Mrs. Asmussen's two daughters had run away from home again. The whole
neighbourhood knew it. Lilly had scarcely set foot in the dusky room
smelling of dust and leather, where soiled volumes on pine shelves
reached to the ceiling, when she, too, became acquainted with the fact.
Mrs. Asmussen was a dignified dame, whom nature had endowed with
gracious rotundity. She received Lilly at the entrance to her
circulating library, and amid kisses and tears declared that even before
seeing Lilly she had conceived a love for her such as she would cherish
for a child of her own; and now that she had met her face to face she
was completely bewitched.
"And people speak of the cold world," thought Lilly, whom this sort of
reception pleased very well.
"What did I say--a child of my _own_? Nonsense! I love you more, much
more, ever and ever and ever so much more. Daughters are venomous
serpents, on whom love is wasted. They are parasites to be torn from
one's breast--torn--"
She stopped because the stupid clerk, who had accompanied Lilly in a
cab, was shoving her trunk over the threshold. After he left Mrs.
Asmussen continued:
"Do you think I loved my daughters, or didn't love them? Did I, or did I
not, say to them every day: 'Your father's a blackguard, a cur, and may
the devil take him'? How do you think they rewarded me? One morning I
get up and find they're gone--mind you, absolutely gone--beds empty--and
a note on the table: 'We're going to father. You beat us too much, and
we're sick and tired of that eternal mush.' Look at me, my dear. Am I
not goodness itself? Do I look as if I could beat _any_body, much less
my own daughters? And do you suppose this is the first time they did it,
the first time they overwhelmed me with shame and disgrace in the eyes
of the whole world? What would you say if I were to tell you it's the
_third_ time--twice before I pardoned them and took them to my bosom. I
found them lying outside my door in tears and rags. Yes, yes, that's the
way it was, that's the way it is, the way it is. But if they dare to
return _again_, here's a broom, here, look, behind the door--I put it
there the instant I found out they had gone, and there it will remain
until I take hold of it and beat them out, beat them out through the
door to the street, this way, this way, this way--"
With a gesture of ineffable disgust Mrs. Asmussen swept an invisible
something through the hall, and let it lie outside, giving it a look of
unspeakable contempt.
"The poor, poor woman," thought Lilly. "How she must have suffered!" And
she registered a silent vow to do her utmost to replace the faithless
children in the abandoned mother's heart.
At this point a young man entered, a customer, who wanted to exchange a
book. He asked for one of Zola's works, and looked at Lilly
triumphantly, as if to say, "You see, that's the kind I am!"
Mrs. Asmussen went to fetch the book, shaking her head softly in
deprecation. The customer took it hastily without paying the least
attention to the look of warning with which she handed it to him.
"Look, my dear," she said after he left, "that's the way youth goes to
its ruin, and I myself am condemned to point the way."
"How?" queried Lilly, who had been listening with the keenest interest.
"Do you know what's inside an apothecary's shop?"
Lilly said she had often been in an apothecary's shop, but could not
itemise the contents.
Her mistress continued:
"One closet is marked 'Poisons.' It contains the most awful poisons
mankind knows. That's why it's always locked and only the owner and his
assistant may have the key to it. Now look about you. Half of what you
see here is poison, too. Everything written these days vitiates the soul
and lures it to its destruction. Yet I must keep the wicked books, and
though my heart bleeds I must hand them over to any and everybody who
asks for them. Oh, I need but to think of my undutiful daughters. No use
my telling them not to--they read at any rate. They read and read the
whole night long, and when they were crammed full of impudence and
corruption, they didn't like the food I prepared for them, and all they
wanted to do was to go out walking. On top of it all they went sneaking
off to their father, that miserable cur, that common cheat, that
pock-marked scum of the earth. Child, I warn you against that man.
Should you ever meet him, lift your skirts and spit, the way I'm
spitting now."
Lilly shuddered at the man's frightful vileness, but took some courage
in the thought that she had found her natural protector in this
excellent woman.
An hour later they went to supper, which consisted of mush and
sandwiches, with nothing but clarified fat between. Lilly, whose palate
had not been pampered, was easily persuaded that nobody in the world
knew how to prepare such dainty mush, and that the emperor himself was
seldom served with more delicious sandwiches. Had a little ham been
added to the repast, such as she had gotten for supper every evening at
the hospital, the acme of earthly enjoyments in her opinion would have
been attained.
Going to bed provided her with another pleasure. The books of the
circulating library were kept in a large room with three windows,
divided into four compartments by two bookcases running from the
windowed wall deep into the room and by a counter opposite the door
leading into the hall. A passageway along the wall dividing the library
from the inner room was the only means of getting from one compartment
to another.
When bedtime came Mrs. Asmussen had Lilly carry to the compartment
farthest from the hall door two bench-like pieces of furniture and mount
a spring-mattress on them. This completely blocked the space crosswise,
so that, to get into bed, Lilly had to jump over the bottom rail of the
benches. She thought it great sport.
Wedged in between perpendicular bookcases, the window-sill at her head,
a chair holding her impedimenta at her feet, the Song of Songs clasped
in her arms, Lilly fell asleep.
The next morning her apprenticeship began.
Lilly was instructed as to the system according to which the thousands
of volumes were ranged on the shelves. As she knew her A B C's, she
would have been able to fetch any book from its place at the end of five
minutes if only Mrs. Asmussen had followed her own scheme and not
produced utter confusion by disposing the books arbitrarily.
Still harder a task was finding records in the large ledger. Here, too,
the plan was supposed to be alphabetic; but some customers filled the
space allotted to them more rapidly than others, and when there was no
more room Mrs. Asmussen had simply turned to the next blank page
regardless of alphabetic succession. The result was such a jumble that
finally neither Mrs. Asmussen nor her decamped daughters knew where to
look for what they wanted.
Inspired by holy zeal Lilly began the great task of getting order out of
chaos. This constituted her entire life.
The very day after her arrival Mrs. Asmussen provided her with some
singular experiences.
During the working hours the worthy dame had for the most part kept out
of sight. When Lilly went in for supper she found her mistress dreamily
inclined over a steaming cup of tea in a room pervaded by a pleasant
aroma of lemon and rum.
"I suffer very much from a catarrhal affection of the mucous lining of
my nose," explained Mrs. Asmussen, blinking at Lilly with somewhat
watery grey eyes. "So I must take some medicine which one of the most
eminent physicians in the city prescribed for me."
Lilly stirred her mush while Mrs. Asmussen sipped tea, every now and
then giving vent to a distressed sigh.
"Have I told you about my daughters?"
"Oh, certainly," said Lilly, respectfully.
In the morning, too, Mrs. Asmussen had spoken of scarcely anything but
those miserable creatures and the contemptible wretch they called
father.
"I don't think it's possible for you to get even a remote conception of
the charm of those two girls. They are my own flesh and blood, and
modesty should forbid me to speak of them this way. However, from a
purely objective point of view, I may say that never, never in the wide
world have I ever seen, even from afar, two young ladies endowed with
such striking qualities of mind and character. Such tender filial
devotion, such self-sacrificing industry, such touching modesty, so much
genuine feeling in all the small relations of life, such quiet strength
in the judgment of great questions, have never before, I warrant, been
united in two such youthful souls. Let them be an example to you, my
child. You are far removed, far, far removed from those models of
maidenhood."
In her astonishment and shame Lilly dropped her spoon. The old lady went
on:
"It was with a bleeding heart that I had to part from them. As for them,
they cried day and night before leaving me. But what was to be done?
They had to go to their father. Have I ever told you about my splendid
husband? An untoward destiny has separated us, but his love, I know,
clings to me, and I will love him all the days of my life. Oh, what a
man he was! My child, pray to the Lord that he may make you worthy to
become the wife of such a man. Alas, I was not worthy, no, not I!"
Two tears of infinite contrition ran down her cheeks.
She related a good deal more on this second evening concerning the
virtues of her two daughters, her husband's nobility of character, and
her own unworthiness.
After she had taken several more doses of the medicine prescribed by one
of the most eminent physicians of the city, she finally wept herself to
sleep.
The next morning she began the day's work by bursting into a rage
because Lilly had used the broom, which was to remain undisturbed behind
the door, for sweeping the library.
"This broom is here for only one purpose--to beat those two monsters
when they come to my door. And if you, wretched creature, take hold of
it once again, you will be the first to make its acquaintance."
Lilly now began to divine that the strange world was not so roseate as
her eagerness for experience had led her to picture it.
But worse was to come.
Mrs. Asmussen, who seemed to be greatly concerned for the salvation of
Lilly's soul and the purity of her virgin fancy, immediately forbade her
to read any of the books in the library.
"Experience with my daughters," she said, "taught me where such
misconduct leads. And I will see to it that you are spared a similar
fate."
So long as the work of ordering the books and the ledger continued, the
temptation to disobey this mandate did not arise very frequently. But
when fall came, when despite increase of custom, unoccupied hours grew
more frequent, and the lamp hanging over the counter shone invitingly,
when Mrs. Asmussen from day to day succumbed earlier to the effects of
the medicine prescribed by one of the most eminent physicians in the
city, and fell into an untroubled dream existence, curiosity and
loneliness drove Lilly irresistibly on to commit the sinful deed.
The final impulse was given by a girl of about her own age, who had come
one rainy October evening to exchange the first volume of a novel for
the second. But the second had been loaned already, and the girl
actually cried in disappointment. She couldn't bear waiting, she said.
She _had_ to know how the story ended. She would _die_ if she didn't.
Lilly good-humouredly advised her to go to one of the other circulating
libraries, which were said to be larger and more aristocratic. She even
returned the three marks deposit for use at the other place. Happy in
reawakened hopes the novel-reader left.
Lilly examined the torn and soiled volume on all sides and took a
cautious peep between the covers.
"_Soll und Haben_, by Gustav Freytag," was on the title page. She
recalled that even the girls of the first year high school had gone into
raptures over the book. But the seamstress's daughter had had no time
for reading novels.
Lilly glanced timidly at the first page, then slipped to the glass door
and listened for a while to Mrs. Asmussen's peaceful breathing--now,
with sails spread, she launched forth on the high seas of romance.
When she finished the volume at four o'clock in the morning she could
have torn her hair in sheer desperation at having so lightly put the
sequel into the hands of some stranger, who might not bring it back. She
mapped out ways and means of unearthing his name and address and
slipping to him secretly in order to hasten the return of the book. Then
she fell asleep.
She spent hours going over the ledger time and again to find the name.
In vain! The entries were made by numbers, not by titles, and each time
she skipped the number of _Soll und Haben_.
So, like a toper who seeks intoxication in a new drink, she greedily
devoured another book.
From now on Lilly's life was one great orgy, and bore all the marks of
such an existence--blurred eyes, aching limbs, huge bills for midnight
oil, and spying and lying every few minutes to allay Mrs. Asmussen's
suspicions.
One winter morning the dreadful crime came to light.
The fire in the library stove would die out about midnight and Lilly's
feet would then grow cold. So she got into the habit of reading in bed,
with the lamp, which she removed from its hanging socket, set on the
broad window-sill directly back of her head. She indulged in the luxury
even though reduced to the bitter necessity of getting out of bed later
to replace both the lamp and the book, for nowadays Mrs. Asmussen was
frequently at her post earlier in the morning than Lilly. But Lilly, for
the sake of the few extra hours thus gained, would not have been
deterred from allowing herself this great joy, even if it had involved
going out on the icy street in her nightgown.
But once she started up from sleep in terror to find Mrs. Asmussen
standing at the bottom of the bed all dressed. A black strap lay across
her white shirt, and the lamp, which she had gotten up at one o'clock to
refill, was still burning behind her.
Never having been beaten in her life, she refused at first to take it
seriously when Mrs. Asmussen, despite her corpulence, suddenly jumped
over the bottom of the bed and squatted on the covers like a great
turkey and began to strike her over the ears with the black strap.
Bad times set in.
Of what avail that Lilly felt genuinely repentant and swore to herself
to reform. She was so steeped in the new passion, so absorbed by that
lovelier existence, where people experienced and loved, suffered and
enjoyed, where there were no pert servant girls who came to exchange
books, no wet umbrellas, no second volumes loaned out, no ledger numbers
not to be found, no mush, and no blows, that she could not have returned
to her former self had she had the self-renunciatory ability of a martyr
and saint.
To such an extent was she dominated by her fancy that what was her
actual existence, moving on from day to day in monotonous prison-like
loneliness, seemed to her a dream, an oppressive death stupour,
painless, but also pleasureless. Her being did not expand in real life
until the sticky pages of a novel began to rustle in her hand.
Intimidated and unresisting as she was, she did not find the courage to
justify what was holiest to her even in her own eyes. She felt it to be
a sin on which her hungry soul fed as on manna.
Mrs. Asmussen had bethought herself of a diabolic way of still further
humiliating Lilly. Like many a believing Protestant, she regarded
religion solely as a scourge. Hitherto she had not shown the least
solicitude concerning Lilly's piety, but now she began each meal with a
long prayer of repentance, and while the steam curled invitingly from
the soup tureen, she would beseech God with sighs and tears to raise
Lilly from the depths to which she had sunk.
And woe to Lilly if caught backsliding!
That first chastisement was not the last. Every pretext was seized for
beating and cuffing her. Storms of abuse showered down on her
unprotected head. She did not dare breathe until the medicine prescribed
by the eminent physician began to have its soothing effect.
Then she would pounce on the first book she came across, and amid the
forging of signatures and broken marriage vows, amid death by poisoning
and the mad acts of love, she would suffer and triumph, triumph and die,
blissful in her sufferings, intoxicated to the very end.