Was it possible that such men had always existed in Germany, discreetly hidden and camouflaged by necessity and conventions? Or had the new Germany suddenly given birth to these monsters, or, by its insidious toxins, had made smiling madmen of gentlefolk? She was inclined to believe the first. Evil always existed; it awaited only the moment of release to rise above civilization and restraint. The sickness quickened in her heart. What hope was there for the world in these days? For she knew it was not only Germany who was so hideously menaced. It was all men. The disease afflicting Germany afflicted the whole world. The epidemic smoldered everywhere, though it had shown its first scarlet signs in her own country. There was no place to flee; there was no refuge anywhere. It was this ghastly realization which turned her face even more pale, and dried her quiet lips.
She turned from Schmidt hastily, with a movement of flight. She seated herself as near as possible to Herr Professor Herman Muehler and his English wife. Frau Muehler regarded her with her friendly but wary smile. She saw that Therese’s hand trembled slightly as she sipped her fragile glass of sherry. Her eyebrows rose a little at this evidence of emotion.
“And how is Karl, Frau Doctor? We have been so worried about him. Herman speaks of him constantly, and misses his visits.”
Therese reflected for a moment, as she often did, that in spite of Karl’s austerity and shy reserve, people soon learned to speak of him by his first name. But few dared to approach her so intimately, though she knew that she had a more approachable personality, and liked her fellows much more than did Karl. It was still a mystery to her. She could not understand the intimacy towards Karl, even in those only slightly acquainted with him.
She answered: “He is still—unnerved, I am sorry to say.”
And then she knew the answer. Karl, in spite of his restraint and aloofness, was naive and simple. He did not know nor comprehend others. Objectively, in his social contacts, he had seen only smiles or faces, or heard only what it had been intended for him to hear. His innocence had insulated him. And so, he could respond to others in the way they wished him to respond. He took them at their face value, and believed what they desired him to believe. They had had no need to protect their nakedness from his candid but unseeing eyes. He took their protective costumes to be the costumes of their souls. They meant nothing more or less than what they said. Their conventional deeds, to his simplicity, were the expressions of themselves. Accordingly, they could relax their wariness and suspicion and distrust in his presence. They could deceive him. They saw themselves reflected in his eyes as they wished to be reflected. His conscious mind, Therese realized drearily, had never caught up, until now, with his subconscious mind. It was his subconscious mind, all-seeing, all-understanding, which had made him a writer. But in spite of this, he had not been a great writer, for his conscious mind had been asleep. Now he could be great, if ever he could overcome his cowardice and the dreadful wound to his innocence, caused by the merging of his two minds.
She added, unaware that she was speaking aloud: “He has been asleep. Now he is awake. He cannot bear it, yet.”
Frau Muehler raised her brows again, with a faint smile of amusement and condescension. She did not like Therese. Therese always saw the things she was not intended to see. Therefore, it pleased Frau Muehler to watch Therese’s sadness, and listen to her make unconventional and naive statements.
But Herr Muehler, who had been listening with unobtrusive intentness, said suddenly and softly: “Yes, yes, he has been asleep. I understand that. It is painful for such a man to wake up.”
Therese looked into his gentle brown eyes, so tired and understanding, and something hard and suffering broke in her. Her lips trembled; she felt the sting of tears against her eyelids.
He nodded, and his smile was like the touch of warm comfort. “But he will wake up, and find his way back. Do not be too afraid, Frau Doctor.”
Therese had always liked him, with as much liking as her selfishness would permit her to like any one not important to her. Now, realizing what he was, what greatness of soul shone behind those nearsighted and weary brown eyes, she loved him. She did not see Frau Muehler’s covert and superior British smile. She did not see her discreet ridicule because Therese had stood nakedly indecent for any one to observe.
The warmth of her love and gratitude pervaded Therese like a heartening fire. She was conscious of a renewal of her waning strength. “I am not so very afraid now,” she said, steadily.
“Do I understand that he has had a nervous breakdown?” asked Frau Muehler, with an air of concern.
Her husband replied quickly, but he looked at Therese: “All Germany is suffering from a nervous breakdown. But it is not only Germany; it is all the world. We intellectuals have helped to bring this about by creating psychological confusion, faithless realism, and liberalism without a tangible purpose or goal.” He added, as if to himself: “In our stupidity, we have not realized that men must believe in something.”
They had not seen the approach of Herr Schmidt, and they started when he spoke, smilingly: “You are quite correct, Herr Professor. Few men of your profession are so discerning and understanding. But now, the National Socialist Party has come to the rescue of Germany, and all other nations. We are giving men something to live for.”
A curious hardening and reserve passed subtly over the professor’s face. He said quietly, looking at Schmidt with piercing intensity: “I am afraid, Herr Doctor, that we do not speak of the same things, though our words are similar.”
Schmidt shrugged slightly. Frau Muehler glowed at him, and smiled with a little disloyal malice. “Do explain what you mean, Herr Doctor,” she said.
He pulled a small but heavy chair before them and sat down negligently. “Thank you. It is a matter of great concern to me. You see, it must all be explained, especially to those who should be the natural leaders of our youth. And I happen to know that the Herr Professor is very much loved by his pupils, and has much influence with them. It is so very necessary that he understand.”
Doctor Muehler said nothing. But his gaze became more piercing.
All Schmidt’s charm radiated itself upon the two women. His handsome face took on itself an expression of passionate earnestness and fascinating naïvete. It was evident that he wished them to believe in his sincerity and enthusiasm.
“Two absorbing faiths have always sustained mankind—God or war. The intellectuals have taken away God from our youth, by their cynical and critical attitude towards all things, and their absurd attachment to what they call ‘truth.’”
He paused. He glanced at the professor quickly.
Doctor Muehler nodded his head. “Yes,” he said, very quietly, “that is true.” But the hardening and reserve on his gentle face became more discernible.
“And so,” went on Schmidt, with an almost disarming earnestness, “National Socialism, with its demand for single-minded self-dedication and sacrifice, with its fanatical religion of the State, has been able to obtain the passionate loyalty and devotion of our youth. It has given it a reason for living, and called out all the noble heroism which makes mankind full of majesty and dignity. It has promised youth greatness, strength and war. War against corruption at home. War abroad, if necessary, against those who would strangle Germany. It has destroyed the complexity of Jewish-Christian civilization, and has given Germany one faith, one leader, one hope, and one goal.”
“In other words,” interrupted the professor, softly, “it has corrupted the natural urge of mankind to self-sacrifice and devotion, to sinister ends.”
Schmidt looked at him with a suddenly evil intensity. He smiled.
“Is it evil to give men a reason for living, Herr Professor?”
“I repeat, we say the same words, but we do not mean the same thing,” said the professor, coldly. Now an astonishing thing happened. The professor’s eyes became vivid with hatred and understanding. The two men regarded each other with a fixed stare. Therese felt a sudden devastating fear.
“Why? Because I believe the noble instincts of men can be used for a noble purpose?”
The professor lifted his eyes and fixed them unseeingly on the old General and Captain von Keitsch, who were conversing boisterously near the fire.
“We are guilty,” he said, in a low musing voice. “We have delivered our children up to you, without a word and without a warning. Because we have been weak and stupid. We have laughed at duty and piety and order. We have given our children a heaviness and tiredness of spirit, and a feeling of futility and sickness. We educators have emphasized that the individual is all that matters, his own happiness and self-expression. We have said: ‘Every man for himself. You are your sole concern.’ How wicked and blind we have been! We thought we were very clever! We emasculated thinkers! We thought that men could live by intellect alone. We laughed at ‘souls.’ We jeered at the ancient idea that the business of men is the welfare of all men. We told them that the burden of living, and duty, courage, abstinence and moderation are the imbecilities of a generation now outmoded and narrow of mind. We smiled indulgently at the name of God. We smiled at duties and obligations and discipline. We said: ‘These are the chains which fetter a free spirit.’ We did not know that no man can be free if he discards his responsibilities. The unchained and irresponsible man is a prisoner.”
Schmidt smiled gaily. “You may deny it, but we do mean the same things, Herr Professor!”
It was then that Frau Muehler spoke, with a smile:
“Of course you mean the same things, Herr Doctor! The professor speaks of it constantly. He knows that the liberals and radicals have brought about the corruption of the youth. He is much upset about it. He said only recently: ‘The National Socialists have done what we should have done. They have given our children a religion.’”
She went on, with unusual animation, and with much nodding: “I, myself, tell my relatives that they must not believe the stories of the atrocities and terrorism which Communists and Jews tell of Germany. Some of them are quite concerned. I received a letter from my cousin, Lady Elizabeth Colston-Hepwaithe, just the other day. She is quite a humanitarian, and was silly enough to give refuge to some Jews who were driven out of Germany. She wanted to know what was happening to Germany. I wrote her that she was being misled, like so many of my people, into believing that all manner of horrors were going on here. I told her that no changes are ever accomplished without some suffering, but that in this instance, only traitors and subversive elements were being punished. So different from other revolutions, when the innocent suffered, too! I told her that I had never seen the German people so happy, so alive, so hopeful as they are today.”
Therese regarded her in stiff and formal silence, her polite training making her face noncommittal and detached. The little Englishwoman’s bright and sensible face was aglow with well-bred fervor. Her commonsense voice, cultured and musical, impelled attention. Herr Doctor Schmidt surveyed her with pleasure and approbation. But her husband looked at her with a strange expression.
“The British,” he said, in a curiously tight voice, “have always suffered from brutal indifference, expediency, or innocence.” After a slight pause he added: “I prefer to be charitable. I prefer to believe it innocence.”
He turned to Schmidt. “Have you heard much of the Gestapo, Herr Doctor?” he asked.
Schmidt’s sparkling eyes shifted only a trifle. “I know some of the officials. Clever and competent men, Herr Professor.”
The professor continued to regard him steadfastly. “Ah, yes. So I have heard.” He paused again. “They might have been interested in this conversation, perhaps?”
But Frau Muehler had become too much animated to hear undercurrents. “So much melodrama!” she exclaimed. “So many dramatic stories! Why cannot Germany be left alone to complete her regeneration?”
Her husband gazed at her for a long and weary moment. At last he said gently: “My dear, it is not regeneration. It is degeneration.” He threw a sharp and gleaming glance at the listening Schmidt. “That might interest the Gestapo also?” He resumed, turning to his wife: “Do you know why Germany must now be the concern of all the rest of the world? Because she is suffering from a frightful contagious disease. And what does one do with a diseased and dangerous person? Ignore him? Or quarantine him?”
Without waiting for a reply, he stood up, not apologizing, but walking away with an oddly shaken gait, as though his thoughts were too terrible for control. He left a hole of silence behind. Therese’s fear for him soared up into terror. She had heard all the undercurrents. Only a little while ago she would not have done what she did now. But now she rose, too, and followed the professor to where he was standing alone at a distant window. He was gazing fixedly out into the night, the folds of the dusty crimson velvet draperies falling about him. When Therese stood beside him, he did not look at her. It was as if he was expecting her. He said in a low, broken voice: “That man—he is a Gestapo officer. I heard it before. I know it now.”
She put her hand on his arm and said pitifully: “You are so agitated. What do creatures like this Schmidt matter? The Gestapo! It is not important! Germany will rid herself of his kind soon. I am sure of it.”
He moved his head despairingly. “Therese, I tell you it isn’t just Germany! It is all the world. It is every man everywhere. Germany has just been the first to show the infection. That is what makes it so hopeless.” He breathed deeply; his thin hands clenched. “You heard my wife, Therese. She speaks for—for the rest of the world. That is why I cannot have the slightest hope.”
Therese was silent. She stood beside him, her hand still on his arm. Waves of desolation swept over her. When he spoke again, it seemed that he was only echoing her own thoughts.
“Last night I thought of going away. To England. To America. To France. And then I saw how hopeless it all was. There is no place to go! Therese, we are going down in ruins, all of us. Perhaps it will be five years, or ten years. Then the end will come. It will never be the same for us, in our generation. Peace, security, hope, civilization: these are all doomed. One by one, each nation will go down. Some by treachery, some by greed, some by expediency, some by cowardice, but all with violence and confusion and death. They will say it is Germany’s fault. Just as they say a single man with smallpox began an epidemic. But they will not realize it is because they have no immunity of their own!”
He sighed despairingly. “There is just one immunity. A year ago, I would have smiled at it. Just as pseudo-intellectuals smile at it in other countries. Now, I do not smile. They, too, will have to learn their lesson.”
Now he turned to her. His ugly, kind, thin face was pale and glistening with grief. “Do you know what that immunity is, Therese? It is God. What does it matter if some say that religion is nonsense? Perhaps it is. I do not think so. A doctrine which insists upon compassion, frugality and strength, courage and faith, justice, sternness and duty and gentleness, is not nonsense. It has its roots in the very earth of being; it draws its saps from the universal verities, the established facts. Why did we not see this before?”
“But what can you do, yourself, alone?” Therese was not conscious that she had cried out.
He was silent a little. Then an exalted gleam flashed into his eyes.
“I did not know, until now, Therese! But now I know!”
Just then dinner was announced.
15
Because the father of Captain Baldur von Keitsch had been his particular friend, and because the Captain filled some of the requirements of the old General as to what constituted the good soldier, he was pleased to have him sit on his left, where he could talk to him. Moreover, the Captain paid him that deference so delightful and necessary from a younger officer. So his father had sat, at the left of the General. He was dead now; his son had many of his physical characteristics, and this gave to the Gene
ral the comforting sensation of continuity and stability in a world which he was uneasily suspecting showed some evidences of irresponsible revolt against all the things he revered and honored. The Captain understood the things that went through the old man’s mind, and he artfully catered to them for his own purposes.
He had spent some years in Paris on a mission of apparent friendliness and governmental cooperation. Only he, and his associates, knew what had been the real purpose of those years. He had become accustomed to the civilized and delicate cooking of France, and had come to loathe the hearty, filling meals of Germany. However, he made it a point to compliment Martina on her dinner, saying that he was experiencing again some of the delights of his stay in Paris. The poor woman bridled, confessed that she had a French chef, and cast a blushing simper about the table. She was rather susceptible to the gallant Captain, and his praises filled her simple facile heart with joy. He was so agreeable; he rarely contradicted. His warm and charming smile embraced every one’s opinion with sympathy, while his flat reptilian eyes invaded one’s inmost secrets.
“It is fortunate for Germany that we have still men like you among us,” said the General, beaming upon his friend’s son. “I have detected signs of a disorderly turn of mind lately. In the name of discipline, there is such a lack of true discipline and honor. They tell me it is just youthful exuberance and excitement.” He shook his head. “I am sure they are wrong. We were exuberant and excited when we were young, too.” He smiled coyly, straightened his great flat back and curled his mustaches. He inferred that he had been quite a dog in Heidelberg. He glanced at his wife, and showed frank contempt as he visibly compared her with the lush barmaids and mädchen of his youth. “But under it all, we realized that there was a basic necessity for discipline, respect, honor and the soldier’s code. Perhaps it was because we young officers were gentlemen. From what I hear, the young men in command these days, and even the older ones, are not gentlemen.” He frowned forbiddingly. “What is this? Are you encouraging the mob to rule Germany?”
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