Frau Asmussen had two daughters, who had run away for the third time.
All the neighbours knew it, and Lilly was given full particulars almost
directly she set foot in the badly-lighted room, smelling of leather
and dustiness, where torn volumes, ranged on shelves of pine, mounted
to the ceiling.
Frau Asmussen was a dignified-looking and portly person, who received
Lilly at the entrance of the library, and amidst kisses and tears
assured her that she had loved her as her own daughter before she saw
her, and now that they had met she was perfectly enchanted with her.
"Who can ever say that strangers are cold and distant again?" thought
Lilly, delighted with her reception.
"Did I say my own daughter? I should have said, ten times more than my
own daughters. One's own daughters are vipers who turn and sting; one
must pluck them from one's bosom----"
She had to pause, because the lethargic clerk who had come with Lilly
in the cab was bringing in her box. When he had gone, Frau Asmussen
continued:
"Do you suppose I loved my daughters, or that I did not love them?
Haven't I said to them every day: 'Your father was a blackguard, a cur,
and may God forgive him!' And what do you think they did? Went off one
fine morning--went off on their own hook--leaving a note on the table:
'We're going to father. You bully us more than we can put up with, and
we are sick of everlasting milk puddings.' You see what I am, my
dear--I am kindness itself. Do I look as if I could hurt a fly, much
less my own daughters? And they did it not once, but three times; this
is the third time they have exposed me to the scoffs and jeers of the
town--the third time they have disgraced me. Twice they came back in
rags and misery, and I have taken them to my heart and forgiven them.
But just let them try it on again--let them come back a third time!
There's a broomstick behind the door ready for them. Directly they show
their noses inside, out they shall go into the street. I'll beat them,
and then sweep them out at the door like so much waste-paper." And with
an air of unspeakable disgust Frau Asmussen swept an invisible
something through the hall and gave it a kick over the step.
"Poor, poor woman!" thought Lilly. "How much she must have suffered!"
and she vowed inwardly to do her best to make up to the mother for the
loss of such unworthy daughters.
At this point a young man came in to change a book. He asked for a
volume of Zola, and looked at Lilly as much as to say, "You see what a
dog I am."
Frau Asmussen shook her head reproachfully, and fetched down the book
required from an upper shelf. He clutched it eagerly, without heeding
in the least the glance of warning with which the old lady handed it to
him.
"You see, my dear," she said when he had gone, "that's how the young go
to perdition, and I am condemned to help them on the way."
"Why?" asked Lilly.
"Do you know how a chemist's shop is arranged?"
Lilly said she had often been in one, but couldn't remember.
"One place is marked 'Poison,'" her employer went on, "and in it are
kept the most deadly poisons known to humanity. On that account the
door is kept locked, and no one may touch the contents save the chemist
and his assistants. Now, just look round; half these books are poison,
too. Nearly everything that's written in these days is pernicious
trash, and lures the reader on to destruction. Yet I am bound to keep
these books, bound to distribute them, though my heart is wrung as I
hand them over the counter. My undutiful daughters are an example. They
read, read--did nothing but read the whole night through; and when they
were stuffed full of impudence and nonsense, they turned up their noses
at the food I gave them and the cooking, and went out for walks, till
at last they sneaked off to their father--that miserable worm! that
swindler and scum! with his face all out in pimples! I warn you, my
child, against that man. Should you ever meet him, gather up your
skirts as I am doing now, to avoid contamination."
Lilly shuddered at the account of this vile monster in human shape, and
was happy that she had found a protectress in his deserving wife.
An hour or so later they sat down to supper, which consisted of milk
pudding and slices of bread and dripping. Lilly, unused to anything but
the simplest fare, was easily persuaded that no milk puddings in the
world were as delicious as Frau Asmussen's, and that the Kaiser himself
could not sit down to a more daintily prepared meal than was spread on
her table. She missed, it is true, the slice of ham which she had been
given every night at the hospital; if this had been added, her supper
would have seemed the acme of gastronomic delights.
More enjoyment awaited her when she went to bed. The library was part
of a big room with three windows, which was divided into four
compartments by two long bookcases running from the wall where the
windows were, and by a counter opposite the door that communicated with
the entrance, and thus there was only one narrow gangway to connect one
compartment with another. At bed-time Frau Asmussen carried into the
furthest compartment two forms, on which she laid a mattress and made
up a bed. The space was so confined and filled up that Lilly had to
jump over a bench at the foot of her improvised bed to get into it, and
she thought this great fun. She fell asleep wedged in between two high
upright bookcases, the window above her head, a chair beside her on
which her things were piled, and "The Song of Songs" clasped in her
arms.
The next morning she was initiated into her duties as librarian. She
learnt the system by which the thousands of volumes were arranged on
the shelves, and as she knew her alphabet she would have mastered it in
five minutes, and been able to fetch any of the popular books from
their places, if Frau Asmussen had followed her own system, instead of
placing the books anyhow and so courting confusion and muddle. A worse
task was to find the names of books and authors in the general
catalogue, and entries of customers in the ledger, which were also
supposed to be alphabetical; but the carelessness of Frau Asmussen and
her daughters had reduced the whole to chaos. Lilly set to work with
burning zeal to put things in order, and for several weeks the
attainment of this desired goal was her sole object in life.
Frau Asmussen provided her with some surprises, even on the day after
her arrival. Lilly saw nothing of her after the morning hours till
supper-time; then Lilly found her nodding over a steaming teacup which
exhaled an agreeable odour of rum and lemons.
"I suffer from nasal catarrh," Frau Asmussen explained, blinking at
Lilly with her rather watery grey eyes, "And one of our most noted
physicians has prescribed this medicine."
Lilly ate her milk pudding while Frau Asmussen continued sipping at the
contents of her teacup, giving now and then a melancholy groan.
"Have I told you about my daughters?" she asked, after a pause.
"Oh yes," responded Lilly respectfully. All the morning there had been
scarcely any other topic of conversation than these two scapegrace
daughters and the wicked man they called father.
"But I don't think I can have given you any idea how charming they
are," Frau Asmussen went on. "Though I say it that shouldn't, there
isn't their match in the world for beauty and talent and lovable
qualities. In such young girls, filial devotion, self-sacrificing
industry, and touching modesty like theirs is not often found. They are
so practical too, so thoroughly reliable in all that relates to
business, besides being brimful of affection. You should take example
from them, my dear, for you are very far from being anything like those
models of perfect girlhood."
Lilly's spoon dropped from her fingers. She could hardly believe her
ears, and the old lady maundered on:
"It was heartrending to part with them, and they cried themselves ill
for days and nights beforehand. They were obliged to go to their
father. Have I mentioned my husband to you? The best and noblest of
men, from whom fate has parted me, but who cherishes for me an undying
tenderness, and whom I shall love till death.... What a man! Pray, my
child, on your knees that you may one day be the wife of such a man,
and worthy of him. Alas! I was not--not worthy, no, not at all."
Two tears of unutterable remorse ran down her cheeks. She had a deal
further to say about the superlative virtues of her two daughters, her
husband's lofty character, and her own abject inferiority, and after
several more doses of the medicine prescribed by the eminent physician
she sobbed and moaned herself to sleep.
The next morning Frau Asmussen began the day's work by scolding Lilly
for sweeping out the library with the broom standing behind the door.
"It's kept there for one purpose only," she said, "and that is to
chastise those two hussies when they appear at my door; and if you ever
dare to touch it again you will be the first to feel what it's like."
After this, Lilly began to regard her future through less rose-coloured
glasses. A worse blow was to come. Frau Asmussen, who seemed deeply
concerned about Lilly's spiritual welfare and the purity of her mind,
strictly forbade her to read any of the books in her library.
"After what I have experienced with my daughters," she said, "I know
the evil results of novel-reading, and I'll take care that you don't go
the same way."
While the work of rearranging the catalogue and the ledgers lasted, the
temptation to disobey orders did not occur frequently. But when autumn
set in, and, in spite of the increase of subscribers, her time became
less occupied and the hanging lamp was lighted early over the library
table, when Frau Asmussen yielded sooner to the effects of the medicine
prescribed by the eminent physician, and fell into a stupor, Lilly was
driven by curiosity and boredom to do what she had been forbidden.
She was first put up to it by a girl who came to change the first
volume of a novel for the second. The second volume was out, and the
girl positively wept for disappointment. She declared that she
couldn't wait to know how the story ended. It would kill her. Lilly
good-naturedly advised her to go to one of the other circulating
libraries, which were said to be larger and superior, and she went so
far as to return the girl her three marks deposit. The novel devourer
thanked Lilly and departed with renewed hopes.
Lilly scanned the outside of the dirty, torn volume she had left on the
counter, then cautiously peeped inside. "Debit and Credit," by Gustav
Freytag, was on the title-page. She had heard them raving about this
book when she was in the first class at school, but there was no time
for novel-reading in the life of a sweated machinist's daughter. She
glanced timidly at the first page, then went to the glass door and
listened for a few minutes to the peaceful snores that came from the
back parlour. Soon afterwards she was launched with full-spread sails
on the wide ocean of romance. At four in the morning, when she had
finished the first volume, she was in desperation at the thought that
she could not go on with the story, and wondered who had the missing
volume, and how she was to get hold of it. Then she fell asleep.
The next day she pored over the ledger to try and trace the name and
address of the subscriber who had not returned the second volume of
"Debit and Credit." But, as the entries were made by the numbers and
not by the titles of the books, she missed it over and over again in
her excitement. So at last she was compelled to seek an outlet for her
newly awakened craving in another book.
Henceforward her life became an orgy of novel-reading. She went about
her daily task with heavy lids and aching limbs, burnt a huge amount of
midnight oil, and only escaped the suspicions of Frau Asmussen by lies
and tricks. Then one dreadful winter morning it all came out. The stove
in the library burning low towards midnight, Lilly's feet became cold,
and she took to reading in bed with the lamp, which she removed from
its hanging socket, on the window-sill above her pillow, where there
was plenty of room for it. Though this involved the bitter discomfort
of having to get out of bed again in order to put back lamp and book in
their places--Frau Asmussen was often now in the library earlier than
Lilly--she would have rather gone out in the cold street in her
nightgown than have sacrificed those dearly bought extra hours.
So it came about that one morning she awoke in a fright to behold Frau
Asmussen, already dressed, dangling a black strap over her white
nightgown, while the lamp, which Lilly had secretly refilled at one
o'clock, still burned on the window-sill. She had never in her life
before been whipped, and at first hardly grasped what was going to
happen, when Frau Asmussen leapt as nimbly as her corpulence would
permit on to the counterpane over the bedrail, and crouching there like
some fat old plucked hen, began to belabour her over the ears with the
strap.
A bad time now began for Lilly. What was the good of being sincerely
repentant, and swearing to herself and to Frau Asmussen that she would
not do it again? The new craze so intoxicated her, she was so absorbed
with the new, beautiful imaginary world in which there were no tiresome
servants sent by subscribers to change books, no wet umbrellas, no
missing volumes, no back numbers of magazines that refused to be found,
no insipid milk puddings, and no thrashings, that, had she had a
martyr's joy in renunciation, she could not have returned to her former
unbroken routine. She was now so completely governed by her imagination
that her actual everyday existence, with its deadly monotony and lonely
hours, seemed to her an unreal dream, and her life had no reality till
she opened a book and turned over its sticky pages. She was too docile
and unresisting to attempt to justify this passion even in her own
eyes. It was wrong, she knew, to feed her mind on this heaven-sent
food; but she could not help it.
Frau Asmussen hit on a fiendish method of humiliating Lilly still
further. She regarded religion, like many orthodox Protestants, solely
in the light of a penance, and, though hitherto she had not concerned
herself in the least about Lilly's creed, she now took to beginning
every meal with a long-winded prayer, in which, in face of the steaming
soup-tureen, she commended Lilly amidst tears and sighs to the Lord,
and begged Him to forgive her sinful depravity.
Woe to Lilly if there was any backsliding! That first chastisement did
not by any means remain the only one. She was cuffed and beaten on the
slightest provocation, and storms of abuse descended on her unprotected
head. In fact, she scarcely dared breathe till the soothing medicine
prescribed by the eminent physician began to do its work. Then Lilly
seized the first book she came across, and suffered all the agonies of
the heroines in the stories about lost wills and broken marriages,
about poison, arson, and murder; with them she loved, and conquered,
and died, finding in it all a never-ending source of ecstasy.