Ingigerd Halström had "invited" the artists to her rehearsal at twelve o'clock. When they gathered in Miss Burns's room—beside Frederick, there were Ritter, Lobkowitz, Willy Snyders, Miss Burns, and the gypsy-like painter Franck, who carried a portfolio and sketching material—there was a certain solemnity in their manner.
It was a clear day and the streets were dry, and they decided to walk to the theatre. On the way Ritter told Frederick of a little country house he was building for himself on Long Island. Frederick had already heard of it through Willy Snyders. It was to be a rather pretentious building, with gardens and stables and barns. Ritter was erecting it according to his own ideas and plans. He discussed the beauties of the Doric column. It was the most natural of column forms and therefore the most suitable for any surroundings. That was why he had used it in his villa. For his interiors, he had partly followed Pompeian models, and there was to be an atrium. He spoke of a little figure, a gargoyle, which he intended to place over a square fountain.
"In these things, which offer the jolliest possibilities, artists nowadays are very unresourceful," he said. "We have naïve German examples in the Gänsemännchen, the Männicken Piss, and the Tugendbrunnen in Nuremberg. One of the best classic examples is the drunken Silenus of Herculaneum. Water when combined as a mobile element with immobile works of art, can run, trickle, dash, splash, spray, bubble up, or rise up in a splendid jet. It can hiss and sputter and foam. From the drinking bottle of the drunken Silenus in Herculaneum it must have popped. I have had a plaster-cast model made of the little Pompeian figure of Narcissus at the spring in Naples. It is exquisitely beautiful. I am going to place it somewhere in my villa. My gardens will reach down to the seashore, and I intend to have a landing-place for boats, with marble steps and balustrades and sculpture work."
While walking in the cold sunny air next to the slim, elegantly dressed sculptor, listening to his Greek fantasies, Frederick's heart beat mightily against his ribs. Whenever the thought arose in his mind that here, in this new country, after everything that had happened, he would again see Ingigerd Hahlström dance her dance, he felt that he was no longer equal to the trial. The forces of his soul that had remained healthy were already rising in rebellion against anything that might increase the power of the little demon. Nevertheless, he was so intimately connected with her, that the public exhibition of her charms tortured him, and he suffered from the anticipation of her great success. Yet while dreading it, he fervently desired it.
The theatre was dark and empty when Ritter and his following entered. They could scarcely see and had to grope their way after the young man that led them to seats in the parquet. Gradually, their eyes grew accustomed to the darkness, and they could distinguish the vast windowless cave, with its rows of seats, its galleries and painted ceiling. The air, smelling of dust and decay, lay heavily on Frederick's lungs. There were recesses in the great grotto that made the impression of gloomy holes for coffins. Some of them were hung with grey canvas, and canvas lay spread over the whole parquet, with the exception of a few rows left free for seats for the visitors. The stage curtain was up, and the only lighting on the stage came from a few incandescent lamps with weak reflectors, which cast only a narrow circle of light, which widened somewhat as the visitors' eyes learned to be content with the faint illumination.
None of the men had ever before seen an empty unlighted theatre, and they felt cramped and oppressed. For no special reason, they lowered their voices in speaking, and sat there in the expectant mood in which people always await the beginning of a performance.
No wonder that Frederick's heart throbbed more and more turbulently. Even Willy Snyders, who was not easily shaken out of his composure and was always inclined to make sarcastic remarks, was silent and adjusted his glasses on his nose. He sat with his mouth open and his nostrils dilating. When Frederick's eye happened to fall upon him in his unwonted state of self-forgetfulness, he was amused by the comic appearance of his black Japanese head.
After a number of tense minutes had passed and nothing had yet occurred, the artists were about to unburden their feelings in questions and remarks, when the silence was suddenly broken by a tramping of feet, and the stage resounded with a loud, though dull and by no means melodious voice. It was the impresario Lilienfeld, in a long overcoat, his hat pushed back on his neck. He was scolding violently and flourishing a cane. The vision tickled the artists' risibilities. It was all they could do to keep their laughter within the limits of courtesy.
Lilienfeld roared and called for the porter, and thundered unmercifully at a charwoman happening to stray on the empty stage.
"Where's the carpet, where are the musicians, where is that good-for-nothing of a fellow who attends to the reflector? I expressly ordered him to be here at twelve o'clock. Miss Hahlström is standing back there and can't get into her dressing-room."
A voice from the parquet—it came from the young man that had guided the artists to their seats—several times attempted a timid "Mr. Lilienfeld, Mr. Lilienfeld." Finally Lilienfeld caught the sound and, holding his hand to his ear, stepped to the edge of the stage. Forthwith a shower of curses, which had ceased for an instant, descended upon the lad, with reinforced severity. The reflector man came and received his dose of furious rebukes. A man in a silk hat pushed in three musicians, carrying a tom-tom, a cymbal and a flute.
"Where's the flower? The flower! The flower!" Lilienfeld now shouted into the parquet, when a hesitating "I don't know" came from somewhere. Lilienfeld disappeared, crying "Where's the flower? Where's the flower?"
"Where's the flower? The flower! The flower!" was taken up in endless echoes here and there, above and below, from the wings, on the stage, and now from the last rows of the parquet—a circumstance which only increased the artists' inclination to titter.
A few more lights were turned on, and a remarkable, great red paper flower was set on the stage. Lilienfeld, now better satisfied, reappeared and entered into a conversation with the three musicians.
"Have you studied the dance I told you to?" he demanded, humming the tune and stressing the accented parts to impress it upon them. "Now then," he said, "let's hear what you can do." He raised his bamboo cane like a conductor's baton and said commandingly, "Well, begin."
And the musicians began to play that provoking, passionate melody, that barbaric music, now dull and suppressed, now loud and screeching, which, ever since it first began to excite his nerves, had pursued Frederick night and day. He thanked heaven that the darkness helped conceal his emotion. It was that hard, convulsive motive conjuring up the demons which had been the beginning of his obsession in the Künstlerhaus in Berlin. Over and again those sounds had lured him and led him on.
What was this strange Ariel's intention with him? At whose bidding was he acting when he assailed his victim with inner storms and almost let him perish in a real storm on the seas? Why did he prick Frederick's flesh with this music? Why did he cast its inseverable hempen cords about his throat and limbs? How was it that after so tremendous an eternal tragedy had been enacted out there on the cosmic solitudes of the ocean, after the waters had unmercifully swallowed so vast a number of men, loving life—how was it that this music had remained untouched and unweakened, that it had here resumed its fantastic devilishness? Frederick felt as if new cords were biting into his flesh and tightening about his throat. Something like the anguish and frenzy of a bull with a lasso about its horns came over him—a bull whom a cruel power will misuse for a senseless, bloody show in the arena. Frederick did not hit about him. He did not run away, and yet he came near doing both. His head, it seemed to him, was wrapped up heavily in thick sail-cloth. He must do something finally to rid himself of that enforced blindness. He must look straight in the face of his grotesque opponent—Prospero or Caliban?
"There is no doubt," Frederick felt, while the music tortured and harrowed him, "that men seek madness, they seek it again and again. They are fond of madness. Was not madness the leader of those men who first made the impossible possible and crossed the ocean, though they were neither fish nor fowl?"
In Skagen in Denmark there is a sight worth seeing. In the dining-room of a small inn there are painted figureheads of foundered vessels saved from the wreckage. The hand of madness has unmistakably touched all those wooden men and women with their painted faces and clothes. They look forward into the distance, where they seem to see something beyond all. Their noses quiver in the air on the scent of gold and foreign spices. In some way or other they have come upon a secret and have lifted their feet from their native land to tread the air and pursue illusions and phantasmagoria and discover new secrets in the trackless salt waste. It was by such that El Dorado was discovered. It was such that have led millions and millions of men to their destruction.
And Ingigerd Hahlström, who shortly before had been his painted Madonna of wood, now became Frederick's ecstatic figurehead. He saw her high above the waves on the prow of a phantom sailing ship, bent forward with open mouth and wide eyes, her yellow hair falling straight down from both sides of her head.
The music ceased, and Ingigerd Hahlström stepped on the stage. She was wearing a long blue evening cloak over her costume.
"Mr. Lilienfeld, I think it is rather stupid to change the name of my number from 'Mara, the Spider's Victim' to 'Oberon's Revenge,'" she said very dryly.
"Miss Hahlström," said the impresario, nervously, "please, for heaven's sake, leave that to me. I know the audiences here. Besides, I have reasons for choosing another title. I want to avoid a damage suit by Webster and Forster. Please begin, Miss Hahlström. We have to hurry." Mr. Lilienfeld clapped his hands and called to the musicians to strike up.
Again those provoking strains, immediately upon which Mara danced in, like a naked elf floating in the air. While flying in wide circles about the flower, as yet unseen, she resembled a fabulous, exotic butterfly in her transparent veil shot with gold. Willy Snyders called her a naiad, Ritter a moth. Franck said nothing, merely keeping his eyes fixed upon the transformed girl.
The moment came when with her eyes closed, like a somnambulist, she sniffed the perfume and began to seek its source. In that seeking, there was both innocence and maddening wantonness. A fine quiver went through her body, like the quiver of a moth in its sultry love-play. At last she smelt of the flower itself, and her sudden rigidity showed that she had perceived the great spider on it.
As Frederick knew, she did not always represent the horror, the numbness of fright and the flight in the same way. The artists all admired the change of expression on the dancer's sweet face, where faint distaste gave way to violent repulsion, fright and stark horror. As if a great hand had tossed her, she flew to the outer limits of the circle of light.
But a force compelled her to return to the flower. Mara no longer followed sweet scents. The hideous venomous creature in the flower's calyx drew her against her will, struggling wildly. Her lids were no longer closed. It was with clairvoyant eyes that the little thing went to meet her doom.
"Strange," thought Frederick, "if her father really conceived the idea of this dance himself. In that case he may have divined his daughter's fate with greater insight and love than he is credited with. As she herself admitted, she is sometimes more irresistibly drawn by what is ugly than by what is pure and beautiful; and the dance follows a logical course leading on pitilessly to tragedy."
The new phase of the dance began, in which the dancer looks at the spider again, takes it to be harmless, and laughs at herself, as it were, for her fears. Ingigerd portrayed this with inimitable grace, innocence and merriness.
After passing through a state of pleasant repose, the fight with the imaginary threads enmeshing her limbs began. At this point, the door opening on the parquet creaked on its hinges, and a tall, stately, noble-looking old man was ushered in. He carried his hat in his hand. His hair was silvery grey, and his clear-cut face was clean shaven. He was a gentleman, "every inch of him." The young man who had led the stranger in, dashed out again, and the gentleman seated himself near the door by which he had entered. Director Lilienfeld appeared and, turning and twisting like an eel around the awe-inspiring old man, officiously begged him to be seated in one of the front rows.
The gentleman, Mr. Garry, President of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children and many other organisations, declined with a wave of his hand and fixed his attention upon the performance. Ingigerd had been confused by the creaking of the door, the arrival of a new spectator, and the mumbled greeting of her impresario. She stopped dancing.
"Keep on! Keep on!" cried Lilienfeld. But the girl stepped to the edge of the stage.
"What's the matter?" she inquired.
"Nothing, nothing at all," the director assured her, all impatience.
Ingigerd called for Doctor von Kammacher. Frederick, who was reminded of his father by the old gentleman and had been looking at him with respect, was not a little startled when he heard his name echo through the theatre. It was fearfully painful and humiliating to him to have to step up to the platform and speak to Ingigerd. She bent down and told him to go "sound that old guy from the Society and try to bring him around."
"If I am not allowed to dance, I will jump from Brooklyn Bridge, and you can go fishing for me where my father is," she cried.
Amid convulsive jerkings of her body, throttled by the spider's threads, Ingigerd ended what was apparently her life, though in reality nothing but her dance. Lilienfeld introduced Frederick to Mr. Garry. The stiff old descendant of the Pilgrim Fathers, who had come over in the Mayflower and founded the New England States, measured Frederick with a cold, penetrating glance of his steely grey eyes, a glance hostile as a cat's and as capable, it seemed to Frederick, as a cat's to see in utter darkness. Mr. Garry spoke very quietly, but what he said scarcely aroused hopes that his attitude would be tolerant.
"Evidently," he said after Lilienfeld had got done with an eager harangue, "evidently, the girl's father has already misused her for low purposes, and evidently, the child's education has been neglected. The creature is to be pitied for not having been taught even the commonest notions of feminine shame and decency. Unfortunately," he added in a cold, haughty manner, which in advance robbed any statements in controversion of their force, "unfortunately we have as yet no law to prevent such revolting performances, which grossly offend public sentiment and morality." He scarcely seemed to comprehend Lilienfeld's arguments, assuming without question that Lilienfeld must know how vile he and his profession were in the eyes of every gentleman and that Lilienfeld in his, Mr. Garry's, eyes was entitled to but one epithet, "vermin."
His inadequate English prevented Frederick from taking an important part in the conversation. Nevertheless, he ventured to mention the necessity under which Ingigerd was of earning her own living. Mr. Garry instantly silenced him with the old question:
"Are you the girl's brother?"
Mr. Garry left the room, and Lilienfeld cursed and stormed against the miserable hypocrisy of those old-fashioned Yankees and Puritans.
"I have my strong suspicions," he said, "that an injunction will be issued preventing Ingigerd Hahlström from appearing in public. I owe the whole cursed business to Webster and Forster."
When Frederick went to fetch Ingigerd in the dressing-room, he found her in tears.
"I have nobody but you to thank for this," she cried in a fury. "Why couldn't you let me dance the first day under Webster and Forster, as Mr. Stoss and everybody else advised?"
"Ingigerd," said Frederick, "I had to look out for your health."
"Stuff and nonsense! You took the whole matter into your hands. You acted illegally, against my expressed wish, when you chased Webster and Forster's agent away from the cab when we left the steamer."
Frederick was disgusted. Mr. Garry had made his father's personality more vivid to him than it had been for weeks. Although his father would never have expressed and carried out his views in the same form as Mr. Garry, yet his opinions, as Frederick very well knew, were akin to the Yankee's. Indeed, even in Frederick's soul, many of the same notions, implanted by birth and education, remained unshaken. For the first time since he had fallen under Ingigerd's spell, he realised that he was inwardly independent of her. The one question that still troubled and occupied him was how to rid himself outwardly as well as inwardly from the degrading liaison. Without fully admitting it to himself, he had suffered a disenchantment in Ingigerd's dance; to judge by which, the demon's spell was broken. This time that alluring seductive dance had seemed inconceivably empty. Nor was his compassion aroused to nearly the same extent as formerly.
Franck, the gypsy painter, burst in. He behaved like a madman. His enthusiasm, which somewhat improved Ingigerd's temper, was of the sort that stammers and stutters and cannot find the words to express itself. Frederick looked at him in disgust, but the next moment started when he recognised in his behaviour the marks of his own former obsession. Ingigerd let the painter take her hand and cover it with wild, passionate kisses, which travelled from her wrist to her elbow, a demonstration that seemed to her to be perfectly natural and quite in order.
"I wish you would go visit Mr. Garry again and try to influence him with pleas and threats and money," she said to Frederick.
"That would be foolish and useless," Frederick declared; whereupon Ingigerd wept.
"The only friends I have," she wailed, "are friends that exploit me. Why isn't Achleitner here? Why did Achleitner have to lose his life, and not somebody else? Achleitner was my real friend. He knew how to go about things in the world, and he was rich and unselfish, too."