Part 39 (1/2)
They became silent. Dorn, watching her carelessly in the dimly lighted room, began to think.... ”Disillusionment already. The dream has died in her. A child's brain overstuffed with slogans, it begins now to ache and grow confused. Tyranny, injustice, seem far away and vague. The revolution in the streets has blown the revolution out of her heart.
There will be many like that to-morrow. The over-idealized idealists will empty first. The revolution was a dream. The reality of it will eat up the dream. Justice to the dreamer is a vision of new stars. To the workingman--another loaf of bread.”
”Of what are you thinking, Erik?”
”Of nothing ... and its many variants,” he answered.
”We've won,” she sighed. ”Oh, what a day!”
He noted the listlessness in her voice.
”Yes,” he said, ”another sham has had heroic birth. Out of workingmen with guns there will rise some day a new society which will be different than the old, only as to-morrow is different than to-day. The rivers, Mathilde, flow to the sea and life flows to death. And there is nothing else of consequence for intelligence to record.”
”You talk like a German of the last century,” she smiled. ”Oh, you're a strange man!”
This pleased him. He thought of words, a ramble of words--but a knock at the door. Von Stinnes entered. He was carrying a basket.
”Food,” he announced cheerfully. ”With food in our stomachs the world will seem more coherent for a while.”
He busied himself arranging plates of sandwiches on a small table.
”Mathilde asleep?”
He walked to the bed and leaned over her. The girl's eyes were closed.
”Poor child, poor child!” the Baron whispered. He caressed her head gently. ”We will not wake her up. But eat and leave her food. Do you mind if we go out for a while? It is still early and it will be hard to sleep to-night. I know a cafe where we can sit quietly and drink wine, perhaps with cookies.”
Their eating finished, Dorn accompanied his friend into the street.
”It seems as if nothing had happened,” he said, as they walked through the spring night. ”People are asleep as usual, and there is an odor of summer in the dark.”
Von Stinnes silently directed their way. After a half-hour's walk he paused in front of an ancient-looking building.
”We are in Schwabbing now,” he said, ”the rendezvous of the Welt Anschauers. I think this place is still open.”
He led the way through a narrow court and entered a large, dimly-lighted room. Blank white walls stared at them. Von Stinnes picked out a table in a corner and ordered two flasks of wine from a stout woman with a large wooden ring of keys at her black waist.
They drank in silence. Dorn observed an unusual air about his friend. He thought of Mathilde's suspicions, and smiled. Yet there was something inexplicable about von Stinnes. There had been from the first.
”Inexplicable because he is ... nothing,” Dorn thought. ”A chevalier of excitements, a Don Quixote of disillusion....”
”You are thinking of me,” the baron smiled over his wine-gla.s.s, ”as I am thinking of you. Here's to our unimportant healths, Erik.”
Dorn swallowed more wine. To be called Erik by his friend pleased him.
He looked inquiringly at the humorous eyes of the man, and spoke:
”You are cut after my pattern.”
The Baron nodded.
”Only I have had more opportunities to exercise the pattern,” he replied. ”For the pattern, dear friend, is scoundrelism. And I, G.o.d bless me ...” He paused and gestured as if in a hopelessness of words.