People appear with a startling suddenness sometimes out of the fog of
Time and Space. Bertha did not visualize Kreisler very readily. She was
surprised when she saw him below her windows the next day. He stared
up at the house with an eager speculation. He considered the house and
studio opposite. Behind the curtains Bertha stood with emotions of an
ambushed soldier. She felt on her face the blankness of the wall of the
house, its silence and unresponsiveness. He appeared almost to be looking
at her face, magnified and exposed.—Then it appeared to her that it was
_he_, the enemy getting in. She wished to stop him there, before he came
any further.
In the processes of his uncertainty he was so innocuous and distant,
for the moment. His first visit. There he was: so far, a stranger. Why
should these little obstacles of strangeness—which gate to enter, which
bell to ring—be taken away from this particular individual? He should
remain “stranger” for her, where he came from. But he had burrowed his
way through, was at the bell already, and would soon be at herself. _She_
found here, in her room, was very different from _she_ found outside, in
restaurant or street. The clothing of this _décor_ was a nakedness.
She struggled for a moment up from the obstinate dream, made of
artificial but tenacious sentiments, shaped by contretemps of all sorts
that had been accumulating like a snowball ever since her last interview
with Tarr. Still somewhat wrapt in this interview she rolled in its
nightmarish, continually metamorphosed, substance through space. Where
would it land her, this electric, directionless, vital affair? This
invasion of Indifference and Difference had floated her, successfully,
away in _some_ direction.
The bell rang again. She could see him, almost, through the wall,
standing phlegmatic and erect. They had not spoken yet. But they had been
some minutes “in touch.”
Perhaps he was _mad_! Elsa, cold, matter-of-fact, but with warnings for
her, came into her mind. However much she resisted the facts, there was
very little reason for this meeting. It was a now unnecessary, exploded,
and objectless impulse, sapped by Anastasya. She was going through
with something from laziness and obstinacy mixed, that no longer meant
anything.
Already dressed, she walked to the door as the bell rang a third time.
Kreisler was serious and a little haggard; different from the day before.
He had expected to be asked in. Instead, hardly saying anything, she came
out on the narrow landing and closed the door behind her. Surprised, he
felt for the first stair. It was eight in the evening, very dark on the
staircase, and he stumbled several times. Bertha felt she _could_ not say
a single word to him. It was just as though some lawyer’s clerk had come
to fetch her for a tragic disagreeable interview, and she, having been
sitting fully dressed for unnecessary hours in advance, were now urging
him silently and violently before her, following.
That afternoon she had received a second letter from Sorbert.
“MY DEAR BERTHA.—Excuse me for the _blague_ I wrote the other
day. There is nothing to be gained in conforming to our old
convention of vagueness. I think we had better say, finally,
that we will try and get used to not seeing each other, and
give up our idea of marriage. Do you agree with me? As you will
see, I am still here, in Paris. I am going to England this
afternoon.
“Toujours affectueusement,
“Votre SORBERT.”
On the receipt of this letter—as on the former occasion a little—she
first of all behaved as she would have done had Sorbert been there.
She acted silent resignation and going about her work as usual for
the benefit of the letter, as though it had been a living person. The
reply to this, written an hour or so before Kreisler arrived, had been
an exaggerated acquiescence. “Of course, Sorbert: far better that we
should part!” But soon this letter began to worry her and threaten her
mannerisms. She was just going to take up a book and read, when, as
though something had called her attention, she put it down, got up, her
head turned over her shoulder, and then suddenly flung herself on the
sofa as though it had been rocks and she plunging on them from a high
cliff. She sobbed until she had tired herself out.
* * * * *
So Kreisler and she walked up the street as though compelled by some very
strange circumstances, only, to be in each other’s company.
He appeared depressed, and to have come also under the spell of some
sort of meaningless duty. His punctuality suggested, too, fatigued and
senseless waiting, careful timing. His temporary destination reached,
he delivered himself up indifferently into her hands. He said something
about its being hot. They said hardly anything, but walked on away from
her house. They showed no _pudeur_ about this peculiar state of mind and
their manners.
Before they got to the Café de l’Observatoire Kreisler was attempting
to make up for his lapse into strangeness, discovering, however, in a
little, that he had not been alone.
Bertha looked at the clock inside as they took up their place on the
quieter _terrasse_. When she asked herself how long she would stop she
was astonished.
“Who is that, then?” Kreisler asked, after some moments of gradually
changing silence, when Anastasya began to be mentioned by Bertha. He
showed no interest.
This meeting had been the only event of the day for him. He had looked
forward to it a little at first. But as it approached he got fidgety,
began counting the time, and from being a blessed _something_, it became
a burden. The responsibility of this meeting even seemed too much for
him. He began to ask himself what useless errand he was on now? The
effort of this simple affair worked lamentably on his nerves. He would
not have gone, only the appointment being made and fixed in his mind, and
he having felt it in the distance all day, he knew it would irk him more
if he did _not_ go. He was compelled, in short, to go, to have done with
it. The worrying obsession of not having done it intimidated him. In the
empty evening he would have been at the mercy of this thing-not-done,
like an itch.
Bertha, for her part, recovered. Kreisler’s complete abstraction and
indifference were soothing. He seemed to know as little why he was
there as she, or less, and be only waiting for her to disappear again.
No slight was implied. Her vanity stirred a little. She perhaps came
through this to bring Fräulein Vasek on the boards as she had originally
intended. As to there being anything compromising in this meeting, that
might be disposed of. He did not look like suggesting another.—His
manner on the day before would not have warranted complete calm. And
Elsa’s description of his conduct with women had stuck in her mind. As
the hour of meeting approached it helped her uneasiness. But now she
felt refreshingly relieved. _This_ was the man who had caused her fresh
misgivings! When a dog or cow has passed a trembling child without any
signs of mischief, the child sometimes is inclined to step after it and
put forth a caressing hand.
By his manner and its reflection on her feelings he had created a
situation not unlike that of the dance night. There they sat, she
pressing a little, he civilly apathetic. It seemed for all the world as
though Bertha had run after him somewhere and forced a meeting on him, to
which he had grudgingly come. She was back in what would always be for
him her characteristic rôle. And so now—and again later continually—she
appeared to be following him up, to the discomfort of both, for some
unguessable reason.
“No, I don’t know who you mean,” he said, replying to descriptions of
Anastasya. “A tall girl you say? No, I can’t bring to mind⸺”
He liked fingering over listlessly the thought of Anastasya, but as a
stranger. This subject gave him a little more interest in Bertha, just
as, for her, it had a similar effect in his favour. She was immediately
convinced that Fräulein Vasek had been guilty of the most offensive,
self-complacent mistake.
Kreisler had not energy enough left to continue his pursuit of his
bespangled dream.
Bertha now had achieved a simplification of the whole matter as follows:
Anastasya, a beautiful and swankily original girl, had arrived,
bespangled and beposed, on the scene of her (Bertha’s) simple little
life. She had discovered her kissing and being kissed by a ridiculous
individual in the middle of the street. Bertha had disengaged herself
rapidly, and explained that she had been doing that because he had awoken
her pity by his miserable and half-starved appearance; that, even then,
he had assaulted her, and she had been found in that delicate situation
entirely independent of her own will. Anastasya’s lip had curled, and
she had received these explanations in silence. Then, at their nervous
repetition, she had said negligently: “You were no doubt being hugged by
Herr Kreisler in the middle of the pavement, the motives the ordinary
ones. You might have waited till—But that’s your own business. On the
other hand, the reason of his eccentric appearance this evening was
_this_. He had the incredible impudence to wish to make up to me. I sent
him about his business, and he ‘manifested’ in the way you know.”
Reducing all the confused material of this affair to such essential
situation, Bertha saw clearly the essence of her action.
Definite withdrawal from the circle of her friends was now essential. It
was accomplished with as much style as possible. Kreisler provided the
style.
Her instinct now was to wallow still more in the unbecoming situation
in which she had been found, with defiance. She wanted to be seen
with Kreisler. The meanness, strangeness, and certain _déchéance_ or
come-down, in consorting with this sorry bird, must be heightened into
poetry and thick and luscious fiction. _They had driven her to this. They
were driving her!_ Very well. She was _lasse_! She would satisfy them.
She would satisfy Sorbert. It was what he wanted, was it not?
Kreisler, of course, was the central, irreducible element in this mental
pie. He was the egg-cup that kept up the crust. She tried to interest
herself in Kreisler and satisfy Tarr, her friends, _the whole world_,
more thoroughly.