"Not her," said Jeanne. "It would have been the end of Voss Strasse as far as Jules's concerned."
"Mills of fate again," said Sarah. "And the child—?" "That was quite a business; she thought she was in love then. The child is the Spanish Count's. Not Jules's."
Narden made no further allusion to the Feldens' private affairs in the Fortschritt, but the morning after episodes from Julius's French life had appeared in other papers he mentioned that the Foreign Office had offered a secretaryship at the Embassy in Paris to the Baron in such and such a year, and that it had been turned down. In the Civil Services where promotion functioned like slow clockwork and Unterministerialdirektoren and Regirungsrate sat ticking off the assiduous years, this glimpse created more concentrated bad blood than anything that had gone before. No plodder had ever liked Bernin, now opposition to the Count became open, solid, almost dedicated.
Julius and Gustavus had not seen each other yet. Julius was kept in by his cold and asthma, and with Clara absent the brothers seemed to be bereft of means or need of communication. This weighed on Caroline.
"He never comes here," said Sarah.
"Gustavus? Oh, good Lord."
"And it's not such a pleasure going out these days."
"Don't tell me they both stay in?" said Caroline.
"Very likely. Men mind so much more."
"Poor Jules, he thinks he is an insect turned into a brown leaf. So transparent."
"But alone."
"Oh yes, quite alone. Poor Jules."
"They must get it over. You know, their meeting," said Sarah.
"I don't know what it is between Jules and Gustavus. Jules was almost lightheaded that night on the train. . . . And how I wish they'd have the funeral."
"That will make a difference."
"It will help Jules."
"He won't go," said Sarah.
"But he must."
"Nothing we do or don't matters a scrap now."
Caroline said, "Sarah, tell me this, is it—is Jules like this because he has been living with the Merzes for so long?"
"No," said Sarah.
"I don't want to understand it," said Caroline.
"You were very good at understanding in Paris."
"Don't let us speak of Paris."
"Your Monet is still there."
"I cannot believe it."
"Don't change," Sarah said passionately.
"I'm not very good without— Not very good by myself," said Caroline.
Sarah got up and went to a window, a thing she always did in her own houses. The window gave on to the courtyard, and all the windows were the wrong size at Voss Strasse.
"This is only a kind of crisis?" Caroline said with a lapse into her younger voice. "Sarah, isn't it?"
Sarah turned to her, but without seeing. "Crisis? There
are no crises. It's all a chain, a long chain. Oh yes—it will pass, this crisis."
"It was the wrong question," said Caroline.
"Twelve gentlemen to see Herr Geheimrat."
"What do they want?"
"Desire was indicated to impart this themselves, sir."
"Twelve?" said Grandmama.
"A deputation, ma'am."
"Will they've had luncheon?"
"After a fashion, ma'am."
"Gottlieb, what is all this?" said Friedrich.
"The Israelite Retail-Trade Association of Greater Berlin, sir."
"Why not say so at once."
"I did not believe it was material, sir."
"I will see them," said Friedrich.
"Send them away," said Markwald.
"Show 'em in," said Grandpapa.
"I understand they wished to see Herr Geheimrat by himself."
"Here we all are," said Grandpapa.
"They don't want us to get up," said his wife.
"Perhaps / should," Caroline said, doing so. "I believe you are right, Baronin," said Fraulein von Reventlow, and followed her. Gottlieb held a door for them. The deputation filed in by another. They carried their tophats and looked round respectfully.
"Herr Geheimrat! Frau Geheimrat! Gentlemen!"
" 'Morning," said Grandpapa.
The head man plucked a document from his coat.
"Why is he reading to us?" said Grandmama.
"An address, ma'am," hissed Gottlieb.
A member corrected him, "A petition."
"Can't understand a word he's saying—"
"Speak up," said Grandpapa.
"The volume is not at fault," said Gottlieb.
"We*re compromising — ?"
"The community, ma'am."
"Community — V
"Of interests."
"Ah yes."
"We are not in retail history," Emil whispered to Mark-wald.
"We have touched pitch."
"Interfering asses," said Emil.
"Harbouring — ?" said Grandmama.
"A form of invitation, ma'am."
"Assim—f assim 1*
"Assimilationists."
"Must be one of those semi-precious stones . . . very unsatisfactory. Implicate — t Co-religionists — ? Shipwreck — V
"Hush, ma'am; they would like us to listen."
"Why don't they sit down?"
"Did we ask them?" muttered Emil.
"Gentiles — ? Where?"
"Ma'am . . ."
"Eliminate — ?"
"Kick out," supplied Markwald.
"That's what I mean," said a member of the deputation, "let goy eat goy."
"WHERE—?" cried Grandmama.
"Moritz Bluhmenthal!"
"Herr Geheimrat?"
"I knew your father before he had a pot to piss in."
"Oh Herr Geheimrat."
"Were you by any chance referring to my son-in-law?"
"Well, Herr Geheimrat—"
"Go home, my boy, and mind your own business. And you can tell the same from me to the community."
"Papa—"
"I have my family live with me if I please, and," the old man looked about with satisfaction, "I send packing whom I please."
"Yes sir, of course sir, only— We shall all be suffering for
this, we know we shall . . ."
"True words," muttered Markwald.
"Merz & Merz among the martyrs," said Emil.
Questions began being raised; once again Count Bernin's hand was discernible; the awkward problem of Johannes's funeral was met by an unannounced quiet burial at Sig-mundshofen. There were present, besides Clara, Gustavus and the priest, two officers from Johannes's regiment, Faithful George and a number of elderly villagers from Landen who remembered him as a boy. The Foreign Secretary, detained by the state visit of the Crown Prince of Bulgaria, had been unable to leave Berlin. The private character of the ceremony was afterwards derided as weakness on the part of the Army; there remained, however, the unspoken face-saver that it had been due to the wishes of the family.
Three days later Corporal Schaale escaped.
The Kaiser cancelled his yachting trip; the long-awaited interpellation took place in the Reichstag; and on that night there were crowds demonstrating outside both the War Ministry and the Wilhelmstrasse. The Government was expected to fall in the morning.
"What if he did just manage to make off on his own? Things do happen that way. I should have tried to in his place, and nothing surprises me about that colonel."
"The country must be in very bad hands," said Markwald.
"No authority," said Friedrich.
"I shouldn't have said that," said Caroline.
"Ladies are born anarchists."
Clara was back, and Caroline went to her on that afternoon. It was round the corner but she drove there in the Merzes' landau. The entrance was thronged and there were a few jeers at a woman in her kind of clothes. She was
shown into the same upper room in which, a little more than a year ago, Clara had asked her to let herself be helped. She had not seen Clara since her own marriage cere
mony, and she felt that it was she now who had come to proffer something to that worn and upright figure. Gustavus was there.
She made her apologies for Julius. "I should have liked to have gone myself," she said.
"You did not know him. There was no need."
Gustavus said, "Do sit down, Clara."
Clara ignored this.
Caroline, on what was actually a horrid little chair, came as near self-consciousness as she ever could. She felt too smart, small, young.
"There seems to be so much misunderstanding. My brother must explain. People would behave differently if they were told what really happened."
"Clara dear—" said Gustavus.
Caroline looked, and realized how little she had seen of him. She was held anew by the likeness between him and Jules, and by the difference. Gustavus was more solid physically than his brother—it was not vitality, but he was there —and he was quite without that extra-human fineness that made Jules felt sometimes as only half a presence in a room. Both men appeared younger than they were; Jules looked younger, Gustavus had acquired the fussy boyishness of the permanent ADC. "What really did happen?" she asked.
Clara told her. "And now Conrad won't say anything. He says it had nothing to do with him, he says he was not there. That is true of course. Conrad was en poste in Rome during those years. When he came back Jean was already settled. It was Papa who arranged it. When Papa died, everybody was charitable and it just went on. What with being so much older and leaving home so soon, I don't believe Conrad ever knew Jean."
"How monstrously unfair," said Caroline.
"What did you say?"
"It is unfair."
"Unfair —what a curious term."
"So then it is all true?" said Caroline; "Jules told me some things, but they seemed so very queer."
"Jules did not know everything," said Clara.
"And they sent him back?"
"We all tried to prevent it; according to our lights. My father, too. When he was able to see what it would mean, he tried to undo it. There was a very good man—a priest —he is dead now. Papa was too late. Now I know that it was something that had to come to Jean's father. Though the rest of us had to go on doing our best; you see, Caroline— it was our duty."
"But the Army? Clara, the Army?"
"We did not see it in that way. Papa did not. It was only a farm . . . One of our local regiments ... It seemed less sad."
Caroline looked hard at Clara, with awe and something like a nascent admiration. For the first time since her arrival in the town she did not feel desolately apart.
Clara said, "Perhaps everything was rather different in Papa's day. It is very dreadful that we should give such scandal now. Conrad must speak. Gustavus—"
But Gustavus, they found, had left the room.
The Government did not fall next day. Bernin said nothing; but the Chancellor got up and spoke a few firm quiet words. He spoke of mountains out of molehills, he spoke of self-seeking propaganda; he pledged investigation of the matter under debate, but doubted if it was of a nature to perturb the workings of a great realm; he undertook to guarantee that justice would be done and a certain fugitive discovered; and he promised to maintain order.
This speech had a wonderfully calming effect. Solid people felt they had been carried away too easily.
"It could peter out now," Sarah said.
The week passed. Schaale was not found. In the towns, police were omnipresent but reserved; the people began showing signs of tiring of the riots.
Then Quintus Narden sprang the fact that Captain Felden had been decorated by His Majesty.
"My Red Eagle!" said Gustavus.
"Ruritania," said Sarah. "Such a pity it isn't more noticeable."
All over Bavaria a bulletin appeared on the house-fronts, purporting that the Kaiser had been non compos since 1902, and in some localities the Crown Prince was proclaimed Regent.
On that day Count Bernin resigned.
He had the Corporal hidden in the Foreign Office."
"He was found there?"
"That's just it —he was not. They took him down to Baden with them. He was smuggled out in a trunk."
"No, not in a trunk, he left bold as brass by the main entrance dressed up in priest's clothes. The sister did it."
"My dear chap, you've got it all wrong: the Felden Murder was used by Biilow—very clever of him actually —to get rid of him. The Cabinet had got on to his naval deal."
"The Englishwoman was the go-between. Baron Bluebeard was the cover. He got paid for marrying her."
"He promised the bishops in the House of Lords to get our Naval Estimates cut down, then the bishops were to sell out to Rome."
"I heard it had been the Zionists?"
"Oh, the Zionists too."
"The Baron ratted; he never married her. Preferred to stick to Frau Shylock. He got some kind of a show put up in their cathedral; man in my department knows somebody who was there, he said there was so much incense you couldn't see your own hand, but there was no bride."
"They'll have to close that chapel on their place; he's been excommunicated, though he won't let on. The Holy Father sent a secret bull."
"He left Germany. On foot."
"Little good that will do him. He's to be locked up as soon as he gets there. In the Vatican. He knows all the Church secrets."
"Will he be a monk then?"
"A state prisoner."
"Have you heard? Count Bernin is to be indicted for High Treason."
"Friedrich, what's the news?"
"Putnitz has been cashiered. Cowardice."
"What will he do?"
"Oh, a bullet, or the colonies. Here he is, in a lounge suit. 'Ex-Lieutenant's Comment.' The g-Uhr Abend nabbed him in the station. ' "It was all a mistake," says von Putnitz.' "
"I wish Clara had heard him," said Caroline.
"The Doctors' Association is asking for an inquiry into Army medicine; there is to be a commission."
"A humdrum day. Anything else?"
"The market's up. Very rum."
"Not at all," said Sarah. "There's not going to be another peep out of the South for a long time, a victory for industry. It's about finished all those Catholic peasant parties."
"You're not expecting a boom?"
"Oh yes."
"Anything else?"
"Only rumours."
"The Eighteen-Months-Service Bill is to come up before recess."
"The old Jesuit's gone; but we are to be left helpless."
"Poor Germany."
Indeed, the troubles, public and internal, of the administration had not been lessened. Too many questions had been left unanswered, and substantial people throughout
the country were acting on their conviction that something, somewhere, had gone very wrong. In Government offices, inquiries were shuffled on to sub-departments and everybody was furious with the fellows down next corridor; the ruling caste was divided by the sense that they had let each other down, and they blamed the Kaiser in their hearts. "H.M. has always been unfortunate in the choice of his friends."
"It couldn't have happened under the Old Man." In all this, little love from any quarter was lost upon the Feldens; and through the whole of that summer the gutter press, scot-free, poured forth what it pleased. They were fair game.
"What does she do with herself all day?"
"She has her own sitting room, you know, upstairs. I go to her; she comes to me. She insists. She insists on going out at least once every day. She does her shopping, she goes to the zoo, she rides a little in the Tiergarten. She's talking about sending for their horses. And she reads. . . ."
"I know. Two novels a day. The next stage is chocolates."
"She reads mostly history," said Sarah.
"They ought to leave!"
"Where is there for them to go?"
"Leave Germany altogether," said Jeanne.
"I don't think she would do that, she'd call it running away."
&n
bsp; "You ought to tell her, Sarah."
"I? She did say to me she couldn't slip off to England— like Edu."
"I should have thought of her as more, I don't know—" Jeanne said.
"More what?"
"Worldly—? feminine—? spoilt—?"
"It comes as a surprise. Caroline is an English gentleman."
"The two or three one used to know in my time drank horribly. But I know you don't mean that."
"No."
"There is no sense in her staying, Sarah/'
"She doesn't like it any better here than you do."
"I've got used to it."
"I hate it!" said Sarah. "With what Quintus Narden calls the notorious lack of patriotism of my race."
"He doesn't notice my existence," said Jeanne. "I'm only fit for the g-Uhr. 'The other Foreign Concubine.' My poor grey hair. . . . Though it's also taught me the small use of an actual husband."
"Jules doesn't read the papers."
"Isn't he tempted to?"
"It doesn't occur to him."
"That's my idea of a gentleman."
"He's started coming down to meals again," said Sarah. "To some of their meals."
"Of course she has the child," said Jeanne.
"What child?"
"Jules's."
"I believe she's trying to educate her. That's lost on Henrietta."
"The girl ought to be out of it all. Sarah—is it beastly? The streets?"
"Berlin's a big place. The only really bad spot is the door in Voss Strasse. And seeing that it doesn't make the slightest difference to anyone in that house except to her and me, and of course poor Friedrich—"
"I'm afraid Friedrich uses the back entrance," Jeanne said, looking her friend in the eyes.
"You do love him," said Sarah.
"He loves me."
Sarah said nothing.
"You can understand that?"
"Yes" she said. "No. Yes. You know I think my girl is going to marry that violinist."
"Will you let her?"
"It's that, or her running away. I'm sure she'd much
prefer the latter. Not he though, as I read him; he's at the house all day, she thinks it's so brave of him. When I have a couple of men from the Watch Sc Ward outside."
A legacy; a novel Page 24