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"Do you know, Doctor von Kammacher," Füllenberg said suddenly, "that little Hahlström is on board?"
"What little Hahlström do you mean?" asked Frederick coolly.
Hans Füllenberg could not contain his surprise that Frederick should have forgotten little Hahlström. He was sure of having seen him in the Künstlerhaus in Berlin when Ingigerd danced her dance there for the first time, the dance that then aroused admiration only in the artist world, but later became the sensation of all Berlin. He described the affair.
"The pick of the Berlin artists were standing around the room and on the stairs in informal groups, leaving the centre of the floor clear. Even Menzel and Begas were there. A special exhibition was to open soon, and the walls were hung with a collection of Böcklin pictures. The name of the dance was 'Mara, or the Spider's Victim.'
"I tell you, Doctor von Kammacher," the young man went on, "if you didn't see that dance, you missed something. In the first place, little Ingigerd's costume was very scanty, and then her performance was really wonderful. There are no two opinions about it. A huge artificial flower was set in the middle of the room, and the little thing ran up and smelt of it. She felt all about the flower with closed eyes, vibrating as if with the gauzy wings of a bee. Suddenly she opened her eyes and turned to a rigid statue of stone. On the flower was squatting a huge spider! She darted like an arrow to the farthest corner of the room. Even in the first part of the dance she had seemed to float without weight in the air; but the way sheer horror blew her across that room made her seem like nothing but a vision."
Frederick von Kammacher had seen her dance the dreadful dance, not only at the matinée in the Künstlerhaus, but eighteen times again. While Füllenberg was trying to express his impression with "great," "tremendous," "glorious," and similarly strong epithets, Frederick saw the whole dance over again with his mind's eye. He saw how the childlike body, after cowering and trembling a while in the corner of the room, approached the flower again to the accompaniment of music played by a tom-tom, a cymbal, and a flute. Something which was not pleasure drew her to it. The first time she had traced her way to the source of the perfume by sniffing fragrance in the air. Her mouth had been open, the nostrils of her fine little nose had quivered. Hans Füllenberg was correct in his observation that her eyes, as she held her head back, had been closed. The second time, she seemed to be drawn against her will by a gruesome something, which alternately aroused fear, horror, and curiosity. She held her eyes wide open, and now and then covered them with both hands, as if in dread of seeing something hideous.
But when she came quite close to the flower, all fear suddenly seemed to drop away from her. She hopped for joy and laughed—she had been needlessly alarmed. How could a fat, immobile spider squatting on a flower be dangerous to a creature with wings? This part of her dance was so graceful, so full of droll, bubbling, childlike merriment, that the audience laughed tears of delight.
Now, however, a new phase of the dance began, introduced in a thoughtful strain. Having danced herself to satiety and intoxicated herself with the flower's perfume, Mara, with movements of agreeable fatigue, made as if to lay herself to rest, but delayed here and there to brush from her body something like the threads of a spider's web, at first serenely and pensively, then with growing disquiet, which communicated itself to the onlookers. The child paused, reflected an instant, and apparently was about to laugh at herself because of the fears that had arisen in her soul; but the next minute she paled with fright, and made a dexterous leap, as if to free herself from a trap. Her blond hair tossed back in Mænadic waves turned into a flaming stream. Her whole appearance evoked involuntary cries of admiration.
The flight began. And now the theme of the dance was Mara's entanglement in the threads the spider wove about her, which gradually choked her to death. No dancer has ever executed such an idea with equal skill and fidelity.
The little creature freed her foot from the meshes, only to find her neck entwined; she clutched at the threads about her throat, only to find her hands entangled; she tore at the cobweb, she bent her body, she slipped away; she beat with her fists, she raged, and only enmeshed herself the more tightly in the horrible skein; finally she lay fast bound. During this last phase of the dance, her artist audience stood there rigid, breathless, suffocating with a sense of horror.
It was not until nearly the end that Frederick von Kammacher felt that his fate was forever linked with this girl. The feeling grew stronger during the few moments that remained before the conclusion of the performance. The poison of infatuation came from the expression of her face. He noted precisely how it forced its way into him and how his whole being suddenly grew sick. When little Ingigerd Hahlström once more opened her eyes with a look of abysmal dismay, and fastened them in helpless inquiry upon the spider, calmly drinking her blood away, an inner voice seemed to command Frederick to become her compassionate knight, saviour, and protector.
VI
Since, in Füllenberg's opinion, Frederick von Kammacher was not sufficiently interested in the dancer, Ingigerd Hahlström, he mentioned several other recent Berlin celebrities also on the Roland on their way to the United States. There was Geheimrat Lars, a man well-known in art circles, who often cast the deciding vote in purchases of works of art by the government. He was going to America to visit museums, private and public, and study the art situation in general. There was Professor Toussaint, an eminent sculptor, some of whose monuments had been erected in several German cities, chiefly Berlin, works done in a wishy-washy Bernini style.
"Toussaint," Füllenberg, who seemed to be fairly loaded with Berlin gossip, explained, "needs money. He needs the money that his wife spends and the social season in Berlin swallows up. He and his wife and his wife's maid are all travelling free on his reputation. When he lands in New York, he won't have enough in his pocket even to pay his hotel bill for three days."
Füllenberg pointed out the sculptor, Toussaint. He was lying in a steamer chair, rising and falling in unison with the Roland. As Frederick turned to look at him, he noticed an odd man without arms being led across the deck by his attendant, who grasped him by his collar and carefully dragged him through a small door close by into the smoking-room.
"That man's a vaudeville star," Füllenberg continued with his descriptive catalogue. "He will appear in New York with Webster and Forster."
Some stewards came oscillating across the deck to serve the chilly passengers with bowls of hot bouillon. After Füllenberg had seen to it that his lady was duly served, he deserted her and went with Frederick to the smoking-room. Here, of course, loud talking and tobacco smoke prevailed. The two gentlemen lit their cigars. In one corner of the small room, some men were playing skat, and at several tables, German and English politics were being thrashed out. The main theme of discussion was the rivalry between America and Europe. Wilhelm, the ship's doctor, with whom Frederick had become acquainted at breakfast, came in from his morning inspection of the steerage, and seated himself beside Frederick.
"There are two hundred Russian Jews emigrating to the United States or Canada," he told him, "thirty Polish families, and about the same number of German families from the south, north, and east of Germany. Altogether there are nearly four hundred steerage passengers, among them five babies at the breast and fifty children between the ages of one and fifteen."
Doctor Wilhelm invited Frederick to accompany him the next day on his tour of inspection. He was a man of not more than twenty-six. He had a fair complexion and wore glasses. His manner was somewhat stiff. Ever since he had passed his examinations, two years before, he had been a physician on a vessel. Once he
