herself delightfully warm as she exercised a truly à propos gratitude
to the Heavenly Powers. She was emboldened too, and almost loftily
asked him if he had a can of green peas, she wanted them to put into
the rice to make the "risi-bisi" that the children so loved. Of course
he didn't have it and scarcely answered her foolish question. But she
espied a very small piece of hard cheese under a very large glass,--it
was extraordinary how many things there were in the world that you
couldn't eat, and how much of them! Then she saw a small package of
"feinste Keks", with its picture in blue and red of a child eating one
in rapture. She took recklessly both cheese and cakes. She knew she had
lost her head, and besides she was feeling quite faint. Buying food
in those days, even when one of the Saints visibly stood by, was an
exhausting matter. She brightened up, however, as she went out of the
shop at the thought that another twenty minutes of putting one foot
before the other would inevitably bring her to Kaethe's door and the
heavier the bag the better....
Frau Stacher's ring brought a scurry of young feet to the door, she
heard welcoming shouts, "Tante Ilde's come! Tante Ilde's come!" even
before it was opened with a rush. She was smiling a breathless smile,
after the stairs and the blessedly heavy bag, as she went in. It was
known that she was coming with the dinner, but _what_ had she brought?
They surrounded her, they embraced her, they overwhelmed her. They were
all there save Maxy whose turn it was to eat his midday meal at the
Bellevue Palace, and Lilli not yet back from fetching a few briquets.
Kaethe was nursing that youngest, rosiest of her children who knew, as
yet, only the sweet fullness of her mother's breast. Carli was sitting
at her feet, his head hanging listlessly against her knee. He hadn't
run with the others to meet Tante Ilde because he couldn't even stand.
He would laugh, a sweet, somewhat surprised little laugh when he tried
to pull himself up by a chair and would fall down; but his mother
always wanted to weep when she heard the soft little thud as he slipped
to the floor. Carli was an angel. Carli, quite evidently to any but
a mother's eye, was not to pass another winter on earth. Even in the
week since Tante Ilde had seen him he had become more and more like
something made of crystal, so smooth, so shining, so transparent was
his little face. But she concealed the sudden fear that came over her
as she looked from him to his mother.
"I'm nursing the baby earlier so I can be ready to help with the
dinner," Kaethe said as her aunt bent over to kiss her and Anny,--one
fat little hand spread out over her mother's breast, and making soft,
contented noises,--little Anny, the last, she must be the last of
Kaethe's children, Tante Ilde was thinking....
Kaethe wore a frayed but evidently once expensive, wadded, blue silk
wrapper. It struck an unexpected note in that denuded room, whose
immediate air of indigence was inescapable. Not only was the piano
gone, and long since Eberhardt's 'cello, but gone one after the other
the pleasant, superfluous tables and the little objects once set out
upon them. Even the bookcases.... What remained of the books was piled
in a corner and received many a careless kick from romping children.
Whenever Frau Stacher entered that room she was confronted by a quite
flashy portrait of her mother in the Winterhalter style. It had been
sent to Kaethe's for safe-keeping and now hung frameless on the
wall. A dealer at the time she sold her furniture had offered her a
surprising and unrefusable price for the frame. The young face that
looked out at the aging daughter, though like her in many ways, had
a point of competent malice in the wide, blue eyes, that was neither
in her daughter's eyes nor in her heart. Sometimes, too, from under
that broad, floppy, rose-trimmed hat with the long, pink streamers she
seemed to look reproachfully, severely at her daughter,--leaving her
elegant prettiness thus unset in so cold a world. Frau Stacher had
never felt easy about selling that frame, and she sometimes had useless
little night thoughts, or equally useless morning thoughts of getting
another. But it had been hanging just like that since she gave up the
house in Baden, near an enlarged photograph, (whose pressed wood frame
picked out with gilt no one had wanted) of the departed Commercial
Advisor. She would gladly have been unfaithful to the memory of her
husband, now become exceedingly hazy anyway, and replaced his image
by that of her mother. But her mother's portrait was square, and his
photograph unprophetically had been taken in oblong form. Things were
like that now. Nothing fitted....
Kaethe got up a moment after her aunt had greeted her and laid the
sleeping baby in a battered crib in the next room, filled with beds
of all sizes and sorts. _That_ child was nourished. She would have
felt quite exhausted herself, but for the thought of the dinner
Tante Ilde had brought. She was still a handsome woman, in the early
thirties,--even treading up that Calvary to which every road she knew
now lead her, those seven roads of anguish for her seven children and
for Leo whom she adored. Once, not indeed so long before, she had been
softly, sweetly alight with a kindly inner warmth, that flamed easily,
attractively in her face, in those sparkling eyes, in those bright
cheeks, hanging about that wide, red-lipped mouth with its irregular
white teeth. And then those quick, generous, outward gestures! Now
that soft fire was banked and her movements were often listless. But as
she stood by the kitchen table, she became animated even gay, because
of that natural gift which neither time, nor wars, nor miseries could
quite destroy, and clapped her hands, as her aunt had known she would,
and talked about the great feast they were going to have. The water
was boiling and bubbling forecasting near, delicious moments and Tante
Ilde had begun to grate the cheese which was sending up its sharp,
appetizing odor.
Carli had been put on the table in the very beginning, that he might be
nearer than anybody else to the goodies, as Tante Ilde took one package
after the other out of the string bag and made them guess what was in
it. Kaethe opened the can of milk to prepare a drink for him.
"Hungry," he said turning his blue eyes somewhat languidly towards her
and shaking his shining curls about his crystal face. They all cried
lovingly in one or another way:
"Yes, gold child, yes, angel, yes, little lamb, you'll have some soon!"
"I bought a whole half kilo of rice," said Tante Ilde grandly,
"suppose," she went on dashingly, "we cook it all at once? We're seven
to eat it and we'll put the cheese on thick!"
Kaethe gave a gasp. But she, too, was no saver.
"Magnificent," she cried. She was faint with hunger herself. Yes, for
once ... then she turned to Carli.
"Carli must drink his mimi," she said, as she held the cup tenderly to
his lips.
The other children looked on absorbed in the spectacle. Resl cried,
drawing her breath in:
"Carli's having such a wonderful drink!" and Hansi with his eyes very
big, asked,
"Carli, does it taste good?" and they all hung close about him as he
drank in tiny not very hungry sips.
"I'd show Carli how to drink if I had the chance!" continued Hansi,
moving his feet up and down in famished impatience.
"I do wish Leo were here to see the children," said Kaethe to her aunt,
"but he won't be back till past one o'clock, though he goes as early as
he can to the Stephansplatz. It's just wonderful to think they're going
to have enough. It's seeing them after they've had their dinner that is
sometimes the worst."
A long, impatient ring was heard at the door. Resl ran to open it
and Lilli came in with a dash in spite of the broken handle of her
basket of briquets. She threw off the disfiguring coat she wore and
revealed herself in a very worn, sea-blue dress of some smooth, silky
material. It lay beautifully about the white column of her young neck,
it repeated the blue of her wide eyes, it heightened the fine pallor
of her cheeks, it burnished the pale gold of her hair. There were
gleaming bits of embroidery in places meant to accent the curves of a
more mature figure. Quite evidently made-over, too, was the elaborate,
dark blue cloth dress that Resl wore. Indeed, they all wore garments or
parts of garments quite patently not fulfilling their original _raison
d'être_, that struck a note of gay luxury in the large, shabby room.
Lilli's objective was the kitchen. She was greeted with shouts. The
rice was boiling briskly, the odor of the cheese was in the air. The
package of "feinste Keks," made of a combination of ersatz substances
meant to deceive the palate and annoy the stomach, looked gayly,
impudently at them beside the little pile of apples. As Lilli took it
all in, a tiny line that sometimes showed itself between those lovely
eyes was quite smoothed out.
Then Hansi made a diversion by being discovered with the thin rind of
the cheese that his mother had put aside for the seasoning of another
day's dish.
"What are you doing, Hansi?" she cried and took it from his chubby, six
year old hand.
"But, Mama, I'm so hungry, I can't wait for the rice," and tears rose
to his eyes, "I didn't mean anything bad!"
"I know, I know," his mother answered, those stupid tears that were
always ready springing to her own eyes, "mother didn't mean anything
bad either, but whatever we have is for all of us."
Hansi had dark curls and soft eyes and seemed like the merest baby as
he stood looking at her, great round tears rolling down his cheeks. But
there was something sturdy about his thinness and pallor, something
resistant; Hansi, like Resl, was one who would survive.
Lilli and Resl followed about by Else had put the plates and forks and
spoons on the table and drawn up the motley collection of chairs.
"Is everything laid on nice and straight? Tante Ilde has brought us
such a good dinner!" their mother called out as she came in with the
great smoking platter of rice sending up its maddening odor and placed
it heavily on the table. But she turned and kissed her aunt before she
began to serve it.
Frau Stacher was conscious of the softest, warmest pleasure. One moment
like this and hard things were forgotten. Kaethe's very expansiveness,
that could so easily be released, communicated joy. And Kaethe never
minded how much noise the children made, so others were undisturbed.
Kaethe never fussed though she sometimes wept and often silently
despaired. But now that full platter, those clattering spoons! Though
mortals were certainly composed of spirit as well as flesh, hot food,
even one meal of it, could change everything. Yes, everything. The
children got uproariously gay, and Tante Ilde and Kaethe began to feel
sure something would soon happen to make things all right again....
Then Tante Ilde heard how Lilli instead of her mother, now went out
early every morning, too early for her thirteen years, and stood in
the bread-line at the bakery, (her father had tried it but had proved
singularly inept at holding his place,) and how you just had to keep
your wits about you or you would find that some one had sneaked in
ahead, and it was such a trouble getting back your place.
There was a certain protocol observed even at those bread-lines. No one
with impunity was caught taking another's place, that is unless there
was a stampede by those behind if the news got out that there was very
little left. Then what a pushing and hurtling! Something terrible,
hard, relentless would suddenly come up out of the crowd that had
seemed composed of pale, exhausted men and women and underfed, listless
children. That precious loaf that Lilli generally managed to bring
home, would, with some of the equally precious cocoa that was in the
heavenly package they got from the "Friends" in the Franzensplatz be
the backbone, somewhat weak, it is true, of their day. The package and
the wonders it contained,--the little tin of lard, the little box of
sugar, the little bag of flour, the coffee, though it could not fatten
a family of nine people, dulled noticeably the sharpest edge of their
hunger and helped to get them through the week. It was really equal
to several meals if you counted that way. Then sometimes a raven in
the shape of old Maria, tapping, flew in at the door. As for the other
meals, the Eberhardts went without them.
It was a mystery to the Professor, surpassing any he had ever before
tried to solve, that he could no longer make a living out of his grey
matter. Being a "genius" was plainly a misfortune. It was the working
classes, fortunate possessors of muscle, that frequented butcher
and delicatessen shops, while the intellectuals and their families
starved. It made science look like something seen through the big end
of a telescope. Biology? Eberhardt got so that he hated the very word.
The only science of life that was of any use was knowing how to get
something to put into your family's stomach and your own. Naturally
mild as summer dew, Eberhardt had been getting bitter.
Those radiant years lay far behind, when a word, a thought would set
his brain on fire, startling into instant action those secret springs
of his talent; when the imponderable why and whence of man's being
was the paramount interest of life. The ponderable things necessary
to sustain that life came naturally, undisturbingly in the train
of work. Now his gifts were useless; the world in which they had
once functioned so easily, so shiningly, was in some chill, shadowy
abeyance. Again and again came from his lips nostalgically: "Süsses
Leben! Schöne, freundliche Gewohnheit des Daseins und Wirkens! von dir
soll ich scheiden!" "Sweet life, sweet, pleasant habit of being and
activity! Must I part from thee?"
He went to his classes, but with the laboratory completely run down,
sometimes even the electric light didn't work, and that listless,
stupid look on the faces of a handful of hungry students, or that wild
look, and everywhere the word "revolution," there was certainly little
incentive and less chance for successful inquiry into those whys and
whences, the indulgence in which was gone with other luxuries. The
great thing was to keep out of the cemetery or the streets or worse
places of last despair, where the broken but undying went. It all
seemed a nightmare from which he must awake, some tight and vicious
circle out of which he must soon break. Yet this was the seventh year
and all that he was, all that he had, those once sweet furnishings of
his mind, those pleasant uses of his faculties were as worthless to
himself and his family as diamonds to a man on the rack.
The children got taller and thinner. Lilli was obviously too pretty
to be out alone, unwatched. A terrible beast had lately followed her
from the Singerstrasse to the Franzensplatz and then all the way home.
Lilli hadn't quite known what he meant or wanted, but she had been
desperately frightened and had trembled and wept in her mother's arms.
There were, truly, devils prowling about, seeking whom they might
devour, and Lilli, bright and beautiful, like a taper in the dull, grey
streets, was one to catch their greedy eyes.
Dark tales were whispered too, of hunger-mad mothers who sent their
girl-children into the streets where such devils awaited them.
Hunger,--dying of it,--made even mothers mad.
Doctor Steier had told him unbelievable things of children in his
clinic, things that the bare mention of had enveloped him in a thick,
hot, pricking misery. Doctor Steier was not yet forty, but his eyes
were deeply sunken and his hair gone white. They had once been
colleagues at the University.... Lilli's beauty,--it made her father's
heart both sad and glad....
But nobody was thinking of any of these things as Tante Ilde opened
the package of "finest cakes." Stripped of its saucy, colored paper,
it proved to contain twelve tiny, oblong, dry, sweetish biscuits.
She gayly apportioned out two to each child. They were seized upon
covetously, the very thought of sweets could awaken, in old and young,
mad, selfish, exclusive longings.
But Carli didn't want his and leaned his head heavily against his
mother's breast.
"Carli not hungry any more," he whispered. He hadn't eaten his rice
either, though his mother had taken him on her knees and tried to coax
him with little tricks and stories; the girls and Hansi had finally
divided it into the most even portions possible.
His mother made another cup of milk for him and soaked one of his
"Keks" in it; he had taken a tiny mouthful, then again leaned his
head heavily against her breast and seemed to go to sleep. She got up
gently and bearing him into the other room laid him on a cot near the
rosebud Anny's crib. So dear he was to her as she laid him down, that
her heart seemed to come out of her breast in a great beat of love. The
only color in his face was those violet eyes, which now were veiled so
thinly by his transparent lids, that standing back from his bed, she
thought for an instant they had opened, and that he was looking at her.
But he lay so still that in anguish she bent over him to see if the
breath were really fluttering from his waxy lips....
When she got back into the living room that look, mask-like, antique,
of mother-fear still lay upon her face.
Tante Ilde softly rose from the table and stood by her without a word.
"It will be all right in a moment," Kaethe said looking up at her
gratefully. "It is silly, of course, to be so frightened," and she
kissed the thin hand that hung over her shoulder.
A moment later there was heard the well-loved sound of the latch key,
but somewhat slow, uncertain even. Lilli ran quickly to open the door.
Her father was not, as she expected, alone. A miserable little girl of
five or six was clinging to his hand, a pale, anxious child that the
wintry monster Life had been grimacing at and frightening terribly.
Professor Eberhardt gave his wife one look, but he knew his Kaethe, and
it was a look of confidence rather than anxiety that he bent upon her
as he stood in the doorway,--a tall, once very handsome man, who had
been mangled by the War, then stamped on by the Peace till he had lost
all semblance to his former imposing self. His grey eyes were sunken
into deep pits on either side of his thin, pinched nose. The blond
beard and moustache had had the yellow taken out of them by the early
grey of his griefs and anxieties. But as he stood there, his shabby
overcoat buttoned up to his chin, some brightness lay about his face;
it seemed for the moment quite filled out.
"I met Koellner coming back," he said to his wife, and then he bent
gently over the child, "This is his dear, good little girl come to make
the children a visit."
Something rose up in Kaethe admonishing her to defend her own. Another
child! no, no, no.... But turn that frightened, shivering mite away? It
was equally impossible to the elastic kindness of her heart.
It was a situation that in the end beings like the Eberhardts meet in
but one way. When that which they have not has been taken from them,
they find that they have still something left that they must give.
There was no doubt about its all being a shock to Kaethe, rather than
a surprise. She couldn't be surprised by another sight of misery, even
though brought up round before it.... Her eyes filled with those weak,
ever-ready tears, then she smiled quiveringly. At that smile for which
he had waited, entirely trustful, Eberhardt turned to Lilli:
"Take Marichi into the kitchen, darling, and find her a bite of
something."
The children suddenly quite still, had been looking at the little
girl. Resl thought she wasn't too dirty, and Hansi that she was of a
convenient age to order about. Else didn't understand.
Lilli's thoughts were confused, only out of that confusion seemed to
come some sudden, new understanding. In that moment, indeed, Lilli
grew from childhood into adolescence. She silently reached out her
hand and received the little girl from her father. She gave him a long
look as she did so. Something quite beyond the scope even of her new
understanding, though within reach of her new feelings was happening.
Something hard to do, yet in another way fluidly, hotly easy. As she
was turning away the child's hand in hers, she hesitated then went back
and threw her arms about her father's neck. Eberhardt had a moment
almost of ecstasy as he pressed his lovely daughter close to him in
some suddenly opened heaven on earth. Then she withdrew herself from
his embrace and took the child out of the room.
"It's a desperate case," Eberhardt said to his wife after a moment's
silence, "her mother has just died,--consumption--and he's starving
himself. He knows a waiter at the Hotel Imperial who gives him some
bread every day ... poor fellow, I was all broken up, so talented too;
his clothes, only hanging on him, no overcoat, just buttons his jacket
up to his neck. I told him about the Stephansplatz. He had a look on
his face I didn't like. He was so worried for his little girl. They've
lost their rooms, I didn't quite understand how. Anyway they've nowhere
to go. Kaethe, I couldn't but say to him, 'Let us take the little one
for awhile,' we _have_ a home," he ended.
Kaethe met his gaze quite clearly now. Those stupid, weak tears were
gone. She was thinking, and he knew it as if she had spoken the words:
"Every crumb that child eats will be taken from our own children." But
Kaethe, inflammable herself, had caught from her husband some of that
light that shone about his face and after a second she was saying and
warmly:
"But naturally, she can stay here till things get better."
Both Eberhardt and his wife were very beautiful in that moment wrapt in
the bright flame of their charity.
Just why he had met his old friend Koellner in the street that noontide
was quite clear. It wasn't for anything that he, in his own great need
was to get out of it, but rather for what the child whose Father in
Heaven knew that she had "need of all these things" was to get--in that
hour and in that way.
Then Tante Ilde, who had been both entranced and troubled at the scene,
spoke for the first time and very gently:
"She'll bring a blessing into the house, Leo."
At that Eberhardt turned and greeted her affectionately.
"Ah, Tante Ilde, pardon, it's good to see you." And as he embraced
her his act of compassion was still so warm about him that she was
conscious of some gentle heat, almost corporeal, emanating from him.
Though his now constant preoccupation as to ways and means was added
to those temperamental fits of abstraction, suddenly in that moment he
saw distinctly the shape and substance of Tante Ilde's hard destiny.
That frail figure, in that worn striped gown, Eberhardt who never
knew what women wore, was suddenly conscious of its old-fashioned
cut, its threadbareness, perhaps it was its symbolic sense working
on his imagination that saw at times both more and less than the run
of men. He perceived, as under a microscope, in all its magnified
significance, not alone that sagging face, that furrowed brow, that
thinning hair, those broad, pale, colorless eyes reflecting something
immeasurably patient under the double burden of old age and penury,
but it was old age itself, in all its component parts that separated,
as if under his glass, on his table, resolving themselves sharply into
their elements. He was aghast at what he saw--those diminutions, those
withdrawals--more horrified than at the accidental tragedy of the
Privatdozent Koellner. This was integral, final. She could hope for
nothing more from time, that was clear,--time that brings so surely
both good and evil, that very time that was his hope had nothing more
for her. He repressed a cry....
Then suddenly, or so it seemed, they all got very gay again, with an
infectious gayety. The children were tumbling about noisily after their
good meal. The little stranger kept looking from one to the other. That
desperate apprehension was wiped from her face. This that was happening
was clearly good. She hadn't seen anyone smile for a long time, except
so sadly that they might as well have wept. She had entirely forgotten
about laughing. But all this was good, good, that she knew out of her
six years.
Then Hansi climbed up on his father's lap and asked him what he had had
for dinner.
"A fine cup of cocoa, so hot it burnt my tongue, and a heaping plate
of very good beans, only I didn't feel hungry today," he paused on the
familiar phrase, and from his pocket he produced two pieces of zwieback.
Kaethe had been watching him, suspecting his next gesture.
"Eat it yourself, Leo," she interposed quickly, almost sternly, "we've
had all we can possibly eat. Tante Ilde brought _so_ much."
But Eberhardt with no hesitation in his hand or heart, or at least none
that one could have noticed, said to the strange child, the child of
whose existence he had been unaware an hour before:
"Come, dear child, come, Marichi," and handed her the zwieback. That
grimy, claw-like little hand closed over it. In spite of her hunger she
was too dazed to eat. She looked from her hand up to her protector with
the mysterious glance of childhood.