and no one spoke to her and she certainly didn't look about her the
way the green Americans or the ripe Jews did. She went in and out like
a queen, haughtily, gracefully, her round hips swaying gently, her
head erect, her beautiful, blue eyes impersonal. But then Fanny was
always careful, not only in mien and gesture but in words. She was not
accustomed to tell, even at her suppers, the sort of stories which, she
heard quite authentically, ladies of the whole world told. It would
have taken the distinction from her situation in the half world.
That luncheon at the Bristol was her regular public appearance. She
occasionally nodded to a slender, distinguished-looking, dark woman,
without her beauty but very chic. She was the friend of a Persian
prince who, in pre-war days had ruined himself for her, but was now
fast remaking a fortune in rugs. Extraordinary how many people there
were in Vienna who wanted to buy expensive rugs! People who had mostly
never seen a rug before,--suddenly Vienna was full of them. They came
easily to the surface of the dark, troubled waters of the Kaiserstadt,
like rats swimming strongly, surely against the current of disaster;
and they wanted quickly all the things that "the others" had always
had. These two women sometimes joined each other in the ante-chamber
and went out together. The dark woman had once been somebody's wife;
but Fanny had stood at no altar save the one she served. She would
take a couple of hours for her toilette for those luncheons, for
her seemingly simple toilette that no woman of the world with less
exclusive and wider demands upon her time could hope to rival. She
dressed sometimes for the weather, sometimes according to her mood,
sometimes in consonance with the national misfortunes. After the Treaty
of St. Germain she dressed for two months in black, fine, shining,
smooth, silky black, and then because of the Count she dressed again
in black after the signing of the Treaty of Trianon. Her face, in
those dark days and dark deeds, shone out of her sombre raiment like a
rift from black storm heavens. But after all in her blue gowns, blue
of every shade, from nearly green to nearly purple, lay her greatest
successes. That is why Kaethe and her children were almost entirely
robed in blue--and Maria's relatives too.
Fanny's own expenses, as will be guessed, were large. She had to spend
money,--a lot of it,--to make money, to keep steady her situation,
somewhat inverted, in the social body. Seven years of it and though she
was handsomer she was older. She had an extraordinary canniness for all
the sweet innocence of her blue eyes and pouting red lips.
Her ways were irregularly regular. In the evening unless she went
to the theatre she was always at home. And there had never been any
falling off in those evenings. Good business was often done then, other
than by the châtelaine. Princes of the old style had there the desired
opportunity to meet the new lords of Austria,--men that they would
scarcely have saluted on the street in the old days, men that then they
only knew in their money-lending capacity, having their habitat in
small inner offices; beings with money in safes behind their desks, who
gave it out at usurious rates to temporarily or permanently embarrassed
scions of noble houses. Then these "Aristokraten" had had the fine
steel of birth with which to defend themselves, a shining sword that
had made such dealings profitable and pleasant on both sides. Now that
sword was gone dull in their hands, or broken at the hilt. Life was a
different kind of tilting ground. Gloves were thrown down in counting
houses and then promptly picked up and pocketed. Those whose only
occupation had once been to lend money now had further pretensions.
It was known that at Fanny's almost any one might be met. The men who
came were expected to have an entrance ticket of some kind--money, wit
or birth. They didn't get a chance to sit around in those deep chairs,
smoking those delicate cigarettes, just because it was so pleasant.
Many a poor devil whose birth or wit was his only asset was mercifully
splashed by the plenty that surged about Fanny. Though each Schieber
really felt, according to the expressive Viennese phrase, that each
prince could "ihm gestohlen sein," the aureole, though thin, still hung
about the heads of the titled gentlemen who frequented the little flat
off the Kaerntner Street.
Fanny was both hard and soft-hearted. In her bargains she was
merciless. Her beauty and her arrogance were worth wagon loads of that
paper money and she knew it. But then how lavishly she could give! For
her family she was as a horn of abundance. Indeed Fanny was a sort of
clearing house for the relief of their miseries. When you came right
down to it she supported in some sort of a way a good half of the less
resourceful and more virtuous relatives with whom Providence had so
richly endowed her. Without Fanny they would have succumbed to their
miseries. Instead of half starving they would have entirely starved.
Fanny who hadn't held out, sometimes wondered what on earth would
have happened to the others if she had,--Kaethe and the children,
Irma's boys, Tante Ilde and a lot more. She wasn't always thinking of
them, it is true. But when she was lonely she did it passionately,
extravagantly, and would send expensive, ribbon-tied boxes of sweets
to Kaethe's children or to the boys. When Maria would find it out she
would scold dreadfully and say that what they needed was flour and a
lot of it, and that Fanny herself was headed for the poorhouse and
Fanny would go off in a huff leaving a hard word behind her for Maria.
But then Fanny was like that. All or nothing. Too much or not enough;
beyond the goal or short of it. In her avoidance of the middle course
lay Fanny's successes and her mishaps. Maria was more reasonable and
more constant; but "we can't do everything, too many of them," she
would reflect, and "weiss der kuckuk," the cuckoo knows, her favorite
expression when in doubt, where they would have got what they did get,
if Fanny hadn't been Fanny.
The reactions of the various members of the family to her methods had
been at first purely temperamental, but according as their misfortunes
increased, her spasmodic though continuous generosity had modified
their sentiments as well as their miseries. Indeed they were, all of
them, in one way or another, continually running beneficently into
Fanny, though as she was mostly invisible in the flesh, the "bumps"
they got were apt to be of the soft and pleasant order.
Fanny, who couldn't bear Irma, a "sour stick," sent the boys their
winter boots, their woollen stockings and jerseys. Irma eagerly yet
acidly received these reminders of relationship while in her heart
condemnatory of the relative. Mizzi, on the contrary, admired Fanny
extravagantly and if she had had the necessary "talent" and what she
also called "Fanny's luck," would have asked nothing better than
to work out her problems along Fanny's lines. She mostly kept her
admiration locked in her breast, however, and generally so harsh in
her judgments she never uttered a word of reproach where Fanny was
concerned. Then, too, it might have got back to her and that wouldn't
have done at all. Fanny was too useful. She knew that Hermann sometimes
went to see his sister, and she thought it a good thing. He might pick
up something there,--which he never did,--but she considered it one of
his least useless acts.
As for Liesel, Otto had grandly and early signified that it was no
place for an honest woman like his Liesel. But then they didn't need
Fanny and could indulge in their virtuous segregation, though the
reports Liesel heard of Fanny's clothes were tantalizing in the extreme
and she was truly sorry that things "were as they were."
As for Anna she hated Fanny with a cold, terrible hatred, too cold
and terrible for the light of day. A sombre jealousy was its chief
ingredient, back from their childhood days, but Anna had forgotten
that and thought it was detestation of Fanny's ways. She and Hermine
could get along without her too. And then, deadliest of sins, she was
convinced, though she had no definite way of finding out, that Pauli
had a soft place in his heart for her. Fanny here, Fanny there, she was
sick of it. Fanny doing what was done for the Eberhardts, Fanny doing
what was done for Irma and the three little stepbrothers, Fanny paying,
she could bet, for Tante Ilde's alcove. Ah! Bah!
Kaethe loved her sister very much and Eberhardt, from the clouds,
was apt to fall as a dew of mercy alike on the just and the unjust.
Pauli and Hermann never mentioned her, though 'twas true that Pauli
frequented the flat assiduously and Hermann would have gone oftener but
for the terror of those open places.
"Virtue, what is virtue?" Fanny had once cried to Pauli when some
thorn or other had pressed deeply into her white flesh. And what _was_
virtue in that starving city? Generous giving in the end assumed the
supreme mien of virtue, had, indeed, usurped the place of all virtues,
theological and human. It was all, to the family, whichever way they
looked, confusingly the triumph of Fanny's sins over their own virtues.
Fanny was inclined, too, to be pious,--in her way and at her time.
She was apt to enter any church she was passing; what the prayers she
offered up, who shall say? Not entirely of thanksgiving that in the
starving city she had plenty. Perhaps she begged not to reach old
age,--to have time on her deathbed. That was what she hated to think
of. Old age! Alone! Death! Judgment! Whom the gods love of Fanny's kind
they certainly snatch young.
Yet, how gay she could be! What life was in her! Even above her beauty
was that sense of flooding life in her veins. 'Tis true her temper
easily ran high. Maria knew well the signs of rising choler; blasts
of that temper blew about impartially. Indeed she was more apt to
administer a box on the ear than to bestow a kiss. It was often said
by the recipients of the first-mentioned gift that never was she so
handsome as when lightnings were flashing from her deep eyes. It was
all part and parcel of poor Fanny. It was extraordinary how the family
got used to her in their hearts, though sometimes in words they still
condemned her--and ah, if Fanny hadn't been _their_ Fanny!
However, there she was and apparently as bright as one of those
American dollars to be gazed upon in the windows of exchange bureaux,
shedding their radiance over the dull waste of paper money.
Obviously they couldn't be seen with her, nor she with them,--in the
end no one could have said just which way it was. However, from her all
blessings flowed. Pauli called her the family Doxology, and once when
he had run into her coming out of St. Stephen's, he had said, with his
wide, flashing smile:
"Na, Fanny, thanking the Lord God for his manifold blessings, that you
will later pass on to the rest of us?"
And Fanny had called him a "stupid ox," and smiled and blushed and
flicked him ever so lightly with the tail of her silver fox.
It was one of Fanny's many gifts, that way of blushing that she still
had, would perhaps always have. It was indeed a confusing situation.
The yard-sticks of the old days were broken or mislaid and anyway few
had the energy to use them.
When Fanny had been very ill with grippe in November, Corinne and
Kaethe, summoned by Maria, had gone to see her for the first time; they
had let it be known afterwards that it was just like any other place
only much nicer, and that Fanny had been saying her rosary. Nothing
hung together somehow.
Tante Ilde, whose judgments were innately of the order abounding in
mercy had had at first only the most uncomfortably confused sensations
at the mention of Fanny,--sensations rather than thoughts. A flush
would, at such moments, mantle her cheek. It was when she still lived
at Baden and Anna and Irma would come out and tell her of certain
things that to them, Anna and Irma, were nothing short of shameful, an
honest family, etc. Her father would have turned in his grave, etc.,
and they, especially Irma, would soon have to think of the boys, etc.,
etc. Tante Ilde had been wont to listen in a sort of confused silence.
She didn't understand things "like that" anyway, was the general
opinion. She would think glimmeringly of what happened in the end in
novels and on the stage to women of Fanny's ways, and she would feel
alarmed for Fanny rather than condemnatory.
But when the races began again at Baden and they heard, necessarily
indirectly, that Fanny, in two shades of blue, had been the sensation
of the day, they were increasingly puzzled, but a touch of pride crept
in to give a new tone to their feelings. So Fanny's scarlet sins, if
not washed whiter than snow in the miseries of War and Peace, had
undeniably been getting paler and paler in the family eye.
Now poor Tante Ilde shared with the others a certain miscellaneous
satisfaction, all sorts of things composed the secret mixture, that
came inevitably from the knowledge that Fanny was doing very well.
Indeed what would they do if Fanny didn't do well? It was the world
upside down. But they were all living in that same upside-down world
and the relativity of their misfortunes was so dependent on the
absolute of Fanny's fortunes that certain chalky lines and demarcations
were fast disappearing. Though none of the women went to Fanny's they
all saw Maria, that messenger of hopes and fulfilments, that faithful
_officier de liaison_ between two worlds.
* * * * *
When, after her habit of recounting everything to Maria, Fanny had told
her all about Carli and meeting Tante Ilde at Kaethe's, they had first
wept over Carli, mingling their tears as they embraced. Then they had
a conversation concerning the proprieties, concerning Tante Ilde's
coming to Fanny for dinner on the very next Saturday,--before the
funeral. At first the thing had seemed impossible, just couldn't be.
Certain things weren't done, and Tante Ilde--so devoted, so genteel,
so innocent. Of Tante Ilde's indestructible innocence there were no
two opinions. Something to be cherished. It wouldn't be "anstaendig,"
decent, a word used with more shades of meaning in Viennese than in
English. Equally Fanny couldn't take Tante Ilde to the Hotel Bristol.
Yet Fanny was suddenly very lonely for Tante Ilde, she had a hunger
for her and Fanny generally gave herself the things she wanted....
Tante Ilde, so loving, so unfortunate, the only one left of the older
generation. Why if Tante Ilde died, Fanny herself, all of them, would
be, dreadful thought, the older generation! She positively boo-hooed,
wiping her handsome nose noisily on her filmy handkerchief. But for
once Fanny didn't see her way quite clear to gratifying her desire.
There were things, a lot of them, that weren't done and this seemed
quite definitely one of them.
She had her code and it was rigorous. But Maria had been saying that
she noticed, too, how white and thin Tante Ilde looked when she had
gone to take Irma the woollen stockings, just as if her life were being
pressed out of her, though not a word of complaint, only a smile and
just faint and tired, as if she didn't have a place to rest her feet
or to lay her head, "and I'll bet she has it hard with Frau Irma,"
finished Maria shrewdly.
"About like sitting on pins," answered Fanny with conviction, "but
Pauli told me Corinne hoped it would do for awhile, on account of the
boys, too."
"I could make her comfortable here for once," pursued Maria
insinuatingly, "a little table drawn up by the stove and a good oatmeal
soup."
Maria, too, had her doubts as to the propriety of the proceeding. She
was quite feeling around in the dark where you might run into all sorts
of things. In ordinary times there would have been no question of such
an arrangement or even during the War, but the Peace had levelled the
ranks of the Viennese with the same efficiency as death--what, indeed,
was virtue?
"I feel so sorry for the poor, dear old lady," said Maria meditatively,
repeating, "I could make her comfortable for once."
"Well, you'll probably have your way, but I'm against it, it just isn't
suitable," answered Fanny flatly. Her aunt's life was broken into bits
but there was a whiteness about the remaining pieces that they all,
according to their natures, felt must not be diminished.
"But, Lord God!" at last cried Maria, whose voice could rise too, "they
all take the money!"
"They can't starve, the poor things!" answered Fanny immediately up in
arms for the family, her voice rising above Maria's.
Maria familiar with the signs of trouble, lowered her own.
"It's different her coming here," Fanny began after a pause with an
unexpected quiver of the lips.
Maria melted instantaneously, this was so painfully, undeniably the
fact, and pressed Fanny's head against her ample bosom.
"It's different," Fanny repeated and wished it wasn't different.
Suddenly the hunger for Tante Ilde became very insistent, rising up
from far out of those happy days when she had been the prettiest girl
that any one had ever seen, and had picked daisies in Tante Ilde's
garden at Baden and pulled off the petals: "He loves me--loves me
not--not."... And _this_ was what Life was.... Maria could do any
blessed thing she pleased about Tante Ilde. She, Fanny, washed her
hands of the matter.
And even the next morning things weren't any better, and she made
her toilet snapping crossly at Maria, with the corners of her mouth
drawn down, looking fully her age, which though it wasn't great, she
couldn't afford to do ... considering.... And then she had gone out
to the Bristol to the tinkle of her bracelets, and the slightest
rustle of silk, (just enough to let one know somebody was passing,)
her eyes stormily sombre under the drooping plume of her hat, her furs
enveloping her softly, odorously--all in a not unfamiliar, black sea
of depression. That black sea, with no slightest light, that sometimes
threatened to flood up above her red, full mouth, above her small, flat
ears, above her wide, blue eyes, till she was drowned, till she was
dead.... What was the matter that Tante Ilde couldn't walk right in to
her own niece's home? And then, it must be confessed, as she walked
slowly along, she used some expressions in regard to life and living
that she hadn't learned in her father's house.
* * * * *
Fanny had been likened by a foreign friend to one of her own
waltzes,--beautiful and hot, gay and sad, for beneath the passion
and beauty they embody is that ever-recurrent note of melancholy,
woven through each sparkling melody, to be caught up swiftly into the
inevitable coda that for so many of Fanny's kind is the end indeed.
Vienna laughs and weeps to her waltz music, loves and dies to its
measures, to a continual "allegro con fuoco." Weber thus annotated
one of the glowing movements of "Blumen der Liebe:" "Breast against
breast he confesses his love and receives from her the sweet avowal of
love returned."... Breast against breast indeed, giving and receiving,
myriads of maidens in each generation embody the brief and tragic
triumph of passion and beauty over the lengthier security of duty. In
that very heart of Europe is a perpetual, warm, fermenting desire for
love, an instant sensibility to the arts--to all beauty in its visible
forms; but "swiftly with fire" these are forever consuming themselves,
for they have little to do with material success or personal continuity.
The Turks left other things there than coffee and ruins. They dropped
some seed of Eastern magic into this only half Western soil and a dark
flower, like no other dark flower of the earth, sprang up abundantly.
Its color for a time has been washed out in the sombre waters of War
and Peace; it has been trampled by the slow tread of cripples, its
growth suspended in starvation. But another generation that has
not seen these things and died of pity or hunger will arise, other
"Flowers of Love" will blossom. The sagging portico of that stately
pleasure-palace, Vienna, will be again upheld by Caryatides with
glowing eyes, with bright cheeks, with thick, shining coils of dark
hair, with full, soft figures and tireless, round, white arms. And
in through the portico, coming from their dark side streets, will
pass "allegro con fuoco," passionate, gifted young men, worshipers of
the arts and devotees of the graces, with their Frauenlieb and their
Frauenlob apostrophes, their lovely, tragic hymns to Spring and Hope
and Love--till the sun and the moon and the stars shall have done with
them.
* * * * *
When Frau Stacher got up that Saturday morning she found that her legs
were trembling weakly and that only with the greatest effort could she
stand. Her chest seemed bound in iron, too, and she was breathing quite
noisily.
"I've got a terrible cold after all," she thought appalled at the idea
of being ill at Irma's--in the alcove. "It just can't be," she thought
desperately. Up and out was the word, though down and all in was what
she felt. She was momentarily comforted by the cup of ersatz coffee
that Irma always served very hot, but she had a vast repugnance to the
piece of hard bread. Gusl, with his sharp eyes out had been watching it
as it lay untouched at her plate.
"Tante Ilde, you're not eating your bread," he observed finally.
"No, I don't want it. I'm not hungry," and she pushed it towards him.
"Not hungry!" he exclaimed and his voice was hopeful.
At that Ferry who always noticed things said: "You're not ill, Tante?"
Irma glanced up quickly. But her sister-in-law always looked that way
in the morning, pale and spent and a hundred years old, so she turned
to the more agreeable consideration of the slice of bread. Being
impartial was one of Irma's many virtues and that slice was cut into
three bits, the thin end larger than the two thicker pieces. It was a
pleasant sight, though no more durable than a flash of lightning, to
see the boys eat it, in an instant, one chew, one swallow. Then they
began to get ready for school and Irma lingeringly wrapped Ferry's
knitted scarf about his neck, she was strangely tender with her sons,
and they all clattered down the bare steps.
Frau Stacher always rather dreaded that moment of being alone with
Irma, but this morning she was glad of the sudden quiet in the
apartment. She would have lain down again but for Irma's inevitable
question if she did so. Clearly Irma's wasn't a house to relax in. You
got up and went on. So instead of lying down, as usual she helped to
wash the cups and saucers and put the room in order.
Then when Irma sat down to her work by the window, she went back to
her alcove and in its semi-obscurity, leaned heavily on the yet unmade
divan, trying not to cough. She could hear Irma drawing the stitches
of her embroidery in and out, and the little click when she picked up
or lay down her scissors. She was no more alone than that. It suddenly
seemed to her that the most intolerable of all her misfortunes was
never, never to be alone. She started up uncomfortably as Irma called
out, speaking more gently, however, than was her wont:
"You're going surely to Fanny's today?" and then she heard Irma lay
down her work and cross the room. As she pulled the curtain aside Frau
Stacher stood up guiltily. Irma even in her preoccupation could not
but see that her sister-in-law was ailing. There was no mistaking it.
But Irma was determined, more determined than she had ever been about
anything that she should go to Fanny's that day, that very day. Virtue
or vice, 'twas all the same in Irma's eyes, all run together. Ferry had
to be saved, saved that day and not another.
"Hermann says that if Ferry gets over this coming year, he'll be all
right."
Something familiarly, sombrely fierce lay in her eyes as impatiently
she looked at the frail messenger of her desire.
"Yes, I'm going, Irma, you can count on me, I won't forget," she
answered almost humbly. "Don't worry, we'll arrange it," and then her
eyes fell on the little figure of the woman bending over waiting to
have the two buckets, one filled with apples and the other with pears,
put into her hands.
"I'll just take it with me--to show Fanny," she continued.
Irma's eyes filled with tears as she took the little carving from the
table and started to wrap it in a piece of newspaper.
"No, give it to me just as it is. I'll carry it in my bag," and she put
it into her worn reticule that never stayed clasped and now promptly
fell open as she laid it on the divan.