The tea-table was now deserted by the guests, dancing had begun in the hall, the Little Ones ran to be part of it, and the professor decided to retreat to his own room. “I hope you’ll have a good time,” he said, as he shook hands with young Möller and Herzl, both of whom had sprung to their feet. And then he walked over to his study, to his own fenced-in empire. Here he let down the outer shutters, turned on the writing-table lamp, and sat down to work.
It was work which in an emergency might easily have been done even in an unquiet environment—a few letters, a few quotations. Cornelius, of course, was distrait. He was still haunted by minor impressions, the inelastic pumps of young Hergesell, the high falsetto emanating from the robust body of Fräulein Plaichinger, His thoughts also reverted to Möller’s collection of Basque songs, while he wrote, or, leaning back in his chair, stared at emptiness, and they hovered about Herzl’s humility and exaggerations, “his” Carlos, and the court of King Philip. Conversations, he mused, were strange, mysterious things. They were plastic, and even when undirected, pursued some secret, dominating interest. He seemed to have noticed this frequently. In the intervals he listened to the by no means noisy sounds of the house-dance outside. There was talk to be heard, but not a trace of the shuffling sounds of the dance. But then, they no longer circled and shuffled, they merely walked round the carpet in a peculiar manner, nor were they disturbed by the folds of the carpet. They took hold of one another in a fashion to which he had not been accustomed in his time, and did this to the tunes of a gramophone, tunes which particularly engaged his attention—these peculiar melodies of the New World, the instrumentation of which was jazzy, with all kinds of percussion pieces, which the talking-machine reproduced excellently. There was also the smacking clack of the castanets, but these affected him as merely a part of the jazz noises and not at all as Spanish. No, Spanish they were not. And then he was once more in the midst of his professional thoughts.
After the lapse of half an hour he suddenly remembered that it would be no more than hospitable to contribute a box of cigarettes to the festivities. It would not be proper, he reflected, to have the young people smoke their own cigarettes—though they would think nothing of it. And so he went into the empty dining-room and took a packet from his supplies in a little wall-cupboard. He did not select precisely the best, at least not those which he himself preferred to smoke, but a rather long, thin format, which he was glad to get rid of by this opportunity, for, after all, they were young people. He went into the hall, lifted the box on high with a smile, and placed it open upon the mantelpiece; then, after a brief, swift survey, turned to go back to his room.
Just then came an interval in the dance—the gramophone was silent. The young folk sat and stood about the walls of the hall and chatted, some of them grouped around the heraldic table near the windows, others on chairs in front of the fireplace. Some were perched upon the steps of the built-in staircase, sitting on the rather threadbare plush stair-carpet, and arranged amphitheatrically. Max Hergesell, for example, sat there with the buxom, high-voiced Plaichinger girl, who was looking directly into his face, while he, in a half-reclining posture and with one elbow supported on the step immediately behind him, gesticulated with the other hand while speaking. The main floor-space of the biggish room was empty; only in the centre, directly under the electrolier, the two Little Ones were visible in their blue dresses, awkwardly embracing, gravely and slowly turning about each other. Cornelius, in passing, bent over and, with a gentle word, stroked their hair. But they would not allow themselves to be disturbed in their solemn and infantile undertaking. Looking back from the door of his study, he observed that young Hergesell, probably because he had noticed the professor, had heaved himself up from the step with his elbow, and had come down to take Lorie out of the little arms of her brother, and to dance with her himself in a droll way, without music. His actions were almost like those of Cornelius himself when he went walking with “four gentlemen.” He bent his knees out, and sought to hold her like a grown person, and then made a few shimmy-steps with bashful little Lorie. All those who had observed it were much amused. It was the signal for once more turning on the gramophone and resuming the dance. The professor, with the doorknob in his hand, regarded the scene for a moment, nodding and shrugging his shoulders whimsically, and then entered his room. For some minutes longer his features mechanically retained the smile he had brought in from outside.
He once more began turning over papers under the light of his table-lamp, began to write, and then concluded a few trifling matters. After a time he became aware that the company was leaving the hall and moving over to his wife’s drawing-room, which was directly connected with his study as well as with the hall. Voices were now heard here and the experimental strumming of a guitar. Young Möller was
