XII

Scarcely heeding the abuse and scorn heaped upon him by the crowd, out of the chaos and confusion of the contemptuous glances of others and his own feeling of perplexity, Count Told stole, as if in a dream, towards the vestibule. He thought of his wife, but he had not the courage to look round for or inquire about her. His car stood before the door, and the chauffeur was about to start the engine when the Count made a gesture of denial, saying, “Wait for the Countess!”

He went into the town and hired the first taxi he saw to drive him home. “What has happened to me?” was the question that he perpetually put to himself. “What was it that overcame me? Who moved my hand?⁠ ⁠… What is it that has happened? I know nothing about it. Can it be merely a bad dream?”

But it was no dream. He reached his house and had to descend. He went down the length of the garden and into the house. The footman took his coat, and the Count went to the room where he and his wife, whenever they had been out together, were wont to spend a short time before going to bed, in exchanging the experiences the evening had afforded. He always looked forward eagerly to these moments.

Tonight he was alone there. “Where can my wife be?” he asked himself, astonished and yet unconscious. So many tender memories clung to this room, and he felt disappointed that in this dreadful hour she was not by his side. It was the first painful experience of his existence.

But all at once it became clear to him that she must have sundered herself from him, and he realized that by that inexpressibly strange occurrence at the gaming-table in the Wendel mansion he had covered himself with mire. It clung fast to him, and he thought, “Lucy must leave me. She must remain away until I have purified myself.” But how was he to accomplish the task?

And suddenly there came over him, like an icy blast in all its pitiless severity, the full meaning of what he had done. He had done it, he really had put cards at the bottom of the pack and then drawn them when he wanted them, and with these he had won money. Yet he had not desired to win money! What could have happened? Was there no help anywhere? He had done something against his will. His act had thrust him out of decent society, and to the end of his days he would be known as a cheat. Was there no help to be found?

“I know now,” he said to himself, “what it is I have done, but I do not know how I came to do it, neither the why nor the wherefore. I am growing crazy, losing my self-confidence, and I shall henceforth be unable to feel safe, whatever I do. Horrible, monstrous thought! I am absolutely afraid of myself. How can I ever have reached such a point? Yonder is a sculpture by Archipenko and the picture hanging there is one of Kokoschka’s; I am quite certain of that; but what proceeds from my own brain, and is my own creation, of that I can never more feel certain again. I retain my sight, hearing and feelings, but my brain is rotting!⁠ ⁠… I shall end in a lunatic asylum! My body moves in the light of day while my mental powers are wrapped in a dim twilight. Is there no one that can help me?”

He struggled with his tears, but he could not even allow himself to weep, for he thought, “Perhaps I shall lose all consciousness of what I am doing. If I weep, may I not possibly destroy a picture that I have hitherto loved and worshipped, or abuse my man, or act improperly to Lucy’s maid?”

And suddenly, at the utterance of his wife’s name, he collapsed entirely. “Ah, Lucy, light of my life, can you not help me?” he cried. “Will you not come? Have you no longer faith in me? Why am I left alone?”

He rang, and then, hastening to meet the footman, inquired for the Countess.

“The Countess has not yet returned,” he was told.

“Nor telephoned? Has she not⁠ ⁠…”

“No, my lord, but an hour ago Herr Dr. von Wenk rang up, asking if he might have the honour of waiting on her ladyship tomorrow morning. His telephone number has been written down.”

“Go!” said the Count. “I will go to Dr. Wenk⁠ ⁠… yes, to Dr. Wenk,” he thought, and then, a prey to a thousand nameless fears, he cried aloud, “Or else I shall hang myself! I must be able to tell some human being what I feel.⁠ ⁠…”

He hurried to the telephone, giving the number written down. “Yes, this is the State Attorney, Dr. Wenk!” answered a strange voice in the distance, and Told began to tremble. But he rallied all his energy and self-control, saying, “Can I speak to you at once?”

He was terribly afraid that the fever of his desire might melt the connecting wire and that he might get no answer. He breathed freely again when he heard the words, “With pleasure! I shall expect you!”

“Fritz!” he shouted; “get the two-seater ready,” and he drove back to Munich.

Wenk believed he had come on the Countess’s errand, and that something had happened in the prison to put an end to the enterprise they had in hand.

“I think, Count Told, that after all it was too risky an experiment. The Countess.⁠ ⁠…”

“No, no,” cried Told, interrupting him. “I⁠ ⁠… I⁠ ⁠… it is on my own account that I’ve come here,” and then he began his story. He told, too, what an extraordinary sensation of heat he had felt at the back of his head, and this must have been the forerunner of misfortune. “Do not be vexed, Dr. Wenk, that I, a stranger, should come to you thus, but I should have had to put an end to myself if I had not been able to confide in someone tonight. May I go on? Well, these powerful rays, that were like red-hot iron at the back of my head, changed gradually to a feeling of well-being throughout my whole body. They seemed to bathe me in pleasant warmth, and I had a feeling that I was somehow saved from something that lay before me, and in this very moment of relief⁠ ⁠… it happened! In the first half-hour afterwards I denied that it could have done, but when I reached home I realized that the dreadful story was true, and this thing had really happened. There is no getting away from it, either for others or for myself.”

Wenk at once recalled his experience with the old Professor. He was startled. Could it be possible that here too⁠ ⁠… and he thought of the Countess and of Cara Carozza. He asked Told, “Have you any suspicion at all?”

The Count did not understand the question.

“Any suspicion? What do you mean? That I have been like this before? Ill in this way? No, never!”

“No, a suspicion of any special person who was there?”

“The idea never occurred to me. I can’t understand how anybody else could.⁠ ⁠… No⁠ ⁠… I don’t suspect anyone!”

“Was there nobody in the company who did not seem to belong there, who was not quite like the other guests?”

“It was a company of the Privy Councillor’s intimate friends. No, there was nobody!”

Wenk rejected the idea. Besides, how could there be any connection between the criminal he was seeking and the Count’s act of cheating? It was apparently a momentary mental aberration, a loss of willpower. A subconscious process in a strange and elusive personality which bordered upon morbidity, which thus strove to register a mental impression upon its fellow-players. The Count ought to consult a psychiatrist. It was extraordinary that he should appeal to him, a criminal prosecutor, but he did not put any question to him on this head.

Told became silent, and the lawyer respected his mood. Then suddenly he seemed to pull himself together and said, “I realize that I am keeping you from your night’s rest; I beg you not to be vexed with me. In misfortune it seems as if the mind sinks into a gulf, and the consciousness grasps at the nearest support. You had rung up, and there was some connection between you and⁠ ⁠… my house, and so.⁠ ⁠…” He broke off. “But tell me, am I really saying what I want to, or am I talking nonsense? You see, that is the horror of such an experience as mine. It seems as if I shall always require a neurologist to guide my future life.”

“Reassure yourself, Count; you are speaking quite clearly and saying exactly what you want to express. I beg you to make use of me if you can. My calling in some respects borders upon the sphere of the specialist in nerve-disorders; perhaps it goes even further, and at any rate it is bound up with the most mysterious and most speculative part of man’s being. I am very sorry that the occasion that brings you to me is such an unfortunate one, else I should be only too pleased by your visit.”

While Wenk was speaking, desiring to convey that anything out of the common which was mentally or spiritually of an unusual and critical nature was really his concern, the idea occurred to him to enlist the Count’s sympathy in his own aims. Count Told was a man of the world. He belonged to a sphere through which Wenk hoped to be able to endow the life of the nation with nobler qualities and loftier ideals. In the practical necessities which the last few months had forced upon him he had almost neglected the ideal side of the task before him. The events of this night had brought him into unexpected relations with a human being, and he could best serve him by not leaving him alone. He explained his views to the Count.

“They talk of ours as the ‘upper’ class. This description, which certainly has a substratum of truth, must be made a living reality once more. Our class, free of the struggle to obtain a better social status, is more than ever called upon to foster intellectual development and mental gifts. It must cherish these noble qualities in itself and turn them to account for others. Our sphere of politics must be the spiritual one!”

Count Told’s life hitherto had been irreproachable. Both in sentiment and in the externals of life he had shown himself superior, but for lack of serious pursuits to which he could devote himself he had thrown his energies into following up his hobbies, such as the collection of Futurist works of art, for which there was as yet no standard to judge by. He patronized young poets who were at present but a minority and a novelty. They were brought into the light, and the discovery of their powers engaged the serious attention of himself and his like. The struggle to get possession of something new and striking was carried on in this respect just as it was by the profiteers of ordinary wares.⁠ ⁠… It was not the uneducated rich who devoted themselves to it, but those who sought for their wealth a channel which should return their gold stamped with the impress of beauty and of intellectual superiority. But these fell victims to the age, and their ideas dissolved in hysteria akin to that of a weeping woman whose whole consciousness can hold but one idea. The value of money declined, and in so doing its power over men became all the greater; it seized upon them with ever-growing force, till at last it was like a disease.

Such was the connection between the hobbies of the Count and his like and the age they lived in. The age made use of what was valuable in them. The propagandists of the “new art” were merely stockjobbers, uniting their intellectual ambitions with their speculations. The celebrated “Blue Horses” were to be had for a couple of hundred marks at first. X bought them for eight hundred, and now it was impossible to obtain them for two hundred thousand. It was such anecdotes as these that spurred them on.

For a long time Wenk and Count Told discussed these things. The Count opposed Wenk’s view, having learnt some of the terminology of the artists whose pictures he bought.

“Folks even begin to say,” said Wenk to him on one occasion, “that he speaks as well as a Futurist! And this school begins to affiliate itself with another intellectual movement of our day, which stands on much the same foundations⁠—with the so-called theosophy. You will notice that the Futurist eo ipso is also a theosophist or an anthropologist. But it is not because these ideas are really inwardly connected, but because the pursuance of them is united. You will always find nowadays that those who most freely deplore the materialism of our age are those who in private life are most devoted to it. Moreover, in the one case as in the other, it is not always a question of money. Mental and spiritual greed is also an aspect of this age, which exchanges the dominion of one for that of another. Everywhere folks are seeking, seeking eagerly to escape from the misery of the present, and for us mortals there remains but warfare⁠—war against those near us, against those among us, and against ourselves, and it is our class especially which must wage war against ourselves!”

Wenk then asked the Count whether he would not spend the night with him, as it was now so late.

The Count answered involuntarily, “Yes, but my wife.⁠ ⁠…” Then he stopped, looking at Wenk, and his face showed the return of his tormenting thoughts. After a time he began again: “You had caused me to forget my trouble, Dr. Wenk! For this night I have robbed you of, which you have devoted to me so sympathetically, I shall eternally be in your debt. I cannot think how I should have lived through it⁠—alone! Now it seems to be behind me, and I gratefully accept your offer of a bed.”

“How would you like,” said Wenk to Count Told next morning, “for me to see the Privy Councillor and relate your story to him?”

“I should be extremely glad if you would.”

He hesitated as if he wanted to say something more. Wenk noticed it and waited. Then he said, anticipating the other, “I am absolutely at your service. If you have any other wish.⁠ ⁠…”

The Count answered quickly, reddening as he spoke, “Yes, I want to speak to my wife. When I think of her I feel⁠ ⁠… so ashamed!”

“You need not be ashamed!”

“My wife has such a strong and forceful idea of life. It always seemed as if she found our life together a somewhat feeble thing.⁠ ⁠… I wonder whether it will be possible for her to go on living with a husband who henceforth is but an invalid.”

“I will see her, too,” said Wenk.

The Privy Councillor received Wenk at once. As amiably as he could, and in the pleasantly sarcastic tone which distinguished him on all occasions, he told Wenk that his opinion was that the Count had been anxious to adventure something that might raise him in his wife’s esteem. The force of her personality stood far above his own, and he hoped to attain to it by undertaking so hazardous a scheme as to “pack” the cards and win the game. It was not on account of the money, he was convinced of that. He merely wanted to exercise his imagination in adventure as his wife did, but her strength of character always ensured a safe way of escape. For the more feeble personality the first attempt had ended in misfortune. His fantasies had been excited by the current stories of the thieving band of gambling cheats, and the whole affair was mainly due to his neighbour at the table, whose own desire for gain influenced a weaker character and thus paved the way to a society scandal.

“May I inquire, sir, who this neighbour was?”

“Ah, now that I have been so unamiable as to speak of him thus, I cannot possibly betray him. Moreover, he is the blameless head of a household, a professor of physiology.”

“The matter is a great deal more serious than you can have any idea of, sir. The Count spent last night with me, driven to get away from himself. He told me the story, down to the most trifling detail, and I have no reason whatever to suspect that he was misrepresenting the facts. He was absolutely confounded and crushed by the affair. It seemed as if it had been a failure of intellectual force, a sudden inhibition of brain-control. May there not have been someone among your guests who exercised some special influence on the Count?”

“No, there was no Futurist poet or painter among them,” laughed the Privy Councillor.

“I beg you not to consider my questions importunate, Councillor. You really are convinced that no such person was present?”

“I do not believe there could have been any. All my guests have been personally known to me for some time. You know what the occasion of our meeting was, don’t you? We were studying the effect of hypnosis on a medium. There were experts, professors, artists of repute, and some personal friends in the company. Then there was a Dr. Mabuse, whom I have not known very long, but whose extraordinary success as a practitioner I respect very highly. He practises psychotherapy. And that reminds me. If Count Told’s state is such as you describe it to be, we might see what he can do for the Count, who is the son of one of my very oldest friends, for I feel a great deal of sympathy for him in his present position. Tell him from me that I strongly advise his seeing Dr. Mabuse, to whom I will give him a letter, for I know his telephone number only.”

Wenk said farewell, and drove from the house to Count Told’s villa at Tutzing, hoping that he might find the Countess there, but he was told by the footman that neither his master nor his mistress had spent the night at home. Then he returned to his own chambers, where the Count, pale and haggard, waited eagerly for him.

“I felt sure of it,” he said disconsolately, when Wenk told him that the Countess had not returned home, “but one always hopes for the impossible. And what about the Privy Councillor?”

“I told him exactly what you told me; he had regarded the matter in another light, but not a very serious one. He advises you to consult a neurologist whom he knows, and has given me this letter to him for you.”

“Dr. Mabuse,” read the Count. “Why, he was at the party last night.”

“Shall I go to him?” suggested Wenk.

“No, Doctor, I really must not rely on your kindness any longer. I must pull myself together and deal with this crisis in my life. I will call up Dr. Mabuse on the telephone, as we have his number there. I will do it from here, if I may.”

“Dr. Mabuse,” said the Count at the telephone, “you were present at Privy Councillor Wendel’s party last night when I had the misfortune to.⁠ ⁠…”

“That is so.”

“I want your professional help. The Councillor gave me a letter of introduction to you. Can I bring it at once?”

The other voice answered harshly, “No. I do not see patients except in their own homes. What is your address? Expect me there tomorrow morning at 11 a.m. Repeat the appointment; what time is fixed?”

“Eleven a.m.,” said the Count, thoroughly terrified, and then he left Wenk’s house.