advantage of the present situation, I should profit by your feeling
lost and in need of my protection. But I am not a designing nature. In
all that concerns the emotions I am a mere babe.... I simply take what
heaven lets fall. Are not you constituted in the same way?"
"No, I am too stolid and heavy," she said, ready to open her heart to
him. "I think over things ever so much."
"It depends what you think," he said gaily.
She wanted to speak out, to tell him everything, and she felt as if she
must lay her heart on his open palm so that nothing should be hidden
from him. But humility and awe of his stupendous cleverness sealed her
lips.
"Why do you trouble yourself about an idiot like me?" she asked, in
order to show at least how humble she was.
"Because I may have a mission to fulfil in your life," he answered.
"_Perhaps_, I say, for one never can tell what reflex action of the
emotions may bring about. Certain psychological moments will show us."
She did not understand the meaning behind this remark, but a timid
feeling of happiness that so infinitely great a man should be
generously interested in her crept over her.
"You are in his power," she thought; "he can make of you anything he
likes."
As he drew her arm a little closer to his, her pressure in response
brought his hand for a moment in contact with her bosom. She was
overcome with terror that he might think she was throwing herself at
his head. What if she went home with him, that he asked her ...
"I will take the tram," she said hurriedly. "I am tired."
He whistled for a cab, which was approaching out of the fog.
"No, no!" she cried, with no other thought than that of preserving the
gift of his friendship as it was, intact. "Not with you. I must go home
alone. You know what people are; besides ..."
She wrenched her arm out of his, and ran to the next stopping place so
quickly that he could scarcely follow her before she had jumped on the
first car that came up. The smile with which he looked after her was,
however, not a disappointed one.
He intended to triumph, and would triumph.
Lilly Czepanek was once more travelling upwards to the heights.
* * * * *
Three days later they met again, but this time at a large social
gathering. The party had come from a _cafe chantant_ in the northern
part of the town, and were to wind up the evening in the private back
room of a middle-class public-house.
By an unlucky chance the seat she had carefully kept for him by her
side fell to someone else's share. This put her out; but there was
champagne to cheer up everyone.
Lilly, out of defiance and boredom, drank far more than was good for
her. Her eyes began to blaze with a challenging merriment; her cheeks
took on the rosy-apple hue which all her friends delighted in. Her
laughter became shriller, her movements more and more animated.
Suddenly there was a loud call for "Lilly." Lilly was to perform.
Her heart misgave her. Not once, as yet, had she dared to recite in his
presence. Indeed, no one had thought of asking her when he was of the
company, for he was always the centre of attraction. Then she felt,
"To-day I can do anything--to-day I will show him what there is in me."
She stood up, tossed back the hair from her forehead, and shook herself
... shook off every vestige of the everyday Lilly; the Lilly subject to
fits of depression and faintheartedness; the vacillating, inanimate
Lilly.... Now she was off. She first plunged into an imitation of "La
belle Otero," and crowed and whooped so that her audience laughed till
it cried.... Then she mimicked a star of the cabarets, ... sucked her
thumb in babylike simplicity and piped, "Let me in, I say, into your
room to-day." In a comical double-bass she growled, "An ambassador
would a-wooing go." Half-hidden behind the hatstand she cooed the song
of the passionate love-pigeon, "Gurr ... gurr ... keak." Finally they
begged her to dance. At first she protested, but in vain; she had to
give in. Tables and chairs were moved out of the way, and making her
own dance-music between her teeth, she whirled madly round the room,
till half-fainting she collapsed into a corner.
The applause seemed as if it would never stop. The women devoured her
with kisses, the men stroked her arms and hair, and Richard stood
silent and pale with pride, in his Napoleonic attitude, and gnawed his
moustache ends. Dr. Salmoni, however, kept in the background, smiled a
melancholy modest smile, and looked as if he had nothing on earth to do
with what had passed. Only one brief glance of understanding, that he
threw at her like a laurel-wreath, told her that he knew for whom she
had let herself go. When the party broke up, she was still glowing with
ecstasy from head to foot.
Yes! this was the genuine intoxication, of the charms of which he had
lately spoken to her; it was like a hissing flame darting through your
heart and limbs.
It was he who helped her on with her fur coat, for Richard was engaged
in paying the bill; and while he carefully placed the sable boa round
her shoulders, he whispered close to her ear, "May I call to-morrow?"
"Yes," she said, terrified at herself; and then, in defiance of her own
cowardice, she turned brusquely on her heel and shouted back in his
face four or five times, as if in wrath, "Yes, yes, yes, yes!"
"What is the matter with her?" people asked each other.
But she laughed a short, hard laugh. What did she care for them? Was
she not once more scaling the heights?
* * * * *
The next morning all seemed like a fantastic dream. Only one fact stood
out clearly. He was coming to call!
She stretched herself in shy conceit as the applause of last night
echoed in her ears. Now he knew what she was. No dull, tame,
half-developed creature; no servile, sheep-like nature, whose fixed
horror of fate made her the voluntary slave of every convention. But,
on the contrary, a free, proud, luminous super-being, one of those
perfectly complete, maenad-like women who dance on the edge of
precipices and mock at death, even when he holds them in his clutches.
Then she became faint-hearted once more. After all, what was there to
boast of in having sung a few songs and danced an outrageous dance
under the influence of champagne? She had only behaved like a
common music-hall diva, and reaped the undesirable plaudits of a
half-inebriated audience! Was that all one had to do to belong to the
elect, the laughter-loving, powerful souls of Dr. Salmoni's literature?
No, oh no! that could not be the key! After such an exhibition he would
feel nothing but scorn or, at best, pity for her.... And if he came
to-day it would be only to tell her what he thought of her. He would
show her how degraded she was, and then benevolently go his way quite
unconcerned.
She wouldn't endure that. She would cling to him, and cry, "You have
promised to lead me to the heights out of this barren miserable
existence. Now keep your word! Don't forsake me. I'll do everything you
wish. I will be your slave, your dog; only don't forsake me."
In feverish expectation she dressed, waved her hair, reddened the lips
that dissipation had paled, and altogether made herself as beautiful as
possible.
Towards twelve there was a ring. Was it he?
No; instead of Dr. Salmoni, Frau Jula had come to call. What did she
want all of a sudden? They had, as if by mutual agreement, avoided each
other since that evening of confidences. And here she was now, without
even going through the formality of being announced! Her air was
cordial, almost affectionate, and she craved a chat.
Lilly hesitated.
"I won't keep you long, my sweet one. I can see you are expecting a
visitor."
"I didn't know that I was," she said, conscious that she blushed.
"Don't deny it, dear.... I know that Dr. Salmoni is coming.... I know,
too, exactly how you feel. I, too, have gone through it, and stood,
getting pale and pink in turns, as I watched for him.... My morning
dress, certainly, was not such a ravishing reseda as yours; it was only
claret colour ... but that is all the same; he doesn't mind us in
claret colour."
"What do you imply by that?" faltered Lilly.
"What do I imply? ... Why, simply this. Our circle for Dr. Salmoni is a
kind of fish-pond of pretty light women, in which he angles from time
to time, till he hooks something that his appetite fancies. At present
he is hooking you, my dearest."
"That is slander!" cried Lilly, flaring up. "He has never made love to
me, nor has such a thing been even mentioned between us."
"Because it isn't necessary," replied Frau Jula; and she laughed
maliciously. "The man does not trouble himself with such trifling
preliminaries. He knows that at the right moment we shall rise to his
bait."
Lilly felt herself getting more and more angry.
"Between him and me nothing has passed but discussions on purely
intellectual subjects, such as a freer, prouder, and higher human
ideal; and if you, and people like you, can't understand such language;
if you are too----"
"Stop, my dear, please," said Frau Jula, "Don't be insulting! There is
no occasion. I have come to you with the best intentions. For anyone
else I would not have taken the trouble; I should only have smacked my
lips. But _you_--well, I am fond of you, even if you prefer to have
nothing to do with me. And you he shall leave alone. And yesterday,
when I saw to what a pass things had come, I could give myself no
peace.... I felt compelled to come ... before it was too late."
"But, indeed, you are mistaken," said Lilly; nevertheless, she cast an
anxious look at the clock.
Frau Jula, whom this did not escape, made a grimace,
"Directly there's a ring, I'll slip out through the next room, but by
that time I shall have achieved my object, I hope.... You see,
child"--she sank into the sofa-corner and drew Lilly down beside
her--"we poor women have all longed to raise ourselves again, so long
as we were pretty faithful to one person.... And then Dr. Salmoni
enters. He has to angle longer for some of us than others, but he
doesn't mind how cheaply he gets us. He has, too, various baits. For a
cold-blooded lump like Karla he doesn't go the same way to work as with
us, naturally. With us he begins in this way: 'My gracious one, I am
always amazed to find you in such an environment as this. Tell me, what
are you doing here?'"
Lilly looked startled.
"Well, was that it? or wasn't it?"
"Yes, but ..."
"It was. That's enough. Next comes his depicting of the dangers we
encounter if we continue to live in bondage.... He is especially down
on duty. Duty he can't tolerate; it is obnoxious to him. As if we were
so terribly particular about our little bit of duty, forsooth! Now
then, wasn't that it? Am I not right?"
"Yes, but ..." stammered Lilly.
"I thought so. And next he says _he_ wants to set us free ... to lead
us upwards on high. He is the personal conductor to the heights. Isn't
it so?"
Lilly turned her head aside to conceal the blush of shame that suffused
her neck and face.
"And then the books! Wretched trash written by little raw scribblers in
imitation of our great Nietzsche! But we all fall into the trap; it
works up our blood like cayenne pepper; we get quite maudlin over it.
What enrages us afterwards is that we were actually such geese as to
believe in his scoundrelly sentiment, although the scurviest cynicism
exudes from all his pores. But one is so stupid, and he is so clever.
Yes, to give the devil his due, he is clever."
"But how does he manage it?" asked Lilly, who dared no longer stand up
for him. "How does he seem to know everything about your past, as if he
had lived it with you?"
"Yes, child, it's strange. But, you know, people whose circumstances
are the same generally have the same experiences. It is easy enough for
him to reconstruct our past when we tell him we've lived in the
country. I am a landed-proprietor's daughter. Didn't he, by-the-by,
tell you he had passed much of his time in castles?"
Lilly nodded.
"That's because he--I found it all out later--was tutor to some Jews
who rented a place near Breslau; but they soon gave him the sack for
his impudence."
In the midst of her agony of disillusionment Lilly could not help
laughing shrilly.
"That's capital!" her friend approved. "You can think yourself
fortunate. If only someone had come and warned me! for afterwards, how
it hurts!"
"What happens afterwards?" Lilly asked, hesitating.
"It's very simple _afterwards_. When he's got what he wants, it's over.
He buttons up his coat, says in a voice of deep emotion, '_Au revoir_';
but it never comes, his _au revoir_. You never see him again."
"That isn't true; it can't be true!" cried Lilly in horror. "Surely no
man can be such a cur to a woman!"
"You--never--see--him--again," repeated Frau Jula. "Why should you? The
creature has other matters of more importance to attend to. I wrote my
fingers to the bone. Not a line in response!... There's no getting at
him. Frau Welter lay on his doorstep, Karla got the jaundice from fury,
and so on. But the man's an eel. Later, if you meet him at a carousal,
there's not the faintest recollection in his eyes ... he just treats
you as he treats the rest."
Startled, Lilly recalled how she too had adopted a like course of
action, and appeared at a carousal without betraying the slightest
memory of what had passed before, although he had turned on her
petitioning tragi-comical glances. Yes, everyone was as bad as everyone
else in this world, in which one cast off one's dignity like a worn-out
dress. She buried her face in the sofa-corner, overcome with shame and
consciousness of guilt.
"Never mind," comforted Frau Jula. "It's all right now." And then there
was a ring.
Lilly rushed to the door to give instructions as before, that she was
"not at home," but Frau Jula restrained her.
"What are you thinking about?" she whispered. "Don't let him think you
are afraid of him. If you do, you won't be rid of him for a long time.
You must laugh at him. Do you understand? Laugh at him pitilessly with
all your might."
Lilly would have liked her to stay and help her out, but she had
already slipped away. Could she possibly outwit him single-handed?...
He was now in the room. Drawn to her full height, she received him as a
deadly enemy.
"My dearest child," he said, and kissed the hand which she quickly drew
away from him.
He was very choicely dressed. He wore straw-coloured gloves, and held
his silk hat against his breast. His eye glass danced on his white
waistcoat.
A serene self-confidence, an air of supreme mastery of the situation,
illumined his person like an aureole. The manner in which he nestled
comfortably against the cushions of his chair, and crossed his legs
with easy self-assurance, showed plainly that he regarded her as his
certain prey.
Lilly was no longer nervous and in doubt. Her soreness of heart and
disappointment had vanished. She felt nothing but a cold calculating
curiosity. She followed his every movement with calm amazement, as he
passed his hand over his glossy bushy hair and hitched up his trousers
to display his silk socks with red clocks. And all the time she kept
saying to herself, "So this is what you are! This!"
And then he began to talk in his low deliberate caressing voice, while
his piercing eyes wandered up and down her. "You are excited, my dear
child, and I am not astonished. When two people such as we are find
themselves for the first time absolutely alone together, they are apt
to betray their emotions. Don't be ashamed of yours.... The tie that
has bound us together is so subtle and delicate an understanding--the
magnetic fluid between us is of such a rare and fleeting nature--"
"Yes, very fleeting," thought Lilly---- "that it really would be a pity
if we did not taste and enjoy it to the dregs. Any restraint of feeling
might easily prove a hindrance on your side, as well as on my own, to
the full rapture of this hour of spiritual hedonism."
He almost smacked his lips as he said this, and rocked from side to
side. Lilly thought of the refrain of a Viennese song in her
repertoire: "I have much too much feeling."
"_He_ has much too much," she said to herself, and she could not help a
smile flitting across her face.
He saw the smile, which she tried to hide by bending her head, and he
misinterpreted it.
"There is a delightful virginal coyness about you," he said, with an
admiring oscillation of his head, "that never fails to excite my
wonder."
"Oh, you mountebank!" thought Lilly, and smiled again.
Now he was slightly perplexed, for his wide and varied experience had
taught him something. He shot at her from under his lids a glance of
suspicion and thwarted greed.
"Or have you," he continued, "kept over for to-day some of the
charmingly graceful humour which you developed last night with such
unexpected _elan_?"
"I may have," she replied, with an upward glance which was almost arch.
"Most excellent!" he cried, his face breaking into a roguish smile in
which there was a touch of devilry. "Are you, then, one of those who
know how to laugh in your sleeve at--how shall I express it?--the whole
farce and hypocrisy of it all ... at yourself too, my child--at
yourself, mind; that is the main point, ... If so, you and I are one,
one in body and soul ... nothing divides us any more ... then ..."
"God forgive me!" she thought, and held her handkerchief pressed
against her lips to stop her giggling. Had not Frau Jula said, "Laugh
at him; laugh at him pitilessly with all your might"?
For his part he seemed to accept her suppressed laughter as an
allurement, a gentle signal to cut short ceremonious preliminaries, for
he chose this moment for springing at her and laying his arms about her
waist.
She repulsed his attack fiercely and struggled with him. Tears of
humiliation and fury coursed down her cheeks.
"Have I come to this?" a voice cried within her as she struck at him
with her fists. In the midst of the tussle she succeeded in reaching
the bell.
The maid-servant came in. He picked up his hat from the floor and,
murmuring something that sounded like "_Canaille_!" disappeared.
He disappeared too for ever from the little circle, which he had at
times honoured with his presence.
* * * * *
Lilly gave up attempting to scale the heights.
CHAPTER XI
During the year that followed, Lilly engaged in two small love
adventures, which had no influence on her subsequent life.
While she was staying for a month's change of air in the Riesengebirge
she came across a novelist whose name at that time was in everybody's
mouth. He was parading his newly acquired fame at the Bohemian bathing
resorts, and accepted cheerfully any good thing that came in his way.
He forced his acquaintance on Lilly without much difficulty, and in a
few days left her in search of fresh conquests.
Back in Berlin, she flirted with a handsome and elegant officer of the
Hussars whom she had first met in an aristocratic restaurant. But on
his sending her a little leather case from a jeweller's, she speedily
threw him over.
Both these affairs gave her no pleasure to look back upon, and she
tried to erase them from her memory.
At Christmas her little household was increased by a new member. She
had often complained to Richard that her life was empty of interest.
She would like something alive to pet and cherish and love, and so one
day he brought her a little naked monkey, that even when he nestled
close to her breast could not get warm, and in his wrath spat in her
face scorn of her yearning caresses.
From time to time there was the excitement, too, of new marriage
schemes.
How well she knew the signs! When Richard, with scowlling brows,
absent-minded, and taciturn, made the tour of the rooms, when he began
to philosophise over the rottenness of everything, when his mother
wanted the carriage at unwonted hours, when little packets of concert
and opera tickets fell out of his pocket-book, then she knew that
something was going on out of the ordinary routine. And soon he would
break silence and tell her what it was. One of them had three millions,
influential relatives, mines, factories, trusts, house property, making
up a dazzling perspective. Often figures were talked in Lilly's corner
drawing-room to such an extent that it might have been the office of an
outside stockbroker. Another eligible young woman was actually poor,
but she was a general's daughter, and his mother thought no end of her.
"And I am a general's widow," said Lilly, in her wounded pride.
This church mouse he called his "distinguished lady-love." But it went
no further. She and all the rest were soon heard no more of, because
none of them turned out in the end to be good enough for him.
Lilly meditated and planned what she must be like.... She must have
white, softly rounded statuesque arms like the tall Danish girl's at
the artists' carnival, and a very delicate, scarcely perceptible
bust--her own seemed to her now to be too prominent--and when she
smiled she must show two dimples in her cheeks; for dimples denoted a
peaceable disposition.
Yes, that was what he wanted more than anything--peace. She knew how he
hated wrangling, and, as a matter of fact, they hardly ever did
wrangle; but, if such a thing as a little quarrel did occur, he would
be miserable for three days, speak in a woebegone, injured tone, and
had to be coaxed back to good temper like a child. And Lilly enjoyed
doing this, though she knew he did not deserve it. For there was no
blinking the matter any longer; he had become a regular reprobate. It
was not so much that he had lost enormous sums at his club, but he led
the debauched existence of the fastest married man, and his amours were
not of the purest.
One day a pretty young thing, with a baby eight weeks old in her arms,
called on Lilly, screamed and cried and declared that she ought to be
promoted to Lilly's place, as she had a child by him.
Lilly consoled her, gave her some wine to drink, and, full of envy of
the baby, tickled it under its damp little chin till it gurgled with
bliss; whereupon the girl departed, deeply touched, after kissing
Lilly's hand gratefully.
Richard, however, came in for no unpleasant scene that afternoon, for
Lilly was entirely free from jealousy. When he came to her, looking
sheepish, and avoided meeting her eyes, while his person exhaled an
odour of cheap perfume, she always gave him a smile of maternal
indulgence, which he well understood and couldn't bear.
However determined he might be to keep silent, he invariably broke down
at last, and in about half an hour had poured out shuffling
confessions, for which he expected to be praised or comforted.
It was inevitable that Lilly, in an existence of this sort, in which
were rampant all the evils of married life, without any of its rights
and dignity, should become more and more self-centred, and look forward
to the future with increasing sadness.
She passed her days as if seated on a bough which every gust of wind
threatened to snap, and so plunge her into the depths below. Before her
lay a straight, dull, endless road, stretching onwards without goal,
without horizon--nothing but the same old pleasures, the same aimless
wandering about from one haunt to another till morning dawned. Often
she felt as tired out as if she had been doing hard manual labour.
Sometimes she struck, and lay the whole day in bed reading _Fliegende
Blaetter_, or dreaming of old days with closed eyes.
The sunless hole of the widow Asmussen's library came back to her like
a paradise, and the milk puddings in retrospect seemed veritable
ambrosia. The memory of her early loves she scarcely dared conjure up,
as if it were sacrilege to think of them in such a present. Yet she
caught herself indulging in vague hopes that one or other of them might
one day turn up out of the past, and, holding his hand out to her, say,
"You have wandered long enough in the wilderness, now come home." Who
it would be she hadn't a notion, but she felt it must happen. Things
could not go on like this for ever.
Every now and then, when secret restlessness gave her no peace, she
resumed her nocturnal strolls, and taking the electric tram to distant
suburbs would wander guiltily up and down unfamiliar lively streets,
just as Frau Jula did; only, unlike Frau Jula, she never could bring
herself to answer her pursuers.
* * * * *
It was on one of these expeditions--in a northerly direction far away
beyond the Rosental gate--that one May evening she met a young man who
did not take any notice of her, who also did not look like a gentleman,
but whose appearance struck her as familiar--so familiar that it gave
her a stab at the heart.
Yet, though she racked her brains, she could not recall where she had
seen him before.
With quick decision she began to follow him. He wore a brown hat, a
pepper-and-salt suit with a yellowish tinge, which had known better
days. His coat-collar was shiny, and his trousers were very baggy at
the knees. They hung over his down-at-heel boots in fringes, as if
someone had tried to mend them, and left black uneven ends of cotton.
No, this could not be one of her friends even in disguise. Her friends
would never own to such trousers. He paused once or twice to look in at
the shop-windows. First, he looked in at a cigar-shop, then at a
butcher's; but he lingered longest before a hosier's, from which Lilly
concluded that his shirts also were in need of renewal.
When he thus gave her a view of his profile, she saw in the reflection
of the rows of lights a haggard, bony face, with prominent nose, and a
tuft of reddish-brown hair on either side of his chin. He seemed to be
dried up and needy, rather than actually ill. The lids of his small,
narrow eyes were swollen and inflamed, and before coming within the
radius of shop-window lights, he clapped a pair of dark-blue goggles on
his nose to protect them.
He had a cane in his hand, which as he walked he pressed into a bow
against the kerb, letting it rebound again. The silver knob of this
cane, which matched ill with the shabbiness of his attire, somehow
awoke recollections of a frosty morning, hot rolls, and church bells.
She gave an exclamation, for she remembered now. Fritz Redlich it
was--Fritz Redlich! Yes, it was; it was!
There could be no further doubt. Her first love, her first lover ...
her brave young champion in life's battle. Hers and St. Joseph's
protege!
Oh dear, yes, St. Joseph! And then the revolver! And the potato soup
with sliced sausage! Oh!... and "The graves at Ottensen"!
"Herr Redlich! Herr Redlich!"
Trembling and laughing she stood behind him, holding out her two hands
to the young man, who shrank back nervously.
He dropped his goggles and gazed blankly at the tall, elegantly dressed
lady, from behind whose lace veil two star-like, tear-filled eyes gave
him a blissful greeting. His red lids blinked suspiciously; then he
raised his left hand with a clumsy gesture to his hat brim.
"But, Herr Redlich ... Don't you know me? I am Lilly--Lilly Czepanek.
Don't you remember Lilly?"
Yes, now he remembered. "Of course," he said, "why shouldn't I remember
you?"
At the same moment he pulled down his waistcoat with a stealthy jerk,
as if to rectify as best he could the shortcomings of his personal
appearance.
"Oh, Herr Redlich, what a long time it is since we've met! It must, I
think, be six or eight years. No, it can't be as long; and yet to me it
seems longer. Things have gone well with you, I hope? I expect you are
terribly busy, otherwise we might spend a little time together."
He certainly was busy, but, in spite of that, if she liked, he could
spare her a quarter of an hour.
"Shall we go into a restaurant," she suggested, still half-crying and
half-laughing, "and have a glass of beer? I can hardly believe it, Herr
Redlich, that we've really met again."
He had decided objections to the glass of beer.
"Restaurants are so stuffy and crowded," he said, "and the beer about
here is so bad--not fit to drink."
"Poor fellow! He's too poor to pay for it," she thought; and she
suggested that they should sit down on a seat somewhere instead.
He didn't mind doing that so long as ... He glanced shyly to the right
and left to see if anyone had remarked what a badly matched couple they
were.
They walked side by side along the more secluded Weinsberg path. Lilly
kept looking at him with pride and emotion, as if she had created him
out of space.
"Dear, dear Herr Redlich," she reiterated, "is it possible?--is it
possible?"
Then they found a bench outside a church, in a dusky spot, overhung
with lilac branches. A pair of lovers had just vacated it.
"Now tell me everything, Herr Redlich. Oh dear, what a lot we have to
tell each other!"
"There is a good deal," he replied, hesitating; "perhaps the gracious
baroness will begin?"
"Pooh! I am not a 'gracious baroness' now, and haven't been for a long
time."
"Ah! so I think I have heard," he replied, and his tone implied blame
and a sense of outrage.
"And I don't in the least regret it," she added quickly, "for, taking
things altogether, I live a much freer and happier life than I did
before. I have no cares, and my little home is delightful. I am in the
happiest circumstances and ought to be thankful. I should be so very
pleased if you would come and convince yourself that it is so.... You
would always find me at home in the middle of the day.... Perhaps you
will dine with me some time?"
"Oh!" he said, apparently agreeably surprised.
She gave a sigh of relief at having steered clear of the rocks of her
autobiography. He made no further inquiries. But he seemed equally
unwilling to give information about himself, either with regard to his
present or his past circumstances.
"Life has its shady side," he said, "and when one finds one's self
among the shadows, it's a question whether it's advisable to speak
about it."
"But I am such an old friend!" cried Lilly. "You can confide in me.
Fancy that we are sitting on the old terrace in the Junkerstrasse....
Don't you remember ... that time we first spoke to each other? It was
just such a May evening as this."
"It was warmer," he replied, turning up the collar of his jacket as far
as his ears.
"You are cold?" she asked, laughing, for she was aglow from head to
foot.
"I haven't"--he paused--"my summer overcoat with me to-night."
"Oh, then we had better get up," she said, becoming thoughtful; "we can
talk just as well walking about."
And so they paced up and down in the shadow of the old church; but the
interchange of personal confidences flagged. He evaded questions and
she evaded them, and they put each other off with generalities. She
extolled her happy lot; he sighed over his: "It's hard--very hard!"
just as he had done at the time of his examination; she could hear him
as plainly as if it were yesterday.
"How are your people?" she asked, to change the subject:
His father had died after a short illness two years ago, his mother
still made cravats.
As he told her this, he settled the invisible tie under his upturned
collar. No doubt he was wearing a gay token of maternal skill and
maternal generosity.
Then, when she had expressed her condolences, she inquired with a
slightly beating heart how Frau Asmussen was, and her daughters.
He made a sound with his lips as he answered: "They are very
undesirable neighbours. The elder of the two girls has married a
cashier, who is likely to lose his berth owing to irregularities. The
younger has charge of the library, and the mother now drinks like a
fish."
He related this in the same outraged tone in which he had previously
alluded to Lilly's divorce.
"He is evidently still very proper," Lilly thought, with a sense of her
own unworthiness and impropriety.
He was unhappy, nevertheless. She was sure of that.
And poor, very, very poor! Poorer than she had ever been in all her
life. Who could say if he were not suffering the pangs of hunger now as
he walked along beside her, shivering in his threadbare, shabby coat?
"Well, Herr Redlich," she said, "if your engagements will allow you,
why not come to-morrow and dine with me?"
His engagements interfered most emphatically with his getting off in
the middle of the day to change his clothes ... but if she wouldn't
mind his coming as he was ...
"You may come just as you like," she cried with a laugh. "And you shall
have your mother's potato soup."
So saying, she squeezed both his hands and jumped into a tramcar.
Oh, what a joy this was! What a joy! Now she had found what she had
been looking for so long. Someone for whom she could care, someone to
pet and spoil. Someone to whom she would be more than a toy and a
plaything; who would regard her as his sunshine and bread of life, and
his gentle guide to hope and happiness.
Someone who would be hers alone--hers alone!
He hid risen from the grave of her youth, even as she had imagined in
her dreams. And now life was going to be different; full of riches,
full of secrets. Little, funny, but perfectly innocent secrets!
That night she slept little. Her new-found happiness kept her awake
like children's Christmas anticipations. Her present servant, a buxom
country girl, who had soon got accustomed to town ways, stared in
astonishment the next morning when Lilly, whom she had hitherto
regarded as lazy, rose early and prepared to go out marketing.
"I am expecting a friend," explained Lilly, smiling.
She wanted to buy everything herself--the meat, the radishes; above
all, the sausages that once had been the glory of his mother's potato
soup.
She also superintended the cooking. She laid the table, moved the palm
from the aquarium so that there should be something green on the table,
for in her excitement she had forgotten to buy flowers. This was her
very first guest at dinner for more than two years; and such a dear
guest, perhaps the dearest she could possibly have entertained.
At half-past twelve the servant came in, turning up her nose in
contempt, to say that a young man wanted to speak to her mistress.
"That is my guest!" cried Lilly.
"I shouldn't have thought it," said the girl, with a haughty inflection
in her voice, as Lilly rushed past her to welcome him.
At first he seemed too shy to enter the light. He hung about the
doorpost and tugged at his suit, which indeed looked dreadfully shabby
and frayed, more so than last night.
His inflamed eyes, like two red slits blinking behind his round
glasses, gave him an air of groping helplessness. The lofty
intellectual forehead had acquired an ugly receding look, because the
forelock of genius no longer fell over it. His once magnificent mass of
fair hair had become a matted thatch of tow, and looked as if a comb
hadn't touched it for many a long day.
He appeared disinclined for conversation. He devoured the potato soup
with tremulous appreciation, leaving the slices of sausage to the last.
When his soup-plate was dry, he stuck his fork into one bit after the
other, and conveyed it to his mouth with uneasy glances to the right
and left, as if he suspected someone were waiting in ambush to deprive
him of his pleasure.
The roast meat filled him with less awe, and he heaped his plate high,
regardless of the waiting-maid's sneers. Moreover, he drank Richard's
good claret in long, unconscionable draughts, and with flushed, mottled
cheeks began to laugh and find his tongue.
Lilly, who had been rather depressed at first, watched him thaw with
relief, and thought perhaps, after all, he might be made presentable.
And then the idea occurred to her that here really was a case of
working out a man's salvation, very different from her delusions about
saving a Walter von Prell. And this reflection filled her with renewed
blissful assurance.
After the meal, they retired to the corner drawing-room. And here,
under the influence of the unaccustomed wine, he became a prey to
frivolity, seated himself in the rocking-chair, and tickled the
snarling monkey.
He presented a ghastly spectacle as he lounged back in the chair with
his legs nonchalantly stretched out before him. The frayed ends of his
trousers were tucked into the tops of his boots, exposing to view
ragged loops; and as Lilly contemplated him, she said to herself, "This
must be altered," and she began to cudgel her brains as to how a
transformation was to be achieved.
As for him, the barriers of reserve being once broken down he began to
disclose his innermost soul and to air his views on life.
Oh! what feelings of gall and bitterness came to light! He had been so
soured by the long struggle with privations and hardships, and eternal
envy of others happier and brighter and more favoured by fortune than
himself, that he could see no merit in anything, and attacked all
talents, attainments, and prosperity--called everyone humbugs and
hypocrites, said that getting on was entirely a matter of birth,
interest, and push, and anathematised success as a hollow fraud.
At the same time he had very little to say about his own personal
experiences. She could not find out whether he was still a student; he
would only confess that his deepest feelings had been hurt irreparably
in the grim fight for existence. And while he talked and laughed
stridently, two semicircular dents appeared in his lean cheeks, giving
his face a hard, sarcastic expression. Lilly had a dim remembrance that
of old these marks had been visible on his youthful countenance, though
less accentuated.
"Oh, poor, poor fellow!" she thought compassionately, and resolved on
the instant to make a man of him again, inwardly and outwardly. But
when he was gone she felt very sad and depressed. "Am I much better
off?" she asked herself. "What has become of the joyous confidence in
life that I once had? Where is my joy of life, where my Song of Songs?"
* * * * *
That afternoon, before Richard came, she evolved a scheme by which she
could bestow a new wardrobe on Fritz Redlich, without drawing on
Richard's purse or offending Fritz Redlich.
"What do you think?" she said to him after tea. "Since yesterday two
rather extraordinary things have happened--one a very nice thing, and
the other a very sad thing. First, I have met an old friend of mine,
who before he went to the university lived on the same floor as I did.
And then this morning a poor student called and begged for something to
eat. He looked so miserable! Have you, in case he calls again, any
clothes to give away? Suits and boots--he wants everything."
"I'll give you some with pleasure," said Richard. "I don't know what to
do with all my left-off stuff." But the other, the "old friend," made
him thoughtful. "What sort of a chap is he?" he asked.
In her effort to keep distinct the two mythical beings that she had
made out of one living reality, she began to sing the old friend's
praises with far too much exaggeration to be judicious. He was an
extremely clever and quite distinguished young professor, who had
completed his university course and was just entering on a brilliant
career, a paragon of knowledge and intellect, and goodness knew what
else.
"What was his special subject?"
She really didn't know, only that it was something very profound and
erudite. Nothing but an academic career was worthy of his talents.
She found herself immersed in such a whirlpool of lies that at last she
did not know what she was saying.
Richard, acutely conscious of his intellectual limitations, cherished
an unbounded reverence for anyone with brains; he grew very red, looked
uneasy and vexed.
"I suppose he'll be coming to see you?" he asked.
"Of course," she replied, highly satisfied with her finesse.
"Congratulations on your soul's affinity," he said with a mocking bow,
"so long as I am not expected to meet him."
Nothing could have turned out better. The next morning a factory porter
brought her a huge bundle from Herr Dehnicke. It contained a nearly new
summer tweed suit in the latest fashion, several coloured cambric
shirts, a pair of boots, and blue silky-looking undergarments.
He seemed to have wanted to exhibit his charity in a very magnificent
manner; for, as a rule, generosity to the poor was not in his line.
The next thing to be thought of was how to hand the clothes over to
Fritz Redlich without giving offence.
Three days later, when he came again, she made an excuse after dinner
for showing him over the flat. He must see how well it was arranged.
When they came to the lumber-room she opened the door quite casually,
and there, in the company of discarded blouses, broken vases, faded
flowers, and other rubbish, the tweed suit hung ostentatiously.
"When I left the general's house I brought it and some other men's
clothes here by mistake," she explained. "That's why it hangs there
getting spoilt."
His small, weak eyes lighted greedily.
Did he perhaps know of someone to whom such things would be useful?
He answered snappily that he did not, but he could not resist casting a
downward glance at his own trousers.
Wasn't there anyone to whom he would be doing a favour by offering the
clothes?
There was no one that he knew of, he repeated.
In spite of her anxiety not to hurt his feelings, she plucked up
courage and remarked that there was, if she were not mistaken, an
extraordinary similarity between his figure and the quondam wearer's of
the suit. The general might have been a trifle stouter, but any little
tailor would alter ...
Then he became seriously angry. He was not the man to accept benefits
from any charitably disposed person he met. Did she think he had sunk
so low as that? He had principles, and to wear cast-off raiment
belonging to people he knew nothing about was a proceeding his
principles would never tolerate.
Lilly, with a sigh, reluctantly relinquished her idea.
He seemed unable to tear himself away. He sat on and on and at last she
was obliged to give him a hint, for at any moment now Richard might be
coming in.
At the top of the stairs he turned round again, and asked, stuttering,
would it be as convenient if next time he came in the evening?
"Can you no longer manage to get off at midday?" she asked, taken
aback. On Richard's account she never received strangers late in the
afternoon.
"It wasn't that," he began to explain, lingering and hesitating, so
that she listened in a fever for footsteps on the stairs.
"Well, what then?"
"I should like to think over the matter you mentioned just now, and ...
and ..."
"Well, and what?"
"And perhaps when it's dark I might ... carry the parcel away with me."
And he rushed down the steps.
"So he had to swallow his pride, poor fellow!" she thought, as she
looked after him full of pity.
The same evening she made a parcel of the things and sent them to him
by post, with a sovereign and a thousand apologies. She wanted him to
have a new hat, she said, and no trouble with regard to alterations.
A few days later, when he put in an appearance again at dinner, one
would hardly have known him, he looked so smart and brushed-up. The
suit fitted as if made for him, and though the dandy boots were too
long, he had prevented them turning up at the toe by padding them with
cotton wool. Even the scornful servant scanned him with a more friendly
eye.
It was a pity he hadn't parted with his shock of hair and got his beard
shaved off. You could almost have been seen in the street with him if
he had. His cheeks had filled out wonderfully. His eyes, too, were
better; thanks to the doctor to whom she had sent him almost by force.
Gradually, too, his manners became less rough. He gave up bolting his
food and putting his fingers into his mouth, and he acquired the art of
drinking claret without flushing. And not only in externals, but
mentally he began to reflect some of the tranquil well-being of his
hospitable surroundings. His abuse became more discriminating, and he
could even forgive people the unpardonable crime of being happy.
He displayed charming tact in refraining from inquiries as to Lilly's
position. And she knew how to thank him for it. Though she avoided
cross-examining him about his own affairs, she was able to piece
together a picture of his scholastic failure from the remarks and
self-upbraidings that he let fall.
After two years of distressing poverty he had abandoned the teaching
profession and his cherished convictions to take up theology for the
sake of a stipend offered to him in his native town.
"Only think of that!" Lilly said to herself, deeply moved. She recalled
the sunny early morning when the sound of the church bells had greeted
them from the green valley.
Even this supreme act of renunciation seemed to have brought him no
lasting blessing, for he had been obliged for more than a year to earn
his bread by addressing envelopes and doing other mysterious odd jobs,
about which he was not communicative.
"All the same," he said, "I have kept up my dignity in spite of
everything. And however poor and despised I am, I have not lost my
self-respect. No, I have not lost it."
As he said this he paced up and down the room gloomily, with fire
flashing from his small eyes. And when he expanded his chest and threw
back his shoulders and ran his fingers through his tousled mane, he
resembled once more the youthful hero who had once fired Lilly's
enthusiasm and filled her imagination with ambitious dreams.
In order to complete her good work and restore to him his lost
happiness she insisted on knowing what ideal he had at heart, what path
in life he would choose.
What he wanted, he said, was to leave Berlin. He would like again to
feel a free man who had his apportioned duty and knew how to do it, and
to breathe fresher, purer air.
"Ah! all of us would like something of the kind," thought Lilly, with a
sigh.
A post as private tutor would satisfy him, somewhere in the country. He
would prefer a parsonage, for then a library would be at his disposal.
"And where the lime-trees will flower," thought Lilly, "the corn wave
in the breeze, and the cattle will be called to drink."
She almost wept with envy at the thought.
From this day forward she left no stone unturned to gratify the heart's
desire of the old friend of her youth. She gave him money to advertise
in the most likely papers, wrote with her own hand testimonials and
letters of introduction, and asked the comrades of her "set" to
interest themselves in him.
She had to go about it all very secretly, for fear Richard should
suspect what she was doing. For even as it was, she had to put up with
a good deal at this time. He complained that she did not show him
sufficient consideration, that she was cold and unloving, and that he
could detect a hostile influence in everything she said.
"I suppose your talented friend thinks so. You had better ask the
learned genius."
These little sarcastic speeches were reiterated _ad nauseam_. And one
day the bomb burst. In defiance of his promise that when she had
visitors he would always be announced, he suddenly burst in on Lilly
and the friend of her youth while they were dining together. He had not
rung, had hardly knocked, and his face was as black as thunder. Growing
pale, she sprang to her feet, and Fritz Redlich, as if caught in a
guilty act, followed her example. He looked sheepish, and the end of
his napkin dropped into the soup.
For a moment silence reigned, only broken by a malicious giggle from
the servant standing in the doorway.
"I ask your pardon, dear madam," said Richard, keeping up his
threatening air and demeanour. "I was only anxious to know how you
were."
"Herr Richard Dehnicke, a kind acquaintance; Herr Redlich, my old
friend," she introduced them.
Then he looked at his much-dreaded rival more closely. In surprise and
disapproval he regarded his unkempt hair and beard, but as his glance
sank lower his face cleared, and a baffled though distinctly pleased
ray of recognition illumined his features. Was not that _his_ suit and
_his_ shirt?
Still further did his glance descend, past the napkin lying in the
soup-plate, down to the trousers. And were not those _his_ trousers and
those _his_ cast-off boots, which the brilliant young genius was
wearing on his feet?
"Oh!" he said expressively, and nothing more. Then, with a sinister
curl of the lip, he turned to Lilly. "Can I speak a few words to madame
alone?" he asked.
"If Herr Redlich will excuse me," she said; and in her confusion and
from old habit, she opened the door of the bedroom, as if that were
quite the correct place in which to speak a few words with an ordinary
"kind" acquaintance.
Richard, equally accustomed to this way, followed her, heedless of the
intimacy he exposed by so doing.
"Look here," he said, when he had shut the door, "I've been fool enough
to be jealous of your so-called soul's affinity. But after what I've
seen just now, I swear you may entertain your friends as much as you
like--morning, noon, and night for all I care. And I'll keep a stock of
old suits on hand for them. Now, go back to your dinner, you little
donkey!"
Then he went out by the other door. She heard him laughing to himself
after he had gone.
She was so deeply ashamed that she scarcely knew how to return to the
friend of her youth, he who was so strict in his morals that at the
bare mention of her divorce he had displayed pained disgust.
Then it dawned on her that she was standing in her bedroom. Now
everything had been shown up--everything! However little acquainted he
might be with the ways of the world, he could not help perceiving her
relations with the intruder who had so suddenly appeared in her flat
and disappeared with equal suddenness.
For a long time she hesitated what to do, with her hand on the handle
of the door. She listened in fear for his departing step, the angry
rasping of his throat--even his silence filled her with alarm. Then,
trembling and ready to confess everything in tears of penitence, she
ventured back to the dining-room.
What did she see? Only the gentleman still seated at the table, rubbing
out the stains made by the wet napkin on his waistcoat. The blue
goggles lay beside his plate, and he blinked at her with friendly and
unconcerned eyes.
"Is he gone already?" he asked ingenuously. Evidently he had not even
heard the door slam.
When the hot joint came in he set to work with undiminished appetite,
and made no further reference to the interlude. In truth, it seemed
that his mind was so pure that he could not see impurity when it was
almost thrust upon his vision.
She was very grateful to him, and, to show her gratitude, she
determined to let him come in the evening if he liked, as Richard had
said he might come at any time. He should come without invitation, she
said, and if she chanced to be out, the servant would get him supper,
and see that he had all he wanted. Then, recollecting the grimaces she
had made on his first appearance, she instructed her to be specially
attentive to the guest, and to make him feel perfectly at home.
The buxom country girl drew down the corners of her mouth and said
nothing.
* * * * *
After these events, Lilly redoubled her efforts on behalf of Fritz
Redlich. And once more Frau Jula proved a helpful friend.
"Leave it to me," she said one day. "I used to know up there"--she
hesitated a little--"someone who has great influence and is considered
a God Almighty in more than one parsonage. I might write to him, but,
of course, my name mustn't be mentioned. It still acts there like a red
rag to a bull."
The next day Lilly sent her an advertisement that Fritz Redlich had
inserted in one of the papers. She was to forward it to the influential
magnate. The answer would be direct, and the intervention of a third
person not required. She, too, was of opinion that it would be better
it he believed that he owed his future employment to his own unaided
exertions.
As luck would have it, Frau Jula's plan succeeded. One evening in the
following week he called at Lilly's unexpectedly--a frequent event now,
whether she was at home or not--and told her with evident satisfaction
that his advertisement had brought forth immediate results. He had been
asked to send his testimonials at once to a clergyman in Further
Pomerania, and to hold himself in readiness to leave Berlin. The
clergyman seemed quite eager about engaging him.
Lilly's heart swelled with joyous pride. She wouldn't have betrayed on
any account that she had had a finger in the pie. Nevertheless, she
flattered herself that it was all her doing. She had made him, and she
felt he belonged to her more than anyone else in the world.
The meal progressed in calm and beatific silence. As he had not let her
know that he was coming, the first course did not consist of potato
soup.
She apologised for the omission, and added, with a little pang at her
heart, "I suppose we shall not have many more meals together?"
"Probably not," he said; and cast a glance at the servant, whose
presence obviously embarrassed him. Otherwise she felt sure that he
would have expressed his feelings more graciously.
Afterwards they withdrew to the corner drawing-room. The hot July air
came in through the open windows, but the little naked monkey, whose
cage was placed near the aquarium, was perished with cold, and now
shivered so violently that he had to be wrapped up in his coat, an
attention to which he submitted with snarls. The bullfinch piped its
evening song and it grew dusk.
Fritz Redlich sat as usual in the rocking-chair, his favourite seat
after he had partaken of a good meal. She walked excitedly up and down
the room.
"I shall soon be lonely again," she thought, "and start knocking about
all alone, as before."
Yet what a piece of luck it was for him! What a piece of luck! She told
him so repeatedly.
"Yes," he said, "it certainly is very fortunate that I have fought my
way as I have done"; he emphasised the last few words and went on,
"When I think what awful years those have been, how often I have been
compelled to belie my character, how often my principles have been
endangered ... And not only that," he added after a depressed pause,
"there have been the many doubtful circumstances in which I have been
thrown, and the enforced connection with impurity, not to be wondered
at when one takes into consideration how easily a man becomes infected
by the society he is in, and finds himself doing things that he would
rather leave alone. It's hard--very hard, Frau Czepanek."
"Oh, please don't Frau Czepanek me!" she exclaimed. "Can't you call me
'Frau Lilly,' or simply 'Lilly'? We are old friends, you know."
"Willingly, if you wish," he replied.
To-day she felt a tenderness for him such as she had not experienced
since the days of her early youth. It was, too, a motherly, a sisterly
tenderness, and something else besides--something like a shimmer of
light drawing nearer and nearer from the distance.
"Tell me, Herr Fritz," she demanded, pausing in front of him, "tell me
honestly, have you ever loved in all your life?"
He jumped as if he had been struck,
"Loved? What do you mean?"
"Well, what should I mean?" she laughed, drumming with her fingers on
the back of the rocking-chair. "What should I mean?"
He seemed to breathe more freely. "For love, properly speaking, I have
neither the time nor the inclination," he said.
"And no woman has ever loved you?"
"Do I look," he asked, shrugging his shoulders, "as if anyone could
love me?"
His utter despondency irritated her. But she turned it off with a
playful "Now, now!" and shook her finger at him.
Again he looked alarmed, as if the mere suggestion of such a
possibility filled him with anxiety.
The poor fellow! Never had a girl's eyes glowingly sought his;
never had a woman's arms encircled his neck in rapture. The highest
pleasure--the only thing that both for man and woman makes life worth
living--he had been denied.
A confession burned on her lips, a confession dating from far-off,
half-forgotten times, which would have told him how mistaken he was.
But she choked it back. Not to-day; perhaps later, when it came to
saying farewell.
It grew dark, and the light reflected from the street-lamps played on
wall and ceiling. The monkey had curled himself up in a ball under his
coat, and the little bullfinch had gone to roost.
Lilly still continued her pacing up and down, lightly brushing his
elbow each time she passed the rocking-chair.
At last she paused again in front of him. There he sat, he whom she had
once adored so passionately, and he was quite ignorant of it. Quite
ignorant of all the miracles woman's love can work. The poor, poor
unfortunate creature!
"You really ought to get your hair cut," she said with a nervous laugh,
"and then perhaps you'll have a better chance with the women."
Slowly she lifted her left hand, which felt as if a weight was hanging
to it, and laid it on his rough wavy hair. It rebounded from her gentle
touch like an air-cushion.
He started, stopped rocking himself in the chair, looked round
uneasily, and gave a cough.
"Yes, yes," he said after a silence, "that's sensible advice. If I want
to make a favourable impression when I enter on my new vocation, I
ought----"
Just then he turned his head sharply towards the window, and her hand
glided down of its own accord on to his neck. She choked back a sigh,
and he stood up and hurriedly took his leave. She was so embarrassed
that she did not press him to stay longer.
The servant was standing outside in the passage, with the lamp in her
hand to light him downstairs.
"The day after to-morrow I shall expect you," Lilly called after him
from the window.
He sent up a "Thank you and good-night" in reply, and disappeared in
the darkness. The poor, poor boy! Plunged in bitterness and depression
he went his way, little dreaming what paradises might have been his for
the asking.
For the remainder of the evening she was distraught and anxious. "It
would have been better not to have put my hand on his head," she
thought. Yet, all the same, she was glad that she had.
* * * * *
The next afternoon a postcard came from Frau Jula. She had good news
from "high quarters." The negotiations were concluded. Her _protege_
was to start without delay, and even his travelling expenses had been
provided. Lilly cried with joy.
Thus was her good work completed. The friend of her youth was saved,
and his zest for life restored. Now it only remained to teach him how
to laugh and enter into his inheritance of proud courageous freedom,
all that belonged to him by rights, which she herself could now never
hope to attain.
Fate might do with her as it pleased, so long as he made upward
progress. He had become an essential part of her existence. She had
made him her own by her efforts and prayers, her lies, and her toil,
and when he came to-morrow evening, as arranged, she would tell him
all--all about that first love ... and everything.
And once more--in farewell--she would lay her hand on his shock of
hair, and then let come what might.
The next evening she dressed herself more carefully than had been her
wont when she spent the evening with him. She made the potato soup with
her own hands and cut the beefsteak--he ate much smaller portions than
he used to --so that the servant had nothing to do but put it in the
pan.
The clock struck eight, but he had not come. He was busy packing, she
thought, to console herself. It struck nine, and still he had not come;
then it struck ten, and there was no further hope, unless the door was
locked up and he was clapping his hands to be let in, as Richard did
sometimes. She leaned out at the open window till it struck eleven.
Then, tired out and very sad, she went to bed.
The next morning she received the following letter:
"Honoured and Gracious Madame,
"Having succeeded by my own unaided efforts in procuring a decent
position, I consider it my duty to break off all connection with my
former life. As I think I have told you more than once; I was often
forced by circumstances into situations repugnant to my high
principles, and that, in spite of my resolute character, I was led into
temptations which, I frankly confess, I have not invariably emerged
from unscathed.
"I am perfectly aware that I am under obligations to you, dear madame,
and I herewith tender you my heartfelt thanks, for it shall never be
said of me that I am wanting in gratitude. I have kept an account of
the cash which circumstances have from time to time compelled me to
borrow from you, and, as soon as my salary permits, I shall refund
every farthing, and also send back the suit, which I am wearing at
present. I may say here, that if you had really respected me you would
never have subjected me to the humiliating encounter with the gentleman
to whom these articles of clothing once obviously belonged.
"In conclusion, I hope I may be allowed to give you the following
exhortation. Mend your ways, dear madame, and change your mode of life,
which is an outrage on all the laws of morality. I believe that in
giving utterance to this sentiment I am acting the part of a friend
more than if I were to leave you under the delusion that I am a
simpleton.
"Yours always gratefully,
"Fritz Redlich,
Cand. Phil et Theol."
Lilly felt this experience deeply, and suffered for a long time acute
anguish.
Not till several months had elapsed was the humorous side of the
incident brought to her notice by the servant coming to give her
warning. The visits of the student of philosophy and of strict morals
on the evenings when Lilly was absent had not been, it appeared,
without their consequences.
CHAPTER XII
In the early autumn of the same year, Richard took a husband's holiday,
and went to Ostend, while Lilly lived cheaply and innocently at a
bathing-place on the Baltic, where she passed as a widow of good birth
and position. She accepted the admiring homage of several spinsters,
allowed a young missionary to dedicate a volume of verse to her, and
declined an honourable offer from a widower, town-clerk of Pirna, with
expressions of esteem and friendship.
Lilly enjoyed those six weeks immensely. The winter that followed
differed very little from those that had preceded it. At Christmas,
Richard's present to her was a hired carriage with the seven-pointed
coronet emblazoned on its panels. He wanted to avoid the unpleasantness
of his mother--whose prejudice against Lilly increased from year to
year--ordering the family brougham for her own use when he was driving
about in it with his mistress. Another present was a sable coat of the
newest shape with dozens of tails, that cost a small fortune.
In spite of Richard's reproaches, Lilly made very little use of either
of her new acquisitions, for the never-silenced inner voice of fear
said to her that this sort of pomp and luxury would make her more and
more part of the world she longed to flee from. While Richard aimed
with stubborn pertinacity at draining the cup of pleasure to the dregs,
Lilly hankered more and more after respectability. It was her last
anchor of hope in the barren life which, as the days dragged along,
left her tortured and dissatisfied in the midst of music, laughter, and
light.
The only person in her set who stimulated her intellect in the least
was Frau Jula. She knew how to relate entertaining stories, she showed
that she had been at home in different worlds, and that her mind
retained the impressions she had received there. But for some time past
her silly little curly head had been enveloped in a web of impenetrable
mystery. The erotic verse, which she had contributed to modern German
periodicals, no longer appeared, and her morbid short stories were
nowhere to be met with. When her friends teased her and asked what had
become of her art, she would smile like a coy bride, and answer, "Wait
and see."
At this time Lilly would gladly have seen more of Frau Jula, for she
had long since given up feeling that she was in any way superior to her
or more moral. But she did not find it easy to approach her, so she
carried the burden of her hopes and fears unshared, and trudged on
alone, thirsting by the way.
* * * * *
What now came to pass happened on the nineteenth of March, a date never
to be forgotten, because it was St. Joseph's Day. It was a day of soft
spring-like breezes and pinkish-grey skies; a day on which Nature's
orchestra seemed to be rehearsing for the great symphony of spring.
The grassy slopes of the canal-banks were already beginning to turn
green, the wild-ducks, in couples, swam on the smooth surface of the
water, and big foam-edged blocks of melting ice floated downstream.
Lilly, filled with vague and wistful longings, could not stand it any
longer indoors, and prepared to go out early. She wanted to run, cry,
shout, jump hedges, throw herself on the grass anything, she didn't
care what, so long as she escaped for a few hours from this prison,
which smelt of powder and perfumed paints, and was oppressed by the
weight of indolence.
She got ready for a walk and gave a few directions to Adele, the new
servant, who was an elderly and rather patronising woman, thoroughly
accustomed to service in the households of single ladies. Instead of
waiting for her carriage, she took the tramway out to Grunewald. She
alighted at the boundary where smart villadom ends, and the maltreated
woods rise high above the yoke of the builder, and walked on straight
ahead, not knowing where she was going.
A few motor-cars rushed by, and young men in them smiled and beckoned
to her. They might have been actual acquaintances or only making fun of
her; but, anyhow she thought it wiser to turn off the main-road, so she
struck into the sandy path that ran along the lake to the old
Jagdschloss. Here far and wide she saw not a human soul.
The chilly March wind swept over the milky-blue water and agitated the
reeds and rushes. Ice was still to be seen round the edge of the lake,
but it was so thin and pierced with holes that every small ripple that
broke on the shore sent up jets of spray. From the pine-branches there
sounded now and then the song of a bird, sad enough to extinguish
awakened expectations of spring.
"It looks more like spring in the town than here," thought Lilly. But
the keenness of the wind, full of the pungent scent of moss and
pine-needles, did her good. As she strode along, she met it full in the
face. Her cheeks glowed; she felt her frozen blood thaw and send fresh
life pulsating through her languid limbs.
Suddenly she burst out laughing. Everything was all nonsense. Her
pining discontent, her longing, Richard's snobbish ambition, his
mother's everlasting marriage schemes--even respectability was humbug.
What had she to do with it all? She--the free, the wild, the ruined
Lilly? There must be something better in store for her, something
nobler. Not in Dr. Salmoni's sense--God forbid!--but something
hardening, pure, and life-giving, like this March wind sweeping through
her veins.
She heard a sound from the top of a pine-tree with which she had
become familiar in the park at Lischnitz. It was a kind of whistle,
half-defiant, half-enticing, which ended in a sharp "Tschek-tschek."
She stopped, looked up, and whistled too. It was a couple of squirrels
that had been chasing each other in corkscrew circles round the trunk,
and now stood suddenly still in alarm at the sight of her.
"Tschek-tschek!" she cried, to incite the little red-coats to a new
game, but, not succeeding, she stooped and picked up a pebble.
Just as she was in the act of throwing it, she caught sight of a pair
of eyes fixed on her from behind another trunk--large, questioning,
astonished eyes, that narrowed and darkened as they gazed, as if they
wanted to look away, but couldn't--a pair of eyes that surely she had
known long, long ago.
But no! she had never seen them before; for the young man who had
watched with her the squirrels' game and stood with his hat in his
hand, still half hidden behind a tree, was quite a stranger to her. If
she had ever met him, she would never have forgotten it. It would not
be easy to forget that serious, self-contained, Greek young face, with
the sensitive, slender-bridged nose and the lustrous eyes of the
dreamer.
He was not very fashionably clad, and she liked him for it. He had on a
brown overcoat of a not very modern cut, and underneath a suit of rough
tweed, quite un-German and still less English.
He seemed gradually to come to life. He put on his hat and emerged
from behind the tree-trunk. "Now he is going to speak to me," she
thought, and she felt a sickening dread. But no! He lifted his hat,
threw her one more long, questioning, earnest look--almost a look of
recognition--walked past her, and took the path she had come by.
Lilly, too, would have liked to walk on, but she could not make up her
mind, and, not to be caught staring after him, she slipped behind the
same trunk which had lately concealed him from view.
She wondered if he would look back. No, he did not do that, and she
felt somehow hurt and neglected.
Smaller and smaller grew the tall figure. He strode over the sand with
a somewhat heavy step. "He's never been a soldier," she thought. Then
she fancied that he stooped and afterwards turned round. Yes, he was
making quite a wide and careful survey of the landscape, as if bent on
discovering her. But she was safely hidden behind her tree and did not
stir.
Then he walked on again and vanished in a bend in the path.
"A pity I haven't got the carriage," she said to herself.
If she had been driving she could have overtaken him without appearing
to follow him, and the seven-pointed coronet would have duly impressed
him. As it was, he must have formed a bad opinion of her for wandering
about alone, whistling like a boy and throwing stones at amorous
squirrels. Nevertheless, as she made her way homewards she felt as if
some rare and beautiful gift had been bestowed upon her.
Was it possible that she had seen him before? She recalled the young
man she had met in the Pragerstrasse, when she was with her husband in
Dresden; how he had given her the same sort of look with a flash in it
of sad recognition; and how she had wanted to turn round and ask, "Who
are you? Do you belong to me? Would you like me to belong to you?" And
she had forborne to follow her instinct, because to turn round in the
street would have been a crime in the colonel's eyes.
To-day she was free--so free that she could choose her friends as her
heart dictated--and yet she had not followed him, but had let him go,
he who, whether he was that same young man or not, might perchance
belong to her or she to him.
With half-closed eyes she filled in the details of the picture that she
had formed of him. His beard was small, dark, and double-pointed, and
so closely shaven on the cheeks that it appeared only a blue shadow.
Such beards were rarely seen in Berlin, though Italians and Frenchmen
wore them. His lips were full, hard, and firmly closed, as if chiselled
out of marble; his high, square forehead seemed to give him an aspect
of wrath, but not the vulgar wrath of an ordinary mortal towards a poor
creature like herself; it was like the wrath of the gods--divine.
So she continued to rhapsodise, forgot where she was going and lost her
way, to find herself finally on quite the wrong road. Anything might
have happened to her in the woods, where unprotected ladies were not
safe at any hour of the day from the attacks of tramps. But she
scarcely gave a thought to the risks she had run, got into the first
tram she came to, and reached home, exhausted but glowing all over, two
hours later than she intended.
She could not eat anything, but threw herself on the _chaise longue_
and dreamed.
The bell sounded, and a man's voice was heard at the door. It couldn't
be Richard. He never came before half-past four.
Then Adele came in, and said that there was a strange gentleman outside
who wished to know if madame had missed her card-case; he had picked
one up in the woods.
Lilly sprang up. The little brocaded case, which she had carried in her
hand with her silver chain-purse, was not there; she must have dropped
it and not noticed that it was missing in her excitement.
"What is the gentleman like?" she asked.
He was tall, young, and handsome, indeed, remarkably handsome, was the
information she received from Adele.
"Has he a dark, close-cut beard?"
Yes, he had.
The delightful shock of the surprise made her stagger.
"Ask him to come in," she stammered, with no thought of how she looked,
though her hands went up to her hair.
As he entered the room she could scarcely recognise him, there was such
a thick red mist before her eyes.
"I beg your pardon, gracious Frau," she heard him say in the clear calm
tones of a man who has no ignoble dealings. "I should not have
disturbed you if your address had been on your card as well as your
name. I looked you up in the directory, but being uncertain that there
were not others of your name ... I ..."
"You are very kind indeed to have taken so much trouble," she replied,
and asked him to sit down.
"I am Dr. Rennschmidt," he said, waiting till she had settled herself
in a corner of the sofa before accepting her invitation. He drew the
card-case from his pocket and laid it on the table.
She smiled her thanks for his courtesy, and then, as it seemed
necessary to her to exaggerate the service he had done her, she told
him that she specially valued the little card-case as it was a souvenir
of her husband, and she would have been very grieved to lose it.
His face grew a shade graver. There was a pause, in which his eyes
rested on her features with a steadfast, questioning, almost searching
expression. There was nothing in it of the tentative brazen advances
that she knew so well in other masculine eyes. His glance was one of
pure, disinterested admiration tinctured with reverence.
"Did we not meet a short time ago on the outskirts of the wood?" she
asked warily.
He replied eagerly in the affirmative. "If I had not been so awkward I
should have asked your pardon then for playing the eavesdropper. I saw
how startled you were ... but at the moment I could think of nothing to
do but to make myself scarce. It seemed the kindest course to take from
your point of view."
His manner of speaking was so joyously frank, it was like a tonic to
her, yet withal made her feel slightly ashamed.
"And now you have done something kinder still," she answered, with as
much hearty appreciation as if he had saved her life.
"Oh, please don't mention it," he said. "I ought to have turned back at
once. But it seemed as if the earth had swallowed you up. I was quite
anxious about you."
She smiled to herself in happy trepidation. A little more and she would
have confided to him where she had hidden herself.
"What must you have thought of me," she said, "wandering about in the
woods by myself?"
"I thought that you did not feel lonely in the society of Nature,
otherwise you would have brought a companion."
"You were right," she responded eagerly. "I left my carriage at the
Restaurant Hundekehl"--the carriage had to be dragged into the
conversation after all--"but it drove back, through some
misunderstanding, and I was venturesome. You love Nature very much
too?"
"I don't know about 'very much,'" he answered. "I may say in Cordelia's
words: 'I love it according to my bond, not more nor less.' Don't you
find that love of Nature is neither a merit nor an eccentricity, but
simply a vital function?"
"Yes, of course," Lilly faltered, thinking to herself, "How exceedingly
clever he is! Will you ever be able to keep pace with him?"
"But to be quite sincere," he went on, "I cannot get used to Nature in
these climes. Her poverty oppresses me. I am in the position with
regard to her of having outgrown the home of my fathers, for which I
heap reproaches on myself. I try hard to get back on the old terms with
her, and praise her whenever I honestly can. But first more recent
pictures must fade from my mind. You see, I have only just come back
from Italy, where I have been living for the last two years."
With a deep sigh she gazed at him, considering him now positively
unearthly.
"Two whole years!" she cried.
"I am engaged on a great scientific work," he continued; "for its
sake--no, it would be more correct to say for my health's sake--I was
sent to Italy. My uncle, who is a father to me, wished it.... And it
was Italy that first inspired me with the idea of the work, and
afterwards fatherland and my old life and studies, everything else,
went to the wall."
As he spoke his eyes flashed with enthusiasm. He seemed palpitating
with his great purpose; and the old former yearning for Italian skies
awoke and beat its wings within her heart.
"Yes, isn't it true," she cried, infected by his ardour, "that there is
the home of all great ideas? There you may feel your utmost. What you
have sown there will repay and bear fruit. Isn't it so? I have never
been there, but I am quite sure that is how people feel. There, where
everything great and beautiful belongs to the soil; there, one's self
becomes greater and nobler.... One has no more petty sordid cares.
Isn't it true?"
He had listened to her astounded, his eyes beaming and radiant. "Yes,"
he said almost solemnly, "it is exactly as you say."
She felt a sensation of joy. Wasn't this harmony of thought a
confirmation of the affinity that she had from the first moment that
she had set eyes on him sought and hoped for? Nothing could ever
separate her from him after this. Perhaps he really was the physical
embodiment of that shadow belonging to the Dresden days that had taken
up its abode in her soul!
"I can't help feeling as if we had met before," she murmured softly,
with eyes downcast.
"I feel like that too," he answered, "but it can't be so, for if we had
met I could never have forgotten the time and place."
"You were not in Dresden, by any chance, about this time six years
ago?" she asked.
He shook his head. "Six years ago I was studying in Bonn. The term was
over, it is true, but I went for my vacation to my uncle's. He had just
had his place restored."
"Where is it?"
"Near Coblentz."
"Then it couldn't have been. It's strange that we should both feel as
if ..." she said.
"There are certain pictures belonging to our psychic existence," he
replied, "which seem like memories, and are in reality presentiments."
"I wonder what you mean?"
"I mean that one walks between past and coming experiences as on a
tight-rope; that one reels and falls into space so soon as----"
"What?"
"So soon as one----" he broke off abruptly. "Pardon my asking, but are
you an artist?"
"Why?" she asked nervously. She felt repelled. Was he making a fool of
her?
"I gathered that you were from the plate outside your door."
The plate: "Pressed Flower Studio."
This was being rudely awakened from a pleasant dream to the stern facts
of reality. But she must not lose her presence of mind and forfeit his
esteem, so she answered carelessly:
"In a way. But mine is a very modest art. Once I worked hard at it, and
it made me very happy. I learnt it soon after I became a widow." Her
lips refused to utter the phrase, "soon after I was divorced." "I took
it up more as a little distraction than as a serious means of earning a
living. But then I had trouble with my eyes, and was obliged to give it
up."
Three lies in one breath! But why not? She and everything round her was
one big lie ... all her gestures and all her thoughts. Only the cry
that went up from her soul now, moving her to the depths of her being,
was _not_ a lie: "You shall be mine. I will be yours." And so for his
sake she went on lying.
"It's painful to me to talk about it," she continued, with her
handkerchief pressed against her eyes. "I still fed it so much. I hope
you will be so kind as never again to refer to it."
"Never again" had slipped from her. It sounded as if she took for
granted that their acquaintance was to continue, and, overwhelmed with
shame and confusion, she rose and turned her face aside.
"Forgive me," he said, greatly concerned. "I had no idea ..." He stood
up to go.
A voice within her cried, "Stay, stay, stay!" But she was incapable of
speaking, and felt as if turned to stone. Had he seen through her lies,
divined who and what she was, and didn't wish to stay? She was
conscious that her manner grew cold and haughty.
She extended her finger-tips to him. "It was kind of you to come," she
said.
This was the moment to invite him to come again, but the words froze on
her lips.
His face had grown very pale, and he looked at her with great,
inquiring, expectant eyes.
"I hope we shall meet again," he said.
"I hope so, too," she replied frigidly.
He brushed her hand with his lips and was gone.
The end--the end! And all her fault. Happiness had looked in upon her,
had lightly laid its hand in blessing on her brow, and then flown away,
leaving nothing but this pain, a pain more intolerable than any she had
ever known. It clutched at her throat and tore her heart like a
physical pain.
During the night that followed she concocted a thousand plans by which
she could contrive to find him out and meet him. As a scholar, he would
probably be a constant visitor to the library. She would go there to
read and study, in the hopes of coming across him. But, simpler still,
why shouldn't she write to him?
"I don't love you," she would write. "Why should I love you when I
hardly know you? But I feel that I am destined to have some influence
in your life, and so ..."
Finally she rejected all her plans, disgusted with her own lack of
dignity. No; Lilly Czepanek would not throw herself thus at any man's
head.
She became tormented once more with restlessness.
In the daytime she haunted the Leipziger and Potsdamer Strassen, and
other parts where metropolitan life is at its busiest. Of an evening,
instead of roaming about in distant suburbs as of yore, she kept close
to the neighbourhood of her own dwelling, walking up and down
incessantly on the solitary banks of the canal with quick, businesslike
strides.
In spite of the economy on which she plumed herself, she left the light
burning in the corner drawing-room, when she went out, for no apparent
object.
* * * * *
It was on the fourth evening after their meeting that while she was
pacing the further bank of the canal at about eight o'clock, when the
stars hung like lamps in the sky, she happened to see among the trees
the figure of a young man, who stood gazing up fixedly in the direction
of her flat.
She could see nothing of his face, for his back was turned towards
her, and it was dark just at that spot. With a slightly accelerated
heart-beat she went on her way, but in a few moments her feet declined
to take her further, and she was obliged to retrace her steps. The dark
figure still stood motionless among the trees, and regarded, through
the bare branches, the light in her corner drawing-room. This time he
heard her footstep and turned towards her.
Startled, she recognised his features. He too showed signs of being
perturbed, for at first he made a foolish little attempt to look as if
he had not seen her, then with an embarrassed smile he took off his
hat.
She trembled so violently that she dared not give him her hand.
"Dr.--Rennschmidt," was all she managed to ejaculate.
He was the first to regain his composure.
"You will wonder," he began, walking beside her, "why I was standing
here in the dark looking over there.... If I said it was by accident,
you would scarcely credit it; so I may as well confess at once.... I
have been troubled, since we parted the other evening, with the thought
that things were not quite all right between us; there was a
misunderstanding somewhere, a hitch, a hastiness--I don't exactly know
what--but I feel that I owe you an apology for something."
"Why, if that was on your mind," she replied, "did not you come in and
tell me?"
"Would it have been permitted?" he asked.
"Why not?"
"Pardon, but I have always believed that what privileges and rights we
men enjoy with regard to women are accorded to us by them. For us there
exist no others. We may stand here, of course, in the dark and tear our
hair ..."
"Have you been doing that?"
"Don't, please, ask for any explanations," he begged. Though his voice
did not betray emotion, the arm that touched hers trembled a little.
She stood still, startled, and glanced helplessly down the dark avenue
she had come by.
"Does this mean you wish me to leave you?" he asked.
In the light cast by a lamp she saw his eager questioning look.
"Oh no!" she answered slowly, and it seemed as if someone else was
speaking for her. "Now we've met, we need not part at once."
"That's what I think," he said, as gravely as if he were making an
affirmation.
They walked on together in silence. Then he said in a lighter tone:
"There's one thing I ought to draw your attention to. You have left
your light burning. If you are so good as to spare me an hour, I am
afraid it will cause you anxiety."
"Oh, never mind the light! We'll go and put it out," she exclaimed
joyously; and turned on her heel so quickly that he was left two or
three steps behind her.
As they crossed the slender span of the Hohenzollern Bridge, he pointed
to the sky.
"Jupiter shines on our enterprise," he said. "I like him better than
Venus, who gallivants after the sun, and will have a rosy carpet for
her feet."
"Show me Jupiter," said Lilly, standing still.
Eagerly he pointed out to her the brilliant ruler of the heavens, and
five or six constellations besides.
She clapped her hands with sheer delight. "Now I shall never feel
lonely again in my flat," she cried, "when I am alone in the evenings
and look out of the window."
While he waited for her at the foot of the staircase, she ran up,
turned off the light, and put the latch-key in her pocket. She told
Adele she would have supper out, and prepared to be off again.
Her heart was so full of ecstasy that she held on for a moment to the
doorpost to prevent herself reeling, and gave a sob. But by the time
she got downstairs she was quite herself again.
"If you will do me the honour to trust to my guidance," he said, "I
know a corner where no one will disturb us, and where we shall be
transported to Italy."
She gave a deep sigh. "Oh, how fond he is of talking about Italy!" she
thought. Yet she wouldn't have gone anywhere else for the world.
They pursued their way for five or six minutes along the dark bank of
the canal, talking nonsense. Now the medley of lights on the Potsdamer
Bridge were quite near, and he stopped before a small dimly lit window
in which were displayed a dozen or so of wine-bottles wreathed with
green cotton vine-leaves, looking like heads of asparagus popping out
of the sand.
"Here Signore Battistini will serve us with a Chianti as good as any to
be had in Florence," he declared.
They went in, and threaded their way through a small front room where
the proprietor, black as the devil himself, was pasting on labels
behind the bar. He was greeted with "Sera, padrone" by Lilly's new
friend. They passed into a long room full of rough tables and chairs.
The only attempt at decoration were garlands cut out of green glazed
paper, which were evidently ambitious of being taken for vines. They
twined round the bare gas-brackets and cascaded over hooks on the wall,
and in order that there should be no mistake as to what was the origin
of all these festive tokens, a placard hung from the middle, wishing
all who entered--at the end of March--a belated "Prosit Neujahr."
"How do you like this fairy-garden?" Lilly's friend asked her, as the
waiter, black as his master, with eyes like fiery Catherine-wheels,
beseechingly held out his hands for her cloak.
At the tables round them sat bushy-haired youths, who rolled long, thin
cigars between their teeth, and nearly thrust their knuckles in each
other's eyes as they gabbled Italian with fascinating rapidity.
"They are marble-cutters," Dr. Rennschmidt said _sotto voce_, "employed
by our leading sculptors. They earn a lot of money, and when they have
saved enough go home to start housekeeping."
Among them were two ladies. They wore their black lustreless hair so
low on their foreheads that their eyes resembled torches burning out of
a dark forest. They had gold rings in their ears, and their low-cut
dresses were clasped by barbaric brooches. They glanced up at Lilly's
tall figure with envious admiration, and then began an animated
conversation in whispers.
Dr. Rennschmidt bowed to them cordially, with an air that seemed to say
he had nothing to conceal and nothing to confess. He told her that they
were mandoline singers belonging to a troupe of Neapolitans, whose
manager had thrown them over, and they were now in search of an
engagement.
"Where am I?" Lilly thought.
It was like a dream, as if magic wings had wafted her into a strange
country; only the genial "Prosit Neujahr," on the placard swinging
close to her, reminded her that Germany, Berlin, and the Potsdamer
Bridge were not far off.
"I have come here every day since my return," Lilly's friend said, as
they made themselves at home in a corner. "Nostalgia for the South
still afflicts me. The most perfect German cooking has no charms for me
now, and I must have my Chianti, To-day we will, however, drink
something else, because the palate has to acquire a taste for Chianti."
He beckoned to the waiter, who was called Francesco, just as if he had
stepped out of a romance about knight-errantry and brigands--and after
a lively discussion between the two a dusty, light-coloured bottle was
produced and put on the table. Then came dishes of curious-looking
macaroni and meat bathed in orange-red sauce.
Lilly could not remember that she had ever tasted anything half so
good, and she told him so; in fact, altogether she had never enjoyed
herself so much in all her life. But this she did not tell him.
They wound up with a dish of fruit--called "_giardinetto_"--mandarins,
dates, and gorgonzola cheese. The yellow wine, which had a perfume of
nutmegs, frothed in the glasses, radiating tiny bubbles.
Leaning back against the wall, she let her eyes rest dreamily on her
new friend. He turned his head from side to side with quick little
movements rather like a bird. Everywhere he found something to observe,
to remark upon, to absorb him; or perhaps he did it all to be specially
entertaining to her. His eyes sparkled with eagerness and zest in life;
the wrinkles on his forehead rose up and down, and what she had
mistaken for a cloud of wrath was, after all, only the expression of
his brain's boiling activity.
He had a dear, funny habit, which heightened this effect: he would put
his outspread fingers to his head as if he were going to run them
through a mass of hair; but the hair was not there, and so he clapped
his hand instead on his bare temples. He seemed compounded of force and
resolution, which commanded her admiration and even awe. But his
physique was not of the most robust, although a golden-brown hue of
health, fresh from the South, tinged his cheek. His throat was
delicate, his breath from time to time came in gasps, and when his eyes
became veiled with fatigue, after some introspective probings, there
was something pathetically boyish about him that awakened maternal
tenderness.
"Ah, so this is you!" she thought, and stretched herself in blissful
languor. "This is you at last, at last."
"Why do you shut your eyes?" he asked, concerned. "Aren't you feeling
well?"
"Yes, oh yes," she said, flattering him with her eyes and mouth. "But
do, please, tell me more about the land of my desires, where I have
always wanted to go and where I have never been."
She then described to him her youthful longing, which the consumptive
master had awakened in her, the longing which had continued to smoulder
amidst the ashes of her life's experience.
"In your place I should have tramped there as a barefooted pilgrim," he
said.
"Oh, but I've had money enough to go often. I could have afforded it
perfectly well. Once I was as far on the road as Bozen. But I had to
turn back as a punishment because a young man made eyes at me."
"How sad!" he said, laughing. "That was hard lines on you, harder than
you have any conception of."
"I have some conception," she sighed. "I have only got to look at you
to be convinced of how hard it was."
"Why me?"
"Because you shine like Moses after he had looked on the glory of the
Lord."
He became serious at once. "There are glories here, too, if we have
eyes to see them," he said. "But, nevertheless, you are right. I am so
chock-full of the life and reflected radiance that I have stored up
there, so many sources have been opened out, so many seeds have
germinated, that I scarcely know how to use all my vast wealth, I write
till my fingers bleed, and there is always more to write.... I want to
give, give, and go on giving; but to whom I don't know."
"To me!" she implored, holding out her hands, palms upwards. "To me! I
am so desperately poor. Such a beggar!"
With the stern eyes of a visionary he gazed down on her. "You are not
poor," he said. "You have merely been allowed to starve."
"Isn't it the same thing?"
He shook his head, still fixing her with his gaze.
"What was your husband?" he asked next.
"I ... am the divorced wife ... of an officer of high rank," she
replied, dropping her eyes to the floor.
Thank God! This time she had not lied.
But hadn't she? What was she _now_? For a moment he pressed her hand,
which lay on the table.
"Don't speak of your past if you would rather not," he said; "leave it
for the present. When we are old friends it'll be time enough. I'll
tell you about myself and how I came to think of my great work."
"The work that you mentioned just now?" she asked, curiously moved by
the sudden solemnity of his tone.
Breathing deeply, he stretched out his clenched fists, and his eyes
burned into space.
"Yes; the work for which I live ... the work that is my pillar of
strength, my goal, my future--my everything ... that stands for father,
mother, brother, friend, and love.... For _it_, this wine was vintaged,
this hour created, and you yourself, dear gracious, beautiful one, with
your delicate infinite charm, and your two begging hands, which really
were made for giving."
"I thought you were going to talk about your work," she said softly.
"I am talking about it--of that and that alone. I want you to know how
all that I live and love is part of it. For instance, think of the
thousands of times the Annunciation has been painted, sculptured, and
sung, and how I have toiled and moiled over the subject, and yet now at
this moment when I see your great wistful 'Mary-eyes' fixed on me in
half-humble, half-astonished questioning, I feel that the last word has
not been said, the highest rung of knowledge has yet to be reached....
So you see how everything must be made to serve my work."
"Are you a poet?" she asked, quite carried away.
He shook his head, smiling. "I am not a poet, I am not an artist,
neither am I an historian nor a psychologist; but I have to be all and
a great deal more besides, for my work demands it."
Then he told her his whole story. His father, a university professor
and distinguished jurist, had died young, not long after the death of
his mother, at his birth. His uncle, a wealthy old bachelor who had
travelled a great deal both on business and pleasure, had adopted him.
He had given him a good education, and since made him an allowance
sufficient to indulge his modest whims and requirements. Acting on his
uncle's wishes he had gone abroad, and postponed for a time entering on
the same academic career as his father, owing to his health having
suffered severely from the strain of the examination, which he had
passed with honours. His studies and researches in the history of art,
which he had always pursued with ardour, had finally drawn him to
Italy. More than churches and museums and picture galleries the teeming
humanity and charm of personality in the Southern race attracted and
enchanted him. It seemed to him as if contact with it awakened in him a
new fresh human impulse and consciousness of his own powers. He was
more than ever strongly impressed by the original unity of artistic
endeavour and personal experience both in history and modern life....
Heroes of mythology and history, characters in poetry and painting, the
creators and painters, too, all became to him so objective, so alive,
that they seemed a part of his being. He had felt nearer than ever
before to penetrating into the emotional world of bygone ages when
living in the midst of a people who were saturated with history, yet in
their thousand-year-old practice of Art had never lost touch with their
own epoch. He learned to discriminate and date at first sight monuments
of various periods, and trace them back step by step down the
centuries. Creative Art was, and always would be, his inspiration and
guide.... Art was able, above all, to wring speech from the dumbness of
death, and to create new forms out of the dust of ages. The only thing
still lacking was the key to the origin of all this amazing and
convincing force. The A B C of the language was not forthcoming.
Lilly, with strained attention, strove to follow him. She had never
heard anyone talk like this, and yet much that he said sounded
familiar. It seemed to her as if some residue of long-past days left on
the floor of her mind echoed to his ideas.
"One day it happened," he continued, "that while I was in Venice I
started off on an excursion to Padua. By rail it is about as far as
from Berlin to Potsdam. I was not attracted there by its art, for I was
still on my honeymoon with the Early Venetians. I went for the sake of
completeness. So I found myself in the little chapel where Giotto's
frescoes are. You know him?"
"Giotto and Cimabue--of course," she answered proudly.
"Then I needn't explain further. I hadn't much enthusiasm left for him
and his school, for, as I said just now, the Quattrocentists had turned
my head. Now, please picture a ruined Roman amphitheatre overgrown with
ivy--nothing but the outside walls still stand, like the walls of a
garden--and somewhere in the middle the little chapel built of slates,
every bit as bare as a Protestant conventicle in the royal realm of
Prussia."
Lilly smiled. A fling at Protestantism always gratified her, like a
personal favour.
"Services are no longer held there. It has been preserved as a national
monument. When I first went in I saw nothing for a minute but a blue
glory on the walls--a sort of background of light--then picture after
picture, in long rows. The history of the Saviour told simply, just as
a poor friar would tell it to poor people on Good Friday, provided he
was the right sort of preacher."
"But are we not all _poor_ people in the Saviour's eyes?" she ventured
to put in shyly.
He paused, stared at her for a moment, and then assented with fervour.
"Certainly we are, and not only in the Saviour's, but in those of every
great personality, and every great truth.... But that feeling is not
easy to cultivate ... the feeling that we must be poor if what is given
us is to make us rich. Religion can inspire us with it if it finds the
right means of expression. In this case it was found. Here was a poor
man speaking to the poor, and therein lay the richness of his gift.
Then what in him goes to our hearts and brings tears to our eyes is not
his great power, but quite the opposite--his lack of power. Do you
grasp my meaning?"
"I think so," she said, her face lighting up. "When someone would beg
anything of us and can only stammer out what he has got to say, we are
far more touched than if he expressed himself in a stilted speech
learnt by heart."
"Yes, that is exactly what I mean," he cried, delighted. "And it is
from this bald, hesitating speech that the whole language of Art has
arisen. Then, all that preceded it was merely a lifeless copy of
worn-out Byzantine models. Here, for the first time, was an artist who,
out of the simplicity of his heart, went straight to Nature for what he
had to say. For this reason he became the supreme master of them all.
And to-day whoever may succeed in depicting with his brush the acme of
joy and the acme of sorrow has to thank that little chapel."
"I can well believe," cried Lilly, "that if the ocean had a source, and
a man suddenly came upon it, he would feel as you did at Padua."
He caught her arm with both hands in his excitement.
"You have hit on the missing simile," he said, "and it is graphic
enough to describe to the letter what took place within me. And yet
another source was revealed to me all of a sudden, while I, with folded
hands, made the tour of those walls. My work was there, leaping out of
nothingness. I said to myself, 'You must write the History of Effects.'
The effects, as Art, not only Creative Art, has created, seen, and
represented them through the ages. Pictorial Art is only a part, you
see; there are besides the elocutionary arts, poetry as well as
painting, sculpture as well as music. It struck me that by adopting
this method I might succeed in producing a real genuine record of the
development of human emotions, which no historian, moralist, or
psychologist has ever yet attempted. But why should it not be
attempted? Material is hidden everywhere, and awaits elucidation just
as fossils lie embedded in the rocks ready for the zoologist's hammer.
Tell me what you think of my plan? Is it not worth a lifetime's
labour?"
"Indeed, I think it is," she said, with the same solemn air as before.
Had she been requested at this moment to sacrifice her own life on the
altar of his work, she would have done it without a moment's
hesitation.
"Ah! but there is a lot to think over first. One cannot start at a
tangent," he continued. "Often Art leads us astray because she has
deliberately tried to reflect something quite different from the spirit
of her time. Whether she succeeded or not is another question. Often,
too, the right channels of expression were lacking. Ah! you and I must
have many, many more talks together. Don't look so horrified at the
idea. Yes, my dear gracious one, I need you sorely. After this evening
I can't do without you, for no one has ever listened to me so
intelligently and sympathetically. And I have become such a stranger
here, it's almost as if I were a foreigner. All the men I know are so
wrapped up in their own interests that they hardly listen to me.
Besides, I am conscious that my undertaking _is_ a little mad. But
there is solace to be derived from that when one thinks how every great
work is supposed to be a little mad till it is finished and has
accomplished its aim. Of course, everyone thinks the same about his own
work, and I shall get over the feeling in time. But during the period
of wrestling, when every day I think I have found a new vein of gold,
and perhaps have to reject it afterwards as dross, if I have nobody to
whom I can pour out my soul, I get into such a muddle I feel fairly
disheartened. And now fate has sent you to me, and the thought of you
has prevented my sitting calmly at my desk; a voice has seemed to call
me to come out and gaze across at your light. Well, now I have you, I
won't let you go in a hurry. I shouldn't, God knows, be so bold if it
were for myself alone, but it's for my work. It clamours for you. Good
heavens! why are you crying?"
She pressed the back of her hand against her eyes, and said, smiling at
him, "I am not crying." But fresh tears gushed forth and dimmed the
image of her loveliness.
"I can understand what it is," he said regretfully. "I have been
inconsiderate, and by talking so happily of my own work I have revived
your grief about your old art. I am very sorry."
She started back as if she had seen a ghost. Then, with a violent
effort, she collected herself.
"No, no; that isn't it. Really, it isn't," she assured him.
But he persisted in reproaching himself, and his every word was a stab,
when she thought of her own unworthiness.
"Let us go," she begged. "So many conflicting feelings overwhelm me. I
am both happy and unhappy.... Outside in the air I shall be calmer."
It was long past midnight when they left the restaurant, A cold wind
rippled the water and sighed among the bare branches.
He offered her his arm, and she clung to it as if she had been at home
there for countless ages. Neither spoke for some time.
"In five minutes he'll be gone," she thought, and she could hardly bear
the pain the threatened parting cost her.
"I have it on my conscience," he said at last, "that I have made so
much of my work in our conversation you will think me conceited. I know
it's not of greater importance than hundreds of other people's. I
believe that in nearly every vigorous-minded young manhood there is
such a goal to strive for, and to point the way. One fellow may have a
book to write, another a great business to work up, a third may have
others dependent on him, and many find it as much as they can do to
swim against the current. It's all the same thing. If we let ourselves
drift, we're lost; and none of us want to be lost, do we?"
"I think I lost myself long ago," she whispered, shuddering.
He laughed out loud. "_You_, noblest, tenderest, best of women!"
She knew how undeserved it all was, yet how sweet it was to hear him
say it!
They were now walking so close to each other that their cheeks nearly
touched. She closed her eyes, drinking in the warm breath of the strong
life beside her. She felt that without volition she was being carried
away to unknown blissful regions. She only came to herself when they
stood before her door.
"When?" he asked.
To-morrow she was not free. She had been invited out.
The day after to-morrow?
Yes, the day after to-morrow she would have the whole evening. He might
call for her.
Then, in fear that if she lingered she would say that she could
see him to-morrow, she ran upstairs and hid her joy in the solitude of
her rooms. She did not turn on the lights; the reflection of the
street-lamps playing on the walls and the prisms of the chandelier was
light enough.
Then she began to roam through the open doors, from room to room, into
the corner where the bed stood, round the dining-table, across the
corner drawing-room into the cold guest-chamber where no guest had ever
been, up and down, up and down, singing, weeping, exulting. And then
out of her tears, her humming and rejoicing, words came suddenly:
"Come, my beloved, let us go forth into the field; let
us lodge in the villages. Let us get up early to the
vineyards."
No, that was not exactly how it went. Something was not quite right;
but she would find out what it was.
She wrenched back the lid of the piano, which hadn't been opened for a
long time, and, as if the neglected and silenced old keys had acquired
a voice of their own, a perfect volume of sound rushed forth, which she
could never have believed herself or the piano capable of producing.
"Let us see if the vine flourish, whether the tender
grape appear, and the pomegranates bud forth; there will
I give thee my loves."
Yes, that was it! She had got it now--every bar, every note. Where had
it hidden itself all these long years? It seemed like yesterday that
she had sung it for the last time.
And yet what worlds of suffering lay between!
"No, not suffering! If it had been nothing but suffering," she thought,
"'The Song of Songs' would never have become mute."
CHAPTER XIII
The next morning, on waking, new troubles faced her. Nobody could be so
blind as not to detect, sooner or later, what a rotten existence hers
was; least of all he whose refinement, at every spiritual contact,
awoke in her an anxious echo. Even if she could keep from him every
contamination of the world she lived in, and create in it an isolated
platform on which to associate with him alone, would not her appearance
at last betray her? All those nights of wild dissipation surely must
have left some traces behind. It was two years ago that Dr. Salmoni had
spoken of the "cold contempt" in her eyes.
She jumped out of bed and ran to the looking-glass to subject every
feature to a suspicious scrutiny. Her eyes had a tired look, it was not
to be denied; but there was no contempt in their expression. _He_ had
called them "Mary eyes," not Madonna eyes. Was there a difference, she
wondered? There were a few faint lines on her forehead, but these she
could almost rub out with her finger. A little massaging was all that
was necessary. Worse were the lines on either side of her mouth, giving
to her face a _blase_, rather haughty look.
"The paths that devouring passion long has trod," she quoted from
"Tannhaeuser in Rom," which she knew almost by heart.
Yet, had she not preserved all that was best and deepest in her nature,
as if she must guard it, for one who was to come into her life? And now
that he had come, the _one_, it might perhaps be too late.
The day passed in fretting and worrying, and when Richard appeared at
tea-time he found her with red eyes. She learnt this afternoon what a
treasure she possessed in Richard. He asked her so few questions, was
so full of tactful solicitude, that for a few moments at least she felt
comforted and sheltered. She was almost tempted to confide in him what
she had gone through the last day or two. Was he not her kindest
friend? Fortunately, however, she refrained. She would rather, on the
whole, tell Adele, who on several occasions had let fall the
encouraging remark that her mistress might place absolute confidence in
her, as she knew life too well not to take the lady's part.
Lilly, feeling that she could not endure any of "the crew" this
evening, pleaded headache, and Richard did not grumble. But when night
drew near she remembered that she had told Dr. Rennschmidt that she was
going out, and in order not to be caught in a falsehood she hurriedly
extinguished the light and sat brooding in the dark till bedtime.
In the morning the first post brought her a letter addressed in an
unknown hand. She broke the seal. Oh, God! What was this? Could these
lines apply to her, to Lilly Czepanek, who was eating her heart out in
morbid self-humiliation?
If anyone on the face of the earth could think of her like this,
especially he, the grandest and best of all--for these verses were his,
without any manner of doubt, though there was no signature--then, after
all, things were not going so badly with her. The life she led had not
as yet entirely mastered her; the innermost core of her being remained
unaffected; there must still be latent good in her, which if used might
be a blessing to herself and to others.
After she had learnt the verses by heart, she went on reading them over
and over again, as she could not tear her eyes away from the beloved
handwriting.
Then she tried to set them to music. She opened the piano and
improvised, and, as on the previous evening, her playing came back to
her. Soon she could play once more all the things she had known years
ago and long since forgotten. She just struck the notes and everything
came back. But her fingers were stiff, and her wrists and the muscles
of her forearm soon ached. She must exercise them and get them supple
again. Then when he came to see her she would be able to play him
something classical. This hope still further increased her new-born
self-esteem, and she began to count the hours till evening.
When Richard came in the afternoon he found her at the piano practising
diligently.
"What's come over you?" he asked. "I had no idea you could play so
well."
"Nor I," she replied, laughing.
"You must show what you can do when we're out this evening."
"This evening?" she exclaimed, horrified. "I thought that I was free
this evening."
"Free! I don't know what you mean by 'free,'" he answered irritably.
"You talk as if our going out together were a sort of martyrdom. You
get off whenever you can trump up an excuse. Only yesterday Karla was
saying no one knew what you did with yourself when you were alone."
"I should have thought that applied much more to Karla than to me," she
replied. "No one even knows her real name."
"That's nothing to do with it. She is not the only person who has
remarked how reserved you are. I have been advised by a man to look
after you a little more, and not let you go your own way so much. To
shut them up I promised to bring you this evening instead of yesterday;
and I must keep my word."
Lilly quickly reflected that opposition to his wishes would not help
her, and only give him further cause for suspicion, so she bravely
choked back her tears and disappointment. But when he was gone she
suffered all the more acutely, and her grief and despair knew no
bounds.
What would her new friend think of her if he came at the appointed time
and found her not at home? She could not send a note to put him off,
for he had not given her his address, and he would have twenty-four
hours in which to think the worst of her.
As a last resource she confided in Adele. Her dry, sour face brightened
perceptibly, for deception of any kind was meat and drink to her. She
proposed that the gracious mistress should say that she had been
summoned to a friend's sick-bed. Such sad occurrences, she knew by
experience, always appealed to gentlemen; and Lilly agreed to act on
her advice.
The round-table derived little amusement from her society that evening.
She ignored the men and was rude to the ladies. Frau Jula, the only
person she wanted to see, was absent, as she had been often of late.
They soon left her to her own devices, and the worthy Richard, who had
imagined he was going to show her music off, gnawed the ends of his
moustache in helpless vexation.
The next morning she again suffered torments. She had roused up Adele
in the middle of the night, and learned that he had been and had gone
away again, greatly perturbed.
Another day passed in nervous counting of the hours. She stood before
the glass and arrayed herself for him despondently. She would have
liked to throw herself at his feet, but in spite of this she resolved
to adopt a certain melancholy quiet dignity in her manner towards him,
which would nip suspicion in the bud and make him feel that she tallied
with the ideal depicted in his verses. Had he not in them termed her
flighty, flirtatious head a "head divine"? The mere thought made her
feel holy.
At half-past seven the bell rang. She received him with a conventional
"How do you do?" and smile; and the quiet melancholy hauteur, which she
assumed, became her remarkably well, and effectually concealed her
chagrin and anxiety.
His manner, too, was not so composed and frank as usual. At a single
glance she perceived it. His eyes wandered beyond her with a curiously
vacant expression.
"He guesses everything," a voice cried within her.
But she knew how to control her feelings. "I must apologise," she said,
"that I was unable to keep my appointment with you yesterday."
"Is your friend better?" he inquired; and a smile of scornful
incredulity played about his lips.
She now said anything that came into her head, and although she did not
look at him, she knew that he did not believe a syllable.
"I also must apologise," he said, with the same covert scorn in smile
and voice.
"Why, Dr. Rennschmidt?"
"I took the liberty of sending you a few verses, which I hope you
accepted in the spirit in which they were written--merely as an
exercise in style, without any special application or significance."
"He is cooling already," her consciousness of guilt told her. And so
all the colder and more unconcerned was her answer.
"Your pretty lines did rather surprise me at first, as I couldn't
conceive why they should be addressed to me, but afterwards it occurred
to me that it might be what you have just said it was, and I did not
mind. If you don't object, I would rather not talk about it any more."
He gazed at her with eyes dilated from amazement, and she was glad that
she had driven her thrust home with such bitterness.
Next she asked him if he would have supper with her, as she wished to
do the right thing, though nothing had been prepared for a guest.
"I thought that I had been given permission to call for you and take
you out," he said in a cold, disillusioned tone.
She smiled graciously. "If you wish, I shall be happy to come," she
said.
In silence they descended the staircase, in silence they walked along
the bank of the canal the same path that they had taken, in such
rapturous proximity to each other, three evenings ago. They had been
silent then, but what a different silence it had been from this.
"What have you been doing the last few days?" she asked, for the sake
of saying something.
"Nothing special," he replied. He had been trying to write an article
for a Munich art paper, to which he was a contributor, on the subject
of the Siennese School outside Sienna. But he hadn't succeeded. His
editor wouldn't be satisfied with his stuff.
She read in his words a reproach to herself. Obviously he wished to
imply that her entrance into his life was to blame. And when he asked
to which restaurant she would like to go, she was so hurt that she
begged to be excused.
"I am neither hungry nor thirsty," she said, "and lights and people
would jar on me."
"If you would rather avoid people, we might perhaps turn into the
Tiergarten?"