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The vast old room was like a field at dusk. Firelight flickered faintly at a great distance, making a pool of light on the intricate parquet floor. In this pool of light sat Otto Wolkenheimb, silent and motionless. At one of the five windows another silent and motionless figure stood gazing down on the grass-grown square.

It was the Autumn of 1918, and to these two men of a crumbling Empire it was the end of the world. Their feelings were not those of men who are to be executed to-morrow; they were those of men who have been executed yesterday. Their world was gone.

Otto Wolkenheimb leaned forward and turned on a small reading lamp. The light shone on his high domed forehead, slanting eyebrows, and round brown eyes, set high above his salient cheek-bones. There was no expression in his eyes. They were like a toy of beautifully polished Chinese boxes: each box contains a smaller one, until the last is reached—and that is empty. His lips were thin; it was not possible to say yet, for he was two years short of forty, whether the lines beside them might not, if fortune went against him, become lines of ruthlessness and self-pity. Otto’s weakest feature was his mouth; women liked it, but the characteristics which formed it were unfavourable to women. Both men were in suspense; but in Otto suspense was merely the prolongation of an inevitable incident; in the younger man it was an anguish of stubborn hope.

Franz Salvator turned away from the window and walked the long length of the room towards his cousin. His handsome features were worn with exposure; his crisp, fair brown hair was touched, young as he was, with silver. His eyes were large, wide apart and very blue. His finely curved, close shut lips had the strength of long patience; and the short cleft chin under them expressed a steady will. It was a beautiful young face, hammered by hard experience; too resolute for laughter, but breaking into charming tenderness when Franz Salvator smiled. He was slim and tall; he moved with the easy motion of one who has mastered every form of activity. His strength was too unconscious to look formidable; it had been tried to the uttermost, but it had not reached its limit. ‘You are sure,’ he said, when he stood on the verge of the little pool of firelight, ‘that there will be no fighting?’ ‘I have given you my word of honour,’ said Otto, without lifting his head. ‘You might be mistaken?’ Franz Salvator insisted. ‘My wits,’ said Otto with a dry smile, ‘are at least as trustworthy as my word.’ ‘Everything has gone mad!’ Franz Salvator exclaimed. ‘We are blown about like leaves, or trampled into mud!’ ‘You have become poetical,’ said Otto more dryly still. ‘But you are right as to the mud—nothing else is left now.’ ‘Otto!’ Franz Salvator said in a low voice, looking about him uneasily at the shadowy furniture as if he feared to be overheard even by such friendly and inanimate witnesses, ‘something horrible happened to me in the streets on my way here—I can hardly speak of it. The crowd would have torn off my medals! A woman spat on my uniform! Are the people of our Country turned into wild beasts?’ ‘All people are beasts,’ said Otto indifferently, ‘only as a rule they are tame. The whip tames them; and now you see we have mislaid the whip!’ ‘I told them,’ Franz said earnestly, ‘ “Men! I have only done my duty; is it for this you attack me? Go and do yours!”—and I knocked two of them down. But though they were afraid of me and I have my medals safe, the feeling of madness remains! I cannot understand it—are there no duties left?’ ‘Ah!’ said Otto looking up quickly into the young man’s eyes, ‘even you question that? It is the point that we have got to face. I hear Eugen.’ The door was flung open, and a man burst into the room with bent head as if he were reeling from a blow. ‘My dear fellow!’ Otto said, rising quickly to meet him, ‘so this is the end?’ Franz Salvator stood speechless, his hand fingering his sword; his dark blue eyes shone hard upon the newcomer; both his hopes and his fears were gone now; only a fatal certainty and his own strength remained. ‘I have come from the Palace,’ gasped Eugen Erdödy, ‘it is finished. They go!’ He sank down in a heap in one of Otto’s deep arm-chairs, his eyeglass swaying helplessly before him, and his round cropped head bent over like an old man’s. Eugen Erdödy had as a rule the faultless rigidity of a mechanical doll; to see him crumpled up shapelessly, without order or dignity, was as shocking as to see the doll with a broken spring cast helpless on the ground. Otto looked at him with a slightly irritated sympathy. There was everything to feel of course, but it was a pity to feel, even everything, so much. There was a lack of spiritual economy, Otto felt, in abandoning yourself to emotion. Eugen did not see as Otto saw, that there is no more use making a stir about the end of a dynasty, than about the end of a rat hunt—the important point in all abrupt closes is not to be the rat.

The loss of the Hapsburgs was an overwhelming public catastrophe, but it was a public catastrophe; and Otto kept his strongest emotions for purely personal disasters. ‘It was bound to come,’ he said considerately, after a pause. ‘Take some cognac, my dear fellow! The Kaiser had the wrong temperament for a king. I said to him a week ago that it might be necessary to break a few heads, and what do you suppose he replied? “Bloodshed for my Country I have had to bear, but I will never bear it for myself.” Emperors who cannot bear bloodshed have to abdicate.’ Eugen poured the cognac with a shaking hand, and drank it hurriedly without appreciation. He did not even glance at the exquisite Venetian glass out of which he drank, though his heart was fixed upon such treasures. ‘It was better to go as you did,’ he muttered, ‘than to see the end come. I was with my Archduke. I had wound up all his affairs. He will return to the country and live on his estate. I did not wish to be a burden to him, so I refused his offers, and said farewell. Then the Socialists were announced. He said, “Stay a little, Eugen.” Half a dozen canaille entered. I could have accounted for at least three of them. Socialists are always flabby. But it was against orders. I said, “Gentlemen, what do you want?” They said, “We wish to see the Kaiser.” The Archduke made a face, and turned his back on them—I am personally attached to my Archduke, but I must admit he is without dignity. The door opened and out came the Kaiser into the Hall of Audience, as if those creatures were his masters. I saw in a flash that they would have been satisfied with a few concessions; they did not expect abdication. He gave them everything. No one could stop him. I seemed to hear the centuries crash behind him. At the end he held out his hand to the dogs and said, “None of my people are my enemies.” ’ ‘I dislike ends,’ said Otto, shrugging his shoulders, ‘particularly sentimental ones. Last week I gave the Kaiser my final advice. He refused it; and I begged leave to resign. I was not trained to be a philanthropist, nor do I find that I have the natural aptitude. Like all idealists, the Kaiser acted for the good of his enemies and left his friends to suffer for it. The class who have supported him is to be destroyed because he feared to kill half a dozen worthless persons. It would be laughable if what deeply affects one personally were ever laughable!’ ‘Yes, our life is gone,’ agreed Eugen gloomily. ‘There is the Danube on one side and a little old cognac left on the other. To which do you propose to devote yourself, Otto?’ ‘Do not let us speak of ourselves!’ interrupted Franz Salvator. ‘The Kaiser has gone. I do not judge him, he sees perhaps further than we, but he is not the last Hapsburg, the line is not dead! If he cannot return to us—and I, for one, will never despair of his return!—there is his son. We can prepare for him—fight for him, when he is ready for us! Eugen, you spoke to the Kaiser, you know his mind? Will he not return?’ ‘Ah!’ said Eugen, staring heavily at the shining floor, ‘men who go—make a mistake! To return is not so easy when to stay has not seemed possible. You ask what is in his mind? But what is in men’s minds does not count; only a man’s acts make history.’ Eugen sank back into silence. His sympathy with Franz Salvator was deeper than words, deeper than tears. He wanted to get drunk and forget it. Blindness! that was what Eugen hungered for. Everywhere there were new evils to see, fresh hearts broken by them, more intensive ruin. Only in the cognac beside him was safety, because only there would unconsciousness blot out the evils he could not help. Otto could speak! He would explain to Franz Salvator all that could be explained. Otto cared for Franz less than Eugen cared for him. He could bear to see hope turn cold in his young cousin’s eyes.

Otto put his hand on Franz Salvator’s shoulder. ‘My dear boy,’ he said slowly and impressively, ‘the Kaiser will not come back. We are in the hands of the rabble who attacked you in the street just now. Be careful not to displease them, for they are our masters!’ ‘Never! never! I will shoot myself first,’ cried Franz Salvator. ‘Why are we sitting here doing nothing? Can we not gather some of the Army together and try to make order?’ Otto shook his head. ‘An army once disbanded,’ he said dispassionately, ‘is a mob. Ask yourself what our soldiers have got by fighting their enemies these four harsh years? Wounds, starvation, death, defeat! And you would ask them to fight again—not against their enemies this time, but against their friends? Be reasonable! We do nothing, my dear child, because there is precisely nothing to be done. There is no Treasury, no Army, no Court, no law! There are a great many good people in the streets who think they have—instead of these things—freedom! To-morrow they will find that they have freedom—to starve. We shall share it with them.’ Eugen moved a shaking hand toward the liqueur bottle. ‘We are kaput!’ he whispered, and the shadows of the vast room echoed the hopeless word, ‘kaput!’ Franz Salvator was silent. The sense of defeat had been for months like something acid in his blood; but he was young and very brave. He could not envisage what defeat meant. He had told himself, and he had told his men, that there was no disgrace in being conquered. One of two fighters must always lose; and no loss that is without shame is final. But he was no longer on the field of battle where suffering is simple, and the heart meets it simply. He was caught in the treacherous obscure trap of the civilized world. Slowly he coloured to the roots of his hair, and looked with puzzled eyes from one of his two friends to the other. Eugen was broken; his eyelids were red and swollen, his hands shook. Something disintegrating and final had taken place in him. His spirit had retreated. Otto was not visibly changed. There was a scarcely perceptible line in his forehead between his oblique eyebrows, but his good-humoured calm was the same as if they were all safely back in one of their serene and brilliant yesterdays. He met Franz Salvator’s puzzled eyes, and leaned slightly forward, placing the tips of his beautifully manicured fingers together. ‘I want you to understand,’ he said in a low resonant voice, ‘that there is no such thing as Austria! No such race as our old race! Our class is finished—as finished as a last year’s drink! As nobles we exist no longer; but we are still men!’ ‘You are right! You are always right, Otto!’ cried Franz, with grave enthusiasm. ‘We are men, and we can still die like men!’ Otto’s curious eyebrows flickered above his bright expressionless eyes. ‘We can still live,’ he said quietly, ‘and it is life, not death, that demands of us wit and courage. I do not know whether life is worth living or not. It is a formidable question; but the answer is easy. For so long as life is worth living—live it!’ ‘But where? But how?’ exclaimed Eugen. ‘I foresaw the downfall. I placed my little fortune in security; but all I have will only keep us in bread—you—Otto—Eugénie—Franz and myself; and when have any of us evinced the slightest interest in bread?’ ‘You are perfectly right,’ agreed Otto; ‘if I had nothing better to suggest than an undignified scramble for crusts, I would embrace your alternative. But before I tell you what I have to suggest, I will ask you to repeat seriously what you see before you. Eugen, you are the eldest; is it your considered opinion and intention to drink yourself to death?’ ‘It is,’ said Eugen, without a moment’s hesitation, ‘unless I find the process too long. If I tire, I shall seek the Danube. I have always disliked water; but a great deal of it at a time is at least conclusive.’ ‘And you, Franz?’ Otto asked. ‘You will end matters by a bullet?’ ‘If I cannot earn enough to keep Eugénie and myself in decency,’ said Franz Salvator. ‘But I am willing, if Eugénie is, to try working first. Personally I prefer death to the present conditions, but I shall not of course desert Eugénie.’ ‘Ah,’ said Otto with a faint smile, ‘Eugénie will, I have no doubt, encourage the idea of work, and by work you mean what is usually alluded to—I have never quite understood why—as “honest toil”?’ Franz Salvator flung back his head impatiently. ‘What else is there for me to do?’ he asked. ‘I have strong arms.’ ‘A life of honest toil,’ said Otto, ‘is not, I fear, particularly remunerative, and I doubt if it will keep you and Eugénie very much above the level of mere bread-winning. Now I will propose my alternative. I may as well say before I go any further that I have no scruples left. Scruples were for the old régime. I shall give up immediately all the virtues that we cultivated in the days which were fit for them. It will be a bore of course, and no doubt we shall have lapses. But the privileges which invented our old virtues will be absent; and we shall learn to match ourselves to our opportunities. We have been fast friends, Eugen and I, for twenty years, and you, my dear Franz, entered our fellowship ten years ago and became in every way one of us. I am the Head of your House, and you accepted me as your leader. It has been an honour, and I hope you both feel that I have not abused it?’ ‘Never!’ cried Eugen and Franz Salvator simultaneously. For the first time during the afternoon Otto was moved, the readiness of his words deserted him; he hesitated and started again at a tangent. ‘Looking back on my life,’ he said, moistening his lips, ‘I can say that our friendship has been the best thing in it. I do not undervalue women; but one does not think of them singly. I have had two friends; you, Eugen! and you, Franz Salvator! I shall have no others. If I have been your leader in the old world, I suggest that you give me your confidence in the new. To you, Franz Salvator, I shall entrust Trauenstein. You love the country, you have always shown a great aptitude for land. I shall ask you to oversee and work the estate to the best of your ability, and I will send you sufficient money for the purpose. I shall be delighted if your sister will occupy with you part of the Schloss—there are I believe three hundred rooms, so you and my mother should be able to accommodate yourselves together without inconvenience. As for you, Eugen, I shall require your legal knowledge and sound head as much as any Archduke, and I ask of you nothing but to carry out and safeguard my schemes—as I retail them to you. Naturally we shall remain in Wien. All three of us had better marry foreign money. In a very short time now the foreigners will swamp us; but they will be, if we use them aright, a fructifying swamp. I propose to let the flat above us to the English at an extremely favourable rent.’ ‘That will be a good step,’ Eugen asserted, ‘but it is not in itself a career. How do you propose to earn money enough to supply Trauenstein, and keep yourself comfortably here in Wien?’ Otto glanced rapidly from one to the other. He had a momentary reluctance. He knew what he was going to do, he had known it for a long time and without hesitation; his reluctance was for the form his action must take. He disliked explanations; but of the two men before him only one would follow him blindly. Otto was anxious, if it were possible, to convince both. It would therefore be necessary for him to explain part at least of his intentions. ‘I have made rather a study of history,’ he observed at last, ‘and in history there are many parallel occasions. Moments of chaos like this, for instance. We have spoken of the world as dead; but worlds don’t die, they change their fashions of life. One sign of vitality still exists, even in this dismembered city. There are a few hundred Jews in Wien who will regulate our new-found freedom and starvation to fill their own pockets. They will survive.’ ‘What has that to do with us?’ asked Franz Salvator impatiently. ‘We are Austrians, not Jews!’ ‘Remember,’ said Otto, ‘what we have already told you, Franz—both Eugen and I. You were under the impression that you fought for your Kaiser and your Fatherland. But there is no such person now, no such place. There is instead, “The New Jerusalem,” a place and a people that have their own laws—their own privileges. Come, my dear Franz! my dear Eugen! don’t let us be tragic! We have lost all we possessed—granted! But hadn’t we each of us something extra? Hardly a possession at all, but a quality or two that we can draw on at a pinch? I at least feel that I am a match for Jews! And I have asked one of them here this afternoon to play the first round with me. This gentleman is old Mandelbaum—the grocer. He is to be made minister in my place. I rather fancy that he does not go in for the honour solely for the salary! Mandelbaum is nearly the master of Wien; but not quite. Since we cannot prevent his power—let us at least share it!’ ‘Why should I dirty my hands because my heart is broken?’ demanded Eugen sharply. ‘I am a little man; independent, and without ambition. No! no! Otto, we cannot sink as low as that!’ It was evident that Eugen understood what Otto meant to do better than Franz Salvator; but it was less certain that he would refuse it. Franz Salvator spoke hesitatingly. ‘But of course,’ he said, ‘I would look after Trauenstein for you! Gladly! gladly! it would be a life work. If I had money enough I think I could make it produce more, but I do not see how you can raise the money? This Jew—Mandelbaum—is it from him you expect to raise a loan? You and Eugen know better than I of course—but I had always understood it was dangerous to borrow money from Jews?’ Otto’s eyebrows came together, and for a moment he looked extraordinarily like one of his Tartar ancestors when that ancestor felt a check to his usually omnipotent will. ‘I do not intend to borrow exactly,’ Otto explained with dry patience; ‘my methods are not quite so crude, nor do I wish that you should even meet this Jewish gentleman. He will be my affair and Eugen’s. For, Eugen, I am certain on reflection you will not leave me to deal single-handed with a power you so much dislike? I ask your assistance and I feel sure that you will not leave me in the lurch.’ ‘No! no!’ agreed Eugen thickly. ‘I am here—count on me, do what you will! But remember that I am not conciliatory in my manner to Jews. If you wish to make a good impression upon this one—withdraw me for the present!’ ‘But,’ interrupted Franz Salvator nervously, ‘why should Otto wish to make any impression upon Herr Mandelbaum?’ There was a moment’s pause before Otto said, ‘My dear boy, because I propose to use Mandelbaum, and in order to use him it is necessary for me to please him. But my conduct is my own affair; all that I find necessary for you is to understand—before you hear it from outside sources—that I do intend to use Mandelbaum. I shall negotiate through him with the present Government, offer them my experience, my foreign languages, my facilities of approach to foreign powers; relieve them in fact of their ignorance—and naturally I shall expect to profit a little by the exchange!’ Franz Salvator looked his cousin Otto straight between the eyes. ‘But you cannot,’ he said resolutely, ‘you cannot mean to do such a thing, Otto? I am stupid! I do not understand you. You would associate with Socialists? The very men who have pulled down our Kaiser! Make bargains with Jews? Earn money out of our ruin? I am mad! Because what you say is impossible! But I know that it is impossible! You are not in earnest? I am too thick-witted to see the joke?’ ‘You see how it seems to him, Otto?’ Eugen murmured, sinking lower and lower in his chair. ‘It seems to him you have made a joke—as bad a joke as God made when He invented man!’ ‘I am making no jokes,’ said Otto severely. ‘Try to be reasonable, Franz. What can you do to make money? You would make an admirable circus rider; but unfortunately there are no circuses at present. Eugen is by training and by inclination a Court official; and there are no more courts. As for me I have what I have always had—my own intellectual resources, and I propose to use them as I think right. I do not ask you to accept any responsibility for my actions; you will merely profit by them.’ ‘But that I find impossible!’ said Franz Salvator slowly and with evident pain. ‘Then you and Eugénie will starve,’ replied Otto angrily. ‘I cannot understand a conscience that exposes a woman to starvation!’ ‘Eugénie would prefer starvation, Otto,’ said Franz steadily. ‘It may be necessary both for men and women to accept death; it can never be necessary for them to accept dishonour. Eugen! why do you not speak? You do not approve of Otto’s intentions?’ ‘I? I approve of nothing except cognac,’ said Eugen heavily. ‘People say more comfortable keep sober! Damn lie! More comfortable keep drunk! Moderate drunkenness, that’s what a man wants! Sober men think; thinking devilish unremunerative at present! Kaiser gone! Country gone! Mandelbaum dirty Jew—but rich! Must have money! Money and blood—only things men are never ashamed of!’ ‘Eugen speaks sense even when he’s drunk,’ said Otto approvingly, ‘and you, my dear Franz, talk nonsense even when you’re sober!’ ‘Eugen!’ Franz leaned over the huddled figure, ‘you won’t let Otto make money out of politics? At any rate you won’t share his infamy?’ Eugen raised his head and fumblingly replaced his eyeglass; it took him a long time to get it fixed; at last he was satisfied and looked from one to the other of his cousins as if he were trying to sum up their differences. ‘Sympathy,’ he said at last, ‘entirely with you, Franz, but reason with Otto. Decent ideas no damned good, like country—kaput!’ ‘Oh, but this is horrible!’ Franz exclaimed. ‘It’s worse than anything that’s happened in all these beastly years! I wish the war had never ended!’ ‘But it has not ended, Franz,’ Otto said quietly. ‘That is where you make your mistake. We have entered into another phase of it, that is all. A phase you don’t understand. We have no country left, therefore we have no duties towards it. We have only a world full of enemies, and we are at liberty to use the weapons of our enemies.’ Franz Salvator looked at him sternly across Eugen’s bowed head. ‘A man never gets rid of his duties towards himself,’ he answered. ‘If you associate for profit with Jews and swindlers, that is what you will become—a Jew and a swindler! and we can have no further dealings with you.’ ‘No! no!’ cried Eugen hoarsely. ‘We’ve been friends all our lives. Can’t let that go! Can’t let that go, Otto!’ He lurched forward with his head on the table and burst into sobs. Franz Salvator hesitated and looked once more at Otto; but the Head of His House merely leaned forward and removed the priceless liqueur glasses into a place of safety.