- 
 quainted with the Princess she was plentifully supplied 
 
FABER 195 
 
 with money. Before that circumstances were rather 
 strained; I know that, I don’t contradict that. But 
 just at that time she had sold her father’s sculpture. 
 The purchaser even paid in American exchange. He 
 paid $6,000. You must admit therefore that there can 
 be no talk of want.” 
 
 Faith smiled with a quiet bitterness. “But I did 
 not speak of want,” she said. “It is strange with 
 what hardihood you misunderstand me. It was not a 
 matter of overcoming a temporary difficulty. It was a 
 matter of carrying on a self-sufficient existence.” 
 
 “A self-sufficient existence? Yes, but how? Listen, 
 that is folly.” Faber laughed out loud, but it had a 
 forced sound. “Martina and a self-sufficient existence! 
 What an insane notion! Why, then? Why should she 
 long for that? This runs wholly contrary to her char- 
 acter, and her mode of thought. What would be the 
 object?” He folded his arms and shook his head with 
 superior assurance. 
 
 Faith did not reply. She wrinkled her forehead and 
 resumed her sewing. Thereupon Faber said icily: 
 “Likewise I did not know that the work in the Chil- 
 dren’s City is connected with a fixed income. In most 
 cases the service is voluntary. I did know that Mar- 
 tina held a sort of official position as secretary of the 
 Princess-director and for that reason was paid. How 
 much she receives, I don’t know even to-day. It can- 
 
196 FABER 
 
 not be a great deal. It is not likely that one can de- 
 pend upon it for a future. Or do you think otherwise? 
 Martina is no poor mathematician and will have nursed 
 no exaggerated hopes.” 
 
 “That may be,” replied Faith, shrugging her shoul- 
 ders. “But an exception was made in her case. There 
 is a fundamental rule that voluntary and unpaid serv- 
 ices can be accepted only from those who are able to 
 do without pay. The mission works with most exten- 
 sive means and does not wish to misuse man-power.” 
 
 Faber tried in vain not to show how crushed he was 
 by Faith’s disclosure. He sat there brooding, with a 
 fixed look and a gloomy expression. Faith saw that 
 he could not bring himself to ask her more questions; 
 he was not sufficiently at peace with himself. A 
 thoughtful frown between her eyebrows betrayed the 
 fact that she was undecided how to draw him out of 
 his troubled indecision without hurting him or appear- 
 ing presumptuous. Her motions at her handicraft be- 
 came mechanical, for all sorts of thoughts were pour- 
 ing in on her; for minutes she allowed her needle to 
 rest and glanced stealthily at him; he had leaned back 
 in his chair, his lips were pressed tightly together and 
 he drummed interruptedly on the table with the fingers 
 of his right hand. — 
 
 No doubt about it, he did not want to speak or to 
 ask. It was everything for him to keep up, so long as 
 
FABER 197 
 
 possible, the pretence that no one could tell him any- 
 thing new about Martina. Perhaps it was merely pain- 
 ful to him that another woman felt herself called upon 
 to do this; perhaps it was just this woman from whom 
 he did not wish to accept it—why was inexplicable. 
 At that the torture of not knowing and of not having 
 known what he had just heard stood written so plainly. 
 on his face that Faith’s look was constantly drawn 
 back to him, and finally caused her to fall for a time 
 into sorrowful reflection. 
 
 “I think we'll close the window now,” she said; 
 arose, went to the window and closed it. Then she 
 turned to the door. 
 
 “Whither?” Faber suddenly ejaculated. There was 
 such a note of resentment, almost of terror, in the 
 short, abrupt question that Faith turned in sur- 
 prise. 
 
 » 
 
 “T will make some coffee,” she replied; “it will be 
 good for you; it is good for headache.” 
 
 “T don’t want coffee to-day,” he said hastily. “Please 
 stay.” 
 
 When she had reseated herself he said: “Please 
 don’t let my ill humour affect you. The devil knows 
 what’s the matter with me. I cannot get my proper 
 balance. My own body often causes me much chagrin. 
 ‘My very existence is a burden to me. It may be that 
 
 it is hard for me to acclimate myself. Hard in every 
 
198 FABER 
 
 way. The air, the people, the things—I don’t get ad- 
 justed. Often it seems to me as if I have artificial 
 organs in my body, or am a machine that some one 
 has forgotten to fire up and to lubricate. What is 
 to be done? Once at least I was a cheerful fellow, 
 even a little foolish, certainly not a dullard and a mis- 
 anthrope. Asia has destroyed me. That is the reason: 
 Asia has made me stupid and sad. But don’t let it 
 affect you. Take me as Iam. So far as you are con- 
 cerned that about misanthropy does not apply. Your 
 company is agreeable, really agreeable—no flattery. I 
 could listen for hours when you speak. Tell me some- 
 thing. Anything, no matter what.” 
 
 Thus spoke his mouth, but his eyes, twinkling pas- 
 sionately in hollows a bit too deep, cried out to Faith: 
 Speak only of the one; stretch me no longer on the 
 rack; read the real meaning in my words, 
 
 Faith understood the call and it seemed to move her. 
 But it was manifestly not easy for her to answer his 
 dumb appeal, because on his part he refused to put 
 aside the mask he felt necessary to use when facing her, 
 so that she had to be prepared for a sort of game of 
 hide and seek. | Caution was part of her nature, and 
 life had taught her that he who opens his whole heart 
 to men draws the least advantage/ At the same time 
 there suddenly appeared an element between her and 
 this man that had not been there before, an irrepressible 
 
FABER 199 
 
 and enigmatic something that both seemed to consider 
 disturbing. This feeling was augmented by silence; 
 so Faith said that she gladly acknowledged his praise, 
 but that she was not a teller of stories; she did not 
 understand how to entertain any one. In her home it 
 had not been considered refined to step beyond the cus- 
 tomary sparsity of speech. Beyond this she had never 
 had the necessary intercourse, that is, with women. 
 
 It was very clever of her to make him believe that 
 she meant to speak solely of herself. And quite grad- 
 ually, so that he did not really notice the transition, 
 she came back to Martina.. She complained that it 
 was difficult for a more or less cultured woman to enter 
 into relations of friendship with another woman, into 
 a real relationship, not merely one based on social 
 bonds. When a young woman she had suffered for 
 want of a female friend; she had always been bored 
 by banal meetings held for the purpose of gossiping 
 and exchanging foolish secrets; later this gave her a 
 wrong attitude toward the world, for it made it almost 
 impossible for her to acquire confidence in a woman, 
 so that she rejected every intimacy from the beginning. 
 Wholly in disagreement with the prevailing opinion, 
 she was forced to admit that disinterested relations 
 with a man, which would lead to all sorts of agreeable 
 understandings, had always been much more desirable 
 to her than even the most friendly association with a 
 
200 FABER 
 
 woman. But this had become entirely different since 
 she knew Martina and kept house with her. 
 
 She observed that Faber breathed deeply when she 
 mentioned Martina’s name and that his features imme- 
 diately took on an expression of composure. She had 
 to smile unwittingly, and then continued in her re- 
 strained voice, which sounded like a harsh whisper 
 even when she spoke loudly: “As I had no confidence 
 in friendship between women I also did not know 
 what sort of a world this relationship opens—a world 
 existing wholly for itself, completely undiscovered. 
 Martina was the first to teach me what one woman 
 may mean to another woman; since then I live dif- 
 ferently and think differently.” 
 
 She shrugged her shoulders a bit and the dark eyes, 
 half closed by remarkably beautiful eyelids, sought a 
 spot on the table, where they remained fixed. “She 
 is always present with me. When I think about her 
 she stands before meas if alive. It was thus even from 
 the beginning. I could guess practically all her 
 thoughts and she was often very much put out thereby. 
 I knew when she had had a disagreeable experience or 
 something ailed her. When she was in a bad humour 
 I told her the reason. This often made her laugh and 
 kiss me and call me her shadow-ego, her better ego. 
 But as it happened this was no virtue on my part. 
 When one carries the image of another within him 
 
FABER 201 
 
 one can know much about him. I will not contend 
 that this is always an accurate judgment. But it is 
 often enough. A woman from the very first knows 
 more about women than does a man. If it comes to 
 that I could probably describe Martina’s life in the 
 last few years in such a manner that perhaps even you, 
 who are closer to her than any other person, would 
 learn something peculiar. I say perhaps; I don’t want 
 to appear presumptuous. It just happens to strike me 
 that way often.” 
 
 She was silent for a while and did not dare to look 
 
 up lest she meet the burning look that Faber had fas- 
 tened on her. 
 “Well, try it anyhow,” she heard his husky voice 
 say. “Suppose that is really the case and make the 
 attempt. It makes me curious.” This was meant to 
 sound amiable and humourous, but it sounded sup- 
 pressed and eager. 
 
 Faith now looked at him, wrinkling her forehead as 
 if he were not sitting opposite her but at a distance. 
 She smiled. “Very well, I'll try it,” she said. 
 
AV 
 
 “Asout the time Martina became acquainted wit! 
 the Princess,” began Faith, “she already had reasoı 
 to hope for your return.” Her face became more ani 
 more serious and her look showed that she was im 
 mersed in her subject. “Many were coming home a 
 that time—husbands, fathers, sons, brothers; man 
 were awaited with ardent longing. Martina had als 
 passed the months and years in longing. It had grad 
 ually become very difficult for her to connect one da 
 with another and the evenings and nights were stil 
 worse. Everything was so unrelated and fragmentary 
 and the regularity of change was a torture to her 
 Everything she did seemed useless to her. She als 
 had worries to combat; first about money, then worrie 
 over Christopher’s education; worries over the inse 
 curity of her position. She did not like to enter int 
 a close connection with any one, did not have the knacl 
 for it, or the conventional attitude. Her aptitude lie 
 in another direction. Thus she found herself mor 
 and more left to herself week after week. Dr. Fabe 
 came at times, but what was she to do with him? Hi 
 abject reverence touched her, even amused her, but a 
 
 a man and a human being he aroused an undefine 
 202 
 
FABER = 
 
 sympathy in her, and she does not like to be sympa- 
 hetic. She could not get along with Clara; they en- 
 yaged in much ironical banter without having anything 
 o say. Likewise she could not get along with Frau 
 Anna, but I must not speak about the reason. So long 
 is Dr. Faber lived she could find solace with him. She 
 ıas often told me about him; he seems to have been 
 ı wonderful man, and at his death she fell into a mood 
 »f despair for the first time. 
 
 “T believe—in fact I am very certain of it—that 
 lecisive changes took place in Martina between Dr. 
 faber’s death and her meeting with the Princess. To 
 liscuss that is hardly possible. Shall I tramp boldly 
 m this delicate subject? I might hurt it by merely 
 hinking of it. Things took on a new aspect and she 
 ‘ven came to new conclusions about herself. Reflect 
 ‘or a moment how women live—the daily task; the 
 ‘outine of distasteful housework; the mechanical pace 
 n joy and sorrow and all the heavier responsibilities 
 jut on the shoulders of the man, with the exception of 
 
 t 
 
 hose affecting the children, which very few take seri- 
 vusly—how can any one arrive at the truth of exist- 
 ınce under such conditions? Women are practically 
 ll asleep; they are forced to that, for no provision is 
 nade for their wakefulness. Perhaps Martina awoke 
 it that time. Perhaps she was no longer satisfied with 
 
 he role she had played until now—liking neither the 
 
 | 
 | 
 | 
 | 
 
204 FABER 
 
 ease on the one hand, nor the insecurity on the other. 
 Perhaps she could no longer endure sitting there, plac- 
 ing her hands in her lap, looking sadly on and waiting, 
 At least that is how it began. It began because she 
 became ashamed of weakness and helplessness. And 
 because she determined no longer to stand inactive and 
 wait, but to meet the man she expected halfway, that is 
 to say to do something that would give her this satis- 
 faction. For until now it had seemed to her that after 
 every year of waiting she found herself that much 
 farther away from him. This happened of itself; it 
 was painful, but unavoidable. 
 
 “At that moment Fate placed the Princess in her 
 path. Think of what it means to find guidance and 
 support in such a crisis! The Princess guessed every- 
 thing by her gift of divination. When Martina was 
 not able to explain herself she provided the words— 
 the simplest and the gentlest. The conflict was not new 
 to her—she had seen women with noble motives go 
 to pieces because of it. In an unforgettable conversa- 
 tion that I had with her later she told me how affecting 
 it was to hear Martina express herself in all sorts of 
 puzzling intimations, she who was unaccustomed to 
 speak freely, who feared and yet ‘wished to do so; 
 how she shyly asked question after question with grow- 
 ing confidence until she suddenly revealed herself, still 
 with reserve but understood easily enough by the ex- 
 
% 
 
 FABER 205 
 
 perienced woman. The Princess had only to say, ‘Come 
 to me,’ and Martina did not delay an instant. She 
 was ready to fulfil the most exacting conditions. The 
 Princess said to me: ‘She is like a man who has never 
 measured his strength and for that reason puts himself 
 to the hardest tests.’ And then something else hap- 
 pened.” 
 
 Faith hesitated a little before continuing in a voice 
 even more suppressed than before. “Martina was 
 wholly without religious training. She had grown up 
 as a real heathen, like most of the generation born 
 around 1900. In addition her father had been a vio- 
 lent liberal in his youth and had never believed in any- 
 thing but his art. I am told that artists may do so. 
 [t may be. Martina had felt for years a feeling of rev- 
 arence that had no object—you must know about that 
 —she was hungry for something exalted, and who 
 could guide her more pleasantly than the Princess, a 
 woman who is all presentiment and humility, whose 
 message is carried forward by sympathizers and by 
 the widely extended outposts of a new belief? Here 
 Martina had the opportunity to satisfy the desire she 
 had so long suppressed; the load on her shoulders was 
 too great, and she would have collapsed if she had not 
 possessed this look upward and this confidence in what 
 the Princess calls the Unknown Heart under the Stars. 
 She came home many an evening with her eyes filled 
 
206 FABER 
 
 with terror at the pictures she had seen. In her slee 
 she murmured the names of children and sobbed int! 
 her pillow. During the first weeks I passed half th 
 nights watching at her bedside; when she awoke te 
 “ rified she would beg me to read her a fairy tale b 
 Andersen, for this calmed her; or a certain story b 
 Mörike that she was most fond of; this made he 
 laugh. But it was very hard to allay her terror, cause 
 by the terrible knowledge of hunger and cold and lac 
 of shelter and early sins and early crimes; this wa 
 etched deep into her mind. Have you not observe 
 that? Finally she came out; of it stronger in spite 0 
 everything and when she began her daily task sh 
 radiated pride and confidence. From now on she di 
 not wait for your home-coming in the old way. ] 
 became an entirely different sort of waiting. The let 
 ters she wrote you must give proof of that. An 
 those she received had a different effect than formerly. 
 
 Faith stopped once more, for everything she ha 
 to reveal came very close and was full of significance 
 She reflected and hunted for words. Faber did not in 
 terrupt her once, either with sound or with gesture 
 He had become pale and not a drop of blood seeme 
 to flow beneath his skin. 
 
 “The letters Martina received from you affected he 
 strangely,” she continued her narrative; “on the day | 
 letter came she was most joyfully excited. First sh 
 
FABER 207 
 
 ould regard it for a long time, not daring to open 
 , and would press it to her breast; then she would 
 0 to her room to read it. In the evening she would 
 sually come to me with the letter. So far as possible 
 re would tell me what it contained, cite certain pas- 
 ges, read whole pages to me, and add her amusing 
 r serious comment. More and more she was seized 
 y a strange contemplation when in the midst of it. 
 hen she would sit there with the letter in her hand, 
 lent and reflecting. Again she would ask me some 
 uestion, usually on an unimportant subject and then 
 unk and think, with her fingers pressed into her 
 reeks. “What are you thinking of?’ I ask; she shakes 
 er head. She had heard that after seven years a 
 ew set of cells forms in the human body, so she asked 
 le in fun whether one could develop new eyes or a 
 ew nose by this method, and added smilingly: ‘If 
 smething like that happened to Eugene I would weep 
 tyself sick.” One day I told her about a returned 
 ger, a young manufacturer, who had formerly lived 
 
 ith his wife in the most happy circumstances; since 
 
 
 
 is return to her they disagreed often; every conversa- 
 on became a quarrel, every look led to a misunder- 
 anding; yet neither had been guilty of anything and 
 one could bring any charge against the other. Mar- 
 
 na knew the woman and was aware of the unfortu- 
 ae situation. After being lost in reflection for a 
 
 | 
 | 
 
 ] 
 E 
 
208 FABER 
 
 while she said that they were like two persons who 
 had formerly played music together in harmony and 
 now played each for himself, using a different key, a 
 different tempo, and eventually even a different com- 
 position. This comparison remained on her mind the 
 whole evening and made her constantly think of new 
 possibilities. ‘Perhaps,’ said she, ‘the man has lost 
 his feeling for music in all those years and the wife 
 keeps up the illusion in order to spare him,’ and again: 
 ‘Perhaps he no longer finds any pleasure in music and 
 accompanies his wife merely to be obliging, or she has 
 made such progress that he can no longer keep step 
 with her and therefore plays false notes out of anger 
 and spite.’ When I suggested that the reverse might 
 also be the case she replied almost joyfully: ‘Of course 
 the reverse might be the case and that would be much) 
 better, for she would sooner adapt herself to him than: 
 he to her, and would follow his instructions more) 
 quickly than he would hers; let us hope it is the re- 
 verse.’ Finally she suggested that the worst of all 
 would be if both played miserably and each blamed 
 the other because he believed that his partner had for- 
 gotten everything. Eventually she reddened and be 
 came embarrassed because she was aware that most of 
 her deductions ran in favor of the woman and that I 
 might consider this observation on her part as im- 
 modest; but such conduct was certainly not in her. 
 
 
 
 
FABER 209 
 
 As for myself, I saw by this incident the extent of 
 her distress, and how this increased with every step 
 and every thought. For as the moment for your re- 
 turn home approached she became daily more anxious 
 and moody. When your letters failed to come she often 
 acted as if feverish. She took out your earlier letters, 
 some of which she had read so often and had studied 
 ‚so much that she knew them by heart. Every syllable 
 was important to her, and she sought between the lines 
 for a hidden meaning. When Frau Faber came with 
 news she trembled like an aspen; when Dr. Fleming 
 ‘appeared to make inquiries she talked a hodgepodge. 
 ‘Several times she remained for the night with the 
 "Princess; toward the last only she could calm her. It 
 was her restlessness, yes, but not solely that, nor solely 
 the suspense and the expectation and the joy. It was 
 something else: fear. Her fear dominated all other 
 -feelings—that is what it was.” 
 
 The word electrified Faber. With a violent move- 
 ment he caught Faith’s wrist and cried: “Yes, by God, 
 yes! Fear it was—fear!” 
 
 ' He knows it, this fear; his eyes say so, but he must 
 not put it into words. It had weighed upon his breast 
 like a ton of sand. It had darkened his thoughts and 
 embittered his bread. Out of what had it come? Out 
 ‘of nothing—a figment of the imagination, the spectre 
 ofa dream, which had produced a poison out of his 
 
210 FABER 
 
 suspicion and his feeling of deprivation. After that 
 no hour or occupation holds any peace for him; fear 
 becomes his companion, grinning in every face, whis- 
 pering in every sound. Something has changed over 
 yonder, thousands of miles away, but what? All his 
 intense thinking produces nothing but this threat, 
 which tortures him like a red-hot iron. He too read 
 Martina’s letters numberless times; he too could re- 
 peat almost all of them from memory. Reading them, 
 he suspected the change that had occurred; her hand 
 betrayed more to him than her words; he could not 
 comprehend it or grasp it and yet could not shake it 
 off by any power of the will; it ate on as does a cancer, 
 
 And yet he might well have fear while wandering in 
 a strange land like Ulysses, for he came by fear nat- 
 urally, as a natural illness, brought about by the violent 
 character of his fate. What, on the other hand, created 
 her fear? Fear was his neighbour and bedfellow, for 
 he was without sources of aid, without men, or friends, 
 or the sounds of home, or wife and child, thinking 
 himself disowned, enchained, forgotten; but she, Mar- 
 tina, still rooted in friendly soil, what did she have 
 to fear? “Tell me, Faith,” he pleaded, placing his 
 open palms together and extending them toward her ; 
 “tell me, what did she fear?” 
 
 Faith dropped her head and did not reply for a long 
 time. Suddenly she rose, drew her chair closer to his 
 
FABER 211 
 
 and put her hand on his arm. Her look brightened 
 with cordiality, her cheeks flushed in her eagerness, 
 her whole being became animated, confidential, with 
 a sister’s confidence, and she said: “Now listen to me, 
 Eugene Faber. Listen calmly to me and don’t get 
 impatient. I have to reflect well over what I am now 
 going to tell you and have to be careful to get things 
 logically, so that there will be no confusion. Let us 
 begin at the beginning. What a wonderful fate was 
 meted out to you, you and Martina! In early youth 
 you found each other, each the one human being with 
 whom the other could live. How rare that is, how 
 very rare! You were like brother and sister, and yet 
 married, and always companions; you two on the one 
 side and the whole world on the other. You never 
 needed the world, it never touched you, never troubled 
 you. You lived a magical life, as in a fairy tale, 
 actually a magical life. How long can that last? How 
 long did you think it would last? For ever? Did 
 you think it would last for ever? One day it would 
 have come to an end, one way or another; one day 
 ‘the world would have confronted you, and you would 
 have had to make a decision and part with some of 
 your treasured happiness. The world does not permit 
 us to hide away from it entirely, from its terrible real- 
 ity, and this is just. There is a point where happiness 
 becomes pride and coldness of heart. Every one must 
 
212 FABER 
 
 assume his share; two persons may not stand apart 
 and say: ‘We hear nothing, we know nothing, we are 
 sufficient unto ourselves and have nothing in common 
 with the rest of you.’ They would discover at the end 
 that the soul of one had completely consumed the soul 
 of the other. Don’t you agree this would be the out- 
 come? You have doubts. Not I. I mean to say 
 that it was best that you were so suddenly torn apart. 
 When Martina stood alone all at once she missed her 
 support. It was as if a prop were withdrawn from a 
 young tree; in the first gust of wind it would break. 
 What had she been up to that time? A loving wife; a 
 beloved woman. Suddenly the one for whom she was 
 that, through whom she was that, was no longer be- 
 side her. What was left was too little to fill her life, or, 
 let us say, her year. You know the year has three 
 hundred and sixty-five days. She could not be a 
 mother exclusively. She was not wholly suited for 
 that; something had to be conceded to herself; her 
 problem was, how to get along by herself. What was 
 she to do when, figuratively, she no longer had a floor 
 beneath her feet or a roof above her head? As I have 
 said before, she no longer wanted to sit there and put 
 her hands in her lap; she simply did not find it fitting 
 to exist wholly by virtue of one man’s benevolence, his 
 experience, his knowledge, his work, his spirit, his) 
 home-coming or continued absence, even when she 
 
 | 
 
 | 
 
 | 
 
FABER 213 
 
 loved this person above everything else, or precisely 
 because she loved him. Could she have done anything 
 wiser and more courageous than what she did? I will 
 admit the task was often hard and at times beyond 
 her strength. But then came her joy at having gained 
 her goal, the daily, wonderful joy at what she 
 had overcome; she learned to respect herself and to 
 fulfil her duty to herself, and out of the clinging little 
 wife developed an active human being; that is some- 
 thing, and will you not agree that it was worth the 
 effort? But even then she became anxious: What 
 will Eugene say? How will he regard this? With 
 what sort of look will he measure me? Every other 
 woman in her position would naturally have sat 
 down and written: ‘My dear Eugene, thus and so; 
 thus I felt about it; this has happened and this have I 
 done; the Martina whom you left is not the same Mar- 
 tina to whom you will return; these are the reasons.’ 
 Ninety-nine out of one hundred would have done so; 
 unfortunately she is the hundredth and cannot do so; 
 to philosophize over it is fruitless, for this happens to 
 be the situation. She could merely hope that her Eu- 
 gene would detect it and discover it at long distance; 
 beyond that she had to be satisfied with reporting pass- 
 ing events in the manner of a primer. Well, you de- 
 tected it, but not in the way Martina hoped you would. 
 God knows what delusions you had built up for your- 
 
214 FABER 
 
 self! Can’t I understand! And could it have been 
 different? Your desperation, because year followed 
 year; the theft of your life and your vain fight against 
 it. According to your view Martina was the deserted 
 one, the one who needed help and protection, and if 
 not, then she must seem lost to you. You wanted to 
 have explicit proof that you were necessary to her, 
 that she could do nothing without her husband, and 
 of this her letters contained less and less; with this 
 horrible secrecy on your mind the untold story be- 
 came a picture of terror. How well I understand that! 
 But let us talk about Martina. Let us talk about what 
 she wished and what she expected of you. Beginning 
 with the basic self, and taking her as she was, she 
 hoped first to find her way into her new life with you, 
 to be treated fairly first, to be approved of first, so 
 that she would not have the feeling that she was de- 
 ceiving the dearest person or that he would have before 
 him, so to speak, two Martinas, one that he knew and 
 another mysterious one of whom he knew nothing. She 
 would like to have had everything begin again, so 
 that she could conquer and could let herself be won 
 again. She did not want to begin with memories or 
 take the past into consideration; too much evil lay 
 between, too much torment, too many desolate days. 
 Then came her fear, fear that things might turn out 
 
 differently ; no wooing, no discovering one another and 
 
FABER | 215 
 
 seeking one another; merely seizure, merely the claim, 
 ‘merely the demand, as if nothing had happened to her; 
 as if six years must be forgotten and erased; as if 
 that were possible, as if people could begin life together 
 again at the exact spot where they had left off, the 
 very day and hour. She could not tolerate the thought 
 that this could come about, but she received no sign 
 from you to allay her fears. Finally you came. And 
 what happened? You wandered about in the city. 
 Clara brought the news that you were at her house. 
 I will not attempt to describe in what condition this 
 put Martina. I prayed, when she left, that she might 
 not break down on the street. Probably you noticed 
 very little of this when you saw her, so cheerful. And 
 then the days that followed. All her dread forebodings 
 were realized. Be not angry with me, Eugene Faber, 
 for it was thus, and it is thus: A perturbed and obdu- 
 rate man came into this house, one who did not see or 
 hear or feel and merely wanted something. What did 
 he want? Just what had been before. He wanted his 
 right. Right is here the equivalent of force. Demand? 
 Is demand anything else than violence? Is there such 
 a thing as a love demand? No. Does one person be- 
 long to another? No. Does one possess another save 
 in that he earns the right, and serves him anew every 
 day? No. There will probably be no difference of 
 Opinion between us on that. I think you know every- 
 
216 FABER 
 
 thing now, and if I have been too explicit and perhaps 
 even a bit too violent, forgive me.” 
 
 She stopped and turned her face away, breathing 
 deeply. Faber did not trust himself to move. His 
 eyes seemed to have lost all life; his head was drawn 
 down between his shoulders; he was gnawing continu- 
 ously at his lower lip with his teeth, at last so severely 
 that it began to bleed. Thus they sat silently beside one 
 another for some time. Suddenly Faber seized Faith 
 by both hands before she was aware and pressed his 
 lips first on one and then on the other. And on each 
 of her hands remained a little spot of blood. His 
 movement had been so abrupt, the expression of his 
 face so full of reverence, that Faith did not dare op- 
 pose him; but she paled noticeably, withdrew her hands 
 in fright and said: “Now we have had enough of talk- 
 ing.” 
 
 Thereupon she rose, nodded to him and hurriedly 
 left the room. It was a quarter past three o’clock. 
 
XVI 
 
 On the following day Faber began his work. He 
 was introduced to the chief of his division and several 
 colleagues, was assigned a place at a desk loaded with 
 documents and took pains to observe the well-meant 
 advice of an old clerk on how to treat those documents ; 
 then he lost himself in reading receipts, rescripts, peti- 
 tions, estimates of costs, and proofs of damages. He 
 glanced absently at those who passed continuously 
 through the corridor-like room, listened to a detailed 
 conversation between two roommates about the quali- 
 ties of their tavern, and after office hours showed on 
 his face traces of the boredom through which he had 
 passed. On his way home he visited Fleming and 
 with ironic humour described to him his impressions 
 and experiences, adding that it was fortunate that it 
 was immaterial whether or not he tarried there; this 
 illusion of work was useful only to kill time with, and 
 of that he had plenty on hand. “Your newly consti- 
 tuted offices,” he said, “are obviously intended to make 
 people who would otherwise break windowpanes harm- 
 less by scrawling on paper.” 
 
 “My God, we try all sorts of ways,” sighed Flem- 
 
 217 
 
218 FABER 
 
 ing. “Panic—no end. We are like hens in a court- 
 yard that see a hawk circling above them. How can 
 any one produce anything useful amid the scream- 
 ing and noise of wings? A hawk—well, there is 
 something imposing about that; but rats ina barn... 
 Last week they stole sixteen valuable works from the 
 university library. Not a soul pays any attention to 
 it. Or, to continue my figure, not a rooster crows. 
 You know I don’t like to lament, but it can give me 
 no pleasure when the most sacred things are not re- 
 spected. When does Martina return ?” 
 
 Faber shrugged his shoulders. He begged of 
 Fleming the ancient book on astrology by Cardano, 
 which he possessed; he had borrowed it from him 
 once, years ago. Fleming studied his catalogue, then 
 climbed a Jadder and took the volume from one of 
 the uppermost shelves. “Take good care of it—it 
 cannot be replaced,” he said, and added, while a broad 
 smile passed over his good-natured pudgy face: “Do 
 you still consider star-gazing a science as you did 
 long ago? The old Goethe seems to be right when he 
 declares that a man becomes a mystic in his late years.” 
 
 “It is not a matter of star-gazing,” said Faber; “it 
 is a matter of—well, I can’t find the philosophical ex- 
 pressions which make this interesting. We look for 
 coherence. Would it not be a salvation for our con- 
 sciousness if we could prove coherence in things. 
 
FABER 219 
 
 That would make us less wretched at once. We could 
 imagine that we had a function. The Chinese know 
 a great deal about this. That is why they are such 
 calm and incomprehensible people. Farewell, old 
 Fleming.” 
 
 He went home, but as there was no one in the 
 house he left again. The lovely weather did not tempt 
 him half so much as the empty rooms distressed him. 
 He bought several fine pears at a fruit stand, but 
 when he sat down on a bench of the avenue in order 
 to eat them he no longer had any appetite and de- 
 cided to take them home with him. 
 
 First, however, he wanted to call on Clara. He 
 met her at the entrance of the house; she was just 
 descending from a private automobile and saying 
 farewell to an elderly woman, who remained seated in 
 the car and who wore a chinchilla cloak in spite of the 
 warm weather. When Clara perceived her brother 
 she took his arm and led him into the house, and said 
 as she passed in: “As you see me now I am worth 
 countless millions more than an hour ago. So show 
 me respect.” From a leather handbag she took a 
 fairly large case, looked around with simulated fear 
 to see if any one was near by, and opened it. Faber 
 beheld, with some astonishment, a valuable diadem of 
 gems which threw a radiance of purple, green, and 
 blue rays in the half-light of the staircase. 
 
220 FABER 
 
 “The woman in the automobile, you must know, 
 
 bf 
 
 was my mother-in-law,” reported Clara, as she locked 
 the case again in her bag; “Frau Counsellor Herge- 
 sell, an elegant and noble woman. A formal family 
 dinner takes place to-morrow. The counsellor will be 
 seventy years old. And because I have no appropriate 
 jewels and yet, as the youngest member of the Her- 
 gesell clan, have to make an appearance, Mamma has 
 loaned me the diadem. Therefore, your sister will 
 appear to-morrow evening arrayed in a glory that may 
 well excite envy. You can imagine that stage-fright 
 is already affecting my reason.” 
 
 Faber remarked smilingly: “In spite of your mock- 
 ery you will not succeed in shaking my faith in it. 
 There is no damage at all if the jewels happen to 
 make you a bit insane. I understand that. ‘There is 
 something terrible about such diamonds. They always 
 make me think of bewitched and purified souls.” He 
 reddened, which looked well on him. He reddened 
 because with his words he passed from the realm of 
 the commonplace, which was rarely the case. 
 
 “Mother has been abed since yesterday; she is not 
 very well,” said Clara, when they entered the apart- 
 ment. “Go to her for a little; I will follow immedi- 
 ately.” 
 
 In Anna Faber’s room reigned as great disorder as 
 in a newspaper office. Letters and brochures lay 
 
FABER 221 
 
 everywhere, as well as written sheets and packages of 
 letters. Just as in former years she still corresponded 
 with the whole world. On a round table near her bed 
 stood a teapot, a cup, a few broken rolls, an enormous 
 inkwell, a barometer and a photograph in a mahogany 
 stand. This was a picture of Valentine, the unusually 
 handsome face of a youth in which one noticed the 
 thin lips, formed like a half-moon and turning down 
 at the ends, and the eyes, which were peculiarly 
 crooked or aslant. 
 
 Mother and son communicated in monosyllables. 
 Eugene inquired about the nature of Anna Faber’s 
 indisposition. She rejected any show of anxiety in 
 curt answers and was angry at Eugene because he 
 thad neglected her for some time. Her appearance 
 ‘did not suggest a serious illness; her eyes sparkled 
 with life and her firm and fleshy face, which still bore 
 ‘traces of former beauty, was tanned by the sun. The 
 difficulty was with her legs; she complained impa- 
 ‘tiently that she could neither stand nor walk. 
 
 “Nevertheless, I must go out to-morrow,’ she 
 ‘cried, with the slightly theatrical vehemence that she 
 always used. “A person like myself cannot remain 
 under the feathers for thrice twenty-four hours. 
 Listen to me, dear son,” she said, lowering her pow- 
 erful voice and looking firmly at Eugene. “Can’t you 
 get me some money? I need a fairly large sum. I 
 
222 FABER 
 
 can get nowhere with Hergesell; there is not a spark. 
 of generosity in the man, and he keeps Clara as short 
 as possible. No doubt on his part he is dependent on 
 his father. Well, how about it; can you spare some- 
 thing for me?” 
 
 Eugene looked at her in astonishment. The request 
 was so urgent and yet his mother’s manner so strangely 
 secretive that he did not immediately find a rejoinder. 
 Anna Faber had never understood how to deal with 
 money; she held it in contempt and never had any; 
 when occasionally some money came to her she gave 
 it away or made the most foolish purchases. Her 
 own children had therefore taken her very early under 
 their charge, so that she had the disposal of very 
 slight sums. 
 
 “You will have to tell me Gad Meitad for what 
 purpose you need the money,” replied Eugene, with 
 semi-humorous deliberation. “A fairly large sum. 
 No, that is impossible; but some help in an emer- 
 gency—we might talk about that; but as I say, no 
 secrets.” 
 
 Anna Faber became angry. “I am old enough and 
 man enough, or woman enough, also to have my 
 secrets. What a filthy lot you all are! Bah, the 
 devil!” 
 
 Eugene laughed. He did not take the matter very 
 seriously. Before he could reply Clara entered. She 
 
“ FABER 223 
 
 had thrown a black silk scarf about her shoulders and 
 wore the diadem in her hair. “Well, how do I please 
 you?” she asked with pretended dignity, behind which 
 her amusement could be detected. “Feudal, don’t you 
 think? It is well, after all, to be a Hergesell. How 
 do I please you, Mother? The scarf is naturally in- 
 tended only as an accessory in decoration.” 
 
 Anna Faber gave her daughter a disturbed look. 
 “Is it really necessary to be a Hergesell?” she asked, 
 throwing back her head proudly. “As a Faber you are 
 also somebody. You look as if you were born with 
 it.” 
 
 “God protect me from such courtly manners,” 
 mocked Clara. Then she confronted Eugene. “And 
 what does my brother think of it?” she asked. “I 
 can tell him what he thinks. First, he thinks that his 
 Martina would look one hundred times more beau- 
 tiful with these gems. That is true. But they hap- 
 pened to come to me. Second, he thinks that we 
 Fabers are poor trash, always have been so, and 
 always will be so. This is no less true, for even my 
 share in the Hergesell wealth, when examined closely, 
 can be blown throt gh my five fingers.” She blew 
 through her widespread fingers. 
 
 “You should not read thoughts, Sister, for you read 
 badly,” replied Eugene. 
 
 “Yes, yes,” said Clara, looking in the mirror. “A 
 
224 FABER 
 
 poor girl who marries into a rich family is like a little 
 craftsman who lets himself be bought up by a stock 
 company. There is one general meeting a year at 
 which he is permitted to see how the dividends are 
 divided; for the rest, he can be happy if they pat him 
 affably on the shoulders.” 
 
 “Disgraceful, her talk!” cried Anna Faber. “And 
 your children ?” 
 
 Clara removed the diadem from her head. “My 
 children? They are already on the other side, the 
 wealthy side.” 
 
 “For heaven’s sake take care of those jewels,” Anna 
 Faber admonished her daughter. “To be responsible 
 for such valuable objects would destroy my sleep.” 
 
 Eugene took his leave. Faith was already waiting 
 for him with supper when he reached home. He 
 asked about Christopher, who had already been put to 
 bed, and she made report in a dutiful tone. He told 
 her about his office, his visit to his mother and sister, 
 and the jewelry. She listened with a cordially frank 
 expression. She was pleased each time by the way he 
 used his words. His voice likewise seemed to appeal 
 to her. The shading and modulations of the voice 
 have an important influence on the relations of human 
 beings. 
 
 He enjoyed the meal. It touched him to think that 
 she also took pains on his behalf in this we He | 
 
 x 
 
FABER 225 
 
 praised especially the preparation of the vegetables and 
 asked where she had learned to cook; not many women 
 like her knew how to cook, and those who did made 
 much of it. She replied that she had been taught 
 when still a child to work in the household; later it 
 had become necessary. He had noticed before that she 
 never mentioned her marriage directly. 
 
 With a sidelong glance at her hands he remarked 
 that it would be unfortunate if such hands were 
 ruined at a stove. She wrinkled her forehead a little 
 and replied that there was no danger, for Martina had 
 been good enough to provide for help in the kitchen 
 for certain hours of the day. He feared that he had 
 been tactless, but an attempt to repair the mistake 
 might increase it. There was an apology in the haste 
 with which he offered her the pears he had brought, 
 for the meal was at an end. She produced two plates 
 and two silver knives and began to peel the fruit. 
 
 “You should not peel it,” he said; “it loses the 
 odour and the down.” 
 
 “Tt won’t do,” she replied, smiling. “I was not 
 brought up that way. To bite in—that won’t do.” 
 
 “Fruits should be treated as animals are,” he con- 
 tinued in a pedantic tone, and observed how she placed 
 one of the white pieces that she had cut between her 
 big white teeth. “Observe, for instance, a pear. How 
 much of life there is in the contour; then the graceful 
 
226 FABER 
 
 curve of the stem above; the rich, golden colour, how 
 warm and delicate; no painter captures it. Practically 
 all the earthen vessels of the Orient are fashioned after 
 the forms of fruit.”’ 
 
 It was still early in the evening and there was still 
 much for Faith to do in the house. She left and re- 
 turned; she carried out the china; she watered the 
 flowers; then she brought her little account book, sat 
 down at the table, and engaged in computation. The 
 account appeared not to balance; she placed her pencil 
 across her lips and reflected, whereby her face assumed 
 the expression of a Madonna. But when she answered 
 his questions or herself broke the silence with a few 
 words she spoke in a comradely manner and with the 
 same look of cordial frankness. i 
 
 Faber had meantime opened his astrological folio. 
 He turned the leaves and looked at the various geo- 
 metrical configurations. Faith asked him what book 
 it was; he explained it to her and she was surprised, 
 sat down beside him, and also looked at the book. 
 
 “This man proves that I can undertake nothing 
 that is not written in the stars as law and precept,” 
 said Faber; “nor omit doing anything. The book is 
 three hundred years old, but the most profound 
 thinkers believed over six thousand years ago that 
 destiny was written in the stars. There is something 
 to it, but one does not dare to take it up for fear of 
 
FABER 227 
 
 becoming too much attached to it. The question is 
 
 
 
 whether the star in which you put your trust really 
 directs you. Yesterday it was all lies and fantastics, 
 to-day it is again becoming true; and so everything 
 gets reversed. You have merely to wait and observe 
 where the little pellet rolls to.” 
 
 ' They discussed it for a while longer and then Faith 
 said: “A letter from Martina will come to-morrow.” 
 
 
 
 _ They retired early, for both were tired from the 
 long wakefulness of the night before. 
 
 ' But no letter came from Martina the next day. 
 Faber remained in his office but a short time. At 
 noon he was already back home. Staying home 
 seemed suddenly to agree with him. Only it was 
 strange that he gave little attention to Christopher, 
 and Faith spoke to him about this. He did not have 
 the patience, however. He tolerated the boy’s com- 
 pany only when Faith was present, and this did not 
 elude the natural keenness of the child; he drew back 
 on his part and his searching eyes, glittering as if 
 from ambush, betrayed a confused mistrust. What 
 this might signify did not distress Faber; besides he 
 hardly noticed it. Faith might have felt anxious 
 about it, for she had a remarkable understanding of 
 the character of the boy, but the change in Faber’s 
 manner, the frankness and animation that he now 
 showed, gave her such hope and gratification that she 
 
228 FABER 
 
 did not want this feeling disturbed by anything un- 
 pleasant. 
 
 Her bearing betrayed this; there was something 
 more proud than usual in her expressions, and when 
 she observed the eagerness, almost childlike, with 
 which Faber sought her presence and watched for 
 her word and look, she attributed it to the change for 
 good that she had caused. It was no wonder that 
 she also should become more frank, more free, and 
 more cheerful. She could not deceive herself and did 
 not dare to; she had neither the inclination nor the 
 tendency to that, and so she gave no attention to her 
 own self. 
 
 She mentioned that she intended to decorate the 
 rooms for Martina’s return. 
 
 In the evening he told her about his experiences 
 on shipboard, about meetings with Siberian hunters, 
 about a fire in a Chinese village, and many other 
 things. She listened, with her chin resting on her 
 folded hands. 
 
 While he spoke he drew on a sheet of paper lying 
 before him. It turned out to be a head, then a face. 
 A strong forehead, well placed eyebrows, a firm gen- 
 erous mouth, with a soft, melancholy expression over 
 the features. 
 
 It was a portrait of Faith. 
 
 She blushed when she noticed it, and when he asked 
 
FABER rors 
 
 her if she wanted it she seemed at first undecided, but 
 finally accepted it. He took back the paper once more 
 and wrote under the portrait: “Everlastingly grateful, 
 Eugene Faber.” 
 
 Thereupon Faith dropped her head, raised it again, 
 and looked at him with her marvellously calm expres- 
 sion. 
 
 The next evening, while Faith was embroidering a 
 monogram on a handkerchief of batiste for Martina, 
 they again touched on the unusually long period of his 
 exile, a theme to which he returned at every oppor- 
 tunity as if by necessity, and with the attitude of a 
 man who wants to remove a pin from his body and 
 cannot find the place where it is hidden. In a moment 
 when the torture that he had experienced became alive 
 in memory he could not withstand the painful temp- 
 tation of speaking timidly and indirectly of the sexual 
 deprivation which condemns a man in his situation to 
 a veritable hell. 
 
 She became a little frightened and unconsciously 
 tried to avoid his unexpected frankness, but she readily 
 saw that he spoke naively and innocently, as if he 
 wanted to tell her of suffering that he had been unable 
 to tell any one heretofore, and as if he hoped to win 
 release from pain by his communication. So she al- 
 
 
 
 lowed him to proceed. 
 It was hard to be just in this matter, especially with 
 
230) FABER 
 
 regard to a woman, he said; nature had constituted 
 man and woman very differently; where the one per- 
 ished for lack of sustenance, the other had-not yet 
 experienced the hunger of desire, and these differences 
 were further sharpened by civilization and custom. 
 Besides, men were very little advanced in self-knowl- 
 edge, so that in the end they knew as little of theit 
 own needs as those of a stranger. In Europe, despite 
 all its learning, the body had been put under restraint 
 and fetters. 
 
 “In general our men, as I saw them there, threw 
 all timidity aside and became beasts,” he continued. 
 “You can well imagine how that happens. But there 
 is nothing to be learned from this unsavoury tragedy 
 save that they throw off the qualities culture has given 
 them; and thus comes madness. This does not mean 
 that men did not combat their debasement, but merely 
 that they lost in the fight. Most men—that is, ninety- 
 nine out of one hundred—have the faculty of dividing 
 themselves. They divide body and soul from one an- 
 other. They discard the soul or they discard the body, 
 as it happens. For this purpose they have instituted 
 special rules and laws, each for himself, as well as a 
 specialized advocacy with all sorts of anchors to wind- 
 ward and escapes. Thus nothing can ever happen te 
 them. They have one domain for love, for what they 
 call the higher things, and another for the so-called 
 
FABER 231 
 
 yassions and the rest, all of which they lump together. 
 [hey are very happily situated; they carry a passe- 
 yartout for all occasions and with this in the pocket 
 hey paddle gaily through the waters in their little 
 hips of adventure. It was my fortune that I had not 
 he least talent for this. I was helplessly fixed during 
 he whole period—as if held down by chains. I could 
 ıot release myself. There is talk of the blood, of the 
 )ower of the blood. Surely the blood can give you 
 nuch pain, surely. But with me that was not the 
 vorst. The worst pain came from what eye and ear 
 rave me and from what the memory had etched into 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 ye and ear. And then there was a certain aggravat- 
 ng noise, a humming and whirring in the nerves, 
 nuch like the hum of telegraph wires that you hear 
 vhen you press your head against the pole, only much 
 nore intolerable and so severe that you cannot free 
 rourself from it. It was odd, this matter of my 
 ixation. Naturally there was but one woman in the 
 vorld for me, but she gradually lost reality and be- 
 ame something gigantic in size, so that I could no 
 onger see the sky because she obscured it. When I 
 aw a woman walking before me her very walk had 
 |omething in it that pierced my thought like an electric 
 hharge; this came also from seeing the way her dress 
 tung to her hips, the movement of the hairs of her 
 teck and the bending of her knees. The actual scene 
 
232 FABER 
 
 always became confused with the one wished for, and 
 then immediately came the tormenting question: Will 
 I ever again grasp it, hold it; what space, and time, 
 and bad fortune lie between? Thus went weeks and 
 weeks, months and years. Impossible to convey an 
 idea of it. Anything I say is merely incoherent stam- 
 mering.” 
 
 He said all this so simply, with such considerate 
 reticence that Faith’s features lost their first expres- 
 sion of discomfort. She listened to him earnestly and 
 attentively. 
 
 “I once lay sick in the tent of nomadic shepherds,” 
 he said; “this was in the upper Amur district, a deso- 
 late region. I no longer remember how long I lay 
 there; perhaps it was five or six days. And think of it, 
 it happened that I was awakened every night by the 
 singing of a woman’s voice. Every night at the same 
 hour the deep voice of a woman sang the same song, 
 a melancholy folk or shepherd song, in a drawn and 
 monotonous rhythm. It came from such a distance 
 that I had to exert myself even to hear it. This sing- 
 ing was the most terrible experience I had. Each 
 time my heart pulsated until I felt it in my temples; 
 I no longer had the desire to breathe; I tossed about 
 on the covers like a lunatic and bit at the tent poles. 
 
 It was a condition such as that which precedes starva-_ 
 
 tion. Everything was fiery—the palate, the hair, the 
 
FABER 233 
 
 finger nails. One night I could stand it no longer; I 
 stumbled out of the tent, fell down, and then crept on 
 all fours in the direction of the singing. There was 
 but one thought in my mind: To the woman, to the 
 woman! As if that meant salvation. The woman, the 
 singing woman, that was salvation, that was divinity. 
 Had it been death, that would not have changed mat- 
 ters. Well, betimes the foolish fever passed and only 
 stupidity remained.” 
 
 He afose and shook himself. “Enough,” he said, 
 with an attempt to put a casual note into his voice. 
 “You see by this that a man is entitled to a little con- 
 sideration when he does not conduct himself like a 
 meek Quaker upon his return home.” He smiled sar- 
 castically. “That reminds me of a story that I have 
 heard or read somewhere. The story of a pair of 
 doves. The two doves had built their nest; the female 
 laid eggs and began to hatch them, the male flew out 
 and procured food for his spouse. This continues 
 for a time; one day he returns to find his nest empty. 
 The lady has disappeared. He waits; he becomes 
 anxious; in his anxiety for his progeny he takes on 
 himself the work of hatching the eggs, but as hour 
 follows hour and the whole night passes without the 
 return of the female he is suddenly seized by a 
 berserker rage and begins not only to destroy the 
 nest but to cast out the eggs, which break to pieces 
 
234 FABER 
 
 on the ground. Not one stone or, more accurately in 
 this case, not one straw remains on the other. He 
 has not yet overcome his chagrin when he observes the 
 lady on the ridge of a roof across the street in the 
 midst of an assembly of doves, where she is ostensibly 
 the spokesman. Like Satan he flies across and soon 
 there is a tremendous scattering of feathers. The as- 
 sembly disbands to the last man, and the insulted male 
 brings his culprit home victoriously and sternly. They 
 must have made peace immediately after the battle; 
 ostensibly the female was greatly impressed by the 
 male’s outburst, for the nest was rebuilt, in which proc- 
 ess none of the previous materials were used but en- 
 tirely new ones—this appealed especially to me; then 
 new eggs were laid and hatching began anew, and so 
 far as I know the marriage proceeded normally from 
 that time.” 
 
 Faith laughed*heartily. “Well, the male dove made 
 short shrift of the matter,” she said; “the monster, I 
 think of him as cruel and rebellious. Do you consider 
 him worth emulating? I do not.” 
 
 ’ 
 
 “Not exactly worth emulating,’ replied Faber, 
 smirking; “but there was, after all, something gratify- 
 ing in his conduct. In fact you can even envy him a 
 little.” 
 
 Laughing, they parted for the night. 
 
 On the following morning Faber had just prepared 
 
FABER 235 
 
 to depart for the office when the doorbell rang shrilly 
 three times. He perceived rapid and excited question- 
 ing; immediately afterward Anna Faber rushed into 
 his room and told him, with every manifestation of 
 terror, that the jewelry had been stolen and that Eugene 
 must accompany her at once. 
 
XVII 
 
 ANNA FABER, having been hindered from leaving her 
 home for a number of days by an attack of gout, had 
 also been unable to see her nephew Valentine. Until 
 now she had visited him almost daily or they had met in 
 a coffee house. After Valentine had been shown out 
 of the house by Hermann Hergesell he had first found 
 shelter in a questionable quarter of the city. She had 
 succeeded in discovering this retreat only with great 
 effort and after she had put herself in touch with 
 persons whose character did not inspire confidence. 
 The young fellow, who had been accustomed to depend 
 on the indulgent protection of his grandmother in ad- 
 ventures that were partly foolhardy, partly dangerous, 
 had been sullen toward her for a time, but was now 
 very glad that her persistent inquiry had led her to 
 him, almost as glad as Anna Faber herself. She pro- 
 cured him respectable quarters at the home of a former 
 acquaintance, the widow of a captain, and paid the rent 
 three months in advance. 
 
 Shortly before she became bedridden she had begun 
 to worry about an obligation he had foolishly con- 
 
 tracted, according to his contrite confession, and that he 
 236 
 
FABER 237 
 
 had to meet at a specific date, now near at hand. He 
 knew so well how to depict the circumstances as urgent 
 and his position as precarious that Anna Faber became 
 anxiously concerned and turned to all sorts of persons 
 for money. Among others also Eugene. Her anxiety 
 increased while she was confined to her room and she 
 determined to have him come to her on the evening 
 that Hermann and Clara were attending the feast of 
 the Hergesell family. It was possible to reach him by 
 telephone in case of emergency, although that was a 
 tedious process, during which she had to use a great 
 deal of caution so as not to be overheard by Clara 
 or her husband. In order to make it possible for him 
 to visit her she had to gain the confidence of one of 
 the servants, and with the help of a few little presents 
 she succeeded in gaining the help of the maid and 
 swearing her to secrecy. 
 
 He came at about nine o’clock in the evening. She 
 served him tea and sweets and while he ate with relish 
 she asked him how matters stood in his own case. He 
 complained and scolded; she comforted him and prom- 
 ised to help him as soon as she could leave her bed. 
 In order to divert him from his sorrow she told him 
 about the event at the Hergesells’ and of the famous 
 diamond jewelry that Clara was wearing in that circle 
 on this occasion. He listened intently. He made her 
 describe the jewelry and had to hear every detail. Anna 
 
238 FABER 
 
 Faber sighed. She had never felt the pinch of penury 
 so much as at this moment when looking into the face 
 of the beloved boy, glowing with eagerness and ex- 
 pectancy. She declared that if she possessed such a 
 treasure he need not worry about money or debts. 
 
 He had always had a predilection for jewelry and 
 beautiful things; she liked this in him and for that 
 reason answered quite innocently questions that be- 
 came more and more penetrating and designing, which 
 he put to her in a tone of childish naiveté. He asked, 
 for instance, where Clara was likely to put the jewelry 
 when she returned home; he considered no lock secure 
 enough and remarked that so far as he knew there 
 was no iron safe in the house. Anna Faber replied 
 reassuringly that Clara would no doubt return the 
 diadem to her mother-in-law the following day, so 
 that the commode in her bedroom, in which her own 
 jewelry was locked, was no doubt safe enough for 
 those few hours. Then he inquired about the approxi- 
 mate value of the diadem and gave way to all sorts 
 of fantastic projects, based on what he would do if 
 something so marvellous fell into his hands. Of course 
 he would hide it carefully, say nothing, keep wholly 
 out of sight, and ‚convert it into money in another 
 country when the affair had blown over. Amused by 
 his boasts and by dreams that were not wholly without 
 
FABER 239 
 
 design, Anna Faber patted him on the cheeks and sent 
 him on his way. 
 
 The young couple did not return until the early 
 morning hours. Clara remained in bed until noon, 
 She had intended to deliver the jewelry to the coun- 
 sellor’s wife in the afternoon, but it was four o’clock 
 before she completed her toilet; then came Father De- 
 siderio and remained until five, and as she had errands 
 in town that could not be postponed she telephoned her 
 mother-in-law and begged permission to return the dia- 
 dem on the following day. She said nothing of this 
 to her husband, who had several friends in for tea. 
 As a matter of fact she did not like to discuss her 
 
 affairs with him, for she hated his mistrustful inquiries 
 and demands for particulars. 
 Anna Faber heard her daughter leave the house ac- 
 companied by the governess and the two children. She 
 had just left her bed in order to walk about for exer- 
 cise when the door opened and Valentine slipped into 
 the room. He immediately threw his arms around 
 her neck and smothered her protests and the exclama- 
 ‘tions caused by her fear with tender attentions. She 
 Was very receptive to this and in a whisper asked 
 
 the reason for his coming. He replied, also whisper- 
 ‚ing, that he had come only because he had been lone- 
 ‘some for her; he had suddenly been overcome by fear 
 
240 FABER 
 
 and had made up his mind to go to her. This did not 
 convince her, but she wanted to believe it, and so she 
 believed it. 
 
 He explained with some agitation that he had been 
 waiting in front of the house for hours; that he had 
 watched for the maid; that she had told him her young 
 mistress had not yet left the house, but would depart 
 at five o’clock. Her master would probably stay at 
 home all day. Then he had waited until Clara came 
 out of the door and had even followed her and the 
 children for a distance in order to see where she was 
 going, and from that to reach a conclusion about the 
 duration of her absence. Anna Faber recognized too 
 late the slyness and calculation in all these preparations. 
 He naturally knew where Hergesell’s parents lived and 
 as he had convinced himself that Clara was taking a 
 different direction he could count with assurance on the: 
 fact that the jewelry was still in her room. Only Her-' 
 mann Hergesell remained to be feared. He actually 
 feared this man very much, and Anna Faber asked. 
 him how he dared enter the house when he knew 
 his Uncle Hermann was at home, since the latter had. 
 threatened to have him sent to the house of correction 
 if ever he met him again in his house, and was cold 
 and relentless enough to carry out his threat. Valen- 
 tine replied, as if the true reason for his visit were 
 being wrung from him, that it was possible that he 
 
 
 
FABER 241 
 
 would have to go on a far journey for a long time in 
 order to flee his creditors, and therefore he had merely 
 come to bid good-bye to his grandmother. Anna Faber 
 tried in vain to divert him from his plan; he insisted 
 that it was necessary and merely promised to write 
 her as soon as possible. He also pleaded with her not 
 to betray him at any price and not to tell a soul that 
 he had visited her, for perhaps his life depended on 
 that. She agreed to this, and even promised it, car- 
 ried away by his pleading and urging, and in spite of 
 all his slyness he was guileless enough to believe him- 
 self protected in this quarter. During this talk he 
 became obviously more excited, opened the door sev- 
 eral times in order to listen for Hergesell’s voice, and 
 became severely frightened when another door opened. 
 He then said that he would sneak into the kitchen 
 and get some apples from the cook; he had seen lovely 
 apples on the buffet before. Anna Faber rebuked his 
 arrogance, although she saw that he was trembling, 
 und offered to procure the apples for him; but this he 
 ‘efused, and sneaked out on tiptoe, meantime nodding 
 o her with a smile and demanding, by gestures, that 
 the let him do as he wished. Six or eight minutes 
 lapsed before he returned. This time seemed inordi- 
 ately long to Anna Faber, and when he slipped into 
 er room again he was very pale, ostensibly from 
 ‘right, and said that some one had been standing at 
 
242 FABER 
 
 the kitchen door and that he had hidden himself i1 
 the rear passage. He then kissed his grandmother o1 
 the cheeks and hands and left in the greatest haste 
 It took Anna Faber a long time to recover from he 
 consternation and anguish. 
 
 Clara was very tired when she came home, took onl 
 some cold food, and immediately went to bed. No 
 until eight o’clock the next morning, after arising, di 
 she go to her commode; then she immediately mad 
 the discovery that the middle drawer was no longe 
 locked and that the lock had been broken open. Sh 
 tore open the drawer ; the diadem had disappeared. Sh 
 felt such weakness in her limbs that she had to si 
 down on the floor; she still felt faint and held on to th 
 leg of a chair for support. Although she realized tha 
 not a minute was to be lost, she had no idea to whor 
 to turn. The whole horror of her own position cam 
 to her in the moment of discovery. Exerting all he 
 strength, she got up and stumbled into her mother 
 room. She closed the door, leaned her back against 1 
 and in hoarse gurgles uttered the words that conveye 
 the news of her misfortune. Anna Faber clasped he 
 hands together and then pressed them against he 
 mouth. “Don’t raise a cry,” whispered Clara with 
 wild look. “Hermann must know nothing. If He 
 mann hears of this, I’ll throw myself out of the windoy 
 Tell me: What shall I do? It could have happene 
 
FABER 243 
 
 only yesterday afternoon, when I was away. Who 
 was in the house? My servants are honest. Did you 
 see or hear any one?” 
 
 Light dawned in Anna F aber’s mind. She uttered 
 1 hoarse cry and fell with her forehead on her bed. 
 clara sprang toward her, hopeful conjectures rushing 
 through her brain; she shook her mother by the shoul- 
 Jers and Anna Faber, broken, troubled, desperate, 
 nurmured the name of Valentine through her teeth: 
 ‘Confess it, tell it,’ Clara ordered her, and with angry 
 riolence made her sit up. Anna Faber told the story. 
 
 “To his house, at once,” hissed Clara, without let- 
 ing her tell the story to the end. “You know where 
 he scoundrel lives. Get yourself ready at once. And 
 ot a word. Not a word to the servants; not a sound 
 'o Hermann. Ah, he would like that! The family dia- 
 lem gone and Clara the guilty one! He would like 
 hat. Clara oppressed for life; a rue-laden sinner all 
 ter life. Mother, I tell you there will be a terrible 
 ‘eckoning if that fellow has fled, if the jewelry is not 
 ‘found. Therefore fast, fast, fast! Try to see if you 
 an walk; you must, there can be no alternative.” 
 
 Anna Faber had never seen her daughter like this. 
 What secrets were disclosed here, what bitter hatred, 
 vhat burdens and torments of married life! She had 
 ilways suspected and felt that Clara’s life with her 
 wsband was rotten to the core, but she had regarded 
 
 
 
 | 
 | 
 | 
 | 
 
244 FABER 
 
 Clara as a cool, domestic vixen with much contemptu- 
 ous pride in her nature. But now this woman poured 
 hot lava over her like a personified volcano, and she 
 trembled, drew back fearfully, and kept silent. 
 
 She was dressed in five minutes. In the meantime 
 Clara had called an automobile. Luckily Hermann 
 Hergesell had already left the house at seven o'clock; 
 he had his riding hour to-day and so they avoided 
 the danger of having to explain to him. Half an 
 hour later both women found themselves in front of 
 the chamber where Valentine lodged. The landlady, 
 a lame, white-haired woman, who had come hurriedly 
 with a desire to be of service and who greeted Anna 
 Faber noisily, told them the young man was still asleep; 
 he had been sleeping twelve hours; early in the evening 
 he had come home, had caused her to prepare a lunch 
 for him, and had told her that he would leave to-day 
 on a journey of a few weeks; a friend with whom he 
 meant to make the journey would call for him at noon. 
 
 Clara demanded no further explanations and offered 
 none. She knocked on the bolted door with her fist 
 so that it echoed through the house. Anna Faber 
 took the captain’s widow aside and whispered to her 
 with eager eyes that her grandson had pre-empted an 
 important document which they had to get back from 
 him; a foolish act, it was, of no great moment; she 
 had best pay no attention to it and return to her room. 
 

 
 FABER 245 
 
 Thus she got rid of the unwelcome witness of an inci- 
 dent that was as disagreeable as it was shameful for 
 all participants. 
 
 In a very short time the door was opened in response 
 to the thunderous knocking. But the man who opened 
 it was in no wise just awakened out of his sleep; he 
 was fully dressed and, it seemed, just about to leave. 
 His cloak and hat lay on the table; beside it stood a 
 leather travelling bag. When he saw his grandmother 
 and aunt before him he became pale as death. Clara 
 took her place before the door with crossed arms, 
 keeping her eye on every movement Valentine made; 
 ‘Anna Faber, however, did the worst thing she could 
 do; she rushed upon Valentine and with uplifted hands 
 begged him to return the jewelry. She begged him on 
 his honour and the good name of the family, her love 
 for him and his future to forestall the results of his 
 crime by a quick repentance. During her torrent of 
 talk Valentine gained time for reflection. He took on 
 an attitude as if he did not grasp what she wanted 
 of him and as if he did not know why she accused 
 him. First he seemed doubtful, then a decided horror 
 showed in his face—not a bad accomplishment from a 
 theatrical standpoint. “What? Am TI supposed to have 
 done that?” he cried, and his eyes flashed with indigna- 
 tion. “I? Well,when? Andhow? Andwhere? Am 
 I a thief? How do you arrive at that? Naturally, 
 
246 FABER 
 
 you can impute all sorts of wickedness to me because 
 I am without protection, I have nobody, I am an 
 orphan; I did not even get an honest family name from 
 you. But I won’t, I won’t; I will look up my rights; 
 you will see that ’ll protect myself.” 
 
 Ostensibly he believed that he would make an im- 
 pression on his grandmother while he raged thus and 
 shed tears, and so divert suspicion from himself. As 
 a matter of fact Anna Faber became confused at the 
 picture of injured innocence that he made and looked 
 helplessly at her daughter. Clara had not yet uttered 
 a word. She regarded her nephew with a scornful 
 sneer, her lips pressed tight together. Without moving 
 from the door she said, and every word sounded as the 
 cut of a knife: “I fear, Mother, that we won’t make 
 much progress alone with this liar. The main thing 
 is that I have him in custody and that he cannot escape 
 me. The cab is still outside; ride as fast as possible 
 for Eugene and bring him here. In the meantime I 
 will stand sentinel here, and God help you, young fel- 
 low, if you move.” 
 
 Valentine gave her a timid look; her manner and 
 her attitude caused him decided fear and it could be 
 seen that this iron determination made him wonder 
 whether to continue in his former tactics or to evolve. 
 other means of escape. i | 
 
 Anna Faber obeyed silently. She moved and acta 
 
FABER 247 
 
 wholly mechanically. When she told Eugene, whom 
 she fortunately found at home, what had happened, 
 ier pain over her misplaced love broke out again in a 
 riolent, almost excessive, manner. She threw herself 
 lown on the sofa and sobbed. Eugene tried to calm 
 rer, and although he was not an accomplished com- 
 forter he at least succeeded in stopping her loud com- 
 jlaints. Rather confused by what he had heard and 
 not knowing exactly, in the moment, what he should 
 Jo, he left to hunt for Faith. He found her putting 
 Christopher’s room in order; Christopher had already 
 sone to school. In a few words he told her what had 
 happened and that his mother had come to him for help. 
 He gave the appearance of not wishing to undertake 
 anything without her advice, and his manner of pre- 
 senting the situation to her suggested that he meant 
 to convey to her the unbounded confidence he had in 
 her. f 
 
 She looked down and said: “It will be very hard to 
 get him to confess. As he has already tied himself up 
 in a lie he cannot well go back. It should have been 
 treated differently.” 
 
 “How, Faith? Please speak. It is a terrible situa- 
 tion. Especially for my sister... .” 
 
 “When such persons are quickly thrust into a strange 
 environment it sometimes has a peculiar effect on 
 them,” she replied; “they lose their sense of security 
 
248 FABER 
 
 and betray themselves more easily. Do bring him here. 
 In the meantime keep your eyes on him.” 
 
 He nodded assent. There was a contented respect in 
 the look he gave her. 
 
 A few minutes later he was sitting with his mother 
 in the cab. When they entered the long, dark chamber 
 they saw the following scene. Clara had seated her- 
 self on a chair at one end near the door and now sat 
 motionless with her arms crossed over her breast, her 
 face colourless, her look immovably fixed before her; 
 at the other end Valentine sat on the edge of his dis- 
 ordered bed, a cigarette in a corner of his mouth and 
 ostensibly engaged in paring his finger nails. He had 
 not seen Faber for six years, at a time when he was 
 not yet ten years old, but recognized him at once; no 
 sooner had he seen him than he arose, smiled in a most 
 ingratiating manner, came forward a few steps, and 
 offered his hand. He had that crooked or slanting 
 look that was noticeable on the photograph that stood 
 in Anna Faber’s room. Beyond that Faber was struck 
 by the almost feminine gentleness in his features. His 
 resemblance to his father was so marked that Eugene, 
 with a sudden shock, thought he saw his brother before 
 him in the flesh. Assuredly this resemblance was partly | 
 responsible for Anna Faber’s overflowing love, for | 
 even after so many years Roderick was still nearest her | 
 
 heart. 
 
 
 
FABER 249 
 Faber acted as if he did not notice the extended hand 
 
 ‘and Valentine shrugged his shoulders in sad recogni- - 
 
 tion. He wore an elegant fall suit of grey with care- 
 fully pressed trousers, brown silk hose with brown ox- 
 fords and a violet tie, faultlessly knotted. Despite his 
 enticing personality, there was something clownish and 
 perverse in the man-of-the-world attitude of this lad, 
 not yet sixteen years old. 
 
 “Get yourself ready to come with me,” said Faber 
 briefly. “And you”’—turning to Clara and his mother 
 —“examine this room minutely, every corner, the bed, 
 the floor, the walls, the clothing, and that bag. I shall 
 expect you to join me at the house. The rest will take 
 care of itself.” 
 
 Clara rose; Valentine took hat and cloak, looked 
 Faber in the eyes with a glance of simple inquiry and 
 then followed him without objection. At first, in the 
 corridor, he walked behind Faber but the latter indi- 
 cated with a commanding motion that he was to keep 
 by his side. When they had descended the three nar- 
 tow flights and reached the ground floor Valentine 
 
 suddenly rushed forward with lightning rapidity; os- 
 
 tensibly he had reckoned on this opportunity for flight, 
 but he had underestimated Faber’s alertness and pre- 
 caution; he had not yet taken two steps when Faber 
 grasped his shoulder with an iron grip. He said not a 
 word. Valentine again shrugged his shoulders in his 
 
250 FABER 
 
 sadly resigned fashion, but his expression became more 
 and more gloomy. 
 
 He sat back in a corner of the cab and dug his hands 
 down into the pockets of his coat. His stiff hat was 
 thrust down over his forehead. Upon leaving the cab, 
 the iron grip again encircled his arm; Faber sent the car 
 back for the use of the women; he made Valentine pre- 
 cede him on the stairs and upon reaching his floor, and 
 the dining-room, motioned him silently to a chair; Val- 
 entine sat down and Eugene chose a seat where none of 
 his movements would escape him. Faith did not seem 
 to be at home; this was the hour when she usually 
 made her purchases for the household. 
 
 His face reflected disgust and deep agitation, re- 
 sulting from the extraordinarily tense circumstances. 
 He spoke not a word to his nephew. The Cardano 
 was still lying on the table from the night before; he 
 opened the book and tried to read. 
 
 Valentine had not removed his cloak. He held his 
 hat on his knees and turned it slowly in his hands. 
 He looked out at the rain and at times his weak lips 
 moved convulsively. He moved several times to take 
 his cigarette case from his vest pocket, but obviously 
 did not dare to smoke. After a time he put his hat 
 on the arm of the sofa and crossed his legs, as if to 
 give the appearance of ease. Then he produced his 
 kid gloves, smoothed them on his knee, and rounded 
 
FABER 251 
 
 his mouth as if to whistle. It could be seen that the 
 silence was wholly incomprehensible and even uncanny 
 to him. His crooked or slanting look turned more and 
 more often toward the silent Faber. 
 
 An hour and a half passed in this manner. Finally 
 the doorbell rang. The kitchen maid opened the door. 
 Anna Faber and Clara entered the room. One look 
 was sufficient to tell Faber that their search had been 
 useless. Anna Faber, exhausted, seated herself in a 
 corner. Clara approached her brother and said: “Noth- 
 ing. As might have been expected. Before we left 
 there came that certain person with whom this little 
 fellow probably meant to have his outing. A female. 
 Rouged and perfumed to a disgusting degree. She 
 became tremendously frightened when she saw us and 
 wanted to scurry away. I interned her with the land- 
 lady with a hint at police interference. And you, Eu- 
 gene, what have you done?” 
 
 The question had a categorical ring. Faber arose 
 and replied: “I have been waiting. I told you there 
 that I would wait for you.” 
 
 “Waiting!” cried Clara, and her features suddenly 
 took on an indescribably wild and contemptuous ex- 
 pression. “Waiting. For what? Why? I have no 
 time. If I do not leave this room with the Hergesell 
 jewelry, then my way lies in a different direction than 
 home—now you know that. That’s the end of the 
 
252 FABER 
 
 story. That’s the end of the matrimonial idyll in which 
 the father-in-law provides rent and mother-in-law pro- 
 vides honey-sweet protection. There’s a man sneaking 
 about in my house, an orator for special occasions, a 
 director of the cultural world order, who would expand 
 with conceit like a frog if I were humbled before him 
 by one of my blood. When a theorist finds that events 
 support his view you get hell on earth. Descent, race, 
 breeding, tradition, ideals—this is always echoing in 
 your ears, and from morning until night you feel your- 
 self less than the dust and not worthy of loosening the 
 latchets of the shoes of such a pillar of national cul- 
 ture. If that were but the worst! Who can put into 
 words what is the worst? Living together without 
 love, do you grasp it? And the fear of it, the fear, 
 day and night, of the step, and the voice, and the word, 
 which you already know. How horrible to fear the 
 word that you know before it is even spoken! It may 
 be good or evil, you detest it. You may well say: You 
 wished this, took it upon yourself, it is your affair and 
 belongs to no one else. That is true; who but myself 
 alone shall I make responsible for my cursed life? I 
 and my insolent demands, my will-o’-the-wisp manner, 
 my foolish wishes and, God forgive me, the right to 
 do everything and to say everything. System, system. 
 There sits one’’—she pointed with her extended arm 
 to Valentine—“a real exhibit, a recommendation for 
 
FABER 253 
 
 the system. Just look at him, Mother, and be proud 
 of your achievement. A marvellous example; our 
 family has never been able to produce anything else 
 so wonderful. A regular thief and jailbird; marvel- 
 lous! And all because of consideration, kindness, sac- 
 rifice, spiritual freedom, and understanding, all those 
 fine things out of which our holiday orator makes us 
 a halter. Oh, I can’t go on, I can’t go on!” 
 
 She pressed her fists against her temples and with 
 closed eyes shook her head for several seconds. Faber 
 was strongly affected to see the woman who had com- 
 mand of herself, was whimsically reserved and sparing 
 in expressing her emotions, so unnerved. His eyes saw 
 at once the suffering of such an existence, and he stood 
 there as if stunned. This increased Clara’s bitterness. 
 “Well, what is to be done?” she demanded of him. 
 “Are you also going down on your knees before this 
 
 
 
 gallows bird? That is too much for me. Now it’s 
 either—or, my dear fellow— 
 by the collar of his cloak and pulled him from his chair 
 with such violence that he fell on his knees. “Out with 
 the booty,” she cried, in a voice that had grown hoarse; 
 
 “out with the jewelry or I will crush your vile and 
 
 „ 
 
 She grasped Valentine 
 
 | 
 
 pretty face.” 
 
 | “For heaven’s sake, Clara!’ cried Anna Faber. The 
 young woman actually presented a terrifying aspect 
 as she stood bent over the horrified Valentine. Con- 
 
 
 
254 FABER 
 
 tempt, hatred, and fear distorted her features unrecog- 
 nizably. 
 
 “Stop!” Eugene commanded. “Stop, Clara.” He 
 stepped between her and Valentine and turned to the 
 latter. “Now you will please empty all your pockets,” 
 he said coldly. “Don’t hesitate, don’t think it over; 
 there is no longer any escape.” 
 
 Valentine jumped up quickly. His face turned white 
 as snow. Everything sympathetic and ingratiating had 
 vanished from it in an instant. “No,” he burst out in 
 a gurgle, and backed against the wall; “that won’t hap- 
 pen. I won’t do that. Not in any case will I do that. 
 Let me go, I tell you.” 
 
 Faber stepped up to him and replied threateningly: 
 “Tf you don’t do it Tl have to do it for you. But 
 it won’t be so pleasant for you.” 
 
 Valentine’s eyes, gleaming like yellow opals, were 
 riveted on Faber and filled with defiance and despera- 
 tion. He bent forward, squeezed his shoulders and 
 back into a corner of the wall, put his right hand into 
 a pocket of his trousers, pulled out a revolver, and 
 confronted Faber with it. It was a six-chambered 
 Browning; Faber saw the round black holes close in 
 front of him. He hesitated and became a trifle paler. 
 
 Anna Faber screamed shrilly. 
 
 At that moment the door to the corridor opened 
 and Faith stepped on the threshold. She had just re- 
 
FABER 255 
 
 "turned from her morning errands; her hat was still 
 
 ‚on her head, a simple black straw hat with a velvet 
 
 "band, very becoming to her. Anna Faber’s scream 
 
 "brought her in. She took in at a glance what was 
 
 happening and what had happened. Without hesitat- 
 ing she stepped up to Valentine, seized his convulsively 
 outstretched hand, deprived him of the revolver with 
 
 a quick motion and handed it to Faber, at the same 
 
 time keeping her eyes on the young man, who was 
 
 startled by her unexpected appearance and trembling 
 
 “in every limb. She put her hand on his shoulder and 
 
 said to him in a low and firm voice: “Come with me. 
 
 We have something to talk over.” 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 He did not resist. With bowed head he followed 
 her into the adjoining room, a small space that led 
 into Martina’s bedchamber. She locked the door. 
 
 Those who remained behind looked at each other 
 and did not take their eyes off one another for some 
 time. Clara stood dumb and unmoved in the middle 
 of the room. Anna Faber had put her head on the 
 arm of the chair; her robust body betrayed a deep 
 relaxation and the expression of her face seemed to 
 indicate a disillusion that could not be overcome. 
 
 They heard the voice of Faith in a monotonous, reg- 
 ular murmuring. Then silence followed for a time; 
 then they heard Valentine’s voice only for a moment, 
 like a faint whisper. Then Faith’s voice came again. 
 
256 FABER 
 
 Faber stood at the window and with his index finger 
 traced the letter F in the light mist of the window pane, 
 making the single letter more than twenty times. He 
 listened for Faith’s voice. 
 
 After half an hour the door opened. In the room 
 beyond, Valentine was kneeling before a chair against 
 which he had pressed his face, and sobbing silently. 
 Faith came out, holding the case in her hand. It was 
 open so that the wonderful gems could be seen. Si- 
 lently, with an earnest manner and an earnest look 
 she turned it over to Clara. The latter said not a word, 
 She simply gave Faith her hand. She bowed her head 
 while doing so; it seemed as if she were making 
 obeisance before a superior and acknowledged the su- 
 periority. Anna Faber sat there with her wide-open. 
 eyes moist and gleaming. 
 
 Eugene observed Faith silently from top to toe as if 
 she had become a stranger to him and moved far away 
 from him. Smiling weakly, she shook her head, 
 pointed, with a hasty gesture that he understood, to. 
 Valentine in the adjoining room, and then went out. 
 
 Faber took his mother by the arm and drew her to 
 the window. “You must find some place for the boy 
 where he will have an occupation and be under observa- | 
 tion,” he said. “Don’t let him be alone in the next few | 
 days, but be curt in your intercourse with him. Do you 
 know of a suitable sanctuary? It is perhaps the last 
 
 | 
 
 
 
FABER 257 
 
 chance still to make a useful man out of him. I think 
 to-day’s experience will not pass over him without leav- 
 ing some trace.” 
 
 | Anna Faber replied that for some time she had 
 | been weighing the plan of placing him in an agricultural 
 ‘institute, the director of which she knew, and with 
 whom she had already corresponded about this matter. 
 | Valentine had not been averse to the idea when she 
 talked it over with him; now he would probably agree 
 | gladly. She would drive out with him even to-day. 
 Clara had gone. A quarter of an hour later Eugene 
 heard his mother and Valentine also pass through the 
 ‘corridor and depart. He stood in reflection for a 
 while, then walked through the rooms of the house 
 in order to find Faith. She was in her room, which 
 adjoined that of Christopher. The door was but 
 slightly closed; he knocked timidly and went in. 
 
 
 
XVII 
 
 THE room had the same dimensions as Faber’s bed- 
 room and likewise had a single window. There was 
 a studied lack of decoration; beyond the most neces- 
 sary furniture there was no concession to leisurely 
 comfort, likewise no picture, nothing colourful, not 
 even flowers. Faith herself had gradually given the 
 room the character of a cell; this was compatible with 
 her habits. Perhaps she did not have an attachment 
 for objects or did not wish to be reminded by them 
 of the past. In any event this spareness aroused 
 Faber’s astonishment, especially when contrasted with 
 the other rooms, where Martina’s love for bright col- 
 ours found expression. Here, obviously, Martina’s 
 power was at an end. 
 
 Faith was standing before an open chest of drawers, 
 about to remove an apron. She turned her face to- 
 ward him with an inquiring look. Her black eyebrows, 
 which came down low over her eyes, rose in surprise; 
 it displeased her to have him enter her room. 
 
 As if to suppress her agitation and give her no time 
 
 to speak he walked quickly toward her, grasped her 
 258 
 
FABER 259 
 
 hands, and said: “How did you manage it, Faith? 
 How did you succeed in thawing out such a taciturn 
 character ?”’ 
 
 She withdrew her hands. “How can I repeat all I 
 said?” she asked, shaking her head. “That is impos- 
 sible. You say what comes to you at the moment; 
 you have to depend on your good fairy. Accidentally, 
 or, if you wish, instinctively, I found the spot where I 
 could touch him. But if I had to do it a second time 
 I’d fail. It is a sad thing to look into such a dissi- 
 pated sinner’s face. It demeans even us. No, I could 
 not do it again. I’d rather go away.” 
 
 She shuddered while thinking of it. Faber held her 
 in his glance. She seemed to fear his look and no 
 less his silence, for she continued hastily: “I avoided 
 holding out any promises to him, I hardly mentioned 
 the difficult position in which he had put his grand- 
 mother and his aunt. I begged him chiefly not to de- 
 stroy himself. Something or other about me seemed 
 to impress him; I used that to assure him that I thought 
 much of him and expected a great deal from him, in 
 contrast to others, and that he probably did not know 
 himself how much good and how much ability were 
 
 “hidden inside him. And similar things. I treated 
 him with respect, even treated his foolhardy crime with 
 “respect. He stared at me continuously and his lack 
 
260 FABER 
 
 of confidence lay before me like a big obstacle. You 
 think ill of me for treating his crime respectfully and 
 think I tried a trick on him—” 
 
 “Oh, no! How can you think that!” said Faber 
 softly. 
 
 “When any one does something so incomprehensible 
 
 —that is to say incomprehensible from our standpoint 
 
 —he then takes a whole fate on his shoulders. It is 
 like a disease which he carries for life, an everlasting 
 leprosy. This eventually calls for a certain amount of 
 courage, a certain resolution. I told him that, in order 
 to explain my respect for him. It is, I will admit, re- 
 spect of a cruel and sinister sort and I took pains to 
 tell him that we extend it solely to those to whom we 
 ‚ would like to give respect of a higher and nobler sort. 
 He began to believe me, and with his confidence to start 
 with I could feel my way to his conscience. I am confi- 
 
 you will discover his deep and powerful need to be’ 
 
 respected. It is deeper and stronger than that of love; 
 this is true, for I have thought a great deal about it. 
 
 If men would respect each other freely there would 
 
 not be a hundredth part of the suffering which is now 
 brought about by love. I am convinced of it. Are 
 you?” 
 
 “It may be,” said Faber. 
 
 They stood there, both suddenly silent. Faber made 
 
FABER 201 
 
 a movement that he did not expect himself, acting as 
 if in a dream. He swung his arms around Faith 
 and drew her to him. He had closed his eyes and 
 sighed. Faith was unable to withstand the power 
 of his arms; it carried her away; flushed and benumbed 
 
 by passion, she too closed her eyes. Her head fell on 
 
 his shoulder like ripe fruit off a tree. And thus they 
 kissed. A moment later she uttered a suppressed cry 
 as if she had been wounded; moaning, she tore her- 
 self out of his embrace, and with a face that seemed 
 to have turned white from intense heat raised her 
 folded hands prayerfully to her forehead as if taking 
 a vow. 
 
 Faber staggered out with the steps of a man who is 
 fighting to regain his balance. 
 
XIX 
 
 Tuey did not meet one another again until evening. 
 A letter came from Martina; Faber read it, put it 
 down; an hour later he read it again, as if he had 
 forgotten what it contained. He left it lying on his 
 work-table and when he re-entered the room he re- 
 garded it as he would a dead thing. 
 
 The letter held nothing but news, stated in clean-cut 
 essentials, after Martina’s manner. Faber’s lips took 
 on a painful expression as he read aloud a sentence 
 that had accidentally struck his notice: “When we 
 have completed our work, the Princess and I, we take 
 a walk and then usually lose our way in the dreadful 
 
 yellow mist, and hold each other fast, so that we won’t — 
 
 lose each other. A mist, after all, is the worst thing 
 in the world.” 
 
 Martina had also written to Faith. After reading 
 it Faith saw things more clearly. Martina informed 
 her that she would return at the end-ef the week; that 
 is, in four days. This was also in her letter to Eugene; 
 but he had not grasped it, or perhaps, in reading it, 
 four days may have seemed as ten years to him. Much 
 
 262 
 
FABER 263 
 
 may happen in four days; in fantasy they may be with- 
 out end. 
 
 “Your mother will come back soon,” said Faith to 
 Christopher, while sitting with him near the lamp; 
 “Saturday evening.” 
 
 Christopher turned up his nose. “I think you are 
 lying,” he replied; “you never lie, but when you speak 
 about mother and father you lie often.” 
 
 “Why should I lie?” asked Faith, reproachfully. 
 “You are an unkind person and don’t weigh your 
 words.” 
 
 “Oh, you!” Christopher countered, and made fists 
 out of hands that still bore evidence of playing in the 
 dirt. “You people always act as if you are in a con- 
 spiracy. You are all so secretive.” 
 
 “You? Whom do you mean by you?” 
 
 “Well, you grown-ups. You are so proud of your 
 conspiracy. If one has enemies one offers them battle 
 _ bravely. But you constantly shun one another. Why? 
 Call the enemy into the open.” But when he saw 
 Faith’s sad face he patted her hand apologetically. 
 “Don’t let it worry you,” he comforted her patroniz- 
 ingly; “of course you can’t act differently than the 
 others. Do you know, you really look foolish to me 
 
 to-day ?” 
 — “Foolish? How do I look foolish?” asked Faith, 
 with a forced smile. 
 
264. FABER 
 
 “Yes, as if you had forgotten to do your lessons 
 and had been punished with extra work.” 
 
 “Oh, come, Christopher! What silly ideas!” 
 
 “Now you are lying again!” cried Christopher tri- 
 umphantly, pointing his finger at her. “You are lying, 
 deep down inside of you. I can see it. You simply 
 won't let a boy be right. So you lie. What is really 
 going on in the house, Faith?” he asked in a changed, 
 almost mysterious tone, extending his arms with a 
 gesture of general disapproval. -‘“Tell me, what is the 
 matter? Things don’t please me any more. Every- 
 thing is so peculiar, even about father. . . .” Ostensi- 
 bly his pride checked him from saying more and thereby 
 betraying his injured feelings. On Faith’s admoni- 
 tion he dipped both hands into the basin of hot water 
 that she had brought him, while troubled lines appeared 
 on his forehead. 
 
 Faith did not leave the room until Christopher lay 
 in bed and she had put out the light. In the corridor 
 Faber stood before her. He stepped to one side and. 
 let her pass. She went into the living-room, looked 
 absently about her, then moved to pick up a majolica 
 vase in order to remove faded flowers; the vase fell 
 from her hand and broke into bits on the floor. She 
 
 looked down at the pieces and a tremor ran through 
 her body. 
 

 
 FABER 265 
 
 Faber had heard the crash and now came in. He 
 knelt down to pick up the pieces. 
 
 “Let be,” she said. “You will hurt yourself.” 
 
 Fe looked up. She stood before him, so strangely 
 tall. “Faith!” he whispered. 
 
 She raised her hand as if to ward off something. 
 Her face became rigid as a mask. “It must not be,” 
 she said softly and decidedly. “If otherwise, then I 
 have to go. We won’t make anything tragic of it—not 
 that. Let foolishness remain foolishness. But don’t 
 let us speak of it, don’t let us think of it; let us erase 
 it. There is no choice. Do get up.” 
 
 He obeyed and stood up. “Good,” he said; “very 
 good.” And he began to pace back and forth. “You 
 cannot speak otherwise, or act otherwise, or be other- 
 wise. I understand. Foolishness? No, I won’t agree 
 to that. There are too many entanglements. Do not 
 ask the impossible. At the moment I don’t know how 
 I am going to live on. I must keep cool. But I would 
 like to have an understanding with you.” 
 
 She shrugged her shoulders. “It’s better to keep 
 
 silent,” she murmured. 
 
 “Enough of silence!’ he cried, aroused. “For six 
 
 years I was silent. Faith, have pity, pity!” 
 
 “What word is that: pity?” she replied, with a 
 
 troubled brow. “A word without standing, one that 
 
266 FABER 
 
 you yourself hate. I don’t like to hear it, that word; 
 and another I dare not hear.” 
 
 “Dare, dare,” he mocked; “that no longer counts. 
 We have passed over that stile.” 
 
 “Not that Iam aware of,” said Faith coolly. “There 
 is no stile, there is a wall that reaches to heaven.” 
 
 Faber placed himself before her, his arms hanging 
 stiffly at his sides, his body, with the broad chest, al- 
 most unnaturally erect. “We will be honest with one 
 another, Faith,” he said, and drew a deep breath. 
 “You are worth that to me; I hope I am worth that 
 to you. Each of us has already suffered too much 
 life and experience and has fought too hard with Fate 
 to think of deluding ourselves with specious pretences, 
 Likewise we are in no position to do so. There must 
 be a more direct way, something practicable and real- 
 izable, not a murky mist in which we grope about 
 without reason. So tell me, and tell me with all the 
 truth that you have in your soul: Do you feel anything 
 for me? Don’t answer—don’t answer yet! I am not 
 asking, Do you love me? No, I don’t ask that; that 
 shall not pass my lips, that again calls up a world of 
 responsibility, of error and forced decisions. I merely 
 want to know whether you would favour me, whether 
 you have a place for me in your inner.self. Don’t say 
 no while you stare at that wall as if you are bewitched; 
 say no only if your heart says no.” 
 
FABER 267 
 
 She blushed and turned pale, tried to speak, pressed 
 her lips together, and remained silent. He stared at 
 her. She met his look; her eyes reflected amazement 
 and sorrow. ‘What do you want?” she asked finally; 
 “why this persuasion? Why this elaborate argument? 
 For an affair? I am not the person suited for that.” 
 
 “Oh, you evade me,” he interrupted, complaining 
 bitterly; “and I begged you so earnestly for a frank 
 and direct answer. What use is anything else to me!’ 
 “It is whimsical of you, Eugene Faber,” she replied, 
 with an unusually feminine, unusually melancholy, 
 smile; “whimsical of you to insist on it. Could we 
 face each other like this if I had need to answer you? 
 
 Tf so, our talk could not even have begun. Do you 
 
 need my ‘Yes’? Do you seriously fear my ‘No’? Such 
 
 
 
 questions are mere cruelty, because they handicap the 
 
 ‚other if he shows weakness. I am not a coward and 
 
 
 
 
 I will stand to account for everything I do. Why 
 should I not admit that your being and your manner 
 have captured me, have disturbed my peace, more than 
 I could foretell? ‘This was not a diversion, it was not 
 a design or even a wish; it just happened. And now 
 we are left to adjust matters. I do not actually hold 
 , myself so dear that I say I am too good for an affair. 
 ‘That is, after all, only a word—affair—lI retract it, if 
 you wish; I used it because I thought of its brief 
 duration, and we are not justified in asking that the 
 
268 FABER 
 
 beautiful and that which moves us and makes us better 
 and richer should survive indeterminably. Therefore I 
 am not deceived about myself. But you, Eugene, you 
 are deceiving yourself about yourself. What drives 
 you to me is not myself, and I can swear to you, even 
 more impressively than you to me, that I try to be 
 honest, to deal honestly with you and with myself. 
 You know what I mean—oh, you know very well. I 
 live under a shadow, but I can free myself from it 
 when I so desire; you cannot even conquer the im- 
 prisoned man who holds you, and in order to give him 
 proof of yourself and obtain for yourself a semblance 
 of liberty and happiness you need me, you have to cling 
 fast tome. Not that it was so planned and calculated— 
 my God, I know that! No, it is the surge, the dis- 
 pensation of Providence, the blood, I know, I know, we 
 cannot help it, I know, we cannot see through it; but I 
 cannot do that, I won’t do that, I dare not. No, never, 
 never!” 
 
 She was trembling all over. She took one of the 
 fragments that lay on the table and broke it apart. 
 There was something exalted in her expression and 
 attitude, a proud passion, which made her very beau- 
 tiful. Faber kept his look riveted on her in speechless 
 surprise. What she said was obviously wholly unex- 
 pected and demoralizing to him. He put his hand to 
 his head and, looking down, replied, first haltingly, 
 
 rae N 
 En: 
 
FABER 269 
 
 then with more and more haste and emotion: “An ap- 
 prehension. Naturally it could be so construed. There 
 is something seductive about it. Yes, certainly. But 
 you have revealed much more of your character and 
 personality to me than you think. I experience strange 
 things: a woman who makes me forget that I am a 
 man; another sex; a creature from elsewhere. Do I 
 express myself clearly? Is this perhaps a new de- 
 velopment, not known in my day, a newly evolved 
 species? How foolishly I talk! I could listen to you 
 to the end of my days, and when you scourge me 
 with words it feels like a healing ointment. You may 
 cite reasons, all you wish; causes, as many as you can 
 think of; but I will not let you go, Faith; I am a 
 lost man if you repulse me. Whatever it is that urges 
 me on, be it this or that, I will not seek to fathom 
 ‘it, I put it behind me. I need you now; in this moment 
 ‘of my existence I need you above all other things; 
 ‘that I found you cannot be the work of the devil; it is 
 God’s work, so do not put God in the wrong. The 
 light. The light, Faith! I was in darkness. I was 
 ‚cold. Men were to me a heap of debris; the whole 
 sky above was empty and black as the night. I doubt 
 the only thing that remains to me; Asia is to me the 
 ‚land of horrors; Europe, the land of murder; there is 
 no longer any Martina, the whole light of love is ex- 
 tinguished; there are demands that I must guess. And 
 
 | 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
270 FABER 
 
 then that night, that one night! I cannot talk about 
 that. An embrace and then—as if one had plunged 
 from a tower. No longer any light, any stop. Oh, 
 what did I do the next day! I gave away the ring, 
 Martina’s ring. I must confess it to you. I gave the 
 ring away—to a wanton!” 
 
 Faith clasped her hands together without a word. 
 
 “Don’t think ill of me,’’ he continued in a hoarse 
 whisper, although he had uttered his words in an un- 
 usually ringing tone until now. “I had nothing more 
 to do with that person. Don’t think ill of me. Save 
 me, Faith. Else I don’t know what all this will lead 
 to. I can’t be held accountable for anything. Give 
 myself back to me, the confidence in myself, give me 
 back my years, my stolen years.” 
 
 Faith watched him fixedly and tensely, with her lips 
 trembling imperceptibly. There was no doubt that she 
 was being carried along against her will by the torrent 
 of his words, his personality, his desperation, and that 
 she was defending herself with the force of her in- 
 stinct, like a tree with far-reaching roots holding out 
 against the storm. With her left hand raised a little 
 she replied in her hoarse voice, that sounded almost 
 broken: “Then don’t you see how impossible my posi- 
 tion becomes here if I give way even with one thought? | 
 I stand here like a soldier at his post; I cannot leave 
 it and cannot betray it. I will not take the child into 
 
FABER rt 
 
 consideration, although you must guess what it means 
 to me to hear such words when your child and Mar- 
 tina’s is sleeping in the next room; but you have for- 
 gotten the relationship that exists between Martina and 
 me. I told you about it, but you seem to have for- 
 gotten it. If, after all that, I gave you as much as my 
 hand it would be a breach of confidence which would 
 lose me my self-respect. So long as Martina suspects 
 nothing, your hands are as much bound as mine. Or 
 did you have the intention of deceiving her, and de- 
 ceiving her with me? And then contrition, confession, 
 or no confession, the customary banal comedy? It 
 seems to me we are too good for that; above all, Mar- 
 tina is too good. Permit us to think it over, Eugene 
 Faber; let us reach a sane decision. Martina shall 
 know everything. Then let her decide, and everything 
 will depend on her decision. So you see how far I 
 
 
 
 have gone.” 
 
 | She suddenly clasped her hands before her face, and 
 her whole body again trembled as if in a chill. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 _ Faber did not move. His face fell strangely and 
 he sank his head slowly. 
 
 _ As if ashamed of her weakness Faith let her hands 
 drop again and with a remarkable rush of cheerful- 
 ness asked: “Will you tell her? Shall I tell her? Or 
 Shall we wait until she sees it for herself? It won’t 
 take long, not an hour.” 
 
 | 
 
 
 
272 FABER 
 
 Before Faber could reply, the door opened softly 
 and Christopher appeared on the threshold in bare feet 
 and his nightgown. He said in a sleepy and indignant 
 voice: ‘Somebody called so loudly that I woke up. 
 Who called ?” 
 
 Faith took him silently by the hand and led him 
 back to his room. She did not return. When the boy 
 was asleep she went into her room, barred the door 
 and sank down on her bed as if lifeless. 
 
 Faber wandered from room to room at the other 
 end of the house and it was late in the night when he 
 finally sought his bed, where dawn found him still 
 lying with open eyes. 
 
XX 
 
 WHEN Faber was descending the steps of the Law 
 Courts the following noon some one touched him on 
 the shoulder from behind. He turned and saw before 
 him one of his companions on the journey home, who 
 smilingly offered his hand. This was a young man 
 named Baltesser, whom Faber never cared much for 
 because of his overbearing manner; in fact the other 
 comrades had composed a saying about him: “Baltes- 
 ser knows it better.” He was tall and slender, but 
 careless in his bearing ; he had a refined, smooth-shaven 
 face, with furtive and undependable eyes and one of 
 those deceptive high foreheads which are less indica- 
 tive of mental capabilities than of greed and selfish- 
 ness. 
 
 Baltesser seemed to have been waiting for Faber. 
 At first the conversation was carried on with reserve 
 on both sides. DBaltesser, whose intuition was very 
 keen, and who obviously noticed that Faber was in 
 an unusual mood, a disturbed condition which might 
 serve the object he had in view, groped about care- 
 fully to learn Faber’s interests. 
 
 Since his return from Asia he had flung himself 
 
 273 
 
274 FABER 
 
 into politics with embittered passion and in a short 
 time had raised himself by word and: deed to leader- 
 ship of the radical and youthful party of the left, 
 which took the Russian Terror for its model. Faber 
 had read his name in the newspapers—mostly in con- 
 nection with that of a certain Peter Arquint, a literary 
 man—as well as a number of fiery speeches which he 
 had made on various occasions. He had too little 
 feeling for Baltesser, however, to let these matters 
 occupy his thoughts. 
 
 They walked together for a short distance. Not 
 without deftness did Baltesser weave his net, for he 
 counted not only on the suspected mental disturbance 
 of Faber, but also on his spiritual make-up, so differ- 
 ent from that of many of his fellows. Faber listened 
 half bored, half astonished, and accompanied Baltesser 
 because ostensibly he preferred any way except that 
 which led home. | 
 
 The name of the Princess entered the conversation, 
 Baltesser pronounced it with undisguised enmity. He 
 characterized the work of the Princess as emotional 
 theatricalism in the grand style, which had the object 
 of throwing sand into the eyes of the poor, suffering 
 people and blinding them to the true reasons for theif 
 need and their slavery. Such attempts of the bourgeois- 
 capitalist world to draw a conciliatory veil over the 
 abyss, on the edge of which it carried on its evil 
 
FABER 275 
 
 activities, were as old as history. Thereby seeing eyes 
 were to be blinded, and the blind were to be induced 
 to praise, something that was unhappily achieved, in 
 this case with enormous foreign aid and shameless 
 palaver about humanity. Many people, probably inter- 
 ested stockholders, were talking fantastically about a 
 new religion, of which the Princess was said to have 
 
 
 
 become a sort of apostle; religion—as if that were just 
 what was most wanted, as if heads were not already 
 sufficiently dull. And now three square kilometres of 
 additional land were to be placed at the disposal of the 
 
 
 
 Children’s City, as well as an appropriation for new 
 buildings; the government could suddenly find money 
 for that purpose and yet calmly look on while dozens of 
 thuman beings existed in one hole in the tenements of 
 ‘the suburbs, not to speak of those who lay about the 
 ‘pavements without any shelter. 
 
 So far as Faber could understand, a widespread 
 demonstration was being proposed, what Baltesser 
 called a registration of the people’s will. Baltesser no 
 doubt knew what part Martina Faber played in the 
 Children’s City and in the service of the Princess. This 
 no doubt was the reason why they wanted to make 
 sure of Faber ; it would make an impression if he joined 
 the opponents of the Princess and her community. 
 Perhaps they were building up their hopes of winning 
 him because of reports that Faber’s married life after 
 
276 FABER 
 
 his return had been disturbed by quarrels which were 
 connected with Martina Faber’s activity. 
 
 Faber understood that also. If he did not become 
 wholly clear on that point he must at least suspect it. 
 In the past anything that had the flavour of politics 
 was a horror to him. In former years he had often 
 argued about it with Fleming, who saw in Faber’s 
 disaffection an unmanly quietism, a comfortable and 
 cowardly rejection of the demands which the common 
 good was entitled to make on the individual. Faber 
 had possessed no other argument against this but his 
 aversion. Once he remarked: “Nothing clean can be 
 made with dirty hands. Politics is dirt.” Fleming had 
 shaken his head and replied: “That sounds like an 
 epigram; moreover, it is false. Every gardener has 
 dirty hands. Do you therefore despise his flowers? 
 You can despise him only if he attempts to offer you 
 sweepings for flowers.” 
 
 Baltesser was a shrewd advocate of his cause. That 
 taciturnity and pride which made him disagreeable 
 company on other occasions was exactly what helped 
 him, by contrast, to victory in cases such as this, Every 
 one felt flattered when he decided to speak. But 
 Faber became acquainted with a much more irresistible 
 pleader in Arquint, for feeling apathetic and aimless 
 that day, he had allowed himself to be led to Baltesser’s 
 house, which was located in the north of the town and 
 
FABER 277 
 
 adjoined a warehouse that served at times as a place of 
 assembly. They met Arquint at the door; he was carry- 
 ing a portfolio filled with writings. He was a small, 
 ‘sinewy, nervous man, with hollow cheeks giving him 
 the look of an ascetic, and a jerky, mocking, challeng- 
 ing way of speaking. Beside him Baltesser seemed 
 phlegmatic. He was returning from a tour undertaken 
 for the purpose of agitation, and when he spoke of it 
 every muscle in his face became tense and his cheeks 
 turned pale. All about the inhospitable room lay 
 brochures, with startling yellow covers and challenging 
 titles; on the wall hung a portrait of Karl Marx, 
 surrounded by pine branches. Once the door opened 
 and a dark-haired young woman peered in, but disap- 
 peared after a look from Baltesser, who glanced at her 
 rather carelessly over his shoulder. 
 
 Faber looked searchingly first at the one young man, 
 then at the other. His expression and his attitude gave 
 no indication what impression they made on him. This 
 reserved and inscrutable manner forced Peter Arquint 
 to disclose more of himself, as if he had become inter- 
 ested or curious. When Baltesser mentioned the move- 
 ment against the Children’s City Arquint laughed dryly 
 and in a highly peculiar manner expatiated on this un- 
 dertaking, founded by friends of humanity and, as he 
 admitted, manifesting much human friendliness. But 
 one could no longer expect human friendliness to 
 
278 FABER 
 
 serve, he said, and a prophetic look came into his eyes; 
 what distinguished the present age from all others and 
 put the special stamp of destiny on it was the bank- 
 ruptcy of the heart, which the age favoured and which 
 could be recognized everywhere; out of this it had to 
 build consistently, create its power, its courage, its 
 ideals—not out of the miserable remnants of a van- 
 ished and exhausted world. Naturally the strength to 
 see this and to wish for this powerful new order called 
 for the courage of a devotee; there was nothing left to 
 kindness and forbearance and help for suffering and 
 love and whatever else one called the false remedies 
 for Europe’s agony of one hundred years. There was 
 no remedy for crimes; they reproduced themselves un- 
 der the scars, and the injuries done by society to its 
 bound and shackled members could not be atoned for 
 before this society itself disappeared from the face of 
 the earth. 
 
 “They save children from physical suffering,” he 
 continued, “and what, in the best instance, is lacking? 
 The spiritual. Or, let us say, they elevate them spirit- 
 ually ; with what result? So that later on they can see 
 the darkness covering the rest so much better. One 
 thousand children, ten thousand children, let us say 
 one hundred thousand; well, and what of the other one 
 hundred million? Compared with such people, Sisyphus 
 was an optimist. It is always the same; they have no 
 
FABER 279 
 
 comprehension of symptoms. They don’t hear the 
 alarm of bells until their eardrums are well-nigh break- 
 ing. ‘They are proud of the few desiccated social 
 victims that they have saved and they hypocritically 
 avoid the mountains of corpses—did you observe any- 
 thing? I observed nothing. All Christs! All re- 
 deemers! Your blood? But don’t you see, we are 
 shedding tears. Your broken existence? But we have 
 been weeping for nineteen-hundred and twenty-four 
 years. May I ask”—here he suddenly turned sharply 
 to Faber— "what reimbursement you have been given 
 or offered for your six years of death in Siberia?’ 
 
 Faber shuddered. He remained silent. 
 
 “The building of an asylum for children, perhaps?” 
 mocked Arquint; “so that you can refresh yourself 
 at the spectacle of how the consumptive, scrofulous, 
 idiotic, anemic offspring of the grateful proletariat is 
 initiated into the mysteries of culture? Decidedly 
 clever speculation, thus to make a man forget that he 
 has been robbed of his lifeblood, the heart of it, the 
 whole kernel of his existence. Oh, you, who forget, 
 you are as guilty as your murderers! For it was 
 murder. Don’t you feel that you were murdered?” 
 
 Faber reddened and stood up. “You may be right,” 
 he said, ill at ease. 
 
 The door had opened again and the black-haired 
 girl, hearing Arquint speak so loudly, entered, ap- 
 
280 FABER 
 
 proached Baltesser, who had seated himself by the 
 
 table and was reading a letter, leaned her arm on his 
 shoulder, and looked at the letter. Baltesser took 
 no notice of her presence and her diffident advances; 
 the abject submission which she exhibited toward him 
 in look and attitude was obviously distasteful to him. 
 Faber observed that she was far pregnant. 
 
 Baltesser asked him, as if casually, whether he would 
 not write his name under the appeal that was directed 
 against the Children’s City and that was to be distrib- 
 uted as the first signal for battle. He replied that he 
 would have to consider it and merely nodded when 
 
 Baltesser said he would call for his reply. Then he’ 
 
 took his leave. On the stairs he observed an old man 
 and an old woman who stepped shyly out of his way. 
 They were poorly dressed and appeared to have been 
 standing here for some time. Suddenly the woman 
 
 spoke to him haltingly. ‘Did you see her?” she asked. 
 
 Faber, amazed, failed to reply. “She means whether ” 
 
 you met our daughter upstairs,’ explained the man, — 
 “She happens to live at Herr Baltesser’s. Pardon, if 
 
 we have intruded.” They were obviously Jews. In 
 a gloomy mood Faber passed on. 
 
 As sleep failed him in the night he arose from his 
 
 bed, sat down at the table, took pencil and paper, and 
 wrote the following: 
 
 “Faith or Martina—I don’t know to which of you 
 
 Pe Mma 4 a? 
 
| 
 | 
 | 
 | 
 
 
 
 FABER 281 
 
 two I write this. Often you merge in my conscious- 
 ness into one person; then again you move far apart 
 
 and I can grasp neither. The one who is dumb and 
 
 the one who speaks—they hold one another by the 
 hand. The dumb one asked too much of me—how 
 could I have understood her when I needed consola- 
 tion, and had myself been condemned to silence for so 
 long? The other had the ability to open me; she did 
 not spare the pains of opening the rusted locks with 
 the rusted keys, as my poor father expressed it. Per- 
 haps toward her I was too unreserved in confessions. 
 It is not good for human beings to know everything 
 about each other, not good to throw light into all the 
 dark spaces. I have regretted much; for instance, 
 that I told her of certain privations. I said to myself 
 afterward: it is impossible that a woman like her can 
 listen to that without resistance, in spite of all that she 
 has experienced, let alone understand. Her training, 
 the social stratum from which she comes, finally the 
 refinement embodied in her personality—all this pre- 
 vents her from an unprejudiced comprehension. And 
 as regards the influence of taste, there is little differ- 
 ence between a St. Anthony with his vision and a rut- 
 ting animal. In any case she must have the impression 
 that I got completely out of control over there. Oh, yes, 
 don’t let us fool ourselves; the insanity has set in— 
 sickness, mental confusion. So it happened, I don’t 
 
282 FABER 
 
 deny it. Yearning—a delicate word. But my yearn- 
 ing no longer possessed spirit and soul; it burst the 
 tortured body; it became tarnished as silver does when 
 it lies in damp soil. 
 
 “Do you remember, Martina, how once, many years 
 ago, we read Gottfried Keller’s ‘Romeo and Juliet’ to- 
 gether in the village, and how, when we reached the 
 lovely episode at its close, where Sali carries Vreneli 
 on the ship and they die together, you said to me 
 with a fiery look: That is as it should be; it must be so; 
 either‘. .....or.. .. Do you remember? Audıl az 
 declare with confidence that we both have held fast to 
 
 that either... or...” We could not follow our 
 
 predilections, neither you nor I; we could not substi- 
 
 tute another, neither you nor I. We had been living in 
 
 actual union. When I parted from you at that time I 
 
 did not yet know what it signified; I was an imma- — 
 
 ture human, had not taken stock of myself, had no 
 
 idea how the majority of mankind helps itself and 
 
 makes a virtue of necessity; did not know that ina 
 
 thousand cases of love and marriage, of happy love © 
 
 and happy marriage, there is hardly one in which the | 
 
 actual union takes place. In the meantime I have | 
 
 thought a great deal about it and heard a great deal. 
 What is experience? Taking things into one’s self, andl 
 
 letting them fulfil one’s self. There were hours when — : 
 
 I could call to my mind’s eye the faces of all human 
 
FABER 283 
 
 beings with whom I had ever come in contact, men 
 close to me and merely passing by, line for line with 
 a clearness and accuracy that they never had when 
 they were present before me; thus I came upon secrets 
 of which even they knew nothing. I call that experi- 
 ence. In our camp was a remarkable man; good, that 
 I think of him, good that I at least write down his 
 name, Alexander Wehn—here none remembers any- 
 thing about him, not even about his death. Soon 
 after my flight typhus felled him. He did not exactly 
 love humankind; was a cynic through and through, but 
 with what insight and understanding! Wehn was a 
 medical man, his leanings made him a psychiatrist. 
 Many a night during the endless winters we sat to- 
 gether in the barracks and gossiped; practically always 
 on one and the same theme. He explained to me how 
 it happened that most men and women constantly de- 
 fied Nature in their ignorance and carelessness ; in their 
 physical relations each goes his own way; each takes 
 his pleasure selfishly; thus gradually they became em- 
 bittered and withered, the one through the other. 
 
 “Tt is so dreadfully difficult; language does not suf- 
 fice. There is no happiness in love, and consequently 
 also no happiness in general without deep and constant 
 watchfulness of the body and of the soul. That was 
 the outcome of our discourses. Sensation shared simul- 
 taneously—if that is not present down to the smallest 
 
284 FABER 
 
 nerve fibre and into the core of the heart, then death 
 is already on the way. I need not enumerate the rea- 
 sons why men have not learned to guide their wives, 
 and why girls age in wedlock without becoming wives 
 —they are as plentiful as the lies and the scars that 
 surround us—now I see it daily, almost hourly; be- 
 cause this is so, an incurable defect in love has grad- 
 ally insinuated itself into our part of the cultural 
 world. Thus spoke Wehn, and he proved to me from 
 many instances that he had observed how, as a result 
 of this defect in love, our world is full and full to over- 
 flowing of unsatisfied souls—through generations, 
 through centuries. Wehn declared that it was like a 
 progressive poisoning and that no matter what desig- 
 nation physicians chose for it, whether neurasthenia, 
 or degeneration, or hysteria, or something else, the 
 roots of it were in this defect. These unsatisfied souls 
 nag one another, torture one another, hate and distrust 
 one another; they consider themselves guilty without 
 knowing exactly why, and nurse a suppressed venge- 
 ance, without knowing exactly for what purpose. Part 
 of them go down because of their own weakness, or 
 weariness, or hopelessness, or disappointment, or ossi- 
 fication; the other part break all bonds and turn to 
 rebellion. k 
 
 “Is it the truth? At that time I doubted the devas- 
 tating picture. It was a little too plausible for me— 
 
FABER 285 
 
 that is why I doubted. One would have had to pos- 
 ‘sess deeper knowledge than I, to have had wider expe- 
 rience in life in order to say: It is true. But since my 
 return I begin to feel a fateful acquiescence in it, and 
 something sinister seems to be stirring deep within 
 ‘me. It was an unusual freak of nature, Martina, 
 which made it possible for us to find perfect union 
 in our young married life without thought of failure 
 or deception ; we innocents did not cherish it or esteem 
 it properly, perhaps because we were still half children 
 ‘who could hold fast to each other and catch the 
 ‚same pitch from each other; I without previous ex- 
 ‘perience, you by the grace that is within you. Later, 
 when I was far from you, it stood out from the rest 
 ‚of life like a gift from God; I trembled constantly 
 ‘on account of it as one who has unwittingly possessed 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 ‚a bar of pure gold and now sees it converted into specie 
 for vulgar use. Then I realized that it had become 
 coin and was no longer intact, untarnished, glorious, 
 as it comes from the bosom of the earth. And when 
 you took me to yourself again that night—I have said 
 to Faith, it was as if I were thrown froma high tower, 
 just so. Our bodies no longer responded. I had be- 
 come, all at once, a cripple in my own eyes. Then the 
 poison began to work within me. My senses became 
 obscured, sight and feeling; something drove me for- 
 ward; I did not wish to go, but I must. I go out on 
 
286 FABER 
 
 the street and hatred rises within me against unknown 
 
 persons that I meet; even their members arouse my 
 hatred—their feet as they walk, their fingers as they 
 grasp; the laughter of this one and the glance of that 
 one, the little and the big, old as well as young, poor 
 and rich, I hate them all equally; I walk behind them 
 with evil thoughts; I shrink from them; I see them 
 
 naked—the horrible bodies, the fat paunches, the loose 
 
 yellow skin, the ugly traces of their dissipations, the 
 ravages of alcohol, the scars of syphilis, with which 
 nine-tenths of them are rotten. Suddenly one looks 
 unashamed into my face; it is a dandy, a fop, if you 
 
 please; Lord knows on whom he has been calling, he’ 
 
 looks so very self-satisfied. It amuses me to imagine 
 
 that I dare seize him and drag him after me; when 
 he is in my power I will have at him until every- 
 
 thing dances before his eyes. What have we here? 
 
 Why have you, my dear fellow, sullied the world by 
 
 being born into it? What makes you chuckle on the 
 
 street in the light of day? Don’t you see, you thief 
 and bounder, time-server and wastrel, what you have 
 
 brought about? You know of nothing? You are 
 
 none the less responsible, none the less guilty. And I 
 
 intoxicate myself with the idea that I will destroy 
 
 him, crush him under my feet. 
 “Oh, Faith! 
 
 x 
 
 “Is this what my return has made of me, after all 
 
FABER 287 
 
 the bitterness? This—an underhanded, malicious in- 
 cendiary? One who breaks his own hearth into bits 
 and perhaps uproots his own son out of his soil, be- 
 cause he himself no longer has roots? Rebels are 
 people easily in motion, who care nothing for those 
 who are sedentary ; they need holes to hide in, quarters 
 on the run. There are many such; since I have taken 
 on their colouring they detect me from afar, draw 
 their rings about me, and it seems that they are certain 
 of Eugene Faber.” 
 
 At this point he broke off, remained sitting for a 
 while at a loss, then locked the pages carefully in a 
 drawer. When he arose from the table he clutched at 
 his breast with a suppressed exclamation. The palpita- 
 tion of the heart, which had spared him for a number 
 of weeks, again set in. 
 
 On the following morning Martina returned from 
 her trip, two days earlier than she had expected and 
 had written. She had sent no message in advance be- 
 cause she did not take herself too seriously on such 
 ‘occasions, and also because she liked little surprises. 
 
XXI 
 
 CHRISTOPHER had three days’ recess from school be- 
 fore him. A scarlet fever epidemic had broken out 
 and the school had been closed. Christopher found 
 scarlet fever to be a praiseworthy institution. He did 
 not understand the terror created by this well-sounding 
 word. 
 
 He was easily impressed by words that had a pretty 
 sound. Especially when he could not associate them 
 with any particular meaning. He invented such words, 
 as, for instance, palufan. Palufan to him meant his 
 Sunday suit. The language in general use had no 
 expression for it; he had one. 
 
 Moreover, he was not in a good humour. 
 
 Since his mother had returned from her trip, now 
 two days ago, he had not seen her altogether for more 
 than one hour. Truly she had kissed him and rallied 
 him in lively fashion, but he did not like that, for he 
 considered it incompatible with his experience and his 
 years. Besides there had been something about her 
 caresses that made him reflect, as if she wanted to hide 
 
 away from him. He would have preferred to have her 
 288 be 
 
 | 
 
FABER 289 
 
 enter into a serious discussion with him. She did not 
 do that. 
 
 _ He understood this. Grown-ups thought they were 
 acting most wisely and acted most stupidly. He saw 
 everything. He saw through all of them. You had 
 ‘to be constantly on guard against the secretiveness with 
 which they did everything. The only one who acted 
 'honourably toward him was Faith. Yet a change had 
 come about even in Faith in the last few days. She 
 always glanced away whenever he talked with her. 
 
 It was not cheery in the rooms. Nobody bothered 
 about him. Nobody paid any attention to him. He 
 heard the voice of his mother at the telephone. Then 
 she departed. Then, as on yesterday, came a man who 
 asked for his father. Then came people who asked 
 for his mother. Then two men came and went into 
 his father’s room, which the first man had already en- 
 tered. Their loud voices penetrated to him. Then 
 his mother returned and Faith remained with her a 
 
 
 
 long time. 
 
 _ There was something remarkable about all that. It 
 could be seen that Christopher was puzzling his head 
 about it. He began a conversation with the kitchen- 
 maid, Emma, whom he did not like ordinarily. He 
 considered her silly. He made her understand that he 
 would soon make himself independent. He would de- 
 part in order to have an adventure. What adventure? 
 
 
 
290 FABER 
 
 Well, a toad languished in the cellar of the furrier’s 
 next door; he would disenchant it. But this was the 
 least, merely a beginning. | 
 After some reflection he said to himself: “One thing 
 
 I would like to know: is there really a China, or do 
 they merely talk about it? I ought to get that out of 
 them some time.” 
 Suddenly he listened. Herr Schadenbach’s voice re- 
 sounded on the lower landing of the stairs. It sounded 
 like the bark of an old, irritable dog. Christopher 
 frowned, opened the door of the corridor, and listened. 
 Herr Schadenbach yelled up. He absolutely could not 
 tolerate the fact that people were constantly moving 
 about and talking loudly above his rooms. It was true 
 that the men in father’s room were talking noisily. But 
 the unseemliness and rudeness of Herr Schadenbach’s 
 complaint aroused Christopher’s anger to the utmost, 
 He had been long enough coming to a decisive act. He 
 descended step by step until he stood directly in front 
 of the hated man, placed his hands behind him, bent 
 his body forward, and on his part yelled as loud as 
 he could: “Tolanzel! Tolanzel! Tolanzel!” This 
 wholly meaningless combination of sounds seemed to 
 him to express such an amount of denunciation and 
 contempt that he turned about immediately and, with 
 head high, climbed back to his own floor. “He will 
 4 
 
 “ 
 
 4 
 
 i 
 
 i 
 
FABER 291 
 
 take notice of that,” he murmured with satisfaction; 
 “he will take care to remember that.” 
 
 
 
 _ Herr Schadenbach, completely benumbed in amaze- 
 ment, looked after him with popping eyes as long as 
 he could and then broke out into piercing laughter. 
 “Laugh, Tolanzel,” sneered Christopher, at the same 
 
 time slamming the door; “laugh; what you have just 
 
 received will stay with you.” 
 A little later he put into his pocket one of the bars 
 
 | 
 
 ‘of chocolate that his mother had brought him and 
 
 | 
 | 
 
 went out. He went into the court of the furrier, where 
 
 
 
 
 
 he commonly found playmates. But he found there 
 only a fourteen-year-old boy whom he hardly knew, 
 and who was digging a gutter in a puddle of standing 
 rain-water. It was dirty work and dirty was the lad 
 ‘who did it. 
 
 Christopher sat down on a stone with studied dis- 
 interestedness and watched him. As the other lad 
 was mean enough to act as if he did not notice him, 
 he decided to start the conversation and remarked off- 
 hand: “I certainly handed something to that Schaden- 
 bach to-day.” 
 
 | The other lad glanced across. “Who?” he asked 
 slightingly. “You? What Schadenbach ?” 
 
 “The fat fellow who lives in our house,” Christopher 
 replied, in a tone that conveyed that he was not one 
 
292 FABER 
 
 to boast. Then he took his chocolate out of his pocket 
 and thoughtfully removed the paper. 
 
 The other bestirred himself slowly, took a few big 
 steps, calmly removed the chocolate from Christopher’s 
 hand and swallowed it. Then he returned to his occu- 
 pation. 
 
 This gave Christopher a great idea of the power of 
 the fourteen-year-old. He was so shocked that he 
 suppressed every protest and silently sought a new 
 sphere of interest. 
 
 He lay down on his abdomen before the door 
 of the cellar, in which ostensibly lived the toad that 
 was waiting for its human form. While his eyes were 
 seeking to penetrate the darkness below it began to 
 rain heavily, and as dusk was also falling he started 
 home. Faith, dressed for going out, came toward him 
 and said that she would probably not return home until 
 late and therefore had asked Emma to remain in the 
 house until then. She hoped Christopher would be rea- 
 sonable and suggested that he take up a book and go 
 to bed at nine o’clock. Then she kissed him on the 
 forehead and disappeared. | 
 
 When Christopher was alone he shook his head. 
 Things appeared strange to him. For Faith to leave 
 him in the evening had never happened before. And 
 Faith had hardly ever kissed him on the forehead. 
 Their relationship did not include confidence of that 
 
FABER 293 
 
 kind. Moreover, the dark shadows in her face and 
 the dejection in her look had not escaped him. He 
 reflected. The quiet round about proved oppressive 
 and he began to hum a little. The chords of a piano 
 came from a residence in the first storey; then again 
 everything was quiet. Then he heard Emma clatter- 
 ing with the dishes in the kitchen; and again silence. 
 The rain had stopped for a time; now it pattered anew 
 on the metal cornice in front of the windows, and this 
 noise made the silence still more uncanny. 
 
 Christopher sat at the window with head resting 
 on his elbow, his cheek pressed into his hand, and 
 ‘watched the streaks of rain flash by when they hit the 
 light coming from the window. This entertained him 
 for a time and he decided to build a Noah’s ark. He 
 placed four chairs together so that they formed an 
 
 
 
 inner square. Into this space he carried his picture 
 ‘books, his school notebooks, his coat, a pair of shoes 
 and a bag for provisions. With lively yelling he drove 
 ‘before him the various animals that were to be housed 
 in the ark—that is to say, he imagined he did so—and 
 ‘managed to become somewhat angered by the stubborn- 
 ness of the camel and the intractability of the fowls. 
 He procured an old, torn umbrella from an adjoining 
 ‘room, opened it, and made use of it as roof for the 
 ark. Finally he himself entered it and was now ready 
 ‘for the flood. After a time this seemed to tire him; 
 
 
 
294 FABER 
 
 he sighed, removed the umbrella from the ark, and 
 marched with it about the room, walking up and down 
 several times, and as he was well-nigh obliterated under 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 the umbrella he gave the appearance of a wandering 
 black mushroom. Suddenly he said in a singing, priest-' 
 like voice, filled with bad tidings: “There is the sea. 
 A great inundation. No houses left; no human beings’ 
 left. No one left on the world except myself and the 
 umbrella.” ; 
 
 An ironical snicker caused him to stop. Emma had 
 entered with his supper. He frowned, and when she? 
 attempted to start a conversation while he was sitting” 
 at table and eating porridge he refused to join in. 
 This hurt her feelings and she left. 
 
 Again silence, and time flying. He gazed long and 
 with extraordinary intentness at the dial of the pendu- 
 lum clock, so long, until the big hand had moved from 
 half-past eight to nine. To his satisfaction he had 
 been able to observe plainly the retarded movement, 
 but he had never succeeded in catching the little hand 
 at the same time. In his private idiom this clock we 5 
 called Ragun, an attempt to reproduce phonetically its 
 rather mysterious characteristics. # 
 
 “Can’t you talk with me, Ragun?” he said to the 
 clock. i 
 
 The big hand crept on; Ragun did not reply. There= 
 upon Christopher pushed his chair to the wall, climbed 
 
 “4 
 
 
 
FABER 295 
 
 up and stopped the movement of the tireless pendulum. 
 He became frightened, probably because the silence be- 
 came terrifying on account of the sudden cessation of 
 the noise of the clock. “It’s all over with you now, 
 Ragun,” he said, in a voice that sounded a bit fearful; 
 
 “now you are dead, now there will be no more time.” 
 | 
 / 
 voice, and he turned so suddenly that he nearly fell 
 
 “What are you doing, Christopher?” asked another 
 
 from his chair. In his eagerness he had not heard his 
 father open the door. He had just returned home and 
 had seen the light in Christopher’s room through a 
 
 crack in the door. 
 
 | 
 
 A remarkable thing happened. Christopher, this 
 strong character, this enemy of any show of emotion, 
 threw his arms around his father’s neck, clasped him 
 tight, and sobbed his heart out. 
 
 Faber, who from his looks plainly did not feel very 
 self-confident himself, was shocked. He did not grasp, 
 without further explanation, the connection between 
 the lad’s violent outburst of suffering and his playing 
 with the clock, at which he had found him. Ostensibly 
 he reflected on its deeper origin and his face took on 
 the consciousness of blame. He caressed Christopher’s 
 hair with a gentle hand and pressed the tearful face 
 to him. “Now, my dear boy,” he said, “what is so 
 terrible? You must not cry. Why didn’t you go to 
 bed? Where is Faith? Were you alone?” The boy 
 
 
 
296 FABER 
 
 nodded. “Entirely alone?” A nod, again. “Well, 
 that is too bad, but you must not cry on that account. 
 
 See, we men don’t cry, no matter how miserably we — 
 ; y; y 
 
 feel. We have to down it; we have to be courageous. 
 The world demands it of us. Now then, I know that 
 you are a brave little comrade—every one knows that; 
 and it seems to me that you and I have to hold to- 
 
 gether much more than we have done heretofore. Nat- 
 
 urally I can’t say that you will need me, but I shall 
 need you in any case.” 
 
 These and other words pleased Christopher so much 
 that he soon smiled through his tears with an expres- 
 sion half of pride, half of curiosity; meanwhile Faber 
 
 removed his shoes, his suit, his stockings, his shirt; 
 
 let him slip into his nightgown; led him to his bed 
 
 and remained seated at his bedside, with the child’s ° 
 hand in his, until Christopher was asleep. Then he 
 turned out the light and left the room. When he was 
 passing the door to the main corridor the key turned — 
 in the lock and Faith entered. In spite of the um- — 
 brella that she had carried her cloak was wet from the” 
 
 rain and even her gloves were wet. 
 “So late?” inquired Faber. 
 
 “Yes... late,” she replied, and put away the um- | 
 
 brella. “Is Christopher asleep?” 
 
 Faber nodded. He was about to tell her what had ‘ 
 
 happened to Christopher, and then refrained. 
 
 He ee 
 
FABER 297 
 
 “Has anything happened?” Faith inquired with un- 
 easiness, having observed the play of his features. 
 
 He said “No” hesitatingly. “At least nothing of 
 moment,” he replied. “The loneliness in the empty 
 house probably frightened him. I also came only a 
 short time ago. I would not have thought him so 
 sensitive. Possibly it was not the loneliness entirely. 
 Possibly he detected something else.” 
 
 “Loneliness, you say? Emma promised me not to 
 leave him alone... .” 
 
 It turned out that the girl had gone home. 
 
 Ten minutes later Faith knocked at the door of the 
 living-room. 
 
 “T must ask your pardon,” she said, entering and 
 remaining standing at the door. “I must explain my 
 going. I went out to the Princess. I wanted to see 
 her. Merely see her. Wanted merely to be near her 
 for a few hours. It gives one strength to be with her. 
 Else I would not have had enough strength for—for 
 everything.” 
 
 In this short time she had changed her attire. She 
 wore a dark brown house-dress with large cloth but- 
 tons and a white ruff at the neck, so that she bore a 
 resemblance to the women in Van Eyck’s pictures, an 
 impression that was accentuated by the oval of her 
 head and her unfashionable, smooth hairdress, which 
 left her forehead free and caused it to shine like ivory. 
 
298 FABER 
 
 “Won’t you sit down?’ asked Faber, looking past 
 her face. 
 
 She shook her head and continued: “I chose to- 
 night for this purpose because I knew that Martina 
 would be with the minister the whole evening in order 
 to discuss the new building project with him. Several 
 specialists and two Englishmen are also there; the ses- 
 sion will probably continue until late in the night. Mar- 
 tina carries the declarations and powers of attorney of 
 the English and American affiliated societies. That 
 gave me the chance, if I was lucky, to be alone with 
 the Princess, and I was lucky. She was still tired 
 
 from her trip and had retired, but when she heard — 
 
 that I was there she had me come to her room.” 
 She told this in a strangely languid tone, as if to 
 herself, hardly looked up once; occasionally a peculiarly 
 repressed smile, merely the suggestion of a smile, 
 played about her mouth. “I had not seen the Princess 
 for many weeks,” she continued; “I had forgotten how 
 wonderful it is even if one may only gaze at her face. 
 
 I asked her: May I stay here half an hour? She was ~ 
 
 lying on an army cot and demanded that I sit down 
 beside her. I sat there and was silent and she made 
 no objection to my silence. After a long time she 
 
 took my head in her hands and said: “You are in need, ; 
 
 child, in great need, it seems to me.’ ‘Yes,’ I said, 
 ‘actually in great need.’ ‘See it through to the end,’ 
 
 ee ne ee 
 
FABER 299 
 
 she said; ‘see it as true as you can through to the end; 
 you can’t go wrong if you are completely honest, if 
 you do not lie to yourself.’ ‘I will do that,’ I said, and 
 begged her merely to let me remain with her. She 
 had a small harmonium in her room and played the in- 
 strument like a master. I know she plays rarely, but 
 to-day she sat down and played softly, an old Italian 
 cantata. Thereupon I kissed her hand and left.” 
 
 Faber looked down before him and said nothing. 
 Faith, too, became silent. But it was as if she ex- 
 pected a question from him. The question came, but 
 only after a long time. “And Martina?’ he asked, 
 dully. 
 
 “Martina, certainly,” she nodded. “My God, what 
 days those two were! I felt as if I were severely ill, 
 I feel it even now. She is no doubt the most peculiar 
 person on earth. No doubt she knew everything, sus- 
 pected everything, the moment she crossed the 
 threshold. I cannot tell how I come to this conclu- 
 sion with such certainty and what it was about her, 
 but that is how it was. I know her so well; I know 
 every bit of her, every shade of her, and I don’t de- 
 ceive myself.” 
 
 “The same thing happened to me,” said Faber, and 
 suddenly his eyes flared up at her with a timid, deep 
 fire; “but you have been with her, Faith, you have 
 spoken with her? . . .” 
 
300 FABER 
 
 Faith, drawing back her shoulders almost imper-— 
 ceptibly as if she wanted to hide herself from his’ 
 glance, replied: “Spoken with her, yes; that is to say, 
 
 she asked me what I had done during her absence, how 
 I arranged matters; wanted to know everything to the 
 smallest detail, even the orders for the kitchen. But 
 only such things. I could not come close to her. It 
 was as if I stood before an iron gate. When I tried 
 to begin, merely to hint at what burdened my soul, 
 made just the slightest attempt to speak of what we 
 have between us, and what I would rather not know 
 nor have ever discovered, she would not wait for my 
 second word, began immediately to tell about her trip, 
 about the Princess and how she had been honoured, 
 about the amusing customs in England and a lord who 
 fell in love with her, and so on; all of this with that 
 peculiar light in her eyes and that high-pitched laugh- 
 ter, which indicates that she is highly agitated and 
 does not wish to betray it at any price. She also looked 
 strangely about her room, her own room, and looked 
 strangely at me, and even if this was but for a second 
 it gave me an uncanny feeling. This happened yester- 
 day, and again to-day. In the meantime she did not 
 mention you once, although formerly she spoke your 
 name in every one of our conversations with a pleasant 
 word or a sigh, and at the slightest excuse. It was 
 quite natural for her to say, “And Eugene.’ Do you 
 
 oe 
 
FABER 301 
 
 understand what I mean? ‘And Eugene.’ This ‘and’ 
 —it would seem no longer to be there, this ‘and.’ ” 
 
 “It may be that it is no longer there,” said Faber 
 bitterly. ‘Perhaps Fate has crossed it out.” 
 
 “And you—” 
 
 “No,” Faber interrupted her, for he guessed what 
 she was about to say. “No. Notaword. We greeted 
 each other. She was very nice to me, very nice. She 
 stood before me with her arms so limp, or perhaps it 
 merely seemed that way. Speak? Speak in detail? 
 No. Where was I to begin? The barricade is grow- 
 ing ever higher. The unspoken words lie upon it 
 like corpses. I got out of her way. A coward. When 
 a man loses his advantage he immediately becomes 
 a coward. We are heroes only when we use our fists. 
 Do act for me, Faith, else I don’t know how it will 
 end.” 
 
 “End?” Faith asked uneasily in rejoinder. “Has 
 it not already ended? Or is a beginning still possible?” 
 
 They both became affrighted at the same moment; 
 outside, the door opened; light, rapid steps; Martina 
 entered. 
 
 She kept her hand on the latch; her tan-brown eyes 
 threw a lightning glance at Faber, another at Faith; 
 not until then did she come wholly into the room. Only 
 the sharpest observation could have detected anything 
 unusual in the two looks, for it was not Martina’s in- 
 
302 FABER 
 
 tent to show any sign of amazement, curiosity, or sur- 
 prise, despite the fact that the way in which Faith and 
 
 Eugene confronted one another, and obviously became ” 
 silent when Martina entered, must in any event have © 
 
 ’ 
 
 appeared odd and suspicious. She did not look up 
 
 while she closed the door, dropped her cloak and re- 
 
 moved her hat, and nothing could be read in her fea- 
 
 tures, which had something thoughtful and collected © 
 
 about them. 
 
 “Oh, this Fleming,” she said, laughing softly, “how ° 
 
 he talks! I must tell you that he escorted me home. ° 
 
 And he was gallant, oh, so gallant! He was at the 
 
 minister’s as interpreter for our Englishmen; he 
 
 speaks English remarkably well. In fact he overdoes 
 
 it. I doubt whether they speak so well in England 
 
 ee Ben een 
 
 itself. He is a man who does excellently everything — 
 
 he attempts. Really. Yes, the Princess begged him 
 
 to be our interpreter and the Englishmen were carried — 
 
 away. ‘A charming fellow!’ they said. That is the ; 
 
 highest praise an Englishman can give, isn’t it?’ And 
 
 she laughed again. 
 
 “Have you dined, Martina?” Faith inquired. “One 
 
 always has to ask you that. Do you wish anything? 
 
 Tea? Tea and biscuit?” 
 
 g 
 
 “No, dearest. I beg of you, nothing, nothing at all,” — 
 
 Martina replied earnestly. “You may well believe that 
 I was nearly drowned in tea in England. Oh, how 
 
 ' 
 
FABER 303 
 
 tired, how tired I am!” Comically imitating a dead 
 weight she fell into a chair. More things seemed to 
 suggest themselves to her the longer she talked, but 
 her look seemed to grow more aimless, almost vacant. 
 “Lest I forget”’—she turned to Eugene—“‘your friend 
 Fleming wants me to say he hopes you will receive 
 him to-morrow after dinner. He says he has some- 
 thing important to say to you.” 
 
 “So? Something important? What can that be?” 
 Faber said, trying to be funny. 
 
 “My God, he told me about it; a call has appeared 
 in a newspaper. A call directed against the Children’s 
 City. They call it a philanthropic theatre, Fleming 
 said in anger. Your name is supposed to be there, 
 too. They find it to be a sinful waste of money. Some- 
 thing to delude people, they find. Did you hear that, 
 Faith? A newspaper publishes such stuff. Is it pos- 
 sible, Eugene, that your name is there? Not really?” 
 
 It would be a vain effort to reproduce the air with 
 which she said this; how outwardly she was full of 
 fun and light-hearted, and inwardly repressing her 
 fear, and how her fluent, girlish voice passed now into 
 the higher and now into the lower ranges. Faber col- 
 oured and made no answer. 
 
 Martina looked at him in astonishment; behind her 
 astonishment was sorrow; then she bowed her head. 
 “Now I am going to bed,” she cried suddenly, sprang 
 
304 FABER 
 
 up, and shook back the hair that had fallen over her 
 forehead. “Good night, Faith; good night, Eugene.” 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 With that she hurried out, almost running. 
 
 Faith and Faber looked at one another. But they 
 exchanged no more words. They even parted without 
 a word of farewell. | 
 
XXI 
 
 As late as three o’clock in the afternoon Faber sat 
 gloomy and inactive in his room. He had decided not 
 to visit the office; he detested every step of the way, so 
 that even his stride underwent a change when he 
 started out for it. He had intended to carry forward 
 a task already begun, a plan for a concert hall drafted 
 days ago, but he had hardly reached for his pencil when 
 he put it down again distracted and disheartened. 
 
 He perceived voices and distinguished them. His 
 mother was speaking with Faith. After a while she 
 came to him in his room. She asked whether she 
 disturbed him. He silently offered her a chair. She 
 thanked him softly, sat down, and sighed. Within a 
 few days she had aged visibly. Deep lines had formed 
 about the mouth; her hair, formerly touched with 
 brown threads, was pure grey, and her eyes showed no 
 trace of their former brilliancy. 
 
 The sympathetic, searching glance of the son caused 
 her to nod sadly. “Yes, Eugene,” she said, “your 
 mother has suddenly become an aged woman. Who 
 would have thought of that? Even I, good Lord! A 
 year ago no tempest could have bent me. Now this 
 
 305 
 
306 FABER 
 
 good old faithful servant of mine”’—she ran her hands 
 down her sides— “gives me notice of leave-taking.” 
 
 “You have done a great deal in your life, Mother; 
 you are entitled to rest too,” replied Faber, gently. 
 
 “Rest—naturally I should like that, although it is 
 not the state in which I am most at ease. Since your 
 father died, that glorious man, I have always had the 
 greatest fear of the moment when I should hear: “Your 
 time has come.’ There are people who dare not take 
 stock of themselves. When I do so it may be too late. 
 You laugh. It is not a matter for laughter.” 
 
 “No, Mother, I did not laugh.” 
 
 “And to go to the others, to stay with them, that is 
 
 no longer possible. I could never get used to the idea” 
 
 that one day I would experience an age that was not 
 
 my age. What was the good of that? It has come 
 
 u 
 
 about, nevertheless. This age, your age—no, it is no 
 
 longer mine. Do you know the, legend of the men 
 
 of stone? The prince goes toward the mountain; 
 
 round about him all are of stone. Behind him is con- 
 
 tinuous hooting, screaming, and yelling. But he dare 
 
 not turn around. If he turns around he will himself : 
 
 turn to stone. That’s the point. Any one who still 
 
 has a heart in his body and who turns toward the ; 
 
 howling will himself become stone.” 
 
 “Have you good reports of Valentine? Is he con- 
 
 ducting himself properly out there in the institution?” 
 
FABER 307 
 
 asked Faber, in order to lead his mother away from 
 her gloomy comment. 
 
 “It seems there is hope,” she replied with uncer- 
 tainty. 
 
 It turned out that she was oppressed not solely by 
 worry over her grandson but that she also feared for 
 Clara. Besides—and this was the ostensible reason 
 for her visit—she had had a discussion with Hergesell, 
 whose consternation knew no bounds when he learned 
 that Faber had joined the party of the extreme reds. 
 Many of his acquaintances, who had read this in the 
 party organ, had already informed him of this out of 
 spite or astonishment. He had declared that he must 
 break loose from such a relative, so that he would not 
 be compelled to meet him in his own home. “He in- 
 
 3 
 
 tends to call on you even to-day, Eugene,” concluded 
 Anna Faber ; “he wants to give you the choice of either 
 retracting publicly or giving up any intercourse and 
 association with him, his children, and his wife in any 
 form.” 
 
 “Oh!” mocked Eugene. “He would have a little 
 Diet of Worms all his own? Just let him come.” 
 
 “You must not forget that Hermann, in spite of all 
 his faults, is a man who stands high in culture,” said 
 Anna Faber; “with him it is a matter of actual ideals, 
 
 of the cause. In any case you must respect his stand- 
 point.” 
 
308 FABER 
 
 Eugene shrugged his shoulders. “You were going 
 to speak of Clara, Mother,” he evaded. 
 
 The situation in Clara’s case was that day by day 
 she withdrew more and more from her family, even 
 no longer took any interest in her children. The visits 
 of Father Desiderio had become increasingly frequent, 
 especially after the affair with Valentine, and it could 
 not be overlooked that the strong-willed and very cul- 
 tured priest exerted an influence on her that was no- 
 ticeable in all her acts. She attended church daily now 
 and went to confession on Sunday. She began to at- 
 tach weight and significance to memories of her early 
 religious training, received before her mother wilfully 
 and designedly tore her from her faith and the ex- 
 ercise of her faith. She mortified herself, she slept little, 
 she gave signs of delighting in introspection, together 
 with complete indifference to the world round about. 
 Father Desiderio had convinced her that her marriage, 
 which had been solemnized in Protestantism, was a vile 
 concubinage, a sin for which there was no absolution; 
 since then she had withdrawn herself from her husband — 
 to such an extent that she began to tremble when she — 
 merely heard his step. It seemed as if he did not 
 want to know this or to see this; as if he wanted to 
 give the world the appearance that all was peaceful so — 
 long as possible, perhaps for the sake of his children; 
 but things could not last much longer, a breach was 
 
FABER 309 
 
 unavoidable, and the outcome must be painful for all 
 who had a share in it. 
 
 Anna Faber did not abandon herself to rosy-coloured 
 illusions. She had recognized too thoroughly the 
 transformation of her daughter; she had learned too 
 much from Clara’s disposition and passionate con- 
 fessions; she had experienced so much pain in the 
 embroilment, dissipation, and ruin of her children that 
 she finally had to admit herself beaten and helpless. 
 
 Eugene listened, but no matter how sorrowfully his 
 mother gazed at him he could find no word of consola- 
 tion or regret. 
 
 Anna Faber shook her head dejectedly. Suddenly 
 she grew pale and said: “I believe Hermann is com- 
 ing.” 
 
 It was not Hermann Hergesell, but Fleming. He 
 entered with Christopher, whom he led by the hand in 
 amiable fashion, and who in a short time had asked 
 him a number of the most difficult questions. “Do you 
 know, little fellow,” he said, “I must read up on that 
 first. Those are matters that cannot be answered by 
 bluffing. The sun is a star. No doubt one may call it a 
 star. Inspite of that itis the sun. There are many suns 
 among the stars, but what ones they are and what they 
 are called I shall first have to study in my books.” 
 
 “Why are you wearing formal black, Fleming?” 
 asked Faber, when the boy had left. 
 
310 FABER 
 
 “T attended her funeral,’ he replied; “she was once 
 my pupil—Olga Veit. I taught her Greek a few years 
 ago, when her parents were still well off. A gentle 
 creature.” | 
 
 “Olga Veit? Funeral? What are you saying?” 
 asked Faber, astonished. 
 
 “Didn’t you know ?” Fleming wondered; “TI thought 
 you knew. She was the beloved of this Baltesser. 
 Day before yesterday she took veronal. He simply 
 crushed her underfoot, this—Baltesser. The second 
 in a few weeks. One threw herself from the fourth 
 storey. There are such woman murderers. They make 
 a business of it. They are good for nothing else. They 
 are the only murderers that I would send to the guillo- 
 tine if I had anything to say about it.” 
 
 Doubtless Faber’s mind’s eye called up the picture 
 of the pregnant young girl and how she leaned on the 
 shoulder of her lover in slavish subjection, how the 
 latter tolerated her humiliating caress with a contemp- 
 tuous indifference that was worse than punishment. 
 But he said no more, merely dropped his eyes before 
 Fleming. 
 
 Fleming’s expression betrayed that he was filled to 
 overflowing with words, warnings, and representa- 
 tions; that he had been driven hither by his anxiety 
 for his friend and the disillusion the latter had suf- 
 fered; that perhaps even on the stairs outside he had ' 
 
FABER Zh 
 
 known exactly what he wanted to say and what would 
 make an impression on Eugene. Perhaps Anna Faber’s 
 presence hindered and embarrassed him; perhaps Eu- 
 gene’s unbending and repellent attitude intimidated 
 him, for he seated himself modestly, even fearfully, 
 on a chair in a corner and occupied himself in polish- 
 ing the lenses of his glasses in silence. After Anna 
 Faber had departed he hemmed and hawed timidly 
 from time to time, but Eugene gave no heed to it. 
 When he raised his eyes and observed Fleming like 
 a black shadow against the wall his look seemed to 
 ask: “Do you want something of me?” It seemed as 
 if Fleming himself had turned into a dumb accusation. 
 
 “T bring to your attention that Hermann Hergesell 
 said Faber, finally. “That is 
 not meant to indicate that I want you away. On the 
 
 bd 
 
 will soon appear here,’ 
 
 contrary, it will be even agreeable for me if you stay. 
 You do not embarrass me; if you embarrass him, let 
 him complain; then we’ll see. I certainly place no 
 value on a talk without witnesses. Beyond that you 
 seem to await explanations from me; perhaps this op- 
 portunity will give you what you seek. I don’t know— 
 perhaps. I don’t know but that I shall tell this man: 
 _ Yonder, dear fellow, is the door.’ ” 
 
 “Don’t do that, Eugene,” said Fleming. “That is 
 condescending. You owe him arguments, not brutali- 
 ties.” 
 
312 FABER 
 
 “Bah, arguments!” responded Faber, as if disgusted. 
 
 Some one knocked, and without waiting for a word 
 Hergesell entered. His lean, youthful figure, moving 
 almost noiselessly, seemed like that of a hurrying mes- 
 senger who comes to deliver a message and disappear 
 at once. Despite this he stood immovable and full of 
 assurance in the middle of the room, looking with 
 his short-sighted eyes now at Faber, now at Fleming. 
 He wore an elegant ulster that was buttoned tight and 
 made his appearance even more slender and unimpos- 
 ing. He had brownish yellow spats on his feet and a 
 blue-striped silk muffler around his neck. He held his 
 hat with a stiff attitude. There was something un- 
 compromisingly rigid about him, which led Faber to 
 suppress a smile. | 
 
 “I have asked Friend Fleming to be present at our 
 
 ’ said Faber, in an ironic tone. “To call 
 
 conversation,’ 
 it an interview would probably be an exaggeration. 
 You have a communication for me. I am all ears.” 
 Hergesell seemed to reflect. He belonged to those 
 men who regulate their conduct by an unwritten code 
 that is respected solely among those they consider their 
 equals. He said, without real firmness, and therefore 
 obviously confused: “Yes, that is true. I come to ask 
 an accounting from you, Eugene, because you happen 
 to be the brother of my wife. I find this is necessary in 
 
 order to get a clear idea of our family relations, or 
 
FABER 313 
 
 rather our relations socially. You will understand me.” 
 
 “Certainly I understand,” replied Faber, without 
 dropping his ironical tone. “There is nothing very 
 difficult about that. According to your view I have 
 compromised myself politically and therefore it is bur- 
 densome for you to continue to have relations with 
 me. I understand that completely. -You need not 
 have exerted yourself personally. Too bad that you 
 have exerted yourself. A written note would have 
 sufficed. Why so much politeness?” 
 
 Two round red spots appeared on Hergesell’s col- 
 ourless cheeks. “You call that ‘compromised politi- 
 cally’? he asked with a deprecatory attitude. “I call 
 it something else. I call it prostitution, soiling one’s 
 self, giving public notice that you no longer wish to 
 be included among civilized men. I call it an attack 
 on the people and a crime against us and our children. 
 And I have come only because I felt it my duty to have 
 it verified out of your own mouth. At least you can- 
 not make a mockery of the fact that I have not been 
 inconsiderate of you.” 
 
 With hands in his pockets Faber walked back and 
 forth in silence for a while. Then he began: “I will 
 tell you something for once, Brother Hergesell. You 
 are a man of convictions. I respect your convictions; 
 they are weapons of steel in the battle of life. Tama 
 man of perceptions, and everything that I perceive, 
 
314 FABER 
 
 and that perceives me, disarms me. We do not stand 
 on the same ground; we cannot hope to understand each 
 other; each of us expresses a different world. These 
 words are wasted, yours as well as mine. Why, then, 
 do you want to force me to give you a statement, 
 which in the end would not actually signify what you 
 read into it? I want no enmity; I want no friendship; 
 so let us leave matters as they are.” 
 
 “T cannot do that,” responded Hergesell, and threw 
 back his head. “With me it is a question of cleanli- 
 ness, a question of renovation.” 
 
 Faber teetered back and forth. “H’m!” he said. 
 “Peculiar. What noble characters there are! It is not 
 surprising that the sparks fly when they collide. But I 
 refuse to clash with you, Hermann Hergesell. My 
 view is peaceful. I travel another road. For, you see, 
 the whole matter has not the least to do with politics. 
 Take note of that, Fleming. I say it for you, not for 
 him. He probably thinks that I trim my- sails to the 
 wind because he is Clara’s husband. But Clara is lost: 
 to me just as much as all others and everything else. 
 { can no longer trim my sails, for the wind has car- 
 ried them away. The persons who give him’’—here 
 he pointed with his thumb to Hergesell in a dark and 
 angry manner— “occasion to speak about renovation 
 and cleanliness picked me up on the street like so much’ 
 dung. You have a suspicious nature, my brother-in- 
 
FABER 315 
 
 law, husband of my sister. I was not spoil of which 
 they could be proud; they could drag me after them 
 by their little finger, they could do with me what they 
 wanted. What were their projects to me? their plans 
 for revenge against your society? or their party in- 
 trigues? Not important enough to me to be worth a 
 moment. When a child I played with tinder, when I 
 was alone in my room. In sucha case my little Chris- 
 topher makes the clock stop. One is like this, another 
 like that. Take for granted, that I played with tinder. 
 Until now it has caught fire only at the Hergesells’. 
 That can be extinguished.” 
 
 “Eugene, Eugene,” murmured Fleming painfully. 
 
 “T don’t know how I am to regard such talk,” said 
 Hergesell with an expression that would have been in- 
 sulting if Faber had been in a mood to see it. “One 
 is either responsible for one’s actions, or not. There 
 is no alternative to take into consideration. What do 
 you think you will do?” 
 
 “Nothing,” responded Faber, calmly. “What shall 
 
 I do? Have you at the end a protocol in your pocket 
 that you want me to sign? Perhaps I will sign it. Is 
 not the whole matter damned inconsequential?” 
 
 “I can see toward what you are driving,” said 
 Hergesell icily; “you have a system. Much like that 
 of a man who expects to be adjudged irresponsible by 
 we ecurt,” 
 
 
 
316 FABER 
 
 Faber overlooked even this insult. “If things were 
 really serious,” he said, dully and dryly, “that is to say, 
 if some one whom I feared ordered me to choose: 
 ‘Right or left, Eugene Faber ; Hergesell or Baltesser’— 
 then I would not hesitate long. You have beguiled 
 your voters with the twaddle that you mean to raise 
 high ideals and national shrines; you are serving them 
 a cud that has already been well chewed up. And be- 
 cause they swallow it dutifully you are justified. But 
 don’t fool yourselves into thinking that all those who 
 cry hurrah and who believe your hocus-pocus are the 
 people, or even the nation. You are a phalanx of pro- 
 fessors, court counsellors, and generals, and those who 
 enact this false enthusiasm before you are the tragic 
 masses of those whom you have taught for a hundred 
 years that professors, court counsellors, and generals 
 are the flower of the fatherland. People—my God! 
 People—that is something else. When I mingle with 
 the people I can feel as if in my own body how this 
 body twitches and turns and sees no end of suffering 
 and trembles solely for its wretched bits of bread. The 
 German people; where are you? Whither have you 
 crept and hidden from the tormentors of your own 
 stock, those prophets of lies and learned fanatics who 
 tempt you with a piece of sugar in front while they | 
 see to it that you continue resolutely and silently to drag. 
 your heavy load behind? Working for the people and 
 
 
 
FABER 317 
 
 with the people; yes, that would be a dream, a beautiful 
 German dream; but where is the people? Where is its 
 face? How can it see me and hear me? It permits 
 itself to be used as the lords in the pulpit up there de- 
 termine; it knows from school days that anything they 
 do is done well. That is in the blood and no revolution 
 will change it. I have experienced that every day since 
 I returned home and it is certainly bitter that I have 
 to see it. Is it then not more practical and fair 
 to join the Baltessers, granted that you consider it 
 worth while joining anything? They, at least, want 
 to clean out the whole plunder. They are not deterred 
 by blood and distress, but also they have no hypocrisy 
 about them; there stands the beast in its horrifying 
 nakedness. It is as if one has worked for twenty-four 
 hours at the pumps of a ship; if finally it actually sinks 
 one gets a feeling of relief, and that is the end.” 
 
 His voice had grown softer at his last words, for 
 Martina had entered the room. She had listened to 
 him with her pale face suffused with an expression 
 almost of belief, of belief against her will, of belief in 
 him and not in what he said. She now approached 
 him and gave him a letter. He looked at it in astonish- 
 ment, tore it open and read: “Sister Benigna most 
 cordially begs Eugene Faber to visit her.” It was writ- 
 ten in a large, clear hand. He knew that Sister Benigna 
 was the Princess. 
 
318 FABER 
 
 He seemed undecided, although there could be no 
 indecision for him here. 
 “You must come with me now, Eugene, immedi- 
 
 3) 
 
 ately,” said Martina with such an earnest emphasis 
 on her words that he could no longer delay. She 
 even brought in his cloak; he put it on and they de- 
 parted. Fleming and Hergesell followed them to the 
 
 door. Here each went in a different direction. 
 
XXII 
 
 Tuey had to ride a long distance. Twilight was al- 
 ready falling when they walked through the double 
 gates of the Children’s City which opened on the high- 
 road; the twilight of an early fall day with a pale 
 green sky and strata of clouds in gleaming red. The 
 straight line of the main street extended almost with- 
 out end to the circle of hills that bounded the land- 
 scape; side streets led off at regular intervals, and 
 cross streets branched off from these. It was im- 
 possible to estimate the number of wooden houses on 
 this enormous expanse of land. And new houses were 
 being built where the lines of streets stopped. 
 
 All these streets, byways, and lanes were inhabited 
 by children. There were also large open spaces at 
 hand; on these spaces children played. Farther on 
 were avenues and gardens, and these also were crowded 
 with groups of children. They came out of the many 
 low-built houses; others went in; there was a continu- 
 ous circulation. The windows, draped with bright- 
 coloured calico, were nearly all open; Faber could look 
 into the rooms and halls; he saw children everywhere. 
 
 Well fed, well dressed children; boys and girls; wee 
 
 319 
 
320 FABER 
 
 ones who still ventured forward with cautious little 
 steps; half-grown children who seemed like giants in 
 contrast. Those in charge, nurses and orderlies of 
 both sexes, disappeared amid this human swarm and 
 one saw only thousands upon thousands of tiny folk, 
 Everywhere the air was filled with singing; loud, joy- 
 ous cries ascended on all sides; enticing calls and the 
 happy laughter of groups dancing roundelays and play- 
 ing ball were heard on all sides. In one room Faber 
 saw about twenty girls five to six years old. They 
 sat on stools in a half-circle and their upraised faces 
 showed such absorbed attention and suspense that he 
 stood still unwittingly and could not suppress a smile, 
 A young man was sitting in the middle and telling 
 them a story. In another room dishes were being 
 placed on many covered tables and in still another 
 stood countless white beds, awaiting their owners pa- 
 tiently and silently. At that moment bells rang every- 
 where, the signal for supper. And they streamed 
 forth; thousands of clear voices, birdlike little voices 
 mingled in a deafening explosion of gladness and joy; 
 thousands of eyes glanced from flushed, excited faces 
 at Eugene and Martina, pushing their way with much 
 difficulty through the struggling crowds. Then came 
 loud, chirping laughter, whirling arms, breathless 
 rivalry. Here and there were timid and diffident chil- 
 dren, pale and aloof ones; these were new to the city, 
 
 en 
 
FABER 321 
 
 at least new in these groups, for Martina explained 
 that those just received were kept from two to three 
 months in a separate part of the colony and carefully 
 prepared for the communal life. 
 
 Suddenly it became quiet in the streets, quiet in the 
 houses. But this quiet had a peculiar quality. It still 
 seemed to pulsate with the joy that had been poured out 
 in a flood, an ocean of joy; it still seemed to hold the 
 beats of those tempestuous little hearts; in it vibrated 
 all that delicate, unexhausted life that had welled up 
 to tremendous size by the coming together of so many 
 units. A magic spell of happiness and contentment 
 hovered everywhere, over everything; this may have 
 been due partly to the gold and green glow in the eve- 
 ning atmosphere, or to the knowledge of what great 
 things had been accomplished here—a whole world 
 saved. Over everything, crowning everything, one 
 could trace the presence of the spirit that had created 
 this and that controlled it. 
 
 After Eugene and Martina had been walking for 
 about a quarter of an hour they came to a place laid 
 out on a circular plan. Martina opened the door of 
 one of the houses and asked a young woman who came 
 toward her for the Princess, in a tone that indicated 
 she was accustomed to being there. The girl replied 
 that the Princess was in the receiving house; Martina 
 no doubt knew that children were received until seven 
 
322 FABER 
 
 o'clock to-day. ‘Oh, yes!” said Martina, then reflected, 
 and seemed at a loss. Then she turned to Eugene 
 and suggested that he accompany her to the receiving 
 house. He nodded, since he associated no definite idea 
 with the word. ‘They turned the corner and after taking 
 a few steps reached a house that was distinguished 
 from the others by its lack of decoration; before it 
 stood men and women of the common people and many 
 children, looking, however, very different from those 
 Faber had seen hitherto; at the entrance officials and 
 servants were bustling busily about. 
 
 They came into a long, brightly tinted hall-like room, 
 lighted by ceiling lamps and filled with the sour odour 
 of many human beings despite its open windows. Fifty 
 to sixty adults crowded around and about as many 
 children of all ages. About a fifth of the room was 
 barred off by a grille; in the open space beyond stood 
 a table and at this sat four persons, two men and two 
 women. One of the former, an aged man with a vener- 
 able white beard and gold spectacles, asked questions of 
 those who were permitted to pass the little door; the 
 other, a younger man, took down the answers; one of 
 the women compared these answers with certain mem- — 
 oranda in a book of record; the other sat at some dis- — 
 tance from the table and said nothing, nor was she — 
 occupied in any way. 
 
 Faber recognized this woman as the Princess. 
 
FABER 323 
 She seemed older than he had imagined. Her face 
 
 was even narrower than in her portrait. Her manner 
 was so rigid that one might have believed her asleep 
 had it not been for her large, wide-open grey eyes, 
 which followed and regarded the people and their ac- 
 tions with a strange, uninterrupted look, almost with- 
 out the flicker of an eyelid. Her hands lay quietly 
 folded on her lap. A large golden cross hung from 
 her breast. Her face was framed by a hood of the 
 same dark blue material of which her wide, nunlike 
 garb was made. The head covering had a narrow 
 edge of lace just as it appeared in the picture that 
 Faber had seen once, then had never seen again. 
 
 There was a passage at the left side of the hall, 
 close to the wall; Martina forced a way for herself 
 and Eugene through the crowd to that spot; a few 
 chairs stood along the wall; she sat down and Faber 
 seated himself beside her. 
 
 _A long time passed before he removed his eyes from 
 the Princess. Whatever he thought meanwhile was 
 not betrayed by the expression of his features. Then 
 minute by minute his attention was drawn increasingly 
 toward the statements and happenings and reports of 
 happenings that went on close at hand. 
 
 It was a shocking sort of new drama, with scenes 
 that had no coherence, no consistency ; without acting, 
 without plot, and in mimicry and gesture of a paralyz- 
 
324 FABER 
 
 ing uniformity. Yet the mere succession of cases, of 
 incidents, and events gave a total effect that was un- 
 speakably horrible, especially when viewed as a whole, 
 and the effect was much the same as the meaningless 
 babble of insane persons. It was as if all the dregs 
 that society brought out of its depths, depths avoided 
 by all except those damned to languish there, had 
 bubbled up dirty and slimy out of a narrow, evil-smell- 
 ing shaft; here were neglect, depravity, corruption, and 
 disease. The room was saturated with it as a sponge 
 with a vile fluid; for a year and a day its walls had 
 absorbed those poisoned words and now the latter 
 hung down from them like stalactites in a cave. Words 
 spoken by men do not pass away; again and again they 
 heap spirit upon spirit, terror upon terror, fate upon 
 fate, and guilt upon guilt. 
 
 The fact that sufferings of children were dealt with 
 exclusively lent an air of cold and perplexed sadness 
 to the scene. The further fact that there was no com- 
 plaining, lamenting, weeping, or sobbing, but simply 
 statement and transcription of the facts, increased the 
 horror latent in every remark. What was disclosed so 
 tremblingly pointed to much that was horrible beneath 
 the surface, just as a slender weed is likely to have 
 long, deceptive roots with which it bores into the 
 ground. These words, motions, looks, and silences 
 built up a stenographic record which suggested a state 
 
FABER 325 
 
 of horror that no inquisitor or clairvoyant was capable 
 of solving. 
 
 The faces betrayed either a morbid calm, or a sullen 
 spitefulness. These children knew only the dark side 
 of life. They did not believe in a change. The con- 
 ditions under which they carried on their existence 
 were unalterable laws for them. They were not only 
 cut off from all light and hope, but also from every 
 form of friendliness. A child of five came forward, 
 covered with pus and scabs, her hair alive with vermin. 
 Her mother was a prostitute; she had no father; her 
 foster-father had disappeared. She had never had a 
 home, had never seen a bed; at night she slept in 
 cellars, under bridges, on scaffolding; in the winter in 
 warming rooms or on the straw of a freight ware- 
 house. She begged for her food and received the 
 necessaries principally from those whose sole abun- 
 dance lay in occasional sympathy with their own kind. 
 
 A twelve-year-old lad, clothed in rags like a grimy 
 harlequin, with his back and shoulders, which he calmly 
 bared, covered with blue welts. The parents both 
 chronic drunkards and he headed well along in the 
 same direction; picked up in a tenement house which 
 had to be vacated because there was danger of its fall- 
 ing down. 
 
 A fourteen-year-old girl; a skeleton; her skin ulcer- 
 ated from former infection; in the attic from which 
 
326 FABER 
 
 she was liberated she lived with eight men, eight fiends, 
 whose defenceless victim she had become. The de- 
 struction wrought upon her body was exceeded only 
 by that of her soul, in which nothing remained but 
 darkness and fear. 
 
 A Jewish lad who had fled from his native town, 
 where all of his blood and faith had been murdered, 
 had wandered here from the east after twenty-six days 
 of the greatest deprivation; he was picked up uncon- 
 scious in the gutter, his feet two wounds. 
 
 A mother urged her three children forward; the 
 father had threatened to kill all three; she could name 
 witnesses who could verify the fact that this was what 
 she had to expect from him. 
 
 Two children now came forward, brother and sister, 
 at most seven and eight years old, who were reported 
 to have been found nearly dead from hunger in an 
 engine-shaft. Faber had sat by motionless until’ now, 
 but when these two, frightened by the questions asked 
 of them, began to tremble and clung convulsively to ~ 
 each other, he quickly rose and looked around like a 
 man who wants to flee. He seemed to have forgotten 
 Martina; he seemed to have forgotten everything ex- 
 cept this picture of the uttermost human suffering; 
 this he could not stand. Martina placed her hand 
 softly upon his arm; he pushed her hand away and 
 there was something in his look that seemed to say to 
 
FABER 327 
 
 her: ‘If you can become accustomed to this as your 
 daily fare then I will abominate even you, even you.’ 
 A severe pallor spread over Martina’s face. 
 
 But something held Faber and directed his attention 
 back to this court of destiny—a voice. The voice of 
 the Princess. She had risen, walked over to the two 
 orphans and was speaking to them. He had never 
 heard such a voice; it was the full, clear tone of the 
 cello, not deep, not high, not loud, not soft, and yet 
 of such a character that silence fell round about. The 
 two children who were trembling from fear disengaged 
 themselves from their embrace, looked up and listened 
 intently, and without resistance let themselves be led 
 from her to a young man who was waiting and who 
 took them away. 
 
 Then the Princess left her place and came over to 
 Martina, whom she had probably noticed long before. 
 She gave her hand first to her, then to Faber. Her 
 hand was strikingly cold, strikingly narrow. “I have 
 become very tired to-day, Martina,” she said. “Let 
 us go to my room.” She nodded to the two men and 
 the woman at the table, who arose and bowed; an 
 old servant hurried ahead to open a little door through 
 which they at once reached an open passage. 
 
 “My limbs are still tired from the trip,” said the 
 Princess. “Do you think it possible, child, that I am 
 no longer strong enough for such efforts? That had 
 
328 FABER 
 
 not yet occurred to me. Weakness, weakness that 
 comes as a surprise—no. We won’t give in to that; 
 not yet; this would be too soon.” 
 
 “You should have taken the sleeper, Princess, and 
 not travelled third class,’ Martina responded accus- 
 ingly. 
 
 The room of the Princess was a space about seven 
 paces square; therein stood a wardrobe, a commode, 
 a large table, an army cot, and, in a corner, the har- 
 monium that Faith had mentioned; above the long 
 side of the bed hung some shelves with a number of 
 books; on the table burned an electric lamp with a 
 green shade of the sort used in offices and courthouses. 
 The only decoration, if this could be called a decora- 
 tion, was a costly wolfskin that had been spread over 
 an armchair. 
 
 Faber found himself alone with the Princess. Mar- 
 tina had not entered with them. She had gone to an- 
 other room of the house to her work. Soon there- 
 after she also left that place. 
 
 The Princess sat down in the armchair; at her silent 
 request Faber sat down opposite her. For a full min- 
 ute she gazed at him with her ‘calm, earnest look and 
 then said, not without confusion, which made her fea- 
 tures appear even more winning: “I am glad to see you 
 at last, Eugene Faber. I think I should have known 
 you even if no one had given me your name. There is 
 
FABER 329 
 
 much of Martina in your face, and in Martina’s face 
 there is much of you. Did you not know that? It is 
 true. There is a blood relationship; there is also a 
 relationship.of choice—the strongest bond that exists 
 on earth. Have you managed to get things arranged 
 a little, to make them livable? No doubt it is difficult, 
 no doubt of that. Naturally; I can think of nothing 
 more difficult. Many persons torment themselves use- 
 lessly. We have lost a world and are expected to 
 fashion a new one out of ourselves. Martina has told 
 me that you have taken a position with the govern- 
 ment. Does it satisfy you to some extent?” 
 
 Faber said no. The change that came over his face 
 might have been compared to that of a mirror from 
 which a mist is disappearing. At first repulse, re- 
 fusal; mental reservation, even obduracy; the mistrust 
 he had nourished, the stupid accusation to which he 
 had held. But before the voice all that faded away, 
 before the soulful eyes it slunk away in shame. Was 
 this the “magic”? What could be the “magic”? The 
 simple nature, the simple, comprehensible truth? The 
 courage and the power to see nothing strange, nothing 
 inimical, nothing hateful, nothing unclean? His look 
 still seemed to search for something while he spoke, 
 and there was something involuntary and hesitating in 
 his words, as if he were trying to suppress and hide 
 a certain urge to give more of himself, which made 
 
330 FABER 
 
 his words more hurried and warm than he obviously 
 
 wanted them to be. 
 
 The Princess, who may have seen through this battle, — 
 
 smiled. Faber was again astonished. It happened to 
 
 be the smile that Faith had described and that caused | 
 
 the pale face to become suffused with rose and reveal 
 
 gleaming teeth like those of seventeen-year-old girls. 
 
 This obliterated years, experience, and wisdom from 
 this woman’s face and left a child. Faber was not 
 merely astonished, he reddened also and seemed to 
 have difficulty reaching the end of what he was saying. 
 
 He said that there was no joy either in what he 
 
 did or in the reward. The man counted for nothing, — 
 
 the cause counted for nothing. Every one was ani- 
 
 mated with the desire to do superficial work, and no ~ 
 
 sooner had a man found the shelter for which he had 
 
 sighed than he began to use it to gain a dishonest — 
 
 advantage. He could not do this to promote himself; 
 
 he wished to be promoted; he wanted to have a share, © 
 
 to work fruitfully for the whole. What he saw was © 
 
 an uncertain, broken machine, human beings who sold ° 
 4 
 
 themselves and betrayed others, and that at the lowest — 
 
 price possible. 
 
 The Princess nodded. “Formerly an organization — 
 accustomed to act firmly demanded accomplishment of — 
 its members,” she said gently. “Duty had become 2° 
 
 ; 
 
 : 
 4 
 
 { 
 
 stern and relentless thing, but it existed. Now free- 
 
 wt 
 it 
 i 
 
 | 
 
FABER 331 
 
 dom in its arrogance breaks up the connection and 
 human beings gradually receive nothing more exter- 
 nally save what they can seize for themselves by force 
 and deceit. But what is the good of criticizing and 
 complaining? Resistance, of what use is that? New 
 races will come and they will have to bring a new 
 heart with them.” 
 
 Faber was silent for a moment. “TI signed that 
 call,” he said softly; “the matter got into the newspaper 
 and you probably called me for that reason, Princess. 
 It was an act of desperation and stupidity in addition. 
 It is not my view. It was not even my intention, I 
 am really far removed from that sort of thing. I am 
 not defending myself; I have seen to-day what you have 
 here. Perhaps too late. I can’t put it into words, 
 not in this case.... You comprehend. I am ina 
 certain position. ... I am—what shall I say—not 
 miyseliy 2.02? 
 
 . “I did not call you for that reason, Eugene Faber,” 
 responded the Princess. “I know that what you say 
 is true. I did not imagine it otherwise. It was merely 
 the occasion that offered itself to me. I have been 
 waiting. I thought that one day you would come. I 
 thought you would come to take Martina back from 
 me to yourself. But when, after your return home, 
 week after week passed, then I knew that you would 
 never come if I did not call; then I knew also that I 
 
332 FABER 
 
 had been indulging in a false hope with regard to you 
 and Martina; I must admit that. I suffered a great 
 deal because of it. And when Faith came to me a few 
 days ago and sat there on my bed at the same hour as 
 this, I first saw how serious matters were. I found 
 no other comfort for her in my confusion, in my 
 sorrow, than such as one might also give to a stone 
 that falls into the abyss. Live it through to the end! 
 We all live it through to the end; we have to, this 
 way or that. Whether it is true or not—the unfathom- 
 able God does not bother with that. Even the wrong 
 path is to Him a path. But it is no comfort to tell 
 that to any one.” | 
 
 Of all this Faber heard and remembered but one 
 statement. “Indeed, Princess,” he asked, “is it pos- 
 sible, as you say, that I was to receive Martina back 
 from you? How? I beg, and I beg earnestly, that 
 you explain this to me.” 
 
 The Princess did not reply at once. Her small 
 head sank a little to her breast; her look showed that 
 she was lost in thought. “Yes, I must do that,” she 
 said, as if to herself; “I must do that. But where 
 shall I begin? And with what? You see, Eugene 
 Faber, in a certain sense I am guilty toward you. For 
 I have actually taken Martina. When we met some- 
 thing cried in my heart: “That is she.” You ask: Who? 
 And why just her? I hope I can make this clear. In 
 
FABER 333 
 
 the course of my life I have associated much with 
 women and girls. They practically fled to me in the 
 last few years when so many destinies were torn to 
 tatters. Practically all were without a guide. Think 
 how the men have conducted themselves in this world; 
 how they have destroyed all the possessions of God and 
 of the heart. We received not a sign from their hands, 
 neither idea nor example; the women stood alone, all 
 of them, without faith, without a look upward. So 
 they come and want to help. Helpless themselves, they 
 want to help. They have experienced marriage with- 
 out love; want to love; they have had love, as they un- 
 derstand it, and, failing to comprehend why they have 
 remained so unfulfilled, seek now something that will 
 take away this emptiness. But the situation in which 
 I work here cannot take the place of bankrupt feelings. 
 Yet it must provide a substitute. And so everything 
 becomes dark and confused. It becomes unclean. 
 These beings—so untiring, so ready to make a sacrifice, 
 so loyal to the task, and unclean! Do you comprehend 
 how I suffer? It would sound frivolous if I put it 
 into words. I should commit a sin against hundreds 
 passionately willing to help. I dare not, must not. Yet 
 there are moments when truth is more important than 
 forbearance based on gratitude. Judge the task: what 
 it is, what it signifies—a world of children who have 
 been made miserable. You gave it a glance to-day, 
 
334 FABER 
 
 but that was nothing; behind it lie atrocities piled as 
 high as heaven; we have not discovered and uprooted 
 one cruelty when another appears to force mankind 
 to its knees. Consider these sad souls of whom I 
 speak, these assistants, who fail to understand them- 
 selves and confound the general suffering with their 
 personal pain—how they mourn and weep vicariously 
 in this situation, Oh! Everything is well so long as 
 they serve docilely and go their way according to the 
 rules. Who shall ask an accounting of the motives of 
 those who save lives, when a whole generation is bleed- 
 ing and dying? If I am not to break down after my 
 efforts of thirty-five years I need the strength of a 
 soul, a fresh, original strength, not vacillating weak- 
 ness. No one knows how rare this is, how rare the 
 innocence and modesty which together build such 
 strength.” ‘ 
 
 The Princess covered her eyes for a moment with a 
 hand so pale and white as to be transparent, before she 
 continued: “We would not be facing each other now 
 if I could not say to you, this was the case with Mar- 
 tina; she needed no pretext. Here was no renuncia- 
 tion, no denial of self. No wounded spirit. But a 
 practical goal. I abetted her in that. I deceived her 
 about what was before her. I had confidence that I 
 could carry her over the difficult part. I saw from the 
 beginning what the issue was, but I closed my eyes to 
 
FABER 335 
 
 it. In order to strengthen her and to determine how 
 well fitted she was for her tasks, I purposely gave her 
 the most dangerous posts, the most terrible pioneer 
 service. You must not forget that this transformed 
 life is very recent in all our children’s cities. It has 
 flowered only within the year. Before that all was 
 Gehenna. What I feared, happened: Martina was 
 stirred and affected much more deeply than all those 
 who regard their activity here as a mission. All be- 
 come accustomed to it in time. Martina never became 
 accustomed to it, but nevertheless she remained cool, 
 collected, and cheerful. That is her incomprehensible 
 peculiarity—she remains cheerful. I learned to love 
 her, and always more. Why should I conceal it? As 
 a daughter? I don’t know. I have never had a child 
 of my own. As a friend, a young friend? No, no, 
 That is beyond my capacity. I don’t know. Perhaps 
 one loves the guardian angel in this manner. Perhaps 
 the idea of one’s self, which is never realized. What- 
 ever it was, I could no longer think of going on in my 
 work without her. When I think of myself without 
 her everything grows dark within me. Even to-day. 
 To-day more than ever. And yet from the first day 
 I knew that she was entering a school of life and that 
 she was preparing herself consciously, not in order to 
 dedicate her life to me and my cause, but to give it 
 replenished to another person as soon as he returned 
 
336 FABER 
 
 to her side. I had drawn this confession from her 
 as out of a deep well and therefore it formed an in- 
 violable bond between us. And so this other one, this 
 absent one, in fact you, Eugene Faber, became as real 
 as if you were daily and hourly beside me. I was 
 guarding your most precious treasure, the sum total of 
 your existence; I realized this to the fullest extent. 
 When you returned I would have to give back a pos- 
 session just as precious to me and irreplaceable; I 
 would have to open the hand that held it; I would 
 have to sever my heart from that to which it had 
 grown fast. I had no doubts about that. And then 
 you came. I was prepared to have Martina step be- 
 fore me and say, according to her feelings: ‘Now I 
 have again my true mission, let me go free.’ I ex- 
 pected it day after day. I waited in vain. In place of 
 that her being changed in a way that troubled me more 
 and more. No one but myself suspected it; I saw her 
 perplexity and how it almost smothered her. No ques- 
 tion was permissible here, no question possible. I 
 sought and sought. I tried everywhere for an ex- 
 planation. On the evening before we sailed for Eng- 
 land, when Martina and I were alone, Faber appeared 
 to me. I cried to him: ‘What are you doing, Faber, 
 what are you doing with the human soul that has 
 been entrusted to you? with all you possess?’ And 
 then suddenly I knew, and Martina also knew that I 
 
FABER 337 
 
 knew everything. And yet nothing had happened be- 
 tween you and Faith at that time. She fell into my 
 arms and wept her heart out. I had never heard her 
 weep. It was unspeakable, her weeping. I determined 
 silently that we two, you and I, must come to an under- 
 standing. I will say at the outset that in this case 
 I am wholly without counsel. You cannot regard 
 me as the older, more experienced person who brings 
 her influence to bear and has already decided how 
 to get free from this unhappiness. I want to turn to 
 you, to have you find a solution within yourself. 
 Everything hangs on that, solely on that. But first 
 tell me something. Or rather, do not tell me; your 
 words could never be recalled, they might create an 
 ineradicable situation before we had approached it 
 ourselves. You love Faith. Few women are more 
 worthy of being loved. You love her; good—or think 
 you do; good. That does not constitute the tragedy. 
 That also is not Martina’s sorrow, whether she sus- 
 pects it or already knows it. Her sorrow and perplexity 
 existed before that. The thing that binds you to Mar- 
 tina cannot be destroyed by anything that bears the 
 name of passion or even of love. You cannot affect 
 it; it is the axis of your existence. Therefore what 
 are you to do, Eugene Faber? Don’t you believe that 
 in the final analysis we may obtain power over what 
 is ostensibly unalterable? Let my meaning become 
 
338 FABER 
 
 clear to you. Obstinate and blind, betrayed by the 
 self-confident ego in our breasts, we are always able 
 to put a stop to things when we seize the right mo- 
 ment. We can do so, we can do so, we need not take 
 the last irrevocable step toward fate. Ask yourself; 
 ask the monitor within you; he is there; he is ready; 
 he will answer; he must answer.” 
 
 She extended her clasped hands toward him; her 
 noble face was turned toward him as if transfigured; 
 her dumb pleading expression touched his very inmost 
 self. His chest heaved convulsively. He forced him-- 
 self to appear calm, and his calmness was transformed 
 into a sort of rigidity. His glance flitted here and there 
 about the room as if he wanted to avoid meeting the 
 look of the Princess as long as possible; but there 
 was no escape. He again forced himself to speak 
 with a certain dryness in order not to betray how 
 deeply he was touched and said: “Neither I nor Faith‘ 
 have the intention of sacrificing Martina. Things‘ 
 have not gone so far as a concept or a plan. It was‘ 
 all an unwholesome dream. I now get somewhat of | 
 a view of the whole for the first time. No matter 
 what Faith is to me—and it hurts me to avow it—I 
 cannot live without Martina. You are right, Princess, 
 and now everything is clear to me.” | 
 
 He stopped. His face changed colour. His arched | 
 eyebrows stood out sharply on his forehead. The 
 
 4 
 
FABER 339 
 
 words that came seemed cut off abruptly, spoken with 
 heavy tongue and shortness of breath: “It follows that | 
 I must win Martina or take myself out of the world. / 
 If I am to win her there is perhaps but one way, and 
 that is to separate myself from her. To give up my 
 right to her. Perhaps I must first withdraw my 
 hand, my greedy hand’’—he contemplated his right 
 hand with a bitter expression and then let it fall as 
 if tired of it—‘“perhaps I must first loosen what I‘ 
 would like to bind. Perhaps that is the remedy, | 
 Princess. What do you think?” | 
 
 The Princess was silent. Something more than joy 
 flared up in her eyes, a deep, grateful rapture.. She 
 was a woman with such extraordinary knowledge or 
 understanding of human beings that she probably con- 
 sidered it precarious to influence in advance the deci- 
 sive battle that was being waged in the breast of this 
 man, by any sudden agreement, whether silent or 
 spoken. So, musing and gently reticent, she merely 
 replied with her lovely smile: “It may be. There is 
 something convincing in what you say. There is 
 hardly likely to be any other way. To loosen, in 
 order to bind: yes, it may be, that is the way.” 
 
 She rose and her figure suddenly seemed pitifully 
 frail. “Then I shall probably not have any Martina 
 as an assistant any more,” she said; “but of course 
 that is not Martina’s intention.” She extended her 
 
340 FABER 
 
 hand witha gesture of respect that indicated how moved 
 she was. 
 
 He bowed down, very low, and touched her hand 
 with his lips. 
 
 Then he departed. 
 
XXIV 
 
 Ir was past nine o'clock when he rang at Fleming’s 
 door on his way back from the Children’s City. 
 Fleming was at home; he shuffled along the floor in 
 slippers and drew the bolt carefully, but upon spying 
 Faber he lost the air of suspicious curiosity that he 
 always wore when opening the door and greeted his 
 friend with inarticulate murmurs, which were, never- 
 theless, an expression of satisfaction. 
 
 “It’s late,” he said, following Faber into the badly 
 ventilated room, which appeared more untidy than 
 ever; “you are fundamentally late, my dear fellow. 
 Only just a little while ago I thought: To-day he will 
 still come. A presentiment betrayed it to me. And 
 how do men get presentiments? Through care. Very 
 simple. All the prophets were full of care, and only 
 for that reason were they prophets. Sit down. Sit 
 down.” 
 
 “Never mind,” responded Faber. “I am going on 
 at once. That is to say, I go in order, perhaps, to 
 come back. That depends on you. As a matter of 
 fact I wanted to ask whether I might lodge with you 
 for a time. The situation is such that I—I beg of 
 you, don’t be shocked and don’t look so perplexed—I 
 
 341 
 
342 FABER 
 
 can’t remain at home just now. There are reasons 
 that... [ll tell you everything when an opportunity 
 comes. But not now, I am not capable of it now. So 
 have patience. I should not like to go to a hotel, for, 
 first of all, I don’t know how long this will last—and 
 it may last longer than is agreeable to you, depending 
 on circumstances. Then again a hotel is not an invit- 
 ing place, not to mention that it is expensive. It is 
 hard to find any other shelter at the moment, and I 
 want to leave even this night. My good old Fleming, 
 don’t distress yourself. I assure you it is not serious; 
 a mood, or not a mood, a passing necessity. If it in- 
 conveniences you, please consider my request as never 
 made. But if not, I will give you very little trouble. 
 A lodging for the night, a basin to wash in. Can you 
 give me that?” 
 
 “But, my God, Eugene, most assuredly!’ stammered 
 Fleming, who had pushed his glasses up on his fore- 
 head and in his amazement forgot to return them to 
 his nose. “And you don’t need to do so much talking. 
 Next to this, you see; we'll remove the two book- 
 racks and put the coal scuttle in the kitchen; I will 
 take the mattress from my bed for the present and 
 to-morrow I will borrow a bed. An old woman lives 
 on the second floor below. She is always helpful to 
 me, yes, most helpful. But... Very well, my dear 
 fellow, I can see you don’t want me to ask. You 
 
FABER 343 
 
 wave that aside. I know, I know. Simply come. Do 
 come. And don’t hurry too much. I[’ll wait for you.” 
 
 In his confusion he did not know exactly what he 
 was saying; he also groped about with his hands, now 
 here, now there, first touching a book, then something 
 in his pocket, then the arm of a chair. Faber’s hand 
 was already on the latch. “Thank you, Fleming,” he 
 rejoined, “when a man needs help he never comes to 
 you in vain. Thank you kindly.” 
 
 He was already in the outer hall when Fleming 
 hurried after him and cried: “What I wanted to 
 
 bf 
 
 say, Eugene—” Faber turned; Fleming looked at 
 him, dropped his eyes in embarrassment and then, 
 when ostensibly nothing else came into his head he 
 remarked brokenly: “I merely wanted to remind you 
 to fetch me the Cardano, the astrologer—please don’t 
 forget.” 
 
 Upon arriving at home Faber went into his study, 
 turned on the light, and then produced from a corner 
 the little wooden chest he had carried home on his 
 long journey. The key hung from a string attached 
 to the handle. He opened the chest and placed in it 
 his sketch books, loose sheets, a packet of letters that 
 he took out of a locked drawer, and a case of mathe- 
 matical instruments. At that moment his glance fell 
 on the letter that he had been writing to Faith and 
 
 Martina and had interrupted in the middle of a sen- 
 | 
 
344 FABER 
 
 tence. Without rereading it he tore it into little bits 
 and threw them into the stove, lighted a match, ap- 
 plied it to the little heap of paper and watched it until 
 it was converted into ashes. Then he crossed the 
 corridor to his bedroom, produced linen and a suit of 
 clothes, and packed this rather carefully in his chest. 
 Then he locked it, lifted it to see whether it could be 
 carried easily, put it down on the floor, and looked 
 around the room. “Oh, yes, the Cardano,” he said 
 suddenly, with a peculiarly suppressed chuckle, and 
 opened the door leading to the living-room, for the 
 book was lying there on the writing table. The ad- 
 joining room was dark, but light shimmered through 
 a crack in the door of the living-room. He stood for 
 a while in the darkness and reflected. As he detected 
 no noise or voices he opened the door. He stopped 
 on the threshold as if struck dumb. 
 
 Martina was sitting on the sofa; Faith, with head 
 buried in her lap, lay before her on her knees. Mar- 
 tina was staring earnestly before her; she held Faith’s 
 head with both hands, as if she had given her a promise 
 or made a vow and both had thereupon fallen silent, 
 for thus, it seemed, they had been for a long time. 
 
 When the door opened Faith rose suddenly. Mar- 
 tina also rose, but rather thoughtfully. She looked at 
 Faber and smiled, with that amiable movement about 
 the mouth; then she took Faith’s hand and said in a 
 
FABER 345 
 
 firm, clear voice: “As you love each other and I know 
 it, you shall not suffer—you must have each other. 
 Take her, Eugene, take her to you, take her with 
 you.” | 
 
 “Martina!” cried Faith, and it sounded like the cry 
 of a soul in unmeasurable agony. “Not like this, 
 Martina! Don’t humble me, don’t cast me off like 
 this. I can’t stand it; rather punish me.” 
 
 “T punish you, Faith? I cast you from me?” asked 
 Martina, surprised, her voice dropping melodiously. 
 “What are you thinking of? Why not act logically? 
 Why not do what one must do?” 
 
 She wanted to leave the room; a shudder passed 
 over her body. Faber detained her with a gesture. 
 “One moment more, Martina,” he said calmly; “and 
 you also, Faith, listen to me for a moment. I have 
 packed my chest in there. I would have gone away 
 without saying farewell if chance had not brought me 
 into this room. ‘The situation is thus: I am going to 
 leave the house. I cannot take Faith with me. Take 
 Faith! Would Faith go with me? And leave you 
 alone, Martina, alone with the child? She would never 
 do that. And can I remain with you, Martina, and 
 see Faith cast off through my fault? Absurd idea. 
 You two must not part. At least not until one of 
 you knows that the flame which she innocently kindled 
 and which has made a new man of me has died out, 
 
346 FABER 
 
 and the other is ready to feed the fire that nourishes 
 three human lives by its warmth. The first evening 
 I sat here with you, Martina, you raised your glass and 
 called to me: “To the future, Eugene!’ Do you re- 
 member? Now I call the same back to you and say 
 to you: I will wait, and wait patiently for this future, 
 even if twenty years must go by before it comes to 
 pass. Adieu, good night, Faith. Adieu, good night, 
 Martina. There is something a bit strange about all 
 this. Recently I read a fairy tale to Christopher 
 about a juggler who sneaks secretly out of the gates 
 of the city at night after he has done all sorts of evil 
 with his foolish tricks. I shall see Christopher once 
 in a while. He will visit me. So once more: Good 
 night, and farewell!” 
 
 He went. Soon after they heard the closing of the 
 outer door. 
 
 Martina, who, like Faith, had been standing mo- 
 tionless, stretched her head forward a little. She 
 listened with bated breath. With both hands she 
 brushed her hair back from her temples; it was an 
 unconscious, trancelike gesture. Her eyes were opened 
 unnaturally wide; the parted lips permitted the teeth 
 ‘to shine through. Suddenly she ran into the corridor 
 in great haste, so that her skirt flew up around her 
 ankles. There she tore open the door to the staircase 
 and listened at the staircase. Thereupon, she dashed 
 
FABER 347 
 
 into Christopher’s room in the same stormy haste, 
 rushed to the boy’s bed, snatched the sleeping one up 
 to her with intense emotion and covered his face with 
 kisses. Again she dashed out of the dark room into 
 the corridor and to the dark staircase, listened again, 
 and then with undiminished violence returned to the 
 room, where Faith, who had not yet moved or spoken 
 was standing sunk in thought, threw her arms about her 
 and cried in a tone divided between suffering and re- 
 joicing, childlike suffering and radiant, mystical rejoic- 
 ing: “Faith, wake up! Faith, wake up! Do you know 
 about it? Have you heard? He has gone, my be- 
 loved! My very best-beloved has gone from me... .” 
 
 And she kissed Faith and laughed and sobbed at 
 once. She seemed as if demented. 
 
 Faith, amazed, watched her with a troubled look 
 and bowed her head. 
 
 THE END 
 

 

 
 
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