Things and events in which Christopher had had a hand passed slowly, painfully into oblivion. Hope was exhausted and the old house awaited no more the home-coming of the last Ulwing.
Anne knew everything.... The huge fortune of Ulwing the builder was shattered before anybody had raised its gold to the sun. This fortune had never shone and those still living only realized its immensity when they saw its ruins.
Thomas choked when he told Anne the truth. He was horrified by the words he had to pronounce, he feared he would break his wife’s heart.
Anne listened to him silently with bowed head, only her face became deadly pale and her eyes turned dim like the eyes of one dangerously ill.
“For a long time I have feared this would happen,” she whispered gently, and straightened herself up with a great effort as if to face the misfortune. She seemed suddenly taller than usual. Her expression became clear and brave and the fine lines of her chin strong and determined.
“Don’t spare me anything, Thomas. I want to know all.” After that she only said that Christopher’s creditors were to be paid in full; she would have no stain on the name of Ulwing.
During the period that followed, Anne bore her ruin with the same dominating will power that Ulwing the builder had shown in building up his fortune. Thomas Illey discovered in Anne something he had not known hitherto. An incomprehensible strength exuded from her, the tenacious strength of the woman, which can be greater among ruins than when it is called upon to build.
Nobody ever heard her complain of the loss of her fortune, nor did anybody ever see her weep. Only on the sides of her forehead a silvery gleam began to appear in the warm, shaded gold of her hair.
Thomas Illey was now forced to concern himself with the Ulwing business. He asked for leave from his official duties and in front of the grated ground-floor window of the builder’s former office he worked hard with his lawyer among the muddled books. He arranged matters with the creditors, and the firm of Ulwing, known by three generations, ceased to exist.
The small tablet was removed from the office door. The employés were paid off. Of the ancient ones, only a few remained, old Gemming and Mr. Feuerlein. The eyes of the clerk were very red when he took leave of Anne. In the corridor, he turned back several times; he stopped on the stairs; with knees knocking together he went round the garden and took a white pebble with him as a keepsake.
When they had gone, Otto Füger alone remained in his place for the liquidation. Thomas rang for him. He asked for explanations. Vague excuses were the answer.
“He knows nothing about it,” thought Otto Füger and waited impatiently for the hour when he would be free.
Illey appeared always cool. He did not grope, and never lost his head. He listened quietly to the end and stuck his hands into his pockets while Füger took leave with deep obeisances.
But he went unusually slowly up the stairs. When he turned from the sordid details of the dissipation of this huge fortune, he was driven to frenzy by the thought that an infinitely small portion of it would have saved him the torture of his invincible longing for the lands of Ille which had tarnished the years of his youth. He was wrung by a bitterness that robbed him of speech when he came to face Anne.
She looked at him.
“Are you tired, Thomas?”
Illey shook his head and pressed his open hand for an instant to his chest, as if something weighed on him in the left breast-pocket of his coat.
Anne struggled silently with her thoughts. She was convinced that if Thomas had made up his mind years ago to do the work he had done now, Christopher might be alive, the firm might be alive, and the fortune too.
They accused each other without exchanging a word. Only when a long time had passed did they notice, both of them, that their silence had become cold and horrible and that they could not alter it.
After a few days the lawyer stopped his visits. Thomas locked up the business books and had the shutters fixed in the old study of Ulwing the builder. He seemed quite calm now, only his face was thinner than usual. In the outer office he stopped in front of Otto Füger and looked motionlessly down on him.
The former book-keeper became embarrassed.
“Sad work,” he stuttered, while he took off his spectacles and wiped them energetically, holding them near to his eyes.
“Scoundrel,” said Thomas Illey with imperturbable calm, “you did your stealing cleverly.”
Otto Füger stared at him confounded. He was not prepared for this. His lips parted, he wanted to protest.
Illey looked down on him from head to foot. He exclaimed:
“Clear out!” and, as Füger did not move, he gripped him by the shoulders and without apparent effort, thrust him out of the door. The spectacles had fallen to the ground; as if he would not touch them with his hand for fear of pollution, Thomas pushed them with the tip of his shoe to the threshold.
Otto Füger spoke excitedly under the porch:
“Defamation of character.... We shall meet again. Then we shall see. I’ll have the law on you....”
He never did. It was not in his interest to make a scandal. He was a rich man now.
In the old house life became quiet and economical. The offices on the ground floor were let to strangers. The lodgings of Mrs. Henrietta and the stables were transformed into a warehouse by a wine-merchant. He built up the windows and doors towards the back garden and made an entrance from the street. Horses and carriages passed to strangers. Of the servants only Florian and Netti remained, and old Mamsell Tini, who wiped clandestine tears from her long, rigid face.
Of late years the whole neighbourhood of the house had changed. In place of the old timber yard strange apartment houses had risen and their grimy walls looked hideously and impertinently into the garden. Between the Ulwing house and the Danube a narrow street with four-storey buildings. From her window Anne could no longer see the lovely, wide river, the Castle hill, the spires, the Jesuits’ Stairs up which she once used to climb to Uncle Sebastian. Morning came later to the rooms than formerly. The houses opposite sent their shadows into the windows. The sun shone into them no more and night fell earlier than of old.
Anne thought often that if her grandfather were to come back he would feel strange in his old town and would not find his way home.
The town grew rapidly and the years flew still faster. Everything became faster than in the old times. Anne remembered how, when she was a child, time passed smoothly, calmly, while now it rushed by as if it went downhill.
Thomas had a high and influential post in his office. For a long time the two boys had been going to school, and Anne, hearing their lessons, learned more than she had known before.
In the garden the flowers began to bloom; the holidays came; then it was again winter.
Christmas eve.
Not the former Christmas of childhood when all was wonder, when the Christmas tree with shining candles was brought from woods beyond the earth by angels above the snow-covered house tops. This was a Christmas suitable for grown-up people, a sober Christmas.
The boys smiled at the old tales. They themselves had decorated the tree the evening before. After supper they both felt sleepy and gathered their presents quietly together in the sunshine room.
George had received a watch and books and a real gun from his father. His mother had given building bricks to little Ladislaus.
“Hurry up. It is late,” said Thomas.
Sleep suddenly forsook the boys’ eyes. “Next Christmas I shall ask for things to build a bridge with,” decided the smaller boy with true childlike insatiability.
George shrugged his shoulders.
“If I were you I should ask for horses like those we saw in the shop window the other day. When I was little they did not make such lovely toys as they do now.”
“You are for ever thinking of horses,” retorted the little son. “I want to build bridges. When I am grown up I shall build a bridge over the Danube and get a lot of toll from everybody.”
“Don’t be silly,” said the elder, “as if one could not get rich with horses!”
Thomas smiled and looked at his wife.
“They have got your grandfather’s fine blood in them.”
Anne looked after the boys. The younger was fair and blue-eyed like the Ulwings. His bony little fist resembled his great-grandfather’s powerful hand and when he got into a temper his jaw went to one side and his eyes became cold.
“Yes, but their appearance and movements are yours, the shape of their heads too,” said she, and, a thing she had not done for a long time, she stroked Thomas’s head where it curved in such a noble, fine line into his neck. She did it out of gratitude, because she loved his blood in her sons. Then her hand slid into her husband’s shoulder and an inordinate longing came over her to lean her forehead on it. But what would Thomas think of it? After all these years? Perhaps he would be astonished and misconstrue it? She blushed faintly and recovered herself. She remembered that whenever she was seeking pure tenderness, Thomas gave her something else. Men never understand women when they ask them for something for their soul.
Anne stood a moment longer near her husband and then, as if overflowing with feelings she could not express, she moved irresistibly towards the piano.
“You want to sing?” asked Thomas, out of humour now. “Has not Adam Walter promised to come? You will be able to have plenty of music then.”
Anne stopped and looked at him over her shoulder. The corners of her eyes and lips rose slowly, sadly.
“Come and sit by me,” said Thomas, “let us talk.”
“Talk....” The word repeated itself on Anne’s lips like a lifeless echo. Was not this word only a name, the name of something that never came when called for?
They looked at each other enquiringly for a little, then there was resigned silence. There had been so many short words and long silences between them, during which they were going further and further apart, retreating into their own souls instead of coming nearer to each other, that they had to make a fresh start if they wanted to talk to each other. A start from a painfully long distance and ... this was Christmas eve.
“Do you hear?”
Anne shuddered and looked shiveringly towards the dark rooms.
A delicate sound repeated itself obstinately, like the sound of a tiny drill working in the depth of things. It started over and over again. For an instant it came from under the whitewash of the ceiling, then up from the floor, from the windows, from the beams, from everywhere.
“Do you hear?” asked Thomas and his hands stopped in the air in the middle of the movement.
“I have heard it for a long time.” Anne’s lips trembled while she tried to smile. They both became silent again and the weevil continued its work in the old house.
Thomas started when the steps of Adam Walter resounded from the corridor. He went to meet him and took the violin case out of his hand.
“Welcome, dear troubadour,” then, as if he had himself noticed his careless irony, he added: “Do sit down, my dear professor,” and offered cigars to his guest.
“But of course, you want to make music. My wife has already started, an hour ago, to air the piano.” He laughed quietly, looking mockingly at the end of Walter’s necktie which pointed rigidly into the air beside his white collar.
“What is the news in town?”
“I only see musicians,” said Walter with good-natured condescension, “and they are fighting at present over the score of the artist Richard Wagner’s Parsifal. They are coming to blows.”
“Do tell me, professor, do you really take those things seriously? Do you consider Art something quite serious?”
Adam Walter wrinkled his low brow. He smiled with mocking forbearance.
Anne looked at him as if making a request that he should not continue the subject. It was always painful to her when her husband talked of these things. She found him on these occasions hopelessly inconsequent, obstinately perverse. She did not like to see him like that.
“I know you are angry if I say so,” Thomas continued lightheartedly, “but my Hungarian breed can see nothing in Art but an explanatory imitation of Nature. We have no need of artists to stand between us and living nature. Any shepherd or cowherd can see the sunset of the great plain without the need of having its beauty worked into verses.”
Walter turned away as if he tried to escape Anne’s irresistible imploring look. He wanted to answer, for he felt he ought to answer.
“I understand music only. I can speak of that alone. That is not an explanatory imitation of nature, it is man’s only artistic achievement which lives in him, and comes out of his very own self.”
“I think so too,” said Anne gently. “Every art represents what exists, music alone creates what has never existed.”
“How they agree,” thought Thomas, vexed. Then, rather disdainfully:
“Do not the musicians learn from the reeds, the thunder, the wind, the birds?”
“Nature only knows harmony and discord,” answered Adam Walter, “melody has been created by man. Nature knows no melody.”
“Don’t say so, professor; have you never walked in the woods? Have you never slept on the moss near a brook?”
Adam Walter shook his head.
“I am afraid we don’t understand each other.”
“It seems impossible,” said Illey. “You are one of those who like the painted landscape more than the real, live country. I don’t want to smell the violet in the scent bottle, but at the edge of the woods.”
Walter looked suddenly at Anne and then, as if comparing her with Thomas.
“Mr. Illey, you seem to me like the music of the Tsigans.”
“Tsigan music,” repeated Anne thoughtfully, “and I, what am I?”
“You are a song by Schubert,” answered the musician.
“The two don’t fit well together.... Do light a cigar, professor. But, of course, you want to make music.”
But that day Adam Walter did not draw his violin from its case. A small nosegay was in it. It was meant for Anne, but it remained there too. He took it away with him, out into the snow, back into the white Christmas night.
When he came again he brought a larger bunch of flowers. It was a poor, ungainly bunch wrapped up in a newspaper. He put it awkwardly on the piano near Anne, and became more and more embarrassed.
“Please don’t thank me, it is not worth it. I thought of it quite by chance.”
Something flashed into Anne’s face which resembled pain. She did not hear Walter’s voice any more, she knew no more that he had brought her flowers; all she remembered was that Thomas never, never gave her flowers.
“Why? ...” and her hands raised doubtful, dreamy chords from the piano. Her tender, meek face became unconsciously tragical. She began to sing.... A deep question sang through her voice. The whole life of a woman sobbed in it, complained, implored. It rent the heart, it clamoured for the unattainable, the promises of past youth, the dream, the realization.
Adam Walter became obsessed by the rapt womanly voice. He went to the door, shut it carelessly, then leaned immobile against the wall.... He stood there spellbound, even after the last sound had died away. He was not in time to harden his features into calmness, and Anne understood his expression, because she was suffering herself at the time. She received with a grateful smile the tenderness which came to her.... They remained like that for an instant. Anne was the first to awake. And as if she wanted to wake him, she looked towards the door.
“I closed it,” said Walter humbly, “in order that your voice should be nobody’s but mine....”
Then he left and she gazed for a long time into the growing darkness. Her tenderness, which she had thought long extinct, was now ablaze.
Thomas came in. Anne remembered that her husband was going to shoot and knew he came to take leave.
“Has the troubadour gone?” Illey looked round the room. Suddenly he saw the flowers on the piano. “Now he has started to bring you flowers?”
Anne looked at him.
“Do you know, Thomas, it has struck me that you never give me any flowers.”
“You don’t think I am going to give you flowers grown on somebody else’s land?” Illey laughed harshly and left the room without a kiss, without a word of farewell.
They had never yet parted like this. Anne looked after him amazed.
“Have a good time!” she shouted and did not recognize her own voice. It could be cold and indifferent.
When Thomas descended the stairs, the sound of Anne’s piano reached him. A sad song echoed through the house.... He slammed the street door furiously, as if he sought to slay the music. He looked up from the cab. He suddenly remembered that Anne once used to look after him from the window. Once ... a long time ago....
“She is probably pleased now when I go and she can live for her music. That is what draws her and Adam Walter together.” He rejected roundly the image of Walter. He did not want to think of him and Anne at the same time, yet the two images would get mixed up in his brain and he felt as if he had been robbed.
The sound of the cab had passed. In the twilight of the sunshine room the music had broken off. Anne began to nurse the burning bitterness with which she thought of her husband. Could he not see that she suffered, that her smiles, her calm, her indifference were all his? Did he not know her face was all a mummery? A mask ... fearfully she raised her hand to her face as though she would snatch something from it....
At that moment a dawning light glimmered in the depths of her mind, mounting up through innumerable memories. An old, once meaningless tale worked its way out slowly from oblivion. First she only saw the setting: the small clockmaker’s shop, her grandfather in front of a large, semi-circular window, the old hand of Uncle Sebastian, the violet-coloured tail coat, the buckled shoes. She heard his voice again. Broken, unconnected words came to her mind, reached her heart ... and then, suddenly, there was light.
“No, people don’t know what their neighbour’s real face is like.... Everybody wears a mask, nobody has the courage to take it off, nobody dares to be the first because he cannot know whether the others will follow his example, or stone him.”
Anne’s thoughts repeated in despair the words of the old story: “Everybody wears a mask, everybody....” And perhaps the proud alone were the charitable, for they wore the mask of silence.
“Thomas,” she uttered his name aloud, as of old, when their love began. It seemed to her that she had found a torch which, on the dark road, lit up her husband’s real face. She began to expect him, though she knew he could not come back so soon. She waited for him through many long hours. Next day too she waited.
Evening came. Adam Walter arrived and again brought some flowers in his violin-case.
Anne became absent-minded and restless. The flowers only brought Thomas to her mind. Adam Walter’s voice seemed strange to her and his ardent glances irritated her. To-day not even music could bring them together.
While reading the music, Anne listened continually for sounds below. A cab stopped at the door. Steps in the corridor. She rose involuntarily and stretched her arms out as if she wanted to stop someone who passed by.... The noise ceased outside and her arms felt weary.
Adam Walter watched her attentively and at the same time peered relentlessly into his own mind. He too felt now what so many others had suffered; he thought with physical pain of the other who was expected and passed by.... An expression of despair passed over his face. Then, as if sneering at himself, he raised his low brows and put his violin aside.
She started and looked at him enquiringly.
“I can’t to-day.” Walter’s voice attempted to be harsh and repellent, but his eyes were hopelessly sad.
Anne did not detain him when he started to go. She felt relieved; now there was no more need to control her expression, her movements. She ran towards her husband’s room.
Thomas stood with his back to the door in the middle of the room.
“So you no longer even come to see me?” she asked, and there was warmth in her voice.
“I knew you had company. I wanted to be alone.”
Anne stepped back but she did not leave the room as she would have done at any other time. Thomas started walking up and down. Several times he touched his left breast pocket and pressed his open hand against his chest. He stopped suddenly before Anne.
“I thank you for staying,” he said excitedly. “I must speak to you.”
Anne looked at him frightened. “Has anything happened to you?”
“No, nothing. Listen.... Ille is for sale.”
Thomas sat down on the window sill as if he were tired. He related how he was shooting over the swampy wood. One of the beaters told him that the property of Ille was again up for auction. Those to whom it belonged were ruined and had left the place. He could not resist and he walked all over the property, a thing he had never done before. An old farm hand recognized him. He called him young master as in old times, though his hair was turning grey. The bailiff recognized him too. And he saw the big garden, the roof of the house, the free Danube, the barn, the tree with the swing, whose bark still showed the marks of the ropes.
“You understand, Anne, all this is for sale, cheap, it could be ours. And there my life would have a purpose. You know, for the sake of the boys.... A family survives only if it is rooted in the soil. It is hopeless for a tree to cast its seeds on the pavements of cities; lasting life is impossible there. The families of city folk are like their houses and last but three generations. Country people are like the earth. The earth outlives a house.... If only I could go home, everything would be different.”
Astonishment disappeared from Anne’s face and an indescribable terror appeared in its stead.
“And the house! We shall have to leave here!”
“Don’t be frightened,” said Thomas icily. “I do not want you to leave the house for my sake. I never asked you for a sacrifice. Nor will I now. But I can’t stand this any longer.”
Every word wounded Anne.
“Why do you hurt me like this?”
“So you would come with me?” He looked at her incredulously, inquiringly. “Is it possible? You would come with me, to me, now when I have grown old and your love for me has passed away?”
Anne smiled sadly.
“Don’t you think, Thomas, that the memories of the road we have trodden together are as strong a tie as love?”
He again drew his hand over his left breast pocket and then let it slip quickly to his waist as if it had been done accidentally.
This movement caused Anne some anxiety. She remembered that it had become frequent lately. She thought no more of her troubles.
“What is the matter with you? What has happened?” She turned back the frilly silk shade of the lamp with a rapid movement.
They looked at each other as if they had not met for a very long time.... When did their ways part? When, for what word, for what silence? Neither of them remembered. It must have been long ago and since then they had walked through life side by side, without each other.
Anne leaned over Thomas. It seemed to her that they had met at last on the dark road and that she saw, through Uncle Sebastian’s story, into the face she had never understood.
“You have suffered too, Thomas....” And as if he were her child she took his head tenderly between her hands. She pressed it to her bosom and gently stroked his grey-sprinkled hair, his wrinkles. She wanted to ask forgiveness of Thomas for the marks left by their sad misunderstandings. Every touch of her hand demolished one of the barriers that had stood between them and had obstructed their vision.
“I have not been kind to you,” he said sadly, “I passed from your side because I thought of nothing but of my craving for my land.”
“And I thought something quite different,” answered Anne, in a whisper. “You said nothing and I am not one of those who can question. We both kept silent and that was our misfortune. I see now that silence can only cover things, but cannot efface them. Dear God, why did you not tell me your heart’s desire? Why did you not speak while we were still rich?”
Thomas took his wife’s hand and kissed it.
“I was afraid you would not understand. You understand me now—and it is not too late.”
“But how could we buy Ille?” she asked anxiously.
“Do you remember that swampy wood? Once nobody wanted it, now I am offered a good price for it. That would go some way and I might take the present mortgage over.”
Anne’s eyes opened wide with fear. She thought of Christopher who had been swallowed up by financial obligations.
“I shall work,” said Thomas and his voice became quite youthful, “and pay off the debts.”
“Debts,” repeated Anne mechanically and the practical blood of Ulwing the builder rose in her.
“No, Thomas, we don’t build on debts!” She said this with such force as she had never before put into her speech with her husband.
Thomas stared at her darkly for an instant. Then his figure bent up in a curious way and while he turned aside he made a gesture as if casting something away.
This gesture went to Anne’s heart. In her despair, she must make another effort, fight a last fight at the cost of any sacrifice. And while her bewildered mind was seeking for a solution, her eye followed her husband’s glance instinctively, through the window, to the garden where, under the evening sky the steep roof descended near the gargoyle.
Both looked at it silently. The two wills were fighting no more against each other and Anne felt with relief that they thought in unison. She buried her face in her hands convulsively, as if pressing a mask on it, a mask heavier than the old one, one she would have to bear now, for ever, for the rest of her life. Then she looked up.
“We must sell the house.”
In that moment, within the ancient walls, a cord, strained for a long time, suddenly snapped in great, invisible pain.