Philip was restless and dissatisfied. Hayward’s poetic allusions
troubled his imagination, and his soul yearned for romance. At least
that was how he put it to himself.
And it happened that an incident was taking place in Frau Erlin’s house
which increased Philip’s preoccupation with the matter of sex. Two or
three times on his walks among the hills he had met Fraulein Cacilie
wandering by herself. He had passed her with a bow, and a few yards
further on had seen the Chinaman. He thought nothing of it; but one
evening on his way home, when night had already fallen, he passed two
people walking very close together. Hearing his footstep, they
separated quickly, and though he could not see well in the darkness he
was almost certain they were Cacilie and Herr Sung. Their rapid
movement apart suggested that they had been walking arm in arm. Philip
was puzzled and surprised. He had never paid much attention to Fraulein
Cacilie. She was a plain girl, with a square face and blunt features.
She could not have been more than sixteen, since she still wore her
long fair hair in a plait. That evening at supper he looked at her
curiously; and, though of late she had talked little at meals, she
addressed him.
“Where did you go for your walk today, Herr Carey?” she asked.
“Oh, I walked up towards the Konigstuhl.”
“I didn’t go out,” she volunteered. “I had a headache.”
The Chinaman, who sat next to her, turned round.
“I’m so sorry,” he said. “I hope it’s better now.”
Fraulein Cacilie was evidently uneasy, for she spoke again to Philip.
“Did you meet many people on the way?”
Philip could not help reddening when he told a downright lie.
“No. I don’t think I saw a living soul.”
He fancied that a look of relief passed across her eyes.
Soon, however, there could be no doubt that there was something between
the pair, and other people in the Frau Professor’s house saw them
lurking in dark places. The elderly ladies who sat at the head of the
table began to discuss what was now a scandal. The Frau Professor was
angry and harassed. She had done her best to see nothing. The winter
was at hand, and it was not as easy a matter then as in the summer to
keep her house full. Herr Sung was a good customer: he had two rooms on
the ground floor, and he drank a bottle of Moselle at each meal. The
Frau Professor charged him three marks a bottle and made a good profit.
None of her other guests drank wine, and some of them did not even
drink beer. Neither did she wish to lose Fraulein Cacilie, whose
parents were in business in South America and paid well for the Frau
Professor’s motherly care; and she knew that if she wrote to the girl’s
uncle, who lived in Berlin, he would immediately take her away. The
Frau Professor contented herself with giving them both severe looks at
table and, though she dared not be rude to the Chinaman, got a certain
satisfaction out of incivility to Cacilie. But the three elderly ladies
were not content. Two were widows, and one, a Dutchwoman, was a
spinster of masculine appearance; they paid the smallest possible sum
for their pension, and gave a good deal of trouble, but they were
permanent and therefore had to be put up with. They went to the Frau
Professor and said that something must be done; it was disgraceful, and
the house was ceasing to be respectable. The Frau Professor tried
obstinacy, anger, tears, but the three old ladies routed her, and with
a sudden assumption of virtuous indignation she said that she would put
a stop to the whole thing.
After luncheon she took Cacilie into her bed-room and began to talk
very seriously to her; but to her amazement the girl adopted a brazen
attitude; she proposed to go about as she liked; and if she chose to
walk with the Chinaman she could not see it was anybody’s business but
her own. The Frau Professor threatened to write to her uncle.
“Then Onkel Heinrich will put me in a family in Berlin for the winter,
and that will be much nicer for me. And Herr Sung will come to Berlin
too.”
The Frau Professor began to cry. The tears rolled down her coarse, red,
fat cheeks; and Cacilie laughed at her.
“That will mean three rooms empty all through the winter,” she said.
Then the Frau Professor tried another plan. She appealed to Fraulein
Cacilie’s better nature: she was kind, sensible, tolerant; she treated
her no longer as a child, but as a grown woman. She said that it
wouldn’t be so dreadful, but a Chinaman, with his yellow skin and flat
nose, and his little pig’s eyes! That’s what made it so horrible. It
filled one with disgust to think of it.
“Bitte, bitte,” said Cacilie, with a rapid intake of the breath. “I
won’t listen to anything against him.”
“But it’s not serious?” gasped Frau Erlin.
“I love him. I love him. I love him.”
“Gott im Himmel!”
The Frau Professor stared at her with horrified surprise; she had
thought it was no more than naughtiness on the child’s part, and
innocent, folly. but the passion in her voice revealed everything.
Cacilie looked at her for a moment with flaming eyes, and then with a
shrug of her shoulders went out of the room.
Frau Erlin kept the details of the interview to herself, and a day or
two later altered the arrangement of the table. She asked Herr Sung if
he would not come and sit at her end, and he with his unfailing
politeness accepted with alacrity. Cacilie took the change
indifferently. But as if the discovery that the relations between them
were known to the whole household made them more shameless, they made
no secret now of their walks together, and every afternoon quite openly
set out to wander about the hills. It was plain that they did not care
what was said of them. At last even the placidity of Professor Erlin
was moved, and he insisted that his wife should speak to the Chinaman.
She took him aside in his turn and expostulated; he was ruining the
girl’s reputation, he was doing harm to the house, he must see how
wrong and wicked his conduct was; but she was met with smiling denials;
Herr Sung did not know what she was talking about, he was not paying
any attention to Fraulein Cacilie, he never walked with her; it was all
untrue, every word of it.
“Ach, Herr Sung, how can you say such things? You’ve been seen again
and again.”
“No, you’re mistaken. It’s untrue.”
He looked at her with an unceasing smile, which showed his even, little
white teeth. He was quite calm. He denied everything. He denied with
bland effrontery. At last the Frau Professor lost her temper and said
the girl had confessed she loved him. He was not moved. He continued to
smile.
“Nonsense! Nonsense! It’s all untrue.”
She could get nothing out of him. The weather grew very bad; there was
snow and frost, and then a thaw with a long succession of cheerless
days, on which walking was a poor amusement. One evening when Philip
had just finished his German lesson with the Herr Professor and was
standing for a moment in the drawing-room, talking to Frau Erlin, Anna
came quickly in.
“Mamma, where is Cacilie?” she said.
“I suppose she’s in her room.”
“There’s no light in it.”
The Frau Professor gave an exclamation, and she looked at her daughter
in dismay. The thought which was in Anna’s head had flashed across
hers.
“Ring for Emil,” she said hoarsely.
This was the stupid lout who waited at table and did most of the
housework. He came in.
“Emil, go down to Herr Sung’s room and enter without knocking. If
anyone is there say you came in to see about the stove.”
No sign of astonishment appeared on Emil’s phlegmatic face.
He went slowly downstairs. The Frau Professor and Anna left the door
open and listened. Presently they heard Emil come up again, and they
called him.
“Was anyone there?” asked the Frau Professor.
“Yes, Herr Sung was there.”
“Was he alone?”
The beginning of a cunning smile narrowed his mouth.
“No, Fraulein Cacilie was there.”
“Oh, it’s disgraceful,” cried the Frau Professor.
Now he smiled broadly.
“Fraulein Cacilie is there every evening. She spends hours at a time
there.”
Frau Professor began to wring her hands.
“Oh, how abominable! But why didn’t you tell me?”
“It was no business of mine,” he answered, slowly shrugging his
shoulders.
“I suppose they paid you well. Go away. Go.”
He lurched clumsily to the door.
“They must go away, mamma,” said Anna.
“And who is going to pay the rent? And the taxes are falling due. It’s
all very well for you to say they must go away. If they go away I can’t
pay the bills.” She turned to Philip, with tears streaming down her
face. “Ach, Herr Carey, you will not say what you have heard. If
Fraulein Forster—” this was the Dutch spinster—“if Fraulein Forster
knew she would leave at once. And if they all go we must close the
house. I cannot afford to keep it.”
“Of course I won’t say anything.”
“If she stays, I will not speak to her,” said Anna.
That evening at supper Fraulein Cacilie, redder than usual, with a look
of obstinacy on her face, took her place punctually; but Herr Sung did
not appear, and for a while Philip thought he was going to shirk the
ordeal. At last he came, very smiling, his little eyes dancing with the
apologies he made for his late arrival. He insisted as usual on pouring
out the Frau Professor a glass of his Moselle, and he offered a glass
to Fraulein Forster. The room was very hot, for the stove had been
alight all day and the windows were seldom opened. Emil blundered
about, but succeeded somehow in serving everyone quickly and with
order. The three old ladies sat in silence, visibly disapproving: the
Frau Professor had scarcely recovered from her tears; her husband was
silent and oppressed. Conversation languished. It seemed to Philip that
there was something dreadful in that gathering which he had sat with so
often; they looked different under the light of the two hanging lamps
from what they had ever looked before; he was vaguely uneasy. Once he
caught Cacilie’s eye, and he thought she looked at him with hatred and
contempt. The room was stifling. It was as though the beastly passion
of that pair troubled them all; there was a feeling of Oriental
depravity; a faint savour of joss-sticks, a mystery of hidden vices,
seemed to make their breath heavy. Philip could feel the beating of the
arteries in his forehead. He could not understand what strange emotion
distracted him; he seemed to feel something infinitely attractive, and
yet he was repelled and horrified.
For several days things went on. The air was sickly with the unnatural
passion which all felt about them, and the nerves of the little
household seemed to grow exasperated. Only Herr Sung remained
unaffected; he was no less smiling, affable, and polite than he had
been before: one could not tell whether his manner was a triumph of
civilisation or an expression of contempt on the part of the Oriental
for the vanquished West. Cacilie was flaunting and cynical. At last
even the Frau Professor could bear the position no longer. Suddenly
panic seized her; for Professor Erlin with brutal frankness had
suggested the possible consequences of an intrigue which was now
manifest to everyone, and she saw her good name in Heidelberg and the
repute of her house ruined by a scandal which could not possibly be
hidden. For some reason, blinded perhaps by her interests, this
possibility had never occurred to her; and now, her wits muddled by a
terrible fear, she could hardly be prevented from turning the girl out
of the house at once. It was due to Anna’s good sense that a cautious
letter was written to the uncle in Berlin suggesting that Cacilie
should be taken away.
But having made up her mind to lose the two lodgers, the Frau Professor
could not resist the satisfaction of giving rein to the ill-temper she
had curbed so long. She was free now to say anything she liked to
Cacilie.
“I have written to your uncle, Cacilie, to take you away. I cannot have
you in my house any longer.”
Her little round eyes sparkled when she noticed the sudden whiteness of
the girl’s face.
“You’re shameless. Shameless,” she went on.
She called her foul names.
“What did you say to my uncle Heinrich, Frau Professor?” the girl
asked, suddenly falling from her attitude of flaunting independence.
“Oh, he’ll tell you himself. I expect to get a letter from him
tomorrow.”
Next day, in order to make the humiliation more public, at supper she
called down the table to Cacilie.
“I have had a letter from your uncle, Cacilie. You are to pack your
things tonight, and we will put you in the train tomorrow morning. He
will meet you himself in Berlin at the Central Bahnhof.”
“Very good, Frau Professor.”
Herr Sung smiled in the Frau Professor’s eyes, and notwithstanding her
protests insisted on pouring out a glass of wine for her. The Frau
Professor ate her supper with a good appetite. But she had triumphed
unwisely. Just before going to bed she called the servant.
“Emil, if Fraulein Cacilie’s box is ready you had better take it
downstairs tonight. The porter will fetch it before breakfast.”
The servant went away and in a moment came back.
“Fraulein Cacilie is not in her room, and her bag has gone.”
With a cry the Frau Professor hurried along: the box was on the floor,
strapped and locked; but there was no bag, and neither hat nor cloak.
The dressing-table was empty. Breathing heavily, the Frau Professor ran
downstairs to the Chinaman’s rooms, she had not moved so quickly for
twenty years, and Emil called out after her to beware she did not fall;
she did not trouble to knock, but burst in. The rooms were empty. The
luggage had gone, and the door into the garden, still open, showed how
it had been got away. In an envelope on the table were notes for the
money due on the month’s board and an approximate sum for extras.
Groaning, suddenly overcome by her haste, the Frau Professor sank
obesely on to a sofa. There could be no doubt. The pair had gone off
together. Emil remained stolid and unmoved.