The young people danced with zest, so far as that which took place with such quiet devotion might be called dancing. There was much slow shoving and striding across the carpet, the partners holding each other in new and peculiar ways, the lower part of the body advanced, the shoulders raised, and with a certain swaying of the hips. They did not grow tired, for these movements and steps did not tire. There were no signs of heaving bosoms or of flushed cheeks. Here and there two young girls were dancing together, now and then two young men even—it was all one to them. They strode and stepped to the exotic strains of a gramophone fitted with the loudest needles, which blared forth its foxtrots, shimmies, and one-steps, its double fox, African shimmies, Java dances, and polka creolas—wild perfumed stuff, partly yearning, partly merely exercising, full of an alien rhythm, a monotonous Negro jamboree, tricked out with orchestral effects, percussion notes, tin-panny noises, and odd cluckings.
“What’s the name of that record?” Cornelius asked Ingrid as she went skidding by with the pale-faced speculator. The music was not at all bad; it was full of yearning and provoked one to exercise, and certain passages in it rather pleased him.
“Prince of Pappenheim—‘Lovely Maiden, Don’t Repine!’ ” she answered, and smiled pleasantly, revealing her white teeth.
Cigarette smoke was floating under the chandelier. The fog of festivity had grown thicker—that dry, sweetish, thickish, disturbing festal atmosphere, rich in various ingredients, and so full of memories of early heartaches, especially for one who had overcome an all too sensitive youth.—The Little Ones were still about; they had been allowed to remain until eight o’clock, since the dance gave them such joy. The young people had accustomed themselves to their taking part; in a way and to a certain extent they “belonged.” They had separated by now: Biter was rotating all by himself in his blue velvet tunic in the centre of the carpet; Lorie was comically running behind a sliding couple and trying to hold the gentleman by his dinner-jacket. It was Max Hergesell, with his partner, the Plaichinger girl. They were doing these slidings and glidings very well; it was a pleasure to look at them. One was forced to concede that the dances of the wild new times were capable of being converted into something quite agreeable, when the right people did the converting. Young Hergesell took the lead in an admirable manner, moving freely, and yet, as it seemed, keeping within the rules. How elegantly he executed the backward steps, whenever there was room! But even in a crush he was able to maintain himself in the best taste, supported by the suppleness of a partner who had developed the astonishing grace which women of a full figure are sometimes able to command. They were talking face to face and did not appear to be observing Lorie, who was following them. Others were laughing over the persistence of the little one, and Doctor Cornelius sought to capture her as she passed and to draw her to him. But Lorie disengaged herself with a tortured expression, and wanted nothing to do with Abel for the time being. She refused to recognize him, braced her little arms against his breast, and, averting her little face, struggled to get away from him, nervous and irritated, bent on following her caprice.
The professor experienced a sharp pang, and at that moment hated the party, which bewildered the heart of his darling and alienated it. His love, this love so strange and unconjecturable in its roots and origins, was very sensitive. He smiled mechanically, but his eyes lost their light and settled into a fixed stare upon a pattern in the carpet, between the feet of the dancing couples.
“The Little Ones ought to go to bed!” he said to his wife. But she begged for another quarter-hour for the children. They had been promised that, because they were enjoying the turmoil so greatly. He smiled again and shook his head, remained standing there a moment longer, and then went into the cloakroom, which was overflowing with coats, scarfs, hats, and overshoes.
He had difficulty in dragging his own things out of the confusion. And then Max Hergesell came into the cloakroom, wiping his forehead with his handkerchief.
“Herr Professor,” he began in the tone common to all Hergesells, and with a certain youthful reverence, “I see you are going out. These pumps of mine are the limit, they pinch like the very Old Nick. They are really too small for me, as I’ve discovered, quite apart from their hardness. This presses here, so frightfully, on my big-toe-nail,” he went on, standing on one foot, while he held the other in his hand, “that I can’t stand it. I’ve made up my mind to change back into my street shoes.—But wait—can’t I give you a hand?”
“Thank you,” said Cornelius. “Don’t worry about me! You must get rid of your own troubles! It’s awfully kind of you.” For Hergesell had knelt down and had fastened the clasps of the professor’s overshoes.
The professor thanked him again, agreeably affected by so much sincere and respectful solicitude. “You must go and enjoy yourself,” he said, “after you have changed your shoes! It’s impossible that you should continue to dance in shoes that pinch. You simply must change them. Auf wiedersehen!—I must get out for a breath of fresh air.”
“I’m going now to have another dance with Lorie,” Hergesell called after him. “She’ll be a star dancer some day,
