One day Marguerite entered his room with the announcement that some one
wished to see him.
At first he made no reply. He lay stretched on a low couch with the
immobility of a corpse and his upper eyelids met the lower in two fine
pencilled lines like the eyes of the dead. His hair and beard, framing
skin of deathly pallor, were also lifeless. His beautifully shaped right
hand, thin almost to the point of transparency, rested limply on his
coverlet.
Marguerite repeated: “Albert, there is some one who wants to see you.”
His figure suddenly stirred as if convulsed.
“I suppose another countryman to view my remains and then go back to
Germany and lie about me!” A bitter smile appeared on his bloodless lips
as he uttered these words with an irritable sneer. “I am sick of all
visitors. They come here out of curiosity. The swine! What stories they
have fabricated about me. I want friends, not visitors. And friends come
only when one has something to give them!” He emitted a sigh. “Why
should they come?” he soon added more bitterly. “Who wants to see
misery!”
“This is a woman, Albert. She says she comes from Vienna——”
“From Vienna—she is perhaps bringing me word that the director of the
Royal theatre is to present one of my tragedies—he has promised me.
Send her in.”
The next instant the corner of his mouth twitched, the crease between
his eyes flattened, and digging his right elbow into the downy pillow
underneath him, he raised his right side to a half-sitting posture and
leaned against the prop of pillows at his head. A panting sigh betrayed
the great effort of raising himself.
Presently a girl of about twenty-two stepped in, and as she caught sight
of the half-blind, half-paralyzed figure her breathing almost stopped.
For a bare second she halted as if she meant to retreat, but her blue
eyes filled with tears and she whispered. “_Bon jour._”
“_Guten Morgen_,” he replied in German and extended his withered right
hand. “So you have come from Vienna,” he added without releasing her
hand. “Do you know my friend Loeb?”
The young woman stood speechless, leaning over the couch, realizing for
the first time that unless he lifted the paralyzed lid of his right eye
he saw nothing. Tears overflowed her eyes.
“I have not come direct from Vienna,” she faltered—“I haven’t been
there for some time, but—but I wanted some excuse to cross your
threshold—I lisped your songs before I could lisp my prayers—they were
my breviary—you have taught me the meaning of the beauty of life——”
Albert nodded his head as she uttered the last flattering words, a smile
of great satisfaction appeared on his face. The speaker’s girlish voice
attracted him; it was like a voice from his young life, the days of
love-making in Gunsdorf, Bonn and Goettingen. And the voice was such a
relief to him! He was tired of all the voices around him—of the
jabbering speech of his nurses, and of his wife—good souls all, but
God! what voices! It was years since he had heard a pleasing voice.
“Never mind why you came here,” he struck in, smiling, “I am happy that
you are here. Sit down and tell me who you are.”
She moved a chair nearer the couch and sat down.
“I can hardly tell you who I am—” she was nervously plucking at the
edges of the roll of music in her hands, her eyes filled with tears,
rested pitifully on the face that spoke of a thousand sufferings. To her
it was the face of the Christ—the suffering face of the Man of Sorrows;
the beard and the superfine, bloodless lips and the nose and the closed
eyes and the strange smile—there was something of the expression of
_Eli, Eli, lamah Zabachtani_ in that face.
“Come nearer, let me see what you look like.”
She moved her chair closer to the couch, and raising the right eyelid
with the tips of his fingers, he held it for a moment and looked at the
visitor, who hesitated to tell her name. He scented romance. The sweet
tantalization of youth was again in his blood. He was eager, pursuing,
impatient. The glimpse of her made him still more eager. He took in at a
glance her roguish blue eyes, so appealing yet so shrewd, her
light-brown hair, her slender figure—the slenderness, without the
suggestion of meagerness that always attracted him.
He pressed her for information about herself. She fenced cleverly. She
did not mean to tell him her history—she had never told her history to
any one.
“I’ll tell you the truth,” she was saying, trying to divert his mind
from her person. “I learned that your secretary had gone and since
French and German are almost equally my mother tongue, I thought I might
be of service to you.”
“No, no,” he shook his head, laughing, “one can no more have two mother
tongues than one can have two mothers. You are a Swabian—you can’t hide
it from me. I can tell a Swabian accent—I can never forget Hegel’s
accent and manner of pronouncing certain words—and a sweet Swabian
woman’s face.—Now, since I have paid you a compliment we are friends,
so you must tell me who you are.”
There was a moment’s silence. The visitor’s blue eyes shifted from side
to side, her inner indecision was betrayed in her mobile features.
“I once spent a whole day talking about you with a perfect stranger, a
man who happened to be a friend and admirer of yours—he thought I had
fallen in love with him.” She gave a roguish little laugh.
“Who was he?” There was boyish inquisitiveness in his voice.
“Heinrich Metzger.”
“So you are the Butterfly!” Albert exclaimed.
“Yes, I am the Butterfly,” she returned, laughing. “What did Herr
Metzger tell you about me?” She halted and a blush spread over her
cheeks. “I know; he told you he had met me on a train going from Paris
to Havre, and that I had fallen in love with him at first sight. Herr
Metzger thinks he is quite irresistible.”
Albert laughed cheerfully. No man is displeased at hearing a pretty
woman ridicule another man, even when the other happens to be a friend.
However, he protested.
“Metzger is a handsome fellow—a very fine chap—quite a lady-killer.”
“What else did he tell you?”
“Let me see. He was quite impressed with the mystery of your flitting
existence. You wouldn’t give him your name but you gave him your ring on
which there was a seal with the emblem of a butterfly—and you did fly
away. The next time he met you on the Strand in London, but you wouldn’t
recognize him. And then he found you in Paris. He thought you were a
mysterious person. He wished he were a novelist instead of a poet. He
could have written an interesting story about you.”
The girl laughed.
“In order to write the novel he would have to know the mystery,” she
said, her smiling face quickly changing to that of sadness, “and he
still knows nothing about me. He doesn’t even know my first name. O,
yes, he thinks my name is Margot.” Again she emitted a light-hearted
laugh. “He evidently doesn’t know the meaning of _Margot_ in French. I
had talked so much and so recklessly that day that I thought _Margot_ a
fitting name for myself. I was a regular _margot_—a real
chatterbox—that day—and all because we talked about you and he said he
had just visited you——”
Albert extended his hand. She let her hand rest in his and gazed
intensely at his face, which was now flushed and full of animation.
“I never hoped, I never dreamed, I’d come so close to you, the poet of
my dreams,” she murmured without withdrawing her hand from his.
“Do tell me who you are,” he begged.
“For the present call me Butterfly,” she said, rising. “I’ll call
again—if you’ll let me.”
He was clinging to her hand.
“You must come again!” he addressed her _du_ (thou) familiarly. “You
must!” he pressed her hand affectionately. “You shall be the last ray of
sunshine in my dark life. Ah, why didn’t you come before? My life of
late has been so dreary!”
There were tears in his voice. Tears gathered in her eyes, too. Then a
moment of silence. From the next room came the jarring laughter of his
wife. The parrot was repeating _au revoir_ again and again. From
outside, through the open door over the balcony, came the noise of the
street, the rattle of carriages, the jangling of a hurdy-gurdy——
“_Au revoir_,” she whispered.
He was still clinging to her hand, speechlessly. Bending over him she
kissed his forehead and rushed out of the house.