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Im Kino Der Humanwissenschaften Studien Zur Medialisierung Wissenschaftlichen Wissens Ramón Reichert Full Chapter Download PDF
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Ramón Reichert
Im Kino der Humanwissenschaften
Ramón Reichert (Dr. phil.), Univ. Ass. lehrt Medientheorie an der
Kunstuniversität Linz. Seine Forschungsschwerpunkte sind Wis-
sens- und Mediengeschichte, Visuelle Geschichte, Populäre Kultur,
Medienästhetik. Zuletzt veröffentlichte er die Anthologie »Reader
Neue Medien« (2007, gem. mit Karin Bruns).
Ramón Reichert
Im Kino der Humanwissenschaften.
Studien zur Medialisierung
wissenschaftlichen Wissens
Gefördert durch: Bundesministerium für Bildung, Wissenschaft und
Kultur (bm:bwk), Österreichische Forschungsgemeinschaft (ÖFG),
MA 18 (Gruppe Wissenschaft), Wien
Einführung
9
III. Paratexte
101
III.1. Wahrnehmungs-Dispositiv und Kino-Dispositiv
101
III.2. Paratexte im Lehrfilm
102
III.3. Lektüreanweisungen im Vorwort
107
III.4. Logo, Titelsequenz und Credits
110
Literatur
263
Abbildungsnachweis
291
Drucknachweis
293
Dank
293
Einführung
9
IM KINO DER HUMANWISSENSCHAFTEN
10
EINFÜHRUNG
11
IM KINO DER HUMANWISSENSCHAFTEN
12
EINFÜHRUNG
historische Verknüpfung prägt bis heute die stereotype Tradierung der Ge-
genüberstellung von fiktiven und nicht-fiktiven Film, was dazu geführt hat,
dass die Auseinandersetzung dokumentarisierender Genres oder Medien-
formate mit ihrer eigenen Narratologie mehr oder weniger ausgeblieben ist.
Das Spiel mit kinästhetischen Wahrnehmungsversuchen erzeugte in
der frühen Stummfilmzeit Berührungspunkte zwischen Jahrmarkt, Zirkus,
Schule, Bildungsvereinen und Laboratorium: Visuelle Coups, demonstra-
tive Showelemente und Interaktionen mit dem Publikum bildeten inszena-
torische Bestandteile einer gemeinsamen Rhetorik. Am Ende des 19. Jahr-
hunderts kann das Kino insgesamt als eine Testsituation für eine sich
wandelnde visuelle Kultur verstanden werden. Die Medialisierung der
Sinne durch das Kino stand hier erst am Anfang. Erst im historischen Ab-
stand erkannte der Typus des erkalteten Wahrnehmungssubjektes der
1920er Jahre im Kino einen Sammelbegriff für heterogene Praktiken, in
deren Zentrum der Menschenversuch stand (Lethen 1994). Zwischen den
Kriegen beschrieben Walter Benjamin und Ernst Jünger das Kino als einen
bevorzugten Ort für ein Apperzeptionstraining (vgl. Köppen 2005: 82).
Mit seinem kommerziellen Erfolg veränderte sich das Kino als soziale
Institution und wurde zum umkämpften Schauplatz medienökonomischer
Strategien. Der Aufstieg des Kinos zum marktwirtschaftlichen Machtfak-
tor hatte für das Kinopublikum einschneidende Konsequenzen: Es wurde
selbst zum Gegenstand humanwissenschaftlicher Forschung. Die Phase des
Imagewechsels des Kinos vom billigen Spektakel für die Unterschichten
zum achtbaren Freizeitvergnügen für die Mittelklasse forcierte die ameri-
kanische Kino-Industrie in ihrem Streben nach Nobilitierung am Vorabend
des Ersten Weltkriegs (Bowser 1990: 191). Der durch die filmwirtschaftli-
che Expansion des Kinos verursachte Strukturwandel des Publikums war
ein schwer einschätzbarer Faktor für die führenden Filmgesellschaften.
Um die erforderlichen narrativen Dimensionen der Stummfilmproduktion
auf die neuen Publikumsschichten abstimmen zu können, suchten die
großen Firmen der amerikanischen Filmkultur fieberhaft Methoden zur
psychologischen Evaluierung der neuen Rezeptionsmuster. 1916 wurde der
in Harvard lehrende Experimentalpsychologe und Kinotheoretiker Hugo
Münsterberg mit einem Vertrag im Umfang von 2000 Dollar von Para-
mount Pictures beauftragt, psychotechnische Testverfahren zur Publikums-
forschung zu entwickeln (vgl. Schweinitz 1996: 13–14). In der populär-
wissenschaftlichen Filmreihe in Magazinform mit dem Titel »Paramount
Pictographs« entwarf Münsterberg eine Reihe von psychologischen Test-
fragen, die der Kinobesucher nach der Vorstellung selbst ausfüllen konnte
(vgl. Carroll 1988: 489–499). Mit den von rivalisierenden Konzernen be-
auftragten humanwissenschaftlichen Versuchsreihen, wie sie Münsterberg
durchführte, formte sich das Beziehungsgefüge von Medium und Beobach-
ter zum Kreislauf wechselseitiger Überwachung und zu einer präkyberne-
tischen Feedbackschleife: Beobachter (Publikum) werden seither beim
Beobachten beobachtet (Forscher) und diese Beobachtungen (Forschungs-
13
IM KINO DER HUMANWISSENSCHAFTEN
14
EINFÜHRUNG
15
I. Filmtheorie und Wissenschaftsgeschichte
17
IM KINO DER HUMANWISSENSCHAFTEN
die Konzepte der Bildwissenschaften und der Visuellen Kultur mit den
film- und fernsehwissenschaftlichen Forschungstraditionen, die das Bild-
Ton-Verhältnis untersuchen, zu bereichern. Vieles scheint für diese Ar-
gumentation zu sprechen. So entspricht es einem faktischen Sachverhalt,
dass das Medienzeitalter des 20. Jahrhunderts vorrangig von audiovisuel-
len Medien geprägt wurde. Der Einwand, dass die visuelle Kommunikation
relevanter als die auditive Kommunikation sei, kann mit dem Hinweis ab-
gegolten werden, dass damit noch nicht der Ausschluss des Auditiven aus
dem Bild-Ton-Verhältnis gerechtfertigt sein kann. Wenn davon ausgegan-
gen wird, dass kollektive Erinnerung ein geschichtlicher und diskursiver
Prozess ist, der mit den Produktionsmitteln und -methoden medialer Ver-
mittlung ermöglicht und verhandelt wird, dann ist es für transdisziplinär
ausgerichtete Studien unabdingbar notwendig, audiovisuelle Medien und
damit die Bild-Ton-Relation in das Zentrum ihrer Analyse zu stellen. Ge-
genwärtig beherrscht hingegen das Forschungsparadigma des Pictorial
Turn die Debatten der unterschiedlichsten Fachbereiche.1 Zahlreiche Stu-
dien wurden bis heute durchgeführt und öffentlichkeitswirksame Debatten
haben sich vermittels der von ihnen angestrengten Perspektivierung der
jungen Forschungsrichtung etablieren können.2 Dennoch wurde bisher der
Film als Medium und das Kino als Institution in fächerübergreifenden Stu-
dien kaum als Forschungsgegenstand erwählt. Die Zweitreihung von Film,
Fernsehen und Video widerspricht jedoch ihrer Repräsentanz und ihrem
18
I. FILMTHEORIE UND WISSENSCHAFTSGESCHICHTE
19
IM KINO DER HUMANWISSENSCHAFTEN
20
I. FILMTHEORIE UND WISSENSCHAFTSGESCHICHTE
film oder der Lehrfilm wurden als kulturell wertlose Auftragswerke für wis-
senschaftliche oder industrielle Zwecke geächtet und – mit wenigen
Ausnahmen – aus der Geschichte des Films ausgeschlossen. In die großen
Geschichten des Films wie auch in den Filmkanon selbst sind demzufolge
kulturelle Identitäten eingeschrieben, die auf implizite Machtverhältnisse
verweisen. Kulturelle Kodierungen (Identität) und Spezifikationen (wertvoll/
wertlos) subordinieren Filme und erstellen Ranglisten der bedeutenden
Meisterwerke und der nutzlosen Bastarde. Filme stehen folglich nicht in
einem gleichberechtigten Nebeneinander, sondern werden in Form von
Dominanz- und Unterordnungsverhältnissen in ihre geschichtliche und so-
ziale Welt eingeschrieben – nämlich mit den Mitteln kultureller Kompetenz.
Forschung und Literatur zum Stellenwert der medialen Konstruktion
wissenschaftlicher Performativität haben seit den frühen 1990er Jahren
eine behutsame Adaption kultur- und bildwissenschaftlicher Methoden
vorgenommen und sukzessive werden seither audiovisuelle Medien als
»Gegenstand«, »Quelle« und »Material« der Geschichtsschreibung von
Wissenschaft thematisiert (vgl. Cartwright 1995; Hediger 2005/06). Davon
ausgehend, dass die Genese, Herstellung und Distribution von Wissen ein
geschichtlicher und diskursiver Prozess ist, der mit den Produktionsmit-
teln und -methoden medialer Vermittlung verhandelt wird, ist es also für
eine fächerübergreifende Forschung unabdingbar notwendig, audiovisuelle
Medien in die historische Analyse miteinzubeziehen. Im Rahmen dieser
Fragestellung kommt der Filmwissenschaft ein nicht unbedeutender Stel-
lenwert zu, insofern sie selbst aus einer ausdifferenzierten Wissen-
schaftstradition hervorgeht und daher über Methodenvielfalt, kanonisierte
Analysebegriffe und systematisierte Theoriemodelle in der Untersuchung
von spezifisch filmischen Modi, Techniken und Verfahrensweisen verfügt.
Die These der Medialisierung der Wissenschaft verweist auf die aktive Rolle
der Medien bei der Produktion von Wissen. Wissen ist untrennbar verbunden
mit medialen Repräsentationsformen. Hinsichtlich ihrer wissenschaftlich-
technischen Voraussetzungen und kulturellen Praktiken ändern sich Ver-
anschaulichungsmethoden der Wissensrepräsentationen kontinuierlich.
Im Selbstverständnis der wissenschaftlichen Praxis sind die in Forschung
und Entwicklung zum Einsatz kommenden Medien jedoch lange Zeit als
Instrument oder Werkzeug angesehen worden. Dabei wurde generell von
einem technisch-apparativen Medienbegriff ausgegangen, mit welchem
Medien als behelfsmäßige Erweiterung der menschlichen Sinnesvermögen
begriffen worden sind. »Registrir-Apparate« (Marey 1985: 2) nannte man im
19. Jahrhundert mediale Anordnungen und instrumentelle Messverfahren,
durch die Beobachtungen von Naturphänomenen mit den entsprechenden
21
IM KINO DER HUMANWISSENSCHAFTEN
22
I. FILMTHEORIE UND WISSENSCHAFTSGESCHICHTE
»Visual documents are used at all stages of scientific research. A series of representa-
tions of renderings is produced, transferred, and modified as research proceeds from
initial observation to final publication. At any stage in such a production, such repre-
sentations constitute the physiognomy of the object of the research.« (Lynch 1990:
154)
Die Auswahl und der Aufbau eines Drehortes, die Herstellung der geeigneten
Apparaturen und der Kulissen, das Aufstellen der Kamera, die Konfiguration
des Bildfeldes, das Arrangement der epistemischen Dinge, die Kalkulation
der Abläufe, die Momente der Überraschung, die Unterbrechungen, Stör-
fälle und Pausen, das fehlerhafte Material, das Einüben und das Wiederho-
len der Versuche, dabei die Anwesenheit der Kamera, das Entwickeln des
Films, die Rituale der Aufführungen, die Publikationsstrategien, die Arbeit
23
IM KINO DER HUMANWISSENSCHAFTEN
24
I. FILMTHEORIE UND WISSENSCHAFTSGESCHICHTE
25
IM KINO DER HUMANWISSENSCHAFTEN
»Die Narratologie verfolgt also weitgehend eine interne Analyse auf der Ebene des
Textes, ihr Anliegen ist ein formal-poetologisches. […] Diese Forschungsrichtung stellt
sich primär die Frage, wie das Narrative entsteht, wie Texte, also auch Filme, erzählen.
26
I. FILMTHEORIE UND WISSENSCHAFTSGESCHICHTE
Sie kann diese Frage auf der Ebene der semantisch-logischen Tiefenstruktur verfolgen,
indem sie die Organisation, den Aufbau und letztlich das System einer Erzählung er-
forscht, unabhängig vom Medium, in dem sich dieses aktualisiert.« (Tröhler 2002:
25)
In der Filmtheorie wird der unmittelbare mimetische Bezug des Films zur
außerfilmischen Welt oft als assertive Aussage (oder auch: repräsentionale
Aussage) bezeichnet. Mit assertiven Aussagen wird eine Behauptung ge-
setzt, informiert und festgestellt. Mit diesem Aussagetypus lässt sich ein
stereotypes Verfahren der Absicherung von Argumenten im Räsonnieren der
Wissenschaftler beschreiben. Im Kinodispositiv des wissenschaftlichen Dis-
kurses wird die ontologisch-assertive Aussage mit dem »Realitätspara-
digma« des fotografischen Bildes verknüpft (vgl. zur deutschsprachigen
Diskussion über das Kinodispositiv Winkler 1992). Verschwiegen wird
meist, dass es sich dabei weniger um eine kognitve Aussage über die faktisch
gegebene Wirklichkeit, sondern um einen bestimmten Stil filmischer Gestal-
tungsmöglichkeiten handelt.
Der allgemeine Begriff der Indexikalität garantiert keine Annähe-
rung an eine konkrete Beschreibung der im Bild aufgezeichneten Phä-
nomene (diese Problematik gilt gleichermaßen für den Ton). Die modal-
verfahrenstechnische Frage »Wie wird ein wissenschaftliches Bild gemacht
und als solches anerkannt?« bedarf einer phänomenologischen Sondierung
des Bildes, die der prädikative Befund der Indexikalität oft stillschweigend
voraussetzt. Eine »dichte Beschreibung« (Geertz 2003) der wissenschaft-
lichen Kinematographie hat aber nicht das Ziel, zu allgemeinen Aussagen
zu kommen, vielmehr werden Generalisierungen im Studium des Ein-
zelfalls untersucht und problematisiert. Es geht um eine Thematisierung
filmischer Strategien wie: Schärfe und Unschärfe, Bildvordergrund und
-hintergrund, Dekonstruktion des Orientierungsraumes; um eine Ausein-
andersetzung mit der Frage, was ein klares und was ein störendes Bild ist,
mit der Inszenierung wissenschaftlich relevanter Handlungen im Bild-
zentrum, mit der Konstruktion spezifischer Handlungsfolgen, mit der Sug-
gestion eines raumzeitlichen Kontinuums u.a.m. In Bezugnahme auf die
»dichte Beschreibung« von Geertz können konkrete Techniken und Prak-
tiken entziffert und dargestellt werden – ohne dabei aber den verallgemei-
nernden Kausalitätsbezug zwischen Einzelsituation und Mentalität her-
zustellen.
Um wissenschaftliche Filme überhaupt als authentische und evidente
Quelle wahrzunehmen, müssen nicht nur ihre strukturellen Eigenschaften,
sondern auch ihr Umfeld, die paratextuellen Bedingungen, glaubwürdig
sein. Daher stellen »gefährliche« Elemente wie Fiktionalisierung oder sub-
jektive Stile nicht nur den Film als Dokument, sondern den gesamten For-
schungsaufbau radikal in Frage. Über die Restriktion des objektivierenden
Modus im wissenschaftlichen Film bemerkt Odin:
27
IM KINO DER HUMANWISSENSCHAFTEN
»Was den Film angeht, wird man zunächst bemerken, dass es Gebiete gibt, wo der äs-
thetische und der Kunst-Modus ganz offenbar nichts zu suchen haben: etwa bei der
naturwissenschaftlichen oder der angewandten Forschung oder bei der Verwendung des
Films als Dokument. In diesen Zusammenhängen findet die Anerkennung des Enunziators
in einem anderen institutionellen Rahmen statt (naturwissenschaftliche Forschung und
Praxis oder Geschichte als innerhalb der Institution Kunst, und die aufgebotenen Werte
Objektivität, Informationsgehalt, praktische Effizienz sind keinesfalls ästhetischer Art.)«
(Odin 2002: 49)
»Das bedeutet nicht, dass die Filme, die für diese Bereiche gemacht werden, nicht auch
unter dem ästhetischen Modus betrachtet werden können, doch dies erfordert, dass
man sie aus dem ›Rahmen‹ (Goffman) herausnimmt, für den sie gemacht worden sind,
wie es bei gewissen experimentellen found footage-Produktionen der Fall ist.« (Ebd.)
»Gerade in den ersten Jahren nach der ›Erfindung‹ des Films gab es keine institutionalisierte
Trennung zwischen ›fiction‹ und ›nonfiction‹. Alle Filme waren unabhängig von ihren
Inhalten und Darstellungsformen für das Publikum interessant.« (Jung 2005: 224)
Ferner muss auch die gängige Periodisierung des frühen Kinos oder »Early
Cinema«, die von 1895 bis 1907 (Kino der Attraktionen, Anfänge des nar-
28
I. FILMTHEORIE UND WISSENSCHAFTSGESCHICHTE
29
IM KINO DER HUMANWISSENSCHAFTEN
demnach nicht nur für die vielbeschworene »Erweiterung der Sinne« (vgl.
Giedion 1994: 44; Benjamin 1977: 50), sondern auch für eine Wissensver-
knappung. Verfügbarkeit und Volatilität von Wissen sind stets auch beglei-
tet von Restriktionen, mit denen der Film arbeitet. Diese beginnen mit film-
spezifischen Aufmerksamkeitssteuerungen und Konditionierungen durch
Stile und Strategien der Wissensrepräsentation. Zirkulierende Filmkopien
machen die Idee des Originals hinfällig. Mit Schnitt und Montage gibt es
kein Original mehr, sondern an seiner Stelle mehrere Versionen eines Ex-
periments, die für unterschiedliche Zielgruppen montiert werden. Dies
macht die Grenzen zwischen Kunst und Wissenschaft, zwischen Öffent-
lichkeit und Expertise, zwischen populären und szientifischen Formen
porös und osmotisch. Das wird deutlich, wenn untersucht wird, wie Filme
zwischen verschiedenen Wissensräumen, den Laboratorien, Archiven,
Museen und Sammlungen, Bibliotheken, sozialen Forschungsfeldern und
öffentlichen Räumen zirkulieren und dabei als Filter der Wissensrezeption
fungieren. Mit Auswahl, Verdichtung oder Ausblendung strukturieren sie
multimediale Vorstellungsräume, entwerfen Lektüreanweisungen, orien-
tieren die Blickrichtungen und sorgen für den Takt und den Rhythmus
beim Konsumieren von Filmen. So entsteht eine neuartige, narrative Ver-
dichtung divergierender visueller Kulturen, die teils zur Ästhetisierung des
wissenschaftlichen Bildes, teils zu konditionierenden und konditionierten
Wahrnehmungskulturen führt.
Aus der erweiterten Frage nach den medienkulturellen Verflechtungen
wissenschaftlicher Praktiken werden Themenstellungen der Medienarchäo-
logie an das Gegenstandsfeld herangetragen. Aufgrund der Tatsache,
dass bildgebende Verfahren und Speichermedien zwar heterogene und di-
vergierende Gegenstandsfelder fokussieren, jedoch übergreifende Medien-
kompetenzen ausbilden, orientieren sich medienarchäologische Fragestel-
lungen intermedial und transdisziplinär: »Archäologien der Gegenwart
müssen auch Datenspeicherung, -übertragung und -berechnung in techni-
schen Medien zur Kenntnis nehmen.« (Kittler 1987: 429) Die Problemstel-
lung der filmischen Verfahren, der Materialitäten und der Techniken des
Wissenschaftskinos generiert eine neue Sichtweise auf die historische Di-
mension des wissenschaftlichen Films. Es kann hier sichtbar werden, dass
das Wissenschaftskino nicht bloß einen Einblick in die »Welt der Wissen-
schaft« gewährt und »Bilder der Wissenschaft« für ein breites Publikum
popularisiert, sondern dass es die vom Wissenschaftsfilm entwickelten,
eigenständigen Filmtechniken sind, welche bis heute in die populären Kul-
turen migrieren und dort etwa zur Ästhetisierung von Lebensstilen dienen.
Eine der großen »Erfolgsstorys« populärer Rezeption des Wissenschafts-
kinos ist etwa die wissenschaftliche Zeitlupenaufnahme, die sich in unter-
schiedlichsten Medienformaten – vom Musikclip, der TV-Sportreportage bis
zum Hollywood-Blockbuster Matrix – wiederfindet.
30
I. FILMTHEORIE UND WISSENSCHAFTSGESCHICHTE
»Intuitiv verbinden wir den Ausdruck ›Repräsentation‹ mit der Existenz von etwas,
worauf die Darstellung verweist, mit einem Repräsentierten. Wir fassen Repräsentieren
als einen Vorgang auf, beim dem ›etwas‹ für etwas anderes gesetzt wird.« (Rheinberger
1997: 265)
31
IM KINO DER HUMANWISSENSCHAFTEN
»narratives Feld, das durch vielerlei Aktivitäten restrukturiert werden kann: die Metho-
den der Datenerhebung, die Veröffentlichung bestimmter Grundmuster, bevorzugte
Tiermodelle, aber auch durch eine Frauenbewegung, Entwicklungen in angrenzenden
Wissenschaften, komplexe Praktiken des Artenschutzes, oder neue nationale Regierun-
gen in Ostafrika.« (Haraway 1995: 148)
32
I. FILMTHEORIE UND WISSENSCHAFTSGESCHICHTE
»Entblößt er sich [der Dokumentarfilm] jedoch als Inszenierung, enthebt ihn das seiner
Glaubwürdigkeit. Es scheint so, als erwarteten noch immer viele Rezipienten vom Do-
kumentarfilm nichts anderes als die deskriptive Verdoppelung eines Ereignisses im Film.«
(Ballhaus 1995: 37)
Während das Zeigen auf die Entdeckung (discovery) verweist, das ist das an-
gebliche Vorfinden einer natürlichen Gegebenheit, die immer schon latent
vorhanden war, konnotiert das erzählerische Erfinden (invention) die kon-
struktiven und kreativen Aspekte wissenschaftlichen Handelns. Bisher wurde
die Wissenschaftsgeschichte der Kinematographie dem Context of Discovery
subsumiert. Das Prädikat ›wissenschaftlicher Film‹ konnte ausschließlich
für das mechanische Registrieren des natürlich Gegebenen verbucht werden.
Inszenatorische Aspekte wurden mit der Aktivierung der Subjektivität des
Wissenschafters gleichgesetzt, obwohl aufwendige Experimentalanordnun-
gen ein detailliertes Drehbuch artifiziell hergestellter Ereignisse verlangten
und Forschungsfilme in langwierigen Prozeduren nachbearbeitet wurden
(vgl. zum Färben, Tonen, Kolorieren des Films Polimanti 1920: 248–256).
Fraglich ist aber, ob diese binär erwünschte Sphärentrennung von Zeigen
und Erzählen (vgl. Odin 2000: 32ff, der die Analysekategorie telling/sho-
wing für die Filmtheorie adaptierte und weiterentwickelte) auch tatsächlich
zutrifft, wenn die filmischen Ausdrucksformen näher betrachtet werden.
Damit bezieht sich die Analyse wissenschaftlicher Erzählformen weniger
auf inhaltliche Strukturen und auf das Endprodukt, sondern vielmehr auf
die formalen Handlungsweisen, die besonderen Merkmale, Stile und Aus-
drucksformen von Wissenschaftlichkeit. Mit dieser Sichtweise beschreibt die
Erzählanalyse die dekonstruierenden Elemente in der Wissenschaftskom-
munikation und siedelt diese in der filmischen Ebene an. Dieser methodi-
sche Ansatz hat weitreichende Folgen, wenn er die Machtstabilisation der
wissenschaftlichen Argumentation in eine Machtdestabilisation transfor-
miert und den Nachweis führt, dass Wissenschaftern die Kontrolle über ihr
eigenes Kommunikat entgleitet und dass sich die Mehrdeutigkeit des filmi-
schen Systems nicht disziplinär regeln lässt (vgl. Reichardt 1991: 217).
Schließlich muss aber auch die klassische aristotelische Dichotomie
von Zeigen (Mimesis) und Erzählen (Poeisis) in ihrer Anwendung auf den
Film neu überdacht werden. Beginnen wir mit den elementarsten Elemen-
ten der Herstellung des Bildfeldes und seiner Komposition. Angenommen,
die Art und Weise, den Rahmen, den Aufbau und das Beziehungsfeld des
Bildes zu gestalten, liefe bereits darauf hinaus, eine wissenschaftliche
Bühne für den Auftritt der epistemischen Gegenstände und der Probanden
als die Figuren eines Dramas zu konstruieren. – Dann kann bereits das
33
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“Harmless!” Ford grinned and scratched his head. “Well, Crane, I
wasn’t takin’ any chances. A little Epsom salts and brook water,
tinctured up with port wine never hurt ’em any, I guess. Then, of
course, they had a dollar’s worth of excitement in waitin’ to get
young. Used to throw in a mirror and a pocket-comb with every
three-bottle sale.”
“A hundred and fifty dollars a week! Ah, you don’t tell me!” exclaimed
Enoch slowly, squaring about in the rocker and scrutinizing Ford
sternly.
“That’s what it amounted to, my friend—clean velvet profit—from
Monday to Saturday night. Not so bad for a youngster of sixteen,
was it? I used to do a lot of talkin’ then. I had to.”
“Naturally you needed a good rest Sundays,” intervened Enoch
coldly.
“Oh! Sundays, of course I had to close down the show. But I was
pretty light-fingered on the cornet in those days, and when I struck a
fresh town Sundays I used to lead the church choir. Nothing like a
cornet to fill a meetin’-house. That always netted me a five-dollar
note. I tell daughter she must have somehow inherited her musical
talent from me.”
“Inherited?” remarked Enoch dryly.
“Well, of course, not exactly—inherited—I being her stepfather; but
anyway,” he laughed, “music runs in the family. Take Mrs. Ford, for
instance, never took a lesson in her life, but she certainly can play
the piano.”
“Now, Ebner,” protested a voice behind Enoch’s chair.
Mrs. Ford, red from dressing, heralded by the faint rustle of a new
lavender-silk dress, and a strong odor of violet perfume, swept
effusively into the room.
“Well, Mr. Crane!” exclaimed that round little woman. (Mrs. Ford was
really round all over. There were no angles.) “You don’t know how
overjoyed we are to see you; how simply delighted!”
“My wife, Crane,” Ford endeavored to explain. She put forth a plump
hand to Enoch as he rose from the rocker. “Ebner has so often
spoken of you,” she burst out.
“Delighted to meet you, madam,” said Enoch. “I regret not having the
double pleasure of seeing your daughter. Your husband tells me
Miss Preston is out singing at a musicale.”
“At a tea, Mr. Crane,” declared Mrs. Ford, her small mouth pinched in
a set smile. “At the Van Cortlandt’s. I tell Sue she’s getting on
famously; of course you know the Van Cortlandts—as if there was
any one in New York who didn’t. Of course you saw about their
niece’s superb wedding in the papers the other day. Magnificent
affair, wasn’t it?”
“Evidently it escaped me,” confessed Enoch.
“Why, Mr. Crane, the papers were full of it! As I tell Sue, when you do
go into society, go into the best.”
“You are right, madam,” returned Enoch. “There is nothing rarer than
good society; the best is none too good. It is more often shockingly
bad.”
“But of course the Van Cortlandts, Mr. Crane. Their wealth and
position——”
Enoch did not reply.
“Sue says their house on Fifth Avenue is a palace of luxury!”
exclaimed her mother.
“Window-curtains alone cost forty thousand dollars, they claim,” put
in Ford over Enoch’s shoulder.
“Well,” sighed the little woman, “when you have millions—do be
seated, won’t you? I’ve disturbed you, I fear. Don’t fib—I have,
haven’t I?—just as you were having a good old chat with Ebner. Ah,
you men, when you get together! Of course you can tell I’m a
Southerner, can’t you, Mr. Crane? They say we old families from
North Carolina never quite lose our accent. Sue was speaking about
it at the Van Cortlandts only the other day.”
“Worth about three millions, ain’t he?” interrupted Ford.
“Who—Sam Van Cortlandt?” inquired Enoch, turning sharply to him
as Mrs. Ford subsided on the sofa, and began to smooth out the
wrinkles in her new lavender-silk dress with an air of a duchess
trying to decide whether or not she should give it to the poor.
“Wasn’t it him that made that big corner in cotton about ten years
ago?” asked the promoter.
“Yes,” said Enoch. “That was Sam Van Cortlandt.”
“Biggest thing ever done, wa’n’t it?”
“Yes, Mr. Ford, in the way of unprincipled scoundrelism it was,”
declared Enoch with some heat. “Piracy on the high seas of finance.
Piracy, pure and simple,” he declared, his stern voice rising savagely.
“Why, Mr. Crane, you surprise me!” exclaimed Mrs. Ford.
“Piracy, madam; there’s no other word for it.”
“Um!” exclaimed Ford. “You call a man a pirate and a scoundrel,
because he’s successful—because he’s got grit, and nerve, and
brains enough to carry a deal through that made him, if I recollect it
right, over a million dollars in a single day?”
“I do,” snapped Enoch, “when that million means the financial ruin of
hundreds of honest families. Sam Van Cortlandt ruined them by the
wholesale. He ruined them from New Orleans to San Francisco,” he
cried hotly. “Many of them have never recovered.”
Mrs. Ford raised her thin eyebrows to the speaker in silent
astonishment.
“Six months later,” continued Enoch brusquely, squaring himself
before the fireless grate, his hands clenched behind him, “Van
Cortlandt again held his grip on the cotton market. Those who had
managed to escape the first crash, went down under the second. A
few came out limping, but he got most of them in the end—more
than one he drove to suicide. Then they thought of running him for
governor. Instead, the Supreme Court ran him uncomfortably close
to the penitentiary for complicity in bribery relative to his mining
territory in Montana. You have asked me about Sam Van Cortlandt.
Very well; I have told you.”
He shut his square jaws hard, and gazed for some seconds at the
pattern in the faded carpet.
Mrs. Ford did not utter a syllable; she sat immovable on the sofa,
redder under the shock of Enoch’s tirade, though none too willing to
believe it. The Van Cortlandt’s millions and social position, their
niceness to her daughter, and the glamour of her being welcomed to
their exclusive society serving only too readily as a balm to heal the
gaping wound left by Enoch’s words.
Enoch had slashed deep; he had bared the truth about Sam Van
Cortlandt down to the bone.
The promoter looked up and cleared his throat.
“Ain’t you exaggerating a little, friend?” he ventured blandly.
“Exaggerating!” Enoch jerked up his square jaws, and protruded his
under lip, a gesture peculiar to him when he was roused. He
focussed a kindling eye on his questioner: “Do you suppose, sir, I do
not know what I am talking about? I am not given to making
statements which have no foundation.”
“But all that which you speak of, Mr. Crane, is—is happily in the
past,” remarked Mrs. Ford sweetly, endeavoring to soften the
awkward pause that followed. “As I tell Ebner, we should always be
ready to forgive others their—their little mistakes. Oh! I believe
strongly in forgiveness, Mr. Crane—’deed I do. I’m just that way, Mr.
Crane, and always have been, since I was a girl—my old North
Carolinian blood, I suppose—” Her monotonous, high-keyed voice
softened as she spoke, and Enoch caught plainly now her Southern
accent, touched slightly with the lazy cadence of the negro, as she
continued to dilate upon the beauty and virtues of Mrs. Van Cortlandt
and the lavish generosity of her husband.
“What’s past is past,” was Ford’s profound remark, when she had
finished. “He got his money, anyway. If he’d laid down and give up,
somebody else ’ed trampled over him—done the trick, and got it—
wouldn’t they? I’ll bet you a thousand dollars even they would have.”
(Ford’s bets were never lower than a thousand.) “I guess when you
sift the whole thing down, friend, you’ll find Sam Van Cortlandt was
up against a pretty big proposition. It was win out or die.”
Enoch lifted a face that quivered with sudden rage, but he did not
open his lips.
“Hark!” said Mrs. Ford excitedly, as she caught the sound of a quick,
familiar step on the stairs. “That’s Sue now,” and she rushed to open
the door. She confided to Sue in an excited whisper as she tripped
up to the landing that Mr. Crane was there; saw for herself that her
daughter was trim and unruffled, smoothed a wisp of her fair hair in
place, and ushered her into the sitting-room, beaming with motherly
pride.
There was a refreshing cheerfulness about the young girl as she
entered that sent the hard lines out of Enoch’s face before her
mother had presented her. As he looked up critically at the girl before
him, her charm and refinement were evident to him before she had
even opened her pretty lips or stretched forth her shapely gloved
hand, which she did with so much unassuming frankness that Enoch
held it gratefully. Her cheeks were rosier than usual to-day. Evidently
she had thoroughly enjoyed herself at the tea. There was a certain
radiance and sparkle in her blue eyes, as she tossed her roll of
music on the little Chippendale table and hastily drew off her gloves,
that captivated him. He had already banished Van Cortlandt’s failings
from his mind. It seemed incredible to him as he watched her, that
she was really part of the household in which, for the last quarter of
an hour, he had listened to the ill-disguised social aspirations of her
mother and the crude, mercenary view-point of her stepfather. The
sight of Sue warmed his heart; again his keen eyes kindled, this time
with satisfaction.
“Your mother tells me you have been singing at a tea,” said Enoch in
a kindly tone, as he released her hand. “I had no idea you were so
gifted, my dear,” he continued pleasantly. “And you made a success?
I’m sure of it.”
Sue flushed under the compliment.
“I did my best, Mr. Crane,” she confessed simply, with a forced little
laugh.
“The Van Cortlandts have asked her to sing again next week,”
declared her mother triumphantly.
“Well, say, girlie! that looks like success, don’t it?” broke in Ebner
Ford. “Made a hit, did you?”
He slammed down the top of the roll-top desk, and locked it. Sue
glanced at him with a pained expression.
“I’m afraid, Mr. Ford, it will be a good many years before I can really
make a success,” she said evenly. Then turning to Enoch seriously:
“I’m only a beginner, you know, Mr. Crane.”
“Of course you are,” he returned, “but there is a beginning to all art, a
hard beginning, and you are beginning bravely, my dear. There is no
short cut leading to art. It is a rough and stony road—mostly up-hill
and very little down-dale, and for the most of its length hedged with
thorns, masking so many pitfalls that many give up, faint and
disheartened by the wayside, long before they reach the broad
plateau of success at the top, and can stand there looking down over
the valley of shadows and trials they have struggled up through
safely.”
Sue caught her breath and looked at Enoch with her blue eyes wide
open with eager interest. “Oh, how wonderful!” she cried. “Do go on.”
“I am not saying this to discourage you, my dear,” he continued, “but
to encourage you. You are so young, so rich in years to come—
years that we old fellows no longer have. Do your best; sing on to
the best of your ability. In every fresh effort, in every new note lies
the real lesson. Think of how happy you will be when at last you are
sure of yourself, sure in making others feel what you feel. In painting,
in sculpture, and in literature it is the same, and in no art is this rare
ability of making others feel what you interpret so rare as in music.
Music without it is simply a display of pretty noises. Only the artist
can touch the heart.” The ugly little room was silent as he ceased
speaking. Sue’s eyes were shining.
“And you were not frightened?” asked Enoch.
“Yes, Mr. Crane,” declared Sue frankly, “I was. I was just scared to
death before all those people. New York is so critical, you know.
They have a way of looking at you when you begin as if they had
made up their minds to be bored. Think of it, mother, the ball-room
was packed—the conservatory, too. Mrs. Van Cortlandt, you
remember, said she had only asked a few intimate friends to drop in
for a cup of tea.”
“Gorgeous affair, of course,” declared the mother solemnly. “I
expected it would be, honey. The Van Cortlandts always entertain so
extravagantly. Well—” she sighed deeply—“when one has millions,
Mr. Crane! Tell me, did Miss Stimpson play your accompaniments? I
worried so, fearing she would disappoint you at the last moment; you
know, honey, how uncertain she is.”
At which Sue declared that that near-sighted and nervous girl, Mazie
Stimpson, had sent word at the last moment that it was impossible
for her to be there, owing to a distressing attack of sore throat.
“How outrageous of her!” exclaimed the mother. “No wonder, darling,
you were nervous.”
“Pity you didn’t go along with her, Emma,” ventured Ford meekly;
“been just the thing.”
“I certainly now wish I had,” declared Mrs. Ford firmly. “Sue is so
dependent on a good accompanist, Mr. Crane.”
“Ah, but I found one, mother,” announced Sue, with so much
satisfaction that Enoch pricked up his ears. “Who do you think came
to my rescue? A Mr. Lamont. He plays exquisitely. Wasn’t it kind of
him?”
“Mr. Lamont!” exclaimed the mother. “Not Mr. Jack Lamont?” she
asked, beaming with interest.
Sue nodded. “Yes, mother—Mr. Jack Lamont. He’s simply
marvellous. He gives one so much confidence when he’s at the
piano. He’s so wonderfully clever in his phrasing, and never rushes
you. I came home with him, mother. He insisted on taking me home
in his brougham.” This time Enoch caught his breath. “I begged him
to come up, but he had to go back for Mrs. Lamont. He told me such
a lot of interesting things—about his polo-ponies and his yacht, and
his cottage at Newport. The Van Cortlandts adore him.”
“How delightful!” exclaimed Mrs. Ford. “You, of course, have heard of
Mr. Lamont,” she said, turning to Enoch. “‘Handsome Jack Lamont,’
they call him. He’s such a lion in society. They say no cotillon can be
a success without him. You see his name everywhere.”
Enoch’s jaw closed with a grip; when it relaxed he confessed bluntly
that he had not only heard about Mr. Lamont, but had seen him. That
he was, in fact, a member of one of his clubs, where Mr. Lamont was
not only to be seen, but heard. He did not add “drunk or sober.”
Neither did he dilate upon the various escapades of that gentleman,
or the strained relations that had existed during several reckless
conspicuous years between Mrs. Lamont and her society-pampered
husband, or that his polo-ponies were fed and cared for, his steam-
yacht run, and the luxuries of his Newport cottage paid for out of
Mrs. Lamont’s check-book—Jack Lamont’s favorite volume, the
stubs of whose pages bore evidence of Mrs. Lamont’s resigned
generosity in matters that did not concern the public. Instead, Enoch
held his tongue and started to take his leave, having left in Sue
Preston’s heart a certain friendly reverence. In Enoch, in his charm
of manner, in his kindly outspoken sincerity, she saw those qualities
so sadly lacking in her stepfather. Enoch was real. She already felt a
strange confidence in him. From the little she had heard about him
as their neighbor—a reputation of being brusque and ill-natured—
she saw only too plainly now that it was a mask, back of which lay a
personality, full of so much charm and kindliness, of insight and
understanding, of that great gentleness which is part of every great
gentleman, that she felt she might come to him gladly for advice as a
daughter might come to a father. Had he not already encouraged
her? and so eloquently and graciously that she could have listened
to him for hours.
In the brief conversation that ensued as he neared the door to take
his leave, Ebner Ford referred again to the hospitality of the young
architects on the third floor, a tactless speech which Mrs. Ford
received frigidly, and which forced Sue to confess guardedly:
“Strange—wasn’t it, mother?—Mr. Grimsby was at the Van
Cortlandts’.”
“At the Van Cortlandts’! I trust it was by invitation,” returned her
mother stiffly, recovering from her astonishment. “Nothing would
surprise me in regard to that young man’s ability to force himself
anywhere. Imagine, Mr. Crane—we were hardly——”
“But, mother, I only saw him for an instant, just as Mr. Lamont and I
were leaving,” explained Sue. “He told me he had known the Van
Cortlandts for years.”
“A most excellent young fellow,” declared Enoch briskly. “A most
charming young fellow,” he insisted. “We are sadly in need of young
men of his good taste and ability, when you consider, Mrs. Ford, how
poverty-stricken in style our architecture has become. How many
horrors in brownstone we are obliged to look at and live in. Atrocious
jumbles, beastly attempts at Ionic and Corinthian—ugly, misshapen,
and badly conceived—nightmares, madam, in stone—scarcely a
detail that does not offend the eyes. Roman, French, Renaissance,
and Tudor stewed together, capped by mansard roofs, and
decorated with vagaries from the fret-saw, the lathe, and the cold
chisel in the hands of bumpkins—we are sadly in need of a
revolution in all this. New York is growing; it will be a beautiful city
some day, but it will take many years to make it so. Young men like
Mr. Grimsby and his colleague, Mr. Atwater, I tell you are worth their
weight in gold.” And with that he took his leave, not, however, without
the consciousness as he did so of a pair of blue eyes smiling into his
own.
“Jack Lamont!” he muttered to himself, as he climbed the stairs to his
rooms to dress for dinner at the club. “And he brought that child
home in his brougham? Merciful Heaven!”
CHAPTER VII
The ever-watchful eye of the liveried servant in charge of the door of
the club, whose duty it was to recognize a member from a visitor and
receive him accordingly past that exclusive threshold, swung open
the door to Mr. Enoch Crane to-night with a bow and a respectful
smile of greeting.
“Good evening, James,” said Enoch pleasantly.
“Good evening, Mr. Crane,” returned the domestic; “a bad night, sir.”
A page ran up to relieve Enoch of his dripping umbrella, but it was
James himself who divested him of his overcoat and white muffler,
relieved him as well of his rain-bespattered silk hat, several seasons
out of date (Enoch had a horror of new fashions), and having handed
them to the page who hurried away with them to the coat-room, knelt
down on the marble floor, Enoch steadying himself with one hand on
the man’s broad shoulder, while he unbuckled and took off his
galoshes.
“I’ve got it for you here, sir,” said James, lowering his voice and
glancing furtively around him. Then as a trio of members crossed the
hall close to his heels, he added: “A note for you, Mr. Crane,” and he
rose and handed Enoch an unsealed white envelope, stamped with
the club’s name, and unaddressed.
“Thank you, James,” said Enoch, and left him to his vigil again at the
door.
Enoch never forgot to speak to James when he entered. He also bid
him a pleasant good night when he left. In fact, it may be said that
out of all the members of that stately and time-honored
establishment, Enoch was the only one who invariably bid James
good evening and good night. Certainly it never occurred to that
faultlessly dressed member, Mr. Morton Beresford, to do so—
Beresford in his smart London clothes, who knew Europe and talked
it, a valuable man at dinner, and a great favorite with the newly
elected “money-having” men. Beresford considered those who
served him as objects of utility, like the great, soft rugs beneath his
feet, or the bell for a fresh cocktail under his big, ringed hand.
Neither was Jack Lamont given to these little touches of human
kindness, which often mean more to those who serve than tips. His
conduct to inferiors was generally overbearing. When he was obliged
to ring twice, Lamont swore. So did Seth Van Worden, grain-broker,
when the slightest thing disturbed him. Van Worden was proud of his
ancestry, having walked one day over a graveyard in Rotterdam and
found a de Worden buried there. From that moment Seth began to
search among the branches of his family tree for some distinguished
fruit. Finally, at the tip end of a forgotten limb, he discovered a
certain Van Worden—an admiral. His joy was intense. It left no doubt
in his mind that he himself was of straight descent from that famous
personage, and within twenty-four hours the Van Worden coat-of-
arms was conspicuous in gilt upon his note-paper, Mrs. Van Worden
adding a few flourishes to her taste which the blazon lacked, while
Seth became absorbed in making a collection of early Dutch prints
for his library—mostly sea-fights, in which the distinguished admiral
could be gloriously detected in the smoke. Seth, however, Enoch
knew, was pure New England, Van Worden meaning “from Worden,”
a Holland town. His ancestors being part of a shipload bound for
Salem, all of them were known when they landed as “Van Wordens,”
and most of them being suspicious characters, were glad to lose
their identity in Van Worden.
As for that ponderous and florid member, Mr. Samuel Barker, who
made his money in glue, and whose truffles, wines, and cigars, were
all especially selected for him, only the most capable of club
servants could attend to his wants speedily enough to save that
gentleman from growing purple with rage.
There were others, too, whose bald heads showed above the
window-sills of the big, luxurious room looking out upon Fifth
Avenue, and whose habit it was to fill its easy armchairs on fine
afternoons and themselves with idle opinions of the public who
strolled by them. Enoch knew them all.
Some of the younger members referred to Enoch as “old Crane,”
and gave him a wide berth, as being sour, opinioned, and crabbed.
They did not forget, however, that he was a member of the advisory
committee, and as such they feared more than respected his
authority, though they openly discussed the failings of the house
committee down to the question of soap and nail-files, and up to the
size of the cocktail-glasses, and the quality of the gin. Others
assumed that critical air of connoisseurs, who, having been weaned
on commonplace nourishment during their early struggles to make a
living, were more difficult to please in good fortune than Lucullus in
the matter of canvasback ducks, terrapin, and grilled mushrooms.
Many of them having reached manhood on cider and elderberry
wine, now considered themselves experts in dry champagne, sound
red burgundy, and their proper temperatures. Some became both
illustrious and conspicuous by inventing concoctions of their own,
like little Archie Reynolds, whose long drink known as a “Reynolds
pick-me-up,” survived two seasons of popularity, and finally fell flat,
to give place to an invention of the barman, whose full name nobody
cared about.
As for the elder men, there were many who were glad to meet
Enoch, men of distinction and brains, whom New York honored
among her citizens in commerce, in law, and in science, in surgery,
and in medicine—men whom it was a liberal education to meet, and
whose modesty was one of their many virtues.
There were half a dozen other clubs in which Enoch might have
chosen to dine to-night, but he chose this one—a club which he
rarely went to for dinner.
He glanced into the big front room where the shades were drawn
back of the heavy velveteen curtains, noted the identity of the men
there chatting in groups or screened behind the evening papers, and
having assured himself that the man he was looking for was not
among them, searched through the silent library and the card-rooms,
and without further investigation made his way to the dining-room,
where he chose a small table in the corner, commanding a view of
the door. A score of dinners were already in progress. Among these
he recognized several acquaintances, Morton Beresford and Sam
Barker being among them. These he nodded to in passing, and took
his seat at the table he had chosen, where he ordered a most
excellent little dinner, beginning with a dry Chablis and oysters, and
continuing with a bottle of Château de Bécheville, stuffed green
peppers, and a salad of cold, firm, sliced tomatoes, which he insisted
on dressing himself. He was dressing this salad when the tall, slim
figure of a middle-aged man silhouetted in the doorway made him
lay aside his spoon and salad-fork and watch the newcomer intently
as he scanned the dining-room with his black eyes, caught sight of
Seth Van Worden dining alone, and went over and joined him.
There was no mistaking that tall, slim figure, the iron-gray hair
shading to silver at the temples, the clean-cut, handsome profile, or
that easy manner of a man of the world with which he crossed the
dining-room.
Enoch saw Seth Van Worden rise briskly from his chair and stretch
out his hand to welcome him. Then the late comer took his seat at
Van Worden’s table and unfolded his napkin, with his back to Enoch,
who resumed his salad dressing with the grim satisfaction a
detective feels in having guessed where to find his man, and found
him.
It was Jack Lamont.
Enoch was in no hurry. He raised his eyes to a waiter and quietly
asked the man to bring him a copy of the Sun, which he refolded by
his plate and perused leisurely over his salad, while Lamont, with his
back to him, bent over his green-turtle soup, and a waiter poured for
him a stiff glass of Bourbon whiskey and soda. Now and then Enoch
caught fragments of their conversation, Seth Van Worden’s big voice
reaching clearly to his table. Lamont’s was pitched lower and
accompanied by a good deal of foreign gesture, which had become
a habit with him since his various sojourns abroad, more often in
Paris than elsewhere, though he knew that gay little Paris—Brussels
—as well as his pocket, and Italy—at least that side of it which
appealed to Jack; Florence in the height of the season, and Venice,
when a favorite little countess he knew was there to welcome him in
her palace so close to the Grand Canal, that you could have thrown
a kiss to it in passing. Seth’s eyes brightened as he drank his wine
and devoured a slice of cold duck cooked to his liking. Seth was
again on his favorite topic of conversation—the Dutch—and his
descent from that brave, stolid little nation. He dilated as usual upon
their centuries of prowess on the high seas, their honesty, their
ancient blood. Seth, being overblooded by high living, had his full
share of it. Presently he launched forth to Lamont, about the
Hollanders’ love of flowers, raking up from his shallow knowledge the
threadbare history of the black tulip. He informed Lamont that he had
picked up two rare volumes on tulip-growing, printed by hand in
Rotterdam in 1600, and paid “a sound price for them, by gad,” for
which he was not sorry, and had them now safe under a special
glass case in his library.
“I knew a Dutch girl once,” intervened Lamont, and he bent over to
confide her qualities to Seth out of hearing of the servants. “Titian
hair and a skin like ivory”—Enoch overhead him declare.
Thus the best part of an hour passed. Both were speaking freely
now, off their guard, the dining-room being nearly deserted.
“Weren’t—you—er—afraid he’d return?” asked Seth.
Lamont’s easy, well-modulated laugh filtered through the room.
“You don’t suppose I was fool enough not to have calculated that,”
he returned. “It was a good eight hours from Milan by train—and
besides there was old Cesare, my gondolier, and the little femme de
chambre Annina to give me warning.”
“Good-looking?” ventured Seth.
“Who—Annina? As pretty a little Venetian as ever paid you a smile
for a compliment. I was playing for high stakes, I’ll admit, old man.
But then I knew what I was about—the countess was no fool.”
Again Lamont lapsed into sotto voce.
“Besides,” he declared (again within ear-shot of Enoch), “they
manage these little affairs better in Italy than in America. To love is
an art there. Very well, they have brought it to a finesse. I’d give ten
years of my life to be back there again—Ah! but we were happy!
Once I wired her all the way from Verona.”
Again the conversation became inaudible to Enoch.
“And she came?” asked Seth, his voice rising, with a sneaking
thought in his mind that he would like to have known her.
“Of course she did; she even brought Annina. There are some
women who never can travel without a maid; the Countess Vezzitti
was one. She arrived in deep mourning without a jewel. Delicious,
wasn’t it? As she whispered to me: ‘You see, amico mio, I have only
brought one jewel—Annina.’ I believe that girl would have given her
life for her mistress.”
He lowered the candle under its crimson shade between them, and
kindled a Russian cigarette over its flame, lighting up his dark,
handsome, devil-may-care face and a cabochon emerald ring the
countess had given him. Lamont might easily have been mistaken
for an Italian. His slim, straight figure, over six feet in height, moved
with an easy Latin grace; a dark-skinned, handsome fellow, with the
eyes of a Neapolitan, fine hands, a soft persuasion in his voice, and
a smile that revealed his perfect teeth, white as milk. At thirty he was
all some women could have desired. He was now forty-three.
“Never run after a woman,” Lamont resumed quietly. “Take the
advice of an old hand, Van Worden, let them run after you; grande
dame or bourgeoise, they are all alike.”
Then they fell into a talk about the theatres, in which Seth gave vent
to some heavy opinions about the revival of the “School for Scandal,”
at Wallack’s, expatiating upon the art and beauty of Miss Annie
Robe, and the consummate acting of John Gilbert as Sir Peter
Teazle, which he considered a capital performance.
In lighter vein, he talked over the good old theatre days of the past—
Harrigan and Hart in their old theatre, the little Comique, playing the
“Mulligan Guards Ball,” the drop-curtain with a picture of the Mary
Powell at full speed up the Hudson, and a strong smell of chloride of
lime permeating the house from gallery to pit. Thus he preambled
reminiscently up the Broadway of his younger days. Where was
Niblo’s Garden and the “Black Crook”? “Gone,” declared Seth.
“Evangeline” and “Babes in the Woods” at the old 14th Street
Theatre had vanished likewise, and the San Francisco Minstrels,
packed on Saturday afternoons with Wall Street brokers, roaring
over the personal jokes, those never-to-be-forgotten end-men, Billy
Birch and Charley Backus, had prepared for them overnight.
“All gone,” sighed Seth.
At which Lamont, who had been more familiar with the 23d Street
Koster & Bial’s, confided to Seth how many corks he himself had
added to the ceiling and walls of its famous cork-room back of the
scenes.
Enoch swallowed his salad slowly, his ears on the qui vive, his
countenance both grim and attentive, and his whole mind on the
man with his back to him, who, if he had seen him on entering, had
totally forgotten his existence during dinner. Thus another quarter of
an hour slipped by, during which Enoch ordered a long cigar and
some black coffee. It was not often he dined alone so lavishly, but
whatever it cost him to-night, he was determined to sit Lamont out. In
his search for him in the club before dinner he had made up his mind
to speak to him privately the instant he sighted him. He had ended in
listening. That which rankled deep in his heart did not concern Van
Worden. He intended to see Lamont alone. If Lamont had a grain of
decency in him, he felt he would understand.
“If he doesn’t understand,” he muttered to himself, as he sipped his
coffee, “I’ll make him. I’ll explain to him, that his method of winning
the confidence of a young girl scarcely out of her teens is nothing
short of damnable; that it’s got to stop.”
“Where?” asked Van Worden a moment later, rousing himself and
stretching his long, angular body back in his chair, as the two
reached their cigars and liqueurs.
“At the Van Cortlandts’,” confided Lamont.
“The devil you say!”
“Telling you the truth, Seth. At one of her deadly musicales. Dearest
little piece of flesh and blood you ever laid eyes on—intelligent, too,
frightened out of her wits, but I soon attended to that—got her
laughing, and played her accompaniments, Tosti’s ‘Good-by,’ and ‘I
Awake from Dreams of Thee,’ and all that sort of stuff. Chuck full of
sentimentality, with a pair of blue eyes that would keep you awake.”
“How’d she sing?” put in Van Worden.
The shoulders of Lamont’s well-fitting dress coat lifted in a careless
shrug.
“Er—not badly—rather surprised me, in fact, after all the squawkers
one hears during a winter; not so badly by any means; a damned
nice little voice, not badly pitched either, for her age—what we call in
Paris a ‘petite voix.’ She’s only a kid, you know, in the rosebud stage.
Lives with her mother and stepfather down in one of those gloomy
old houses in Waverly Place. Drove her home. She’s got the prettiest
little feet in the world, old man. I tell you as we fellows get older, we
begin to prick up our ears over something that is fresh and young;
bright and cheery, with a skin like a rose. They’re the best, after all.
Why shouldn’t they be? Our hearts never grow old, when we’re
young we’re timid and difficult, and by the time we do get some
worldly knowledge, the gray hairs begin to hit us, and we go tagging
around after a lot of passéd widows, and divorcées, who know as
much as we do.”
“And sometimes more,” grunted the grain-broker.
“And sometimes more,” reiterated Lamont, laughing outright.
Enoch clenched down his napkin, and rose quivering. He drew a
sharp breath, and strode over to the table where the two men were
seated. His eyes fastened savagely upon Lamont, his under lip shot
forward, the muscles of his jaw working convulsively, in an effort to
command his voice.
“Hello, Crane!” exclaimed Van Worden, who, facing him, was the first
to notice his approach. He might as well have addressed a bull about
to charge, for he got no reply, and for an instant stared blankly up at
him, wondering what was the matter.
Lamont wheeled round in his chair.
“Hello, Crane!” said he. “You here?” Then noticing the state he was
in, rose to his feet.
“You’re not ill?” he ventured, with a rapid apprehensive glance at Van
Worden, who had risen, his mouth open in astonishment.
“Mr. Lamont,” said Enoch evenly, despite the rage that shook him, “I
have something to say to you. Something of the utmost importance,
sir—that’s why I’m here.”
Lamont instinctively started back, like a man on his guard. Then he
covered the speaker with his attractive black eyes half closed, a
condescending smile playing about his lips.
“Well?” said he. “Out with it, Crane; what’s it all about?”
“You,” said Enoch grimly.
Lamont’s smile broadened under his trim, gray mustache.
“Must be devilish important for you to get into the state you’re in,” he
laughed, with a wink to Van Worden that suggested Enoch was
drunk.
Enoch’s eyes blazed.
“I’ll have you know, sir,” he declared tensely, “that it was important
enough to bring me here. I’ll have you know, sir, that I came here to-
night with the express purpose of seeing you”—he turned to Van
Worden—“over a matter which does not concern you, Mr. Van
Worden. I wish to express to you personally my apology for
disturbing you.”
“Oh! well—er—that’s all right,” stammered Van Worden. “Of course if
you want to see Lamont in private——”
“In private!” cried Lamont, his black eyes flashing. “What the devil
have you got to tell me in private, I’d like to know? I decline to be
bullied by you, sir, into anything like a conversation in private. No
conversations in private for me with a man in your state of mind,
thank you, without the presence of a witness. Your age, Crane,
prevents me from saying more. What right have you got to disturb
us, I’d like to know? Here we are, two gentlemen—dining alone, at
the club, and you have the arrogance, the impudence to disturb our
dinner!—to make a scene! You are extraordinary,” he cried with a
forced laugh. “Conversation in private—eh? I’ll be damned if I will.
What have you got to say, anyway?”
“This,” said Enoch, with slow determination, “that I warn you now,
Lamont, it will be to your advantage to grant me an interview, now, at
once, over there in the card-room, if you please.”
“Not without Seth,” retorted Lamont, reddening sullenly under
Enoch’s dogged insistence. “If that’s a go, say so. If not, you can go
to—” The oath did not escape him—something in the elder man’s
eyes arrested it.
“Will you grant me an interview, as I desire it, or not?” Enoch
demanded.
“Not without Seth,” repeated Lamont stubbornly. He wrenched back
his chair and sat down, followed by Seth Van Worden, who slipped
into his own.
Though he had scarcely put in a word in an affair which Enoch
Crane had assured him he was no part of, but which was rapidly
turning from bad to worse, it, nevertheless, made him frightened and
so ill at ease that he wished he was anywhere else but where he
was. Seth had a horror of scenes, and the scene before him was
verging dangerously near a club scandal. There was Mrs. Van
Worden to think of. If his name was mentioned with it he knew what
to expect from his wife, who was as proud of the name of Van
Worden as she was of her solitaire earrings, or her box at the opera,
in which she dozed twice weekly during the season.
“Without Mr. Van Worden,” Enoch continued to demand sternly.
“I’ll be damned if I will!” snapped Lamont, reaching out for the
decanter of Bourbon and shakily spilling out for himself a stiff drink.
“You are a member of this club, sir,” declared Enoch. “I, as you may
know, am a member of its advisory committee.” Lamont turned
sharply.
“Well,” said he, with a careless shrug, “what of it?”
“On December 14,” continued Enoch, “you were over a month in
arrears for house charges, amounting to one hundred and forty-two
dollars. On December 15 you paid the amount without being posted,
a delay having been granted you.”
Again Lamont turned. This time he faced him, silent and anxious.
“On the evening of December 14,” continued Enoch, “you were one
of four members—Mr. Blake, Mr. Archie Reynolds, Mr. Raymond
Crawford, and yourself—in a game of poker that lasted half the
night.” Enoch planted his strong hands on the table. “Late play in this
club is forbidden,” he declared. “Play of that kind especially. That
night you won close to four hundred dollars.”
“Well, I won it, didn’t I?” snarled Lamont. “And I paid my house
charges, too, didn’t I? What more do you want? See here, Crane
——”
“You will wait, Lamont, until I have finished,” returned Enoch firmly.
“The incident of the poker game might have been closed, had you
not left these in your trail.” Lamont started, a peculiar expression in
his eyes. “These,” repeated Enoch. He reached in his coat pocket
and drew out the white envelope James had given him. It contained
three cards—the ace of clubs, the ace of hearts, and the ace of
diamonds. “Look at them carefully, Lamont,” said he. “You no doubt
recognize the pin scratches in the corners.”
“You lie!” cried Lamont, springing to his feet, his fists clenched, Van
Worden staring at him in amazement.
“I might have expected that,” said Enoch, bending closer to him, and
lowering his voice. “If you attempt to strike me, Lamont, I warn you
you will find I am a stronger man than you imagine. What I say to
you is the truth, and you know it.” Lamont noticed the size of his
hands, the stocky breadth of his shoulders. “These cards are yours,
marked by you,” continued Enoch. “James, who put you into a cab at
daylight that morning, saw them slip out of your pocket—you were
drunk—as he propped you back in the seat; he picked them up from
the cab floor, discovered they were marked—came to me as a