"Dear Beloved Mr. von Prell:--
From what has happened you can imagine that everything between
us must come to an end. Yes, all's over. We shall never see
each other except at meal times. If you ask me whether I am
very sad, I will be brave and say, "no," hoping thereby to
assuage the pain of parting for both of us.
But easy or difficult--that's not the question. The main thing
is, our feelings should raise us to pure heights. True
greatness of renunciation must illumine our lives. Yes, I
expect you to show the greatness of renunciation. Our lives
after this must be dedicated entirely to recollections of the
past. Besides, can we hope ever again to find anything so
beautiful as those unspeakably exquisite hours we passed
together? I have given up thoughts of happiness, and you must
do the same. From now on my one sacred interest will be my
husband's welfare; and I ask you, with all the strength you
possess, likewise to labour at the reconstruction of your life.
Life is earnest, solemn, holy. I feel it is. The conviction
comes upon me with force, and has possessed me ever since I was
led back to the right path by a friend of mine. You must feel
it, too.
This letter is my last to you. Write to me once again. Oh, only
once. And stick the answer in the pea-shooter, which still
stands on the balcony. I shall have no peace until I know our
souls are united by the same ideal. Farewell, and at table
don't make any secret allusions to the past. You would merely
hurt me and make me doubt your good faith.
Ever with feelings of sisterly friendship,
Your L. v. M."
* * * * *
"Dearest Friend:--
The profound emotions which have held me in their grip since my
interview with our honoured friend, have, if possible, been
deepened by your lovely letter. I feel a tremendous impulse to
accomplish by deeds of atonement that which has never yet been.
I am prepared to scorn the seven deadly sins. I will carry in
mind all the paragons of virtue from the young Tobias to St.
Helena, and will try to find that pure happiness in the great
renunciation you demand of me, which alone, they say, is
unalloyed with regret--an advantage which bears little weight
with me, since I am acquainted with that evil institution only
by hearsay.
Well, then, dearest, most charming of women, farewell. It was
_very_ delightful. I can swear to that without perjuring
myself. Should you require pledges for the future, I can
further swear that: 1, I will shun alcohol; 2, I will declare
war upon the female sex; 3, I will devote myself to the
encyclopedia of agriculture with inordinate, unalterable love.
Ha, do you smell the rarified atmosphere?
Once more, farewell. After I have climbed the ladder of my
hopes for the last time, I will lay it to repose under a wintry
grave of pine branches. When the time comes, may it awaken to a
new spring.
With a kiss on your slim, refreshingly large hand,
Your much improved,
Walter von Prell."
Lilly found this letter the second morning after the great event in the
shape of a pellet stuck into the mouth of the pea-shooter, which leaned
innocently against the jamb of the balcony door.
It did not provide her with unqualified satisfaction. There were turns
of expression in it which raised doubts as to the sincerity of his
conversion. Nevertheless, his asseverations were so plain and
unmistakable she felt she might take the core to be sound. It was simply
that he could not refrain from his wanton way of speaking, which the
person who loved him would have to acquiesce in.
She kissed the letter and stuck it in her bosom, to lie there warm and
secure awhile before she tore it up.
In the afternoon she took a walk about the grounds, and actually found
under her balcony a long heap of pine branches from between which a few
ladder rungs peeped at her familiarly.
Rejoiced at this token of his pain she ran off to the park, now soggy
from the autumn rains, and sauntered about, marvelling from time to time
that renunciation was so easy.
After all it was not so easy.
She discovered it was not in the course of the next few days, when life
began to lose its content and intensity, when the hours jogged along in
dreary autumnal greyness, and the evening came and the morning came
without a reason why.
Moreover, she failed to find that support in Anna von Schwertfeger which
she had expected to. Although her friend withdrew none of the promises
she had made, yet a shadowy wall circumscribed her, which no insinuating
love could penetrate. She seemed almost to fear that too great
familiarity with Lilly would bring down upon her own head the sin of the
adulteress.
Lilly had much to suffer from the colonel these days. She, like the
rest, now fell a victim to his attacks of fury. And what was worse, in
moments of quiet self-abandon, she would suddenly feel his dark,
lowering look fastened upon her, betokening many a thought in his mind
which boded her no good.
She began to fear he had gotten wind of her affair with Von Prell; but
Anna pooh-poohed the idea.
"The symptoms would be rather different," she remarked. "Such a
suspicion would not pass without leaving a few broken chairs or lamps
behind. My opinion is, he feels bored at home. He's hankering for the
regiment, and holds you responsible for the change in his life. I
sincerely hope he doesn't come to hate you on that account. In that
event only two courses would be open to you: separation or suicide."
Here was small comfort. And no less dispiriting was his hesitation to
introduce her to the neighbours. Long before, Miss von Schwertfeger had
declared Lilly's education complete. No colonel's wife or high-born dame
could now find fault with her manners. But the colonel looked at her
distrustfully, and deferred the visits from week to week.
Lilly kept up bravely in all her tribulations. Faith in herself and,
still more, faith in him, gave her peace and strength.
She regulated her days strictly according to rule with a fixed
occupation for each hour. She learned Goethe's poems by heart, studied
Shakespeare in English, read histories of art, and lost herself in the
mazes of the French Revolution.
She took special delight in a large geographical work, in which there
were many pictures of southern ports, tropical forests, and bald, rocky
mountain ranges.
There were also full illustrations of Italy--pious pilgrims on crusades,
enigmatic churches, and slender-columned porticos, which filled her with
an ardent longing to be there.
When she travelled great distances into strange countries and looked
about timidly to find her way back again, whom did she see standing
there all of a sudden, blond, freckled, in a black and white checked
fall suit, making deep reverences? "As my lady commands."
The tears welled up in her eyes.
Her one diversion was to stand behind her balcony door--without his
knowing she was there, of course--and look over to the lodge through the
openings in the vine, the last leaves of which fluttered like little red
flags.
Oh, she might be proud of him. When he sat at the window in his leisure
hours he never let himself be seen without the encyclopedia of
agriculture in his hands.
He closed his shutters early every evening. In his frivolous days he had
hung heavy portieres at the windows, which, with the help of the
shutters, prevented the tiniest ray of light from penetrating to the
outside.
Lilly doubted not in the least that his student's lamp burned until late
at night, while he sat there over his book copying valuable extracts and
soaring on the pinions of great creative ideas.
She soared with him. She knew he could not lose his footing now. She had
his vow, and he held her honour in his keeping. That would serve as a
talisman, a guide on the road leading upward to a new life.
A few weeks passed.
He begged to be excused from coming to Sunday dinners; for which she was
grateful to him. Fortune had favoured her still further by having
bestowed a cold upon her that fateful night, as a result of which the
physician forbade horseback riding throughout the winter. In this Miss
von Schwertfeger probably had a hand.
* * * * *
Once on a day early in December, the colonel, as if to spite his
customary surliness, appeared at dinner in high feather. He chuckled to
himself, his eyes danced and looked cunning, secret laughter, as it
were, ran down his cheeks in rivulets.
Lilly ventured to ask what was amusing him.
At first he refused to speak.
"Oh, stuff and nonsense, mind your own affairs." But he could not
contain himself, and finally began: "Well, guess what happened to me.
One of the men at the club said to me I'd better look sharp to my Prell,
because stories were afloat that he kept knocking about in vile joints
night after night and had even gotten mixed up in a nasty brawl on
account of a hussy of a barmaid."
Lilly felt an icy numbness creep slowly upward from her feet. Her limbs
grew rigid. She smiled, and the smile cut into her cheeks like a
sharp-edged stone.
"At first, of course, I merely laughed at him, because, you know,
there's only the one train to take going and coming, and lately _I've_
been on that train nearly every day. No horse can stand twenty miles
each way night after night, and the pocket money I give him won't hire a
special train. That's what I said to the major; but he insisted. The
younger gentlemen had told him; and it would be a pity if after all Von
Prell had to be deprived of his uniform. When I got to the station at
one o'clock, the business was still buzzing about in my head. I had a
few moments' time, so I looked through the whole train--fourth class and
all. Of course, not a sign. I did the same thing three times in
succession. Well, I thought, it's a lie. And now listen. Yesterday, when
I was just about to get into the train at this end, I remembered I had
left my umbrella in the carriage. I can't get used to that piece of
furniture. So I went back. The platform was already empty, but the train
was still standing there; and when I passed the baggage car--sliding
doors open--I saw someone on the opposite side jump out to the tracks
and scamper off. 'Stop!' I called. But he ran and ran, into the woods. I
was going to tell the baggage master, who was on the platform next to
the locomotive, but Prell flashed into my mind. I said to Henry: 'Drive
as if the devil were after you,' and we reached here in five minutes.
But then, I reflected, he must have heard the carriage wheels from the
path. So I went up to my room to hurry and turn on the lights. I wanted
him to think I was in my room already. Did I wake you up, Lilly?" The
colonel started. "How you look, Lilly!"
"I?" she said, and smiled again.
"She hasn't been feeling very well all day," Miss von Schwertfeger
interjected hastily. "Besides, your story's very exciting, colonel. I'm
all keyed up, too."
"Hm," he muttered, twisting the end of his black dyed moustache,
evidently little desirous of concluding his tale. But Lilly could not
calm herself.
"I must know, I must know," she cried, clasping her hands. She was
beside herself.
"Well, then," said the colonel, fixing his eyes on her, "down I go again
in a jiffy--in ambush in front of the lodge--there he comes, stooping
like a polecat--stands still--eyes my window--sees the light--aha, he
thinks, all right. And just as he's about to stick the key in the lock,
I tackle him by the collar."
Lilly burst out into a mad laugh.
"Isn't that funny, isn't that funny!" she cried. This time the colonel
believed her.
"Something funnier's coming," he continued. "'If you confess
everything,' I said, 'I'll pardon you. But only on that condition.
Otherwise you're off to-morrow bright and early.' Well, what do you
think the rascal was up to? The good-for-nothing has a lady
love--barmaid in the Golden Apple--where the sergeants and clerks
resort. So, for the sake of bumming with her, he bribed a railroad
official and actually went to town and came back as a piece of the
king's baggage. Night after night rode in the same train as I did--each
way. If _that_ isn't rank impudence, what--Lilly!"
A pause ensued. Lilly experienced a sensation of swaying and reeling as
if tossed on stormy seas, a buzzing and singing; at the same time she
felt Miss von Schwertfeger press her hand under the table by way of
warning.
The colonel rose, took Lilly's head between his hands, and pressing it
until she thought her ears would split, said:
"It seems you _do_ need rest."
With that he faced about, and left the room abruptly.
"Now gather your wits together," Lilly heard her friend's disturbed
voice behind her, "because after this he'll be on the look-out."
Lilly wanted to throw herself on Miss von Schwertfeger's breast and be
petted and comforted. But Miss von Schwertfeger, as if afraid somebody
might catch her in too intimate a conversation with Lilly, held herself
aloof, and said coolly, though in a friendly tone:
"Excuse me, dear, I have something I must attend to this minute."
With that, she, too, left the room.
What now?
Lilly stared into space. The remnants of the precipitate meal littered
the table; the dark carved furniture cast black-edged rays from out of
the room's wintry twilight; the brass chandeliers gleamed palely. All
was as usual, and yet nothing was there, nothing but an awful,
all-devouring void, an abyss which drew her into its bosom with the
enticements of grappling hooks and huge tongs.
She stepped to the window and looked out apathetically.
The bare branches swayed in the wind, the ivy on the railing fluttered,
even the arched stalks of the rose bushes, the heads of which the
gardener had secured under heaps of earth, trembled and quivered this
way and that. The world was writhing in the clutch of winter. The only
still things were the leaves lying on the thin coating of snow which
covered the ground; but the leaves were dead already.
What now?
If _that_ could happen, then the very earth beneath her feet gave way;
then there was no hope, no rising to loftier heights, no strength, and
no fidelity; then you might as well throw yourself down beside the
leaves out there and die.
But before that--what?
Dishes rattled behind her. No one had rung for the maid, but she had
come of her own accord and was helping Ferdinand clear the table.
Lilly thought of Katie and that other creature in whose arms he had made
mock of her and her faith in him.
She dragged her torpid legs up the steps to the rooms where she felt at
home. In passing the colonel's door, she caught the sound of his tread
as he fairly ran to and fro.
She experienced not the faintest fear of him.
"Let him run, if he wants to," she thought.
When in her own room, she heard him give orders to have the carriage
brought around immediately.
"For all I care, he may stay here."
She stepped out on the balcony.
The iciness benumbing her neck crept into her arms and spread down to
her very finger tips.
There sat Walter, as always in his free time after dinner, completely
absorbed in the great encyclopedia of agriculture, so full of zeal for
study that every now and then he would pass his hand through his hair in
a preoccupied way and without looking up--he hadn't so much time to
spare, Heavens! no!--he would flick the ashes from his cigarette into a
flower pot.
In the face of this infamous game, which he played for the sole purpose
of deceiving her, Lilly was seized by a wild, infuriated desire to
denounce him, which completely robbed her of her senses. A stinging and
pricking lifted her paralysed arms. The iciness gave way to a painful
fever, which throbbed in her temples, and hung a red curtain before her
eyes.
She saw nothing, heard nothing.
She rushed down the staircase, tore open the garden door, leapt down the
stone steps, and ran at full speed straight across the lawn to the
lodge.
Whether someone spied her or not she did not care.
The door to his room banged against the wall.
She had not stopped to knock.
A rank, pungent smell, as in a menagerie, assailed her nostrils.
There he was, sitting at the window. He jumped to his feet. The grey
daylight glided over his head.
"He's had his hair cut brush fashion again," thought Lilly. "The
dissolute life he's living demands it; the elegance of the dives demands
it."
"Good Lord!" he said, crumbling his burning cigarette between his
fingers, "a pretty howdy-do!"
"Why--? Why did you--?" she screamed at him. "You're a blackguard! Your
word's not to be trusted! You're a liar!"
"Confound it!" he said, and looked about helplessly. "_How_ will my lady
get out of this mess?"
"You broke your promise--the most sacred bond uniting us.
You--you--threw it away on a barmaid--a barmaid, a creature who would
hang herself on anybody's neck for a couple of pennies. You're a vulgar
profligate! You're not worth a woman's having tried to save you--you
don't _want_ to be saved--you _want_ to go to the bad--"
"All very good and fine," he said, "and probably very saddening and
incontrovertible truths; but will my lady please explain how she expects
to get out of here?"
"I don't know anything I am more indifferent about," she cried. "I came
for you to give me an account of yourself. I am asking you to answer
me--immediately--here--now--on the spot."
"Certainly, my lady, I will without fail. But first--damn it! hell! Get
away from the window!"
He cast a sharp, all-embracing glance at the castle. Nothing suspicious
to be detected at that moment, at least.
Alarmed by his snarling at her in that way, Lilly fled into the interior
of the room, which was low, dark, and ill furnished. Here the vile
animal smell was still stronger. From where it came was made clear to
her the next instant. As she approached the rear wall, something
suddenly snapped at her foot, and two little circular torches gleamed up
at her wickedly.
"Down, Tommy!" called Von Prell, while Lilly recoiled with an
exclamation of fright.
So that was Tommy, the other member of the triple alliance.
Lilly leaned against the arm of the old spindle-legged sofa. Its worn
springs squeaked under her pressure and pricked her thumbs, and the
thought flashed into her mind:
"What am I doing here? What is it all to me?"
Von Prell the while stepped from door to door listening.
"If that old Leichtweg had happened to be in the next room," he said,
"we should be dying a dog's death. But if you go this instant, the front
way, into the courtyard, they might suppose you had come to ask
something, and perhaps we can patch it up still."
All Lilly perceived in his words was a sly attempt at evasion, and a
fresh flood of indignation overwhelmed her.
"First justify yourself," she cried. "Until you do, I won't go this way,
or that way, or the other way."
To enforce her resolve she dropped down on the screeching sofa, which
was covered with a dirty grey horseblanket folded into several
thicknesses for protection against the sharp points of the springs.
He was compelled to yield.
"Very well, then, look here--a fellow's a human being, isn't he? And if
he's given the go-by in that common way--"
"Common way?" faltered Lilly. "What was common in my letter? Didn't I
tear my heart out and throw it at your feet, and didn't Miss von
Schwertfeger--?"
She could not continue. Wrath and despair choked her utterance.
In the meantime Von Prell, who at first had been at a complete loss,
arrived at the proper policy to adopt.
"Yes, that's just it," he said, growing more aggrieved with each word.
"Is a love like ours to be concluded with a lukewarm homily? And that
Schwertfeger--did I deserve being dismissed by you like an asthmatic old
dog through the intermediation of a third person, a horrid, disgusting
creature? Isn't it enough to make a man desperate after all he's done
for you?"
"What--did you--do for me?" queried Lilly.
"Well--wasn't I a self-sacrificing comrade the whole time? Wasn't I
disloyal even to my old colonel for your sake, that fine old gentleman,
who saved my life, you might say? You see, all that's no small matter.
Do you suppose it didn't cut me to the quick? Do you suppose I didn't
get the blues? And then to be fooling round here alone night after night
with that dung-beetle, that Tommy--the beast smells, I tell you. So why
not try to dull one's feelings? Shouldn't I--how shall I say?--deaden
the anguish of lost love? Not even deaden it? It's a perfect mystery to
me how you can demand such a thing of me. We speak different languages,
my dear child--there's a yawning chasm dividing our natures--and you're
even willing to risk our two lives for such mummery. As a rule, I'm
_not_ an old aunt, but indeed, if only I had you out of this place."
Throughout this long speech he had walked about Lilly in a semicircle,
with one hand thrust in the belt of his Norfolk jacket, making short,
jerky steps, which forcefully expressed his righteous indignation.
Lilly sat on the sofa stiffly upright, mechanically turning her head
after him now to the right, now to the left, and staring at him with
great, uncomprehending eyes.
When he stopped speaking, he drew a cigarette from the case and
energetically beat off the superfluous tobacco with the index finger of
his left hand.
Lilly rose in all her height, leaving the sofa and the table next to the
sofa far below her.
"Listen, Walter," she said, "from this moment everything between us is
at an end."
"Why, wasn't it long ago?"
"I mean--inwardly, too."
"Oh, inwardly, too!" He made a little grimace. "With you that probably
means if you have something in your stomach."
When Lilly saw her love so ridiculed and mutilated, she could no longer
restrain herself. With an outcry she ran from the sofa, and hid her
face--anywhere at all--on the wall next to the window.
"Get away from the window!" she heard him hiss.
Oh, what did she care!
In the extremity of his fright he took to pleading.
"Just come away from the window," he said. "It was all mere twaddle. I
simply wanted to make you laugh again, nothing more. Please come away
from the window."
She did not budge.
To crawl off somewhere! To crawl away and hide herself and all her
shame.
She felt his hands seize her rudely.
That, too! To suffer violence, too!
She flung him off, wrestled with him, clawed at his neck--
And suddenly--
A whistling, a clash and clatter--shivers of glass flew over their
heads, and a long, dark something, like the shaft of a lance, sped past
them, knocked against something, rebounded, and fell at their feet.
The same instant Lilly felt a rush of cold air on her forehead, which
aroused her from the stupefaction of surprise.
One of the two upper window panes had been broken.
No living creature was to be seen. But the balcony door yonder, which
had been closed a moment before, now showed a dark opening, and was
swinging shut.
"A narrow escape," murmured Walter, and stooped to pick up the
mysterious thing from the floor, while the fragments of glass gritted
beneath his feet.
"The pea-shooter," Lilly faltered.
"A mercy he didn't happen to have his fowling-piece at hand," said
Walter, "else we'd be riddled into sieves."
With the back of his hand he wiped away the sweat of fright standing on
his forehead in bright beads.
None the less he was a brave little chap, and knew on the instant what
to do.
He sprang to the wardrobe under which Tommy had burrowed, fetched out
his army revolver, and tested all its parts. Then he said:
"Now, please go into Leichtweg's room, and lock yourself in. The
colonel's simply gone to load his gun. Then he'll be here."
But Lilly refused. Her wrath against him had completely evaporated.
"Let me stay with you, let me stay with you!" she begged, clasping his
shoulders.
"Impossible, child," he replied, with the old masterful lift to his
brows. "What's coming is men's business."
"Then I'll stand out in the hall, and receive him at your door."
He bit his lips.
"Well," he said, "if you take it that way, I can't help myself. Sit
down, please."
He removed the key from the outside of the door, stuck it in the lock on
the inside and cautiously turned it several times.
"Between loading and shooting," he said then, "there's a great big
difference--but the devil knows."
He took out his watch, and listened intently for sounds from the
outside, while he counted, "a half--one--one and a half--two. Probably
can't find his cartridges." Then commandingly: "Do sit down. You'll need
your legs to-day."
Lilly sank in one corner of the sofa, and he seated himself in the
other, placing the watch between them on the bumpy seat. Both counted
now with their eyes fastened on the second hand. "Two and a
half--three--three and a half--four--four and a half--five minutes."
Not a sound, save the wind howling in the bare branches.
Then it seemed to them they heard the trot of horses starting in the
courtyard and dying away on the other side of the gates.
"Whom's he gone to fetch?" asked Walter. "We're not ready for seconds
yet."
Red suns danced before Lilly's eyes. The ceiling began to rise and sink.
Walter kept on counting.
"Seven--eight--eight and a half."
Nothing.
"Nine--nine and a half--ten--" Suddenly he emitted a faint whistle, and
grasped his revolver.
The front door grated on its hinges, steps resounded, but not the
threatening, thundering steps of a vengeful husband. They were soft,
hesitating, dragging steps.
Then for a while nothing again--no sound, except the breathing of two
persons--and someone else--on the other side of the door, it seemed.
"Who's there?" called Walter.
Now came a knock.
Soft, broken, as if of trembling, failing fingers.
"Who's there, in the devil's name?" he called again.
"Anna von Schwertfeger."
He jumped up and opened the door.
There she stood, ashen-hued, red about the mouth, her lids quivering.
"The colonel has just driven off to Baron von Platow. He will return in
three hours. He charged me to tell you, Lilly, that when he comes back
he doesn't want to find you on his premises."
"And what did he charge you to tell me?" sneered Walter von Prell.
Miss von Schwertfeger, without regarding him, took Lilly's hand.
"Come. You haven't much time. We must pack."
"But--but where am I to go?" she asked, helplessly, suffering herself to
be drawn to her feet.
* * * * *
When she got to the door of the lodge, she saw the carriage that was to
convey her from the castle already rolling up the driveway.
PART II
CHAPTER I
She was Lilly Czepanek again.
In the divorce proceedings there had been no attempt at dissimulation or
concealment, and the case moved along rapidly. Lilly alone was found
guilty, and, upon the colonel's deposition, was deprived of the right to
use her married name.
"There is nothing to be saved from the ruins," wrote Mr. Pieper, "except
the jewels which I hope you diligently accumulated by following my
advice and standing in front of fine shop-windows. The pearl necklace
your ex-husband put about your neck on your wedding day--owing in part,
I may now say, to my suggestion--which I will try to get back for you,
is in itself sufficient to keep your head above water several years."
The result of this letter was that Lilly took the pearl necklace, which
after her flight she had found in one of her trunks among the laces and
evening gowns, carried it to a jeweller, had him pack it up, and
addressed it to Miss von Schwertfeger.
She felt justified in considering the less valuable trinkets to be her
personal property. She had already disposed of a considerable number of
them, and what was left would scarcely suffice for more than half a
year. Then poverty.
But her material condition gave her little concern.
Her regret for what she had lost was too profound, her consciousness of
the shame she had undergone too lively, but that her future should not
have been hidden from her perceptions behind a veil of tears.
Yes, tears, tears--oh, she learned to shed tears.
She learned to swallow tears like salt sea water; she sucked them into
her mouth with her lower lip thrust out, she shook them from her cheeks
like drops of rain. And they kept welling up again, finally without
cause, even after the pain had subsided--awake or asleep, they just
came.
She had gone away that grey, windy December day just before nightfall in
a trembling state of stupefaction without complaint, without attempts at
self-justification.
Gone away blindly--anywhere--simply gone away--in all haste.
She landed in Berlin, the haven of all the wrecked.
In that world where oblivion spreads its blessing hands alike over the
righteous and unrighteous, where enticing possibilities flash and
sparkle, illuminating the dark days of inertness and prostration, where
regret over a lost past by and by becomes tense, desirous expectation of
happiness, and where the god Chance reigns supreme--in that world of the
unknown and forsaken, in which none but those who are both old and poor
sink into nothingness, hopeless outlaws--into that world Lilly crept.
Many a dreary month she knocked about in lodging houses where divorcees
with lost reputations huddle together, reminding one of little heaps of
decaying apples; where the tone is given by Chilian attaches and agents
of mysterious trades from Bucharest and Alexandria. In a friendly way
she avoided the confidences of companions in misery, who lavished words
of comfort, and with mute disregard repelled the advances--physical
advances as well--of her enterprising, olive-complexioned neighbours.
After a while she began to look about for a position--something unique,
something between a lady in waiting and a chaperon, which would not be
incongruous with her former station and the quiet dignity of her
bearing.
But positions of that sort seemed remarkably scarce.
And all she reaped of her endeavours were the tender attentions of a few
old gentlemen who came to see her in the evening, and could not find
their way out again until the door was held wide open for them.
Discouraged, she gave up going to employment bureaus and the useless
ringing of front door bells. But her expectations had not yet sunk to
the level of those of a shop-girl or model in a dressmaking
establishment. And they never would sink so low, because "general's
wife," as she was branded, no matter where she went, was written all
over her.
In that seething sea of humanity she tossed about without so much as a
straw to clutch at; except, indeed, Walter's letter, which Miss von
Schwertfeger forwarded to her two months after her expulsion. The poor
boy was now completely ruined. Nevertheless, his letter gave proof of a
modest attempt to offer her some support.
"Dearest Friend:--
I'm done for. I've been shot. A mere trifle when it happens to
others; but when it happens to oneself, the consequence is, it
considerably lessens one's hopes of entering upon a glorious
career as head waiter on the other side of the Atlantic.
Nevertheless I thank fate for having been gracious enough to
lead across my path so good, so touching a lamb, one so filled
with the desire to redeem, as my baronissima.
You will readily understand, O dearest, supergracious woman,
that I in turn also feel a slight obligation to play the
redeemer, if only to preserve our souls for each other.
But "the how" presents some difficulties, to be sure. If I were
to recommend you to the care of my former friends, your future
would be settled. For in blissful hours leaves and virtues
still fall.
Therefore I descend a step to those regions in which a sturdy
Philistinism creeps on its belly before our coronets, even when
those coronets lie shattered on the ground.
In Alte Jakobstrasse in Berlin there dwells a respectable
manufacturer of bronze ware, a comrade of the reserves, etc.,
by name Richard Dehnicke, who feels he is indebted to me
because I pumped him for coin.
I am writing to him by this mail. Step boldly in among his
lamps and vases. The former, I hope, will brighten your nights,
the latter, daintily line your way in life, and he will not ask
the price which it is the custom in our country to demand of
beautiful women. Some queer fish there have to be in the world.
My address will be
Walter von Prell,
Street-lounger & Candidate for Fortune,
Chicago, First Stockyard to the Left.
P. S.--Tommy sends his regards. Before going I planted a ball
in his forehead."
This letter, the last and only greeting from her friend, left Lilly
untouched. Soon after, Miss von Schwertfeger wrote, he set sail for the
United States with a crippled arm. Their love had deserved an honourable
burial, even if its rapture had not been genuine, even if its lofty
purpose had set in dirt and disgrace.
"If only to preserve our souls for each other," he had written, the dear
little fellow.
The letter, however, offered a certain guarantee that in her hour of
need, a helping hand would be stretched out to steady her. But the
measure he recommended, she never, never thought of adopting. What she
feared above all was that something which emanated from the eyes of men
fixed upon her face in desire, that something which issued from men's
lips persuasively, masterfully.
She wanted to keep her fate in her own hands and go her own way.
What that way was to be, she had not yet determined.
So irresolute had sorrow and anxiety made her that nothing but a faint
breeze would have been required to head her life in a certain direction.
But no breeze blew upon her.
Months passed. Miss von Schwertfeger ceased to write. Lilly's money gave
out. The little treasure of trinkets dwindled rapidly.
The lodging houses to which she moved grew ever more modest. Chilian
attaches and Greek trafficers were replaced by bankrupt real estate
agents and unemployed bank clerks, who wanted to solace her in her
loneliness by spending the evenings with her. And the women who came in
soiled kimonos to pay her neighbourly visits cast greedy glances at the
few brooches, bracelets and rings she still had left.
So Lilly determined to make an end of this life.
CHAPTER II
One of the best of the "best rooms" in Berlin which are to be found in
houses having once known those renowned better days and which are let
out to decent young women for thirty marks, including service and
breakfast, was to be had from the widow Clothilde Laue.
It contained red plush furniture, which embodied the acme of good taste
at the time of the Franco-Prussian War. It contained a pier glass
fantastically stuck from top to bottom with New Year's cards, cards of
congratulation, and illustrated advertisements of soaps and powders. It
contained photographs on the walls of actors once famous, whose fame in
the meantime had faded no less than the autographs they had written
beneath their pictures. It contained a washstand, whose marble top was
covered with a tidy embroidered with the sententious couplet:
To keep your body clean, be sure
To have your conscience just as pure.
It contained photograph albums, card-cases, a cigar clip in the shape of
a windmill of olive wood, a green glass punch bowl, and a shaky pine bed
modestly hidden behind blue woolen portieres.
It contained, finally, hung over the sofa in a gilt-edged glass case, a
mysterious round creation. The thing consisted of six strips of paper
braided together and radiating from a common centre. It was covered with
gauze, beneath which the outline of pressed flowers could dimly be
distinguished.
It was in this best room on Neanderstrasse, four flights up, over a
china shop, a piano-renting establishment, and a "repair studio," from
the windows of which room an oblique view was to be obtained of the
greenish grey waves of the Engelbecken, and into which a broad expanse
of genuine Berlin smoky sky actually shone, that Lilly one day landed.
Mrs. Laue was a woman of fifty, worn out by overwork, with a face like a
dried apple, and great staring, tearful eyes. She circled about Lilly in
incredulous admiration, as if unable to comprehend that so much
brilliance and beauty had strayed into her home.
The very day of her arrival Lilly was informed of her history. Her
husband had been cashier and bookkeeper at one of the favorite variety
theatres in Berlin, and twenty years before had departed this world,
leaving her without home or protection. There was no rosy glamour to
glorify tears wept in solitude, no comic songs to drown the cry of
hunger.
Here that mysterious round creation, which on closer inspection proved
to be a lamp shade, came to her rescue. It had been presented to her by
an artistic friend, and it occurred to her to use it as a model for
making others to sell.
After peddling her wares about for years, after long drudgery and
disenchantments of all sorts, she at last conquered a market for her
"pressed-flower lamp shades," and won for herself a name as specialist
in her field.
In her back room with one window, which smelled of hay and paste, and
where hundreds of dried flowers lay on a long white deal table--she
herself did not gather them, of course, for lack of time--she had worked
for nearly two decades tapping, daubing, pasting, drying, threading, and
weaving sixteen hours a day, and had earned--thanks to her renown as a
specialist!--so much that she was compelled to rent her best room, her
treasure chamber, her sanctuary, to a stranger for thirty marks a month.
Lilly and Mrs. Laue, it is true, did not remain strangers.
Into the existence of this back-room being, in whose eyes a few
betinseled ballet-dancers were paragons of beauty, the embodiment of
unattainable splendour, Lilly descended from the world of genuine
aristocracy as from heavenly heights. Her hostess idolised her, because
she saw in her a messenger from that wholly improbable land which exists
only in novels, and in which words like "lackey" and "drawing-room," and
"pearl necklace"--Lilly soon told Mrs. Laue of hers--and other such
things as one allows to melt on one's tongue with half-closed eyes, are
taken as a matter of course.
Mrs. Laue immediately became Lilly's confidante and counsellor. She
helped her overcome the shame consequent upon the divorce trial, she
encouraged her when the feeling of being lost unnerved her, and she held
before her eyes the prospect of a radiant future.
In great, powerful, wonder-working Berlin, nobody need succumb. Every
day a dozen lucky chances might occur to help one to one's feet. There
were lonely old ladies who were desperately seeking heiresses for their
fortunes, there were noble young women who, disgusted with the
artificiality of their surroundings, helplessly yearned to reach out the
hand of companionship to a beautiful poor orphan; there were celebrated
artists who sought to escape the snares of lewd women in the arms of a
pure love; there were great poets with whom the position of muse had
become vacant.
The whole city seemed to have been waiting for Lilly's coming to lift
her jubilantly to the throne of mistress.
More months passed.
Regret for her squandered life gradually lost its edge. Her nights
became calmer. She no longer started out of a drowse with a cry because
some picture of her paradise lost stood before her with horrible
vividness.
But one thing she did not learn: to consider the brief span during which
she had wandered on the heights as a mere episode that had interrupted
her true, modest life like a caprice, a dream. In her consciousness she
was and remained a sort of enchanted princess in the guise of a beggar
until it pleased Providence to reinstate her in her own.
She solicitously cherished everything reminding her of her vanished
glory.
The gala robes the colonel had had made for her in Dresden hung in Mrs.
Laue's wardrobe; her underwear embroidered with the seven-pointed
coronet filled Mrs. Laue's empty drawers with their blossom-like
delicacy, and in a long row in front of the tall mirror in Mrs. Laue's
best room lay the superb toilet articles of ivory and gold which had
once been the pride of her "boudoir." These, too, still bore the
seven-pointed coronet. Lilly would have considered it an outrage upon
her most sacred rights had she had to part with them.
And all the time she awaited the future. She still studied
advertisements, and wrote letters applying for positions; but the
advertisements were usually forgotten and the letters seldom mailed.
However, feeling the need of occupation and companionship, she got into
the habit of sitting with Mrs. Laue in the back room and helping her
with her work. Soon she, too, was tapping, pasting, daubing, threading,
and weaving just like her teacher. Having inherited taste and talent for
everything artistic she soon outstripped Mrs. Laue. After having sold
the shades Mrs. Laue would relate without envy how the patterns she
designed and set together were instantly recognised and preferred.
Lilly's ambition was aroused. She strove to create works of art. She
could not toil enough.
"If you wouldn't fool such a time over every little spray," was Mrs.
Laue's criticism, "you would make more money than I do." After each
transaction Mrs. Laue honestly settled accounts with Lilly.
But Lilly was satisfied with the forty or fifty marks a month that her
work brought in. Her newly aroused fancy flew toward higher goals.
The dried grasses, the "grass flowers," as Mrs. Laue called them,
charmed her especially. Their slender, aspiring stalks, the delicate
grace of their branchings, the weary mourning of their hanging sprays,
caused them to resemble tiny trees, weeping willows at the edge of a
brook, ash-trees inclining over marble urns, or palms longingly rooted
on parched rocks.
Lilly dreamed of a new sort of art--paintings on transparent glass with
foregrounds of dried grass; lamp shades and window shades, on which
woods of flowering grass and ferns charmingly shaded pasteboard houses
standing out in relief with their windows cut out to let light shine as
if from within; fleecy clouds, glowing sunsets, ridges of hills in hazy
outline, and dark blue rivers, across which the moon threw swaying
bridges of light.
An endless succession of pictures suddenly took form in Lilly's mind,
and new ones kept coming and coming. She did not know what to do with
all that wealth of imagery.
Mrs. Laue, who for twenty years had unswervingly stuck to pasting her
oiled paper and felt that every desire to abandon her modest work was
heretical, warned Lilly with all her might.
But Lilly was possessed.
And one day she resorted to extreme measures. She took her arrow-shaped
brooch set with six small emeralds to the jeweler, who gave her eighty
marks. It was worth five times as much, of course. She used the money to
buy polished cut-glass plates, which were held together in pairs by
brass screws and could be hung at the window by dainty chains. She also
purchased a box of paints, and while Mrs. Laue clasped her hands in
dismay, she set to painting bravely.
But her skill, which consisted of nothing more than some recollections
of water-color lessons at high school, failed her utterly. The colors
ran together, and the woods in the foreground, which had significance
and value only in conjunction with the painted landscape, remained
nothing but fern leaves and grass blades, rooted in nothingness.
Lilly agonised a long time. Finally shedding hot tears she threw all the
stuff into a corner, and ruefully returned to her lamp shades. She again
took to pasting oiled paper wings and weaving six of them together with
white silk ribbons.
Mrs. Laue, who during the weeks of Lilly's truancy had maintained glum
silence, took again to depicting seductive futures. All the fancies that
had been held fast in her poor brain for twenty long years were set
free, now that she herself had nothing to hope for, and were laid in
Lilly's outstretched hands.
As for Lilly, she continued to listen greedily; but a feeling began to
oppress her soul that as her life went on--that which she called
life--she was sinking slowly, almost imperceptibly, but deeper, deeper
every day into this dark, sorry existence; and she was tormented by a
horror of her landlady, of that limited human being in whose great,
watery, red-rimmed eyes a hopeless desire for life's attractions still
shone, although her lamp shades had brought her nearly to the edge of
the grave.
This horror often came upon Lilly so powerfully that she had to run out
of doors, no matter where--out into the world, into the arms of life.
Before an hour had elapsed she was back again. The streets frightened
her. The painted prostitutes who brushed her shoulders, the young
fellows hunting for game who trotted behind her, the unconcerned
brazenness with which each and every one elbowed his way--all this
filled her with apprehension and made a coward of her.
A dim feeling told her she would never again be equal to that lusty
independence which takes pleasure in fight. She seemed to herself a
helpless cripple, when she remembered the poor shop-girl who in cozy
security performed her duties among Mrs. Asmussen's old volumes, and
felt she was in the right even when she lied and deceived and was beaten
and obviously was in the wrong.
Then the waiting--the waiting--the never-sleeping, ever-hungry waiting.
For what? She herself did not know.
But something _had_ to come. Her life _could_ not end here among those
bits of oiled paper.
From time to time the thought of the rich bronze manufacturer to whom
Walter had recommended her rose to the surface of her soul as a vague
craving. But the fervor with which she clung to this shadow terrified
her, and she instantly chased it from her mind.
A year had passed since Walter's letter had been written. It was much
too late to seek help from him.
So she waited a few months more.
Sometimes when her glance fell on the mirror while she was undressing
and she beheld the image of a human being consecrated by beauty, round,
slim, with long-lashed, yearning eyes and a mouth ripened by kisses,
glad astonishment seized her at the thought: "Is that myself?" And she
was overcome by a transport compounded of consciousness of her youth and
readiness for love.
The world was there just to press her to its heart. Then even that dingy
work-a-day existence became a blessing, because it keyed up her energies
to intoxication and flight.
And at twilight, when she stretched herself on the sofa in a brief
moment of leisure, and saw the blue flash of the electric tram flit
across the ceiling, dreams came gently gliding upon her, resolving that
burning expectancy into soft, half-fulfilled desires; a feeling that she
had been saved stole over her soul like a thanksgiving, and that which
she usually bewailed as lost happiness became nothing more than a
nightmare from which a benign destiny had freed her.
But such hours were rare. And they resembled the solacing mirage that
arises before the eyes of the thirsty traveller, rather than the drink
itself.
* * * * *
The winter passed in fog and rain.
Now came the mild March evenings when rosy clouds floated like blossoms
over the house tops. Then came spring itself. The freshly trimmed little
trees on the open places put forth brownish green buds, which by degrees
turned into pale bunches of leaves.
Lilly saw as little of all that glad bourgeoning, that snowy florescence
of cherry trees, that brilliant glow of the hawthorne as when she dusted
the yellow powder from Mrs. Asmussen's bookcases.
Mrs. Laue did not like taking walks. To her the idea of passing a meadow
without gathering flowers, or a garden without thrusting her hand
between the rails, was inconceivable; and she feared being caught in the
act, an experience she had often had.
Lilly for her part would not venture out alone, dreading the
unrestrained crowd.
Then came those hot, hazy, oppressive Sunday afternoons when endless
throngs stream from the city to the suburbs, when the streets lie
stretched out dead in all their length, and when the overcast heavens
fairly weigh upon those who have been left to pant between the walls of
the houses.
On those afternoons Mrs. Laue would stick genuine rhinestone studs into
her ears, would don a brown velvet dress with a black jet collar on the
square-cut neck, and in this costume would pay Lilly a formal visit in
the best room. The Dresden gowns would be taken from the wardrobe and
carefully compared with the gorgeous dresses worn by the charming ladies
of the proscenium box twenty-five years before. The faded pictures of
long-forgotten stars would be fetched down from the walls and examined
as to their charms. Exciting tales would be told of their own
adventures, in which, amid blithe sinning, marital fidelity asserted its
modest worth.
The afternoon would decline pale and perspiring as a fever patient. A
hot breeze would blow in through the window. The varnish of the rosewood
furniture would reek, the walls of the houses opposite would shine as if
polished with wax, and Mrs. Laue, munching her cheese cake, would again
repeat the tale of her stale virtues.
When at last she took leave Lilly would groan and sink on her bed,
burying her face in the close-smelling pillows. From without she would
hear the shouts of the merry-makers returning from the country.
The next morning the pasting of flowers would begin anew.
July came. She could no longer endure it.
One Monday, while she was lying in bed and early dawn found her still
awake, still waiting, her pillow wet with tears, the desire for life
suddenly gripped her heart so strongly that she jumped from bed with an
outcry, a jubilant exclamation, and finally determined: "I will do it
to-day. I will take the difficult step, and go on a begging pilgrimage
to that strange man."
But no--mercy, no! Beg--she would not beg. Oh, she had long before
carefully arranged all that.
She would merely ask for a bit of advice, which an experienced
connoisseur of arts and crafts could easily give without sacrificing
more than five minutes of his business time. She would simply find out
from him how and where she could learn transparency-painting.
Whatever his answer, the foundations of a new life would have been
laid.
CHAPTER III
Was it a path of destiny?
The street wore its usual appearance. Truck waggons rattled along; women
doing their marketing crowded in front of the provision shops; young
men, hastening by with portfolios or books in their arms found time to
turn and look after her. Lilly perceived this as always with a sense
partly of satisfaction, partly of chagrin.
Was it a path of destiny?
The throbbing of her heart as she walked along said to her, "Yes."
She felt she was going to market to sell herself.
Herself--everything left of herself; her bit of pride, her bit of
freedom, her faith that she was one of the elect, her faith in the
miracle that some day was to be accomplished in her behalf.
The walk lasted nearly an hour.
She lost her way. She asked the policemen. She stood in front of shop
windows to look at her reflection--she was afraid of not pleasing. And
each time she saw the soft, slim contour of her tall figure with its air
of pleasant self-sufficiency, she drew a breath of relief.
When she read the name of the street where he dwelt, she started in
fright. She had secretly hoped she would not find it, and would have to
return after all.
His house presented nothing remarkable. A grey, four-story structure
with a broad, unadorned square carriage entrance, across the full width
of which was a scaffolding
Liebert & Dehnicke
Manufacturers of Metal Wares,
was inscribed in gold characters on an enormous iron plate stretching
along half the front of the house.
From the opposite side of the street she scrutinised every detail, still
oppressed by the question whether she had not better turn back.
The second story windows were closely hung with dainty ecru lace
curtains. On the sills were snowy white porcelain pots filled with
geraniums and marigolds. That part of the house looked better kept and
more prosperous than everything round about.
"That's probably where he lives," she thought, and felt a slight dread
in the face of so much serene yet severe beauty.
Then she took heart, crossed the street, and made straight for the door
with iron grill work, which was next to the carriage entrance and seemed
to lead up to that awe-inspiring second story.
But the door was locked, and before ringing she peeped through the
grating. She saw a dark staircase solemnly lined with cypress trees and
laurel bushes. In the background at the head of the stairs was a window
glowing blue and red and throwing rainbow colors on a white bust in
front of it. Lilly recognized the bust, having seen it in the display
windows of the art shops. It was Clytie, whom she had always loved
because of her gentle melancholy.
As she looked upon all this her heart sank again. She seemed to herself
totally unworthy to step into those formal, peaceful regions. So she
descended the three door steps and entered the profaner carriage
entrance, where several labourers in white overalls were busily engaged
covering the bare brick walls with highly veined marble stucco.
Men were at work in the yard as well. The round cobble stones with which
it had once been paved were lying in heaps, and the ground was being
covered with an ornate mosaic, of a light grey broken by white swirls
and circles, like the flooring in ancient churches.
At the back of the yard rose the bald brick side of the factory, which
also was undergoing changes in accordance with the general beautifying
scheme. Up to about the second story the wall was being set with yellow
and blue tiles. They looked gay and festive, and upon the completion of
the repairs the old smoky court would have the appearance of a decorated
salon.
"They're doing things here in great style," thought Lilly, growing even
more timid.
To her left in a corner of the court she saw a building to which not a
drop of the varnish being used on the other parts of the establishment
had been applied. It stood there with bare, dun-colored plastered walls.
Next to an extremely plain flight of iron steps was a metal plate
inscribed "Office."
Lilly went up the iron steps and entered a badly lighted, dusty room
divided in two by a wooden rail, on the farther side of which a half
dozen young people were sitting at desks covered with spotted,
threadbare felt. They all stared at her in astonishment. It did not
occur to one of them to ask her what she wanted.
Evidently a person like herself had never before been seen in the place.
The group was turned to stone and did not regain animation until she
drew her card from her gold brocade purse and silently laid it on the
table. Then the six of them jumped up and tried to get possession of
it. There came near being a row.
But one of them, a tall, straw-complexioned fellow, who seemed to have
some authority, chased the others back to their seats with a few furtive
nudges, and bowing and scraping, said to Lilly he would immediately go
see whether Mr. Dehnicke--and with the card in his hand disappeared into
a back room.
A few moments passed. Lilly could hear subdued voices through the
half-open door.
"Czepanek? Don't know her. Ask her what she wants. What does she look
like?"
The answer, which lasted several seconds, seemed to have been
satisfactory, for the clerk came out and without further ado opened the
gate in the wooden railing and ushered Lilly into the back room.
At last _he_ stood before her.
Stocky, middle-sized--shorter than herself--with a tendency toward
stoutness. A round, well-kept face, good, greyish blue eyes, which said
little; an arched brow, light brown hair brushed back smooth from his
temples, a short moustache turned up abruptly at each end, probably to
proclaim the lieutenant. Remarkably small hands and ears. Everything
about him breathed tidiness and scrupulousness, though it would not have
mattered if he had been less well groomed.
He was taken aback at Lilly's entrance. His eyes grew round with polite
astonishment.
The consciousness that she had not failed to make an impression
emboldened her, and gave her a sense of security. It was not in vain
that she had gone through Miss von Schwertfeger's schooling.
"I have come to you at the recommendation of a friend of both of us, who
prepared you for this visit," she began, inwardly rejoiced to be able
once again to play the _grande dame_.
A mirror hung opposite, and Lilly regarded with satisfaction the
discreet wreath of violets about her lilac turban, and the
violet-coloured tailor-made suit. Her image looking affably from the
frame reminded her of a picture by some portrait painter of high life.
Mr. Dehnicke silently drew up a chair for her. An expectant distrust was
to be detected in his eyes in place of the consternation of the first
seconds. Evidently he did not dare to place her in the class in which,
to judge from her appearance, she belonged.
His head was set a bit obliquely on his neck, inclining to the left, as
if he had recently had an attack of lumbago. This posture increased
Lilly's impression that he suspected her.
She looked down at her brocade purse, and acted as if she could scarcely
suppress a smile.
He became still more confused.
"May I ask," he stammered, "who that friend--? I don't recall." In
perplexity he turned over the visiting card his clerk had brought him.
Lilly rebelled at having to utter her former lover's name, and so expose
her shame to the man who lived behind those respectable porcelain flower
pots.
"Is it possible," she asked hesitatingly, "that you do not recall having
received a letter from a comrade in your regiment, in which he asks you
to interest yourself in a lady who--"
Mr. Dehnicke jumped to his feet and reddened to the roots of his hair.
His eyes grew bright and round between his stretched lids and threatened
to pop from their sockets.
"I beg pardon," he faltered. "You probably refer to a letter which I
received nearly a year and a half ago from Lieutenant von Prell?"
"I do."
"My lady," he cried, completely upset. "If I had suspected that my
lady--"
So much simple respect was depicted on his face that Lilly's
consciousness of aristocracy was heightened quite a bit.
But so it could not remain.
"I call myself Lilly--Czepanek," she whispered, blushing in her turn,
though delighting in the expression "call myself," which permitted the
assumption that she had voluntarily chosen to use her maiden name.
Fright at the indelicacy of which he thought himself guilty was plainly
to be read in his features.
"I beg pardon," he said, "I should have remembered that you must have
gone through many difficulties." Then as if shot from a pistol: "Why
didn't you come sooner? I waited and waited--a month--several
months--then I took to looking for you--in vain. I even thought of going
to a detective bureau, but I feared overstepping the bounds of
reserve--"
Lilly nodded with a smile of appreciation.
"Unfortunately I did not dream of another name. So I gave up the hope of
ever having the great pleasure--"
In the exuberance of his delight he seemed prepared to clasp her hand.
However, he proved himself sufficiently well bred to desist when he saw
she did not respond.
Lilly now had the reins of the situation in her hands. She felt she was
so saturated with the romance of suffering, so enveloped by the delicate
aroma of aristocratic aloofness, that she might just have stepped out of
one of Mrs. Asmussen's novels.
"I am grateful to you for your reproaches. I see I did not knock at your
door in vain."
"I assure you," he replied, inclining his head still more to the left by
way of emphasis, "I place myself at your service with all my powers,
with everything I am and--" He paused. The word "have," which should
naturally have followed, was more than he, the scrupulous business man,
would allow to pass his lips so lightly.
"I will not make great demands on you, of course," Lilly replied airily,
to put a little damper on his ardour. "I simply do not want to be
without someone to advise me as to a way of earning my livelihood, and
since--Mr. von Prell"--at last the name came out--"said I might place
perfect confidence in you--"
"You may rely upon me as upon Mr. von Prell himself."
"That's not saying a great deal," flashed through her head, but she kept
from revealing her thought by so much as a smile.
"By the way, what do you hear from him?" he asked.
Lilly blushed. If she admitted his silence, she laid herself bare,
irremediably. So, not to appear forsaken and cast aside, she said:
"On parting we agreed not to write to each other for the time being. We
thought in the struggle ahead of us that eternal waiting for news and
that eternal fear for each other would not leave us with the strength
necessary for meeting the demands of life. But you probably have gotten
a letter from him lately?"
He started, and reflected an instant.
"Yes--that is, no. Not lately. Sometime ago he wrote--he was getting
along. He said he was about to make a career for himself. And he asked
most urgently as to your whereabouts; in regard to which, of course, to
my great distress, I could not enlighten him."
This did not sound very likely. A moment before he himself had been
asking for news of Walter, and now when she inquired for Walter's
address, he had to acknowledge, stammering, that the letter had not
contained an address and for that reason--
It was quite clear he had fabricated.
Probably he hoped to acquire greater importance in her eyes by
representing his relations with her lover as still continuing. But since
similar motives had led her to trifle with the truth, she had no cause
for feeling angry with him.
She now told him the purpose of her visit; described the delicate craft
she had learned a few months before, the desire she had to perfect
herself in it, and her helplessness when it came to practical matters.
Might she ask Mr. Dehnicke to recommend some artist who could instruct
her? That was all she had come to him for.
He listened to her with professional interest, and acted as if he took
her plans ever so seriously. But behind the mute thoughtfulness of his
features lay something that did not please her. It was not pity, most
certainly not. It was rather a holding back and seeking, then an
increasing satisfaction, as if he felt he was gaining ground in the
measure in which the helplessness of her situation became apparent.
"A very easy matter," he replied, his manner less constrained than
before. "There are several real painters among the artists who furnish
the models for my business. One of them"--he turned the pages of a
book--"Kellermann--the very man--and then--. However, we'll drop that
for the present. There are other things to be considered in connection
with your practising your profession which, it strikes me, are more
important. So please don't consider me impolite if I put some questions
to you."
Lilly nodded assent.
"What artistic training have you had?"
"Well, you see, that's just it," Lilly replied, getting the better of
her embarrassment. "Just because I never had any I should like--"
He did not move a muscle.
"What are your means of support?"
She was silent. She felt as if her clothes were being drawn from her
body piece by piece.
"I need not tell you," he added, "it's not my intention to pry into
matters that do not concern me. But since you honoured me by asking my
advice--"
"I still have some jewels," she said, looking at him severely and
haughtily. "When they go, I'll have nothing."
He nodded slightly, as if to say, "I thought so."
"One more question: in what sort of a place are you living now?"
"In the sort of place befitting my condition. Four flights up, with a
poor woman, the one from whom I learned pasting pressed flowers."
As she said this, her glance fell upon the mirror and showed her the
image of the beautiful aristocratic society dame, who had condescended
to bestow a visit upon Mr. Dehnicke, "comrade of the reserves," in his
dark hole of an office.
He rose, and for a few moments paced up and down between the desk and
the door. He was so spruce and his clothes fitted him so snugly that
everything about him cracked and creaked. In his polished rotundity he
looked as if he had just stepped out of a bandbox. He had a little bald
spot, too. But the expression of his face remained serious, almost
uneasy, as if he were weighed down by heavy thoughts.
He came to a halt before her and his voice quivered a little as he
spoke.
"What I am going to say has its roots in the many years of genuine
friendship that unite me to Mr. von Prell--"
The mocking, condescending words with which Walter had recommended him
to her, occurred to Lilly.
"I passed so many delightful hours in his company. I owe him so much
inspiration and--" He stopped. He owed him so much he could not remember
it all on the instant. "I will remain in debt to him the rest of my
life."
"Who feels he is indebted to me because I pumped him for coin," was what
Walter had written. Then there really did exist such touching creatures
in the world.
"But I am most grateful to him for the confidence he showed in me by
bequeathing his betrothed to me, so to speak."
"Betrothed!" The word had been uttered. She had not deceived herself. It
frightened her, but she did not repudiate it. Until that day she had not
even dreamed of considering Walter and herself bound to each other,
neither herself, nor the poor little fellow who did not know how to care
for himself, much less for a wife and child. But then--in the eyes of
this man with his middle-class morals, that was the only justification
for her bungled, ill-regulated existence. And not only in his eyes--in
the eyes of the whole world--and, if she cared, in her own eyes, too. If
she clung to the man who was practically dead to her, fastening upon him
all her wishes and feelings, she would have a support for her entire
being. She could ask for absolution and justification even before God.
All this flashed through her mind with lightning rapidity while Mr.
Dehnicke continued to asseverate his friendship for Walter, and look at
her with his round eyes in undesirous adoration. Finally he came to the
point.
"In his place and for his sake I advise you most urgently to quit
surroundings that do not suit you, and create an environment in keeping
with your past. If you ever wish to realise your plans you will have
to."
"What has my environment to do with my art?" queried Lilly, shrugging
her shoulders.
"Well, in the first place you must have a studio where you can receive
your customers--where you can show them who you are and the extent of
your artistic demands, and what the real nature of your artistic
intentions are. That is the only way of preventing your customers from
treating and paying you like an ordinary worker."
"But the customers don't come to me," she interjected.
"They should come to you," he exclaimed, talking himself into a degree
of eagerness. "An artist with self-respect doesn't take one step outside
his studio to offer his wares for sale. You must treat yourself the same
way."
She mentally calculated the value of the rest of her brooches, rings,
and bracelets, and rejoined with a smile:
"Easily said."
Mr. Dehnicke made a bold sally.
"My sincere friendship for Walter"--now he called him by his first
name--"gives me the right--how shall I say? to make provision, to--"
Lilly saw what was coming and shut off further discussion.
"I feel content where I am," she declared, "and until I have created
with my own efforts the suitable environment that you so kindly wish for
me, I do not feel I am entitled to make a change."
He bowed. His friendly zeal cooled off markedly. But he asked for her
address, so that he might know where he should send her the desired
information.
Lilly hesitatingly gave it to him, and added the request that in no
circumstances should he come to see her.
He bowed again, and his coolness became rigidity.
But Lilly rejoiced that she had known so well how to keep him at a
distance. Nobody in the wide world should call her a beggar.
She therefore took leave all the more graciously, for she had not come
to him in order to frighten him away forever.
He was quick to profit by her warmer tone, and became ardent again.
If there was anything else he could do for her--if she felt lonely--and
required company.
Lilly looked at his right hand, saw no wedding ring there, and smiled
"no."
He understood look and smile, for he said, hemming and hawing in an
endeavour to conquer fresh confusion:
"I live alone with my mother, but unfortunately I cannot take you to see
her because she is sickly and since my father's death has withdrawn
entirely from society. But I would be most careful as to the company to
which I should introduce you."
"I took that for granted," Lilly replied with amiable condescension. "In
spite of that--thank, you, really--in the peculiar position I am in it
is better for me not to mingle with people."
She gave him a regal bow, held out her hand, and left.
He followed her respectfully, and the six young gentlemen stood up in a
row and curved their backs like their employer.
With flushed face Lilly passed the partially completed decorations in
the yard, and walked along the imitation marble entrance to the street,
thinking, in mingled triumph and disenchantment:
"No, that was _not_ a path of destiny."
But she had suddenly acquired a betrothed. That was something, at any
rate.
CHAPTER IV
Mr. August Kellermann, though unsuccessful in selling his pictures,
enjoyed a fair reputation as a painter. He was a knowing fellow of about
thirty-five, seven times washed in the life of the metropolis, who got
great amusement from his own astuteness. He had a sandy Rubens beard and
small bleared eyes with an eternal yawn in them from the night before.
He lived in an abandoned photographer's studio of enormous dimensions,
like a huge glass case. To keep out the glare and the heat he had hung
oriental rugs under the skylight, propping them up on long poles, and
their fringed ends hung down as in a Beduin's tent.
When Lilly stepped from the dim anteroom into the glare of the diffused
light from above--it was so high it seemed a very part of the
heaven--she found him in a puce-coloured sack coat and worn green
unheeled slippers, over which hung his red-checked stockings. He was
squatting on the floor next to an oriental coffee tray poking at a
narghile that had gone out.
"Lordy!" he exclaimed without responding to her greeting and without
rising. "It's worth receiving such a visit."
Lilly prepared to withdraw. Then he shot to his feet like an arrow,
hoisted his trousers with a shrug of his shoulders, and wiped the dust
from a bamboo chair with his sleeves.
"Sit down, child. I have given up painting for the present, and have
gone in for pottery, and I should not be able to make use of fair Helen
herself, but I won't let anything like you escape me, not I."
Lilly handed him her benefactor's letter, which she had received the day
before, and enlightened him as to the mistake he had made.
"Now his manner will change," she thought.
Nothing of the sort took place.
"Botheration!" he said, scratching his head. "Noblest of women, why are
you so beautiful? Quondam general's wife"--here she was "general's wife"
again--"I had imagined spectacles and pimples, and now something like
this comes along."
"Then you probably know what my motive is in visiting you?" asked Lilly,
who was too faint-hearted to express resentment at his tone.
He clapped his fleshy hand to his forehead.
"One moment, one moment. Mr. Dehnicke, my dry bread-giver--dry referring
to bread as well as to giver--_did_ say something to me day before
yesterday, but I suffer from congenital defect of my faculties of
apprehension, and I hope you will be good enough to--"
When Lilly explained the nature of her desires, he broke out into
unrestrained laughter.
"That you shall have, my aristocratic friend. You shall certainly enjoy
the benefit of my instruction. Even if you hadn't been foam-born! Such a
treat doesn't happen every day. I will charm so many sunsets out of the
heavens and set them on glass in hues so roseate you will never be able
to look a rose in the face again."
Lilly was by no means ignorant that in her capacity of aristocratic
lady, the part she wished to play, she should have left the studio long
before. But she was too eager to avail herself of his readiness to
instruct; she could not throw away the opportunity so painfully won.
"What would Anna von Schwertfeger do in such a situation?" she asked
herself. Then, tossing her head, she said: "But there are certain
matters to be settled before we proceed further. In the first place, I
should like to know what your charges are, so that I may decide if I can
afford to pay for such valuable services--"
He looked somewhat disconcerted, and remarked that Mr. Dehnicke would
probably look out for that.
"Mr. Dehnicke has nothing at all to do with my money matters," she
replied. "If there should be any misunderstanding as to that--" she
grasped her parasol--she had kept her gloves on.
"Tut, tut, don't be so hasty," said Mr. Kellermann. He reflected a few
moments, and then mentioned a reasonable charge, five marks a morning.
"The ruby ring," thought Lilly, and nodded.
"I'm curious as to the second condition," he said.
"It is more important to me than the first. It is--I should like to be
treated like a lady."
"Oh," he said, "I'm not fine enough for you? We'll fix that. I can be
fine as silk, I tell _you_, I can. In fact I possess six degrees of
fineness, and all you need do is choose the one you like best:
superfine, extrafine, fine, semifine, impolite, and downright vulgar.
Now select."
This joke and a few more similar in quality pleased Lilly so well that
for the present she gave up her demand to be respected as a _grande
dame_, and was content if in associating with her he did not pay her
court and took her as a "good fellow."
However, her admonition had not failed of effect. The next day when she
came he was wearing boots.
He proved to be an intelligent, discreet teacher, who did not essay wild
flights with his pupil and manifested kindly, considerate interest in
her childish plan.
He devised something of gelatine especially for her purpose, by which
colours on a transparency gained in brilliancy. He was untiring in
planning new effects.
"I will make six bloody sunsets for you," he said, "with which you will
deal a blow to all your competitors in a body, especially that extremely
conscienceless lady who perpetrates the most impertinent pranks. I mean,
of course, Dame Nature."
While Lilly daubed on a window pane, he stood smoking Turkish tobacco or
chewing ginger before one of the modelling stands that took up the
centre of the room and "pottered" at his work.
The artistic creations that he "fetched out of the depths of his soul"
were usually human figures half or third life size: knights in armour
bearing banners, maidens in old German costumes aimlessly stretching out
their hands, allegoric women's figures doing the same, heralds blowing
trumpets, and now and then secession shapes, long, slim, swirly limbs
which trailed off like a nixy's body into a fish's tail into ash trays,
finger bowls, or other such pleasing and useful objects.
And all the while that he was turning out factory models, dusty,
half-completed paintings and sketches hung on the walls, or stood on the
floor leaning against the walls. They showed a bold inventiveness, a
riotous joy in colour. Each seemed to bear the mark of a reckless
conception and a laughing ability to execute.
One was a picture of a half-ruined church in a tropical forest with a
pack of monkeys chasing over the altar; another, a group of stupid
camels in a depressing desert scene snuffling at the corpse of a dead
lion. The best was a painting of a naked woman weighed down by heavy
chains, which bound her blooming, lustrous body to a parched rock,
while a flock of black, red-eyed vultures hovered about her head.
There was much else which testified to force and originality, but the
woman in chains remained Lilly's favourite.
One day she ventured to ask her teacher why he permitted all these
paintings to go to ruin instead of finishing them and placing them on
exhibit.
"Because I have to produce pot-boilers, you innocent angel, you," he
replied, and splashed a clod of clay against the leg of the allegoric
lady he was working on. "Because the world requires lamps and vases, but
not an eternal beauty with mother-wit inside her lovely body. Because
there are 'manufacturers of imitation bronze ware,' who keep you from
dropping by the roadside. And because I'm a fellow with sound teeth who
must have a few morsels of life to crunch, and, after starving for
twenty years, would like to join the great band of Dionysus worshippers.
Do you understand, you afternoon-tea-soul, you?"
"But the woman with the chains, why don't you finish her at least?"
He burst into mocking laughter at himself, and threw himself full length
on the fur-covered couch which stood in the darkest corner of the large
glass-walled room. Then he jumped up, and offered Lilly some of the
ginger from the pot he always kept on hand.
She declined, and pressed him for an answer.
"Good Lord," he said, "don't you realise how heavily one's own chains
weigh one down? Fire would have to descend from heaven and melt my
manacles. Or else the goddess herself would have to come down, lay her
corset and stockings on that chair there, and say: 'Here I am, sir. Here
is the foam-born body. Begin--look and paint to your heart's content.'"
Still chewing ginger he took his stand in front of Lilly and raised his
clasped hands up to her.
"You look at me so oddly," she said, "what have _I_ to do with all
that!"
"I'm not saying anything," he exclaimed. "I have too much contemptible
respect to--. But when my chain-laden beauty shall have cried for
freedom long enough--she cries day and night, sometimes she cries so I
can't sleep--then, perhaps, the miracle will happen, and a certain lady,
who is now blushing even unto her eyeballs, will come and--"
"I think we'd better get to work," said Lilly.
After that day Lilly took good care not to speak of the picture, nor
even give it a sidelong glance if she thought Mr. Kellermann might see
her. Nevertheless he made many beseeching allusions to his presumptuous
desire, which he seemed unable to dismiss from his mind. Finally Lilly
had to forbid his ever referring to it.
Her zeal for learning increased daily. The hours in the studio did not
suffice. She practiced at home as well. And when she tried her skill on
the glass plates she had bought, the result, in her and Mrs. Laue's
opinion, was highly commendable.
In the background the sun set in the prescribed manner in a sea of blood
over hilltops of a robin's egg blue. In the foreground stood woods, dark
and silent, of grass and ferns, belonging anywhere between the Jurassic
and Carboniferous ages, shading huts festively lighted from within,
constructed by a race of men who must have acquired culture at an
extremely early period in the world's history.
Lilly lacked the courage to show her creations to her master. He had
declared, as a matter of principle he would have nothing to do with
those pasted abominations. But it would have been a great pleasure to
let Mr. Dehnicke see what she had learned and achieved since she had
visited him.
Unfortunately, after receiving that one letter, she did not hear from
him again, and she was abashed at having been set aside so lightly.
But one day Mr. Kellermann said:
"What the devil--the bronze manufacturing business seems to be booming
all of a sudden. Our Mr. Dehnicke can't give me enough orders. He's up
here every day to see how things are progressing."
Something in Mr. Kellermann's manner of blinking at her made Lilly
blush, and disquieted her, though at the same time it filled her with a
degree of satisfaction.
At length, when the seven pairs of plates had been painted, and she
could no longer endure her excess of eager pride, she took heart, and
wrote him a letter on her beautiful ivory paper with the golden,
seven-pointed coronet--she had about twenty sheets of it left. Since he
had taken such kindly interest in her, she wrote, she would ask him to
come next Sunday afternoon, and so on.
His reply arrived without delay.
Her kind letter gratified his dearest wish; he had greatly desired to
visit her but had remained away so long merely out of respect for her
wishes.
And then, on the appointed Sunday afternoon, he came.
Lilly had placed a gladiolus plant in the punch bowl and stuck pink
carnations back of the box containing the lamp shade. Suspended at the
windows by silk ribbons hung the sunsets glowing like a conflagration
and throwing a magic light on the motley frippery that Mrs. Laue had
saved along with her own self from better times. In her white lace
blouse, which she herself had washed and ironed, Lilly looked gay and
festive, and when she held out her hand to Mr. Dehnicke who appeared in
the doorway clad in patent leather shoes and a chimney-pot, bowing and
scraping, she was once again the affable, unapproachable society lady,
who three weeks before had entered his office, and given rather than
gotten.
Her benefactor seemed all the more embarrassed.
He sniffed the poor-people's smell that penetrated Mrs. Laue's best room
from the rest of the house, looked up and down the walls uneasily, and
in general acted as if he were trespassing on forbidden territory.
How happy he was, he said, that she had at last granted him
permission--he hadn't wished to appear intrusive--he would have waited
even longer had not her note removed all his doubts. He repeated
everything he had said in his letter with nervous precipitation, which
did not harmonise with his elegant appearance or his usual frosty
manner.
Lilly thanked him amiably for all he had done for her, regretted having
caused him the inconvenience of coming to see her, and all the while
felt that with each word she was falling back more and more into the
role of the "general's wife"--partly against her will--who does the
honours in her drawing-room with courteous condescension.
Gradually she turned the conversation in "by-the-ways" to her art. She
said she was sorry she was so incompetent, and pointed to the
transparencies at the windows.
Mr. Dehnicke jumped up. He was silent for a while, then burst into
exclamations of enthusiasm, for each of which he had to take a fresh
start, as it were, reiterating his praises with a certain business-like
monotony of tone, and smiling in an embarrassed way.
Lilly was far too delighted to suspect the tone of his criticism.
"Have you shown them to Mr. Kellermann?" asked Mr. Dehnicke.
Lilly confessed to her lack of courage. "Besides," she added, "I felt I
ought to show them to you first."
He looked at her gratefully and worshipfully, and said:
"If you haven't done so yet, I advise you to refrain from ever showing
them to him. Despite his apparent willingness, the man is obsessed by
inordinate professional conceit, and it might be--"
Mr. Dehnicke seemed to fear to say more.
Lilly plucked up her courage, and asked, as if it were a matter of only
slight importance, whether he thought anyone would buy her work.
Mr. Dehnicke became silent again, and with his index finger scratched at
the left side of his upper lip under his moustache. Then he inclined his
smooth, round head still more to the left, and said weighing each word:
"It would be best if you were to entrust the sale of your transparencies
to me. I have certain connections and I know the character of the
buyers. If I set the glass in bronze frames, or something of the sort, I
might even dispose of them as goods of my own."
Lilly flushed with gratitude.
"Oh, will you?" she cried, grasping his hand. "At least until I have
found customers for myself?"
The pressure of her hand caused him to redden to the roots of his hair.
"In order to do that," he said, looking away from her with an abashed
expression, "you must move away from here at once and establish a home
worthy of yourself."
"I will gladly," she answered gaily, "as soon as I have earned the
wherewithal."
"That may mean years."
"I will wait years."
"May I be permitted," he stammered, "to remind you once more that being
an old and intimate friend of your betrothed, I am justified--"
Lilly drew herself up.
"If my betrothed," she said, "ever should or could take care of me, I
might not have to refuse. But as it is, I may not allow anybody in the
world, not even his dearest friend, to make offers which at best would
merely humiliate me."
She turned her face aside to hide her tears, which arose from a sense of
insult.
Mr. Dehnicke contritely begged her pardon, but something like a bit of
fluttered triumph sat in his eyes.
When it had been agreed that one of his waggons was to come the
following day to fetch the transparencies, and all "business" had been
settled, Mr. Dehnicke modestly begged to be allowed to remain a few
moments longer. He would like to speak a little more about the absent
friend. It was his only opportunity--
"A great pleasure for me, too, I am sure," replied Lilly and invited him
to be seated. "I am happy to have found somebody with whom I can speak
about my betrothed."
"Betrothed," now fell quite naturally from her lips. She felt somewhat
stirred when she uttered it.
The chance that Mr. Dehnicke might prolong his visit had been foreseen
and provided for. Lilly needed only to ring and Mrs. Laue appeared in
the famous brown velvet dress with one of Lilly's white fichus modestly
tucked in the square-cut neck, and carrying a tea tray with two very
dainty coffee cups. On being presented to Mr. Dehnicke she made a
courtesy, than which none more aristocratic was to be seen at the balls
of Prince Orloffski. After saying a few suitable words about the great
actors of the past and the photographs to which they had affixed their
signatures especially for her, she took leave, as was proper.
Lilly displayed style as a hostess; and like the aroma of the coffee,
the spirit of "better days" hovered over all.
* * * * *
About four days later the mail brought Mrs. Lilly Czepanek a money-order
for 210 marks. Sender, Richard Dehnicke, of Liebert & Dehnicke, Mfrs. of
Metal Wares. And on the left side was the remark: "Seven
transparency-paintings with pressed flowers, sold at 30 mks. a piece."
The foundations of a livelihood had been laid.
CHAPTER V
Now followed happy times.
With part of the sum she had earned Lilly bought new material, and soon
more sunsets glowed beyond woods of dried grass.
When she lay on her bed during the hot summer nights, sleepless from
overwork, she would give herself up to wild dreams of what she would do
when her art had conquered the world.
She would start a workshop, like Mr. Dehnicke's, employ about a dozen
women with Mrs. Laue, of course, as forelady. Then hunt up her father,
and transfer her poor crazy mother to a fine private insane asylum. What
else? Oh yes, provide for Walter, certainly. Now that she felt she was
his fiancee, and her future was his, this was her bounden duty. To be
sure he must first let himself be heard from. But some day, Lilly knew,
when he was at a loss where to turn, he would get word to her in some
way or other. Then she would send him money--in abundance--in
overflowing measure--everything her craft threw into her lap.
No, not everything. One task, the greatest, the holiest, merely to think
of which was presumption, dominated her life.
Whether or not her father returned, his work, his immortal work, must
never be allowed to sink into oblivion. Awaiting its summons to life the
score of the Song of Songs still lay asleep in Lilly's locked trunk. But
its sleep was no longer so sound, so dreamless as in the years just
gone by. It began to stir and moan. It gave out a humming and ringing
which echoed through the day's work and crooned in Lilly's sleep,
causing chords and melodies to sound when she least expected them.
From the blue hills beyond which the sun set in flames came a soft
strain as if blown by evening winds: "How beautiful are thy feet in
sandals, O prince's daughter!" And out of the dark depths of the
fabulous woods fluttered fragments of songs of the rose of Sharon and
the lily of the valley.
It was almost as if invisible little beings were singing who led a
pleasant existence inside those bright-windowed pasteboard huts.
Like Lilly herself the whole world would some day have a share in the
treasure whose guardian fate had destined her to be.
Wherever she went or stood, whatever she did or thought, from all
corners hopes came dancing forth, beckoning and smiling. A new, larger,
purer existence was now to begin. The ends of that golden thread which
her insane mother had cut in two with the bread knife, had been tied
together again, and drew her upward, upward. She had divinations of
something sacred which gave forth blessings, something to be prayed for
and struggled for.
A few more months and it would all come to pass.
A piece of good fortune seldom comes unaccompanied by another; and so it
happened that--miracle of miracles!--her betrothed gave a sign of life.
It was one of the first days in September between eleven and twelve
o'clock in the morning when Mr. Dehnicke appeared at her door without
having announced his coming. Lilly was not completely dressed, and
refused at first to see him in. However, he was so insistent that the
business on which he had come was extremely important, that she did not
venture to dismiss him, and offering a thousand excuses she received him
in her matinee.
He let a shy glance of admiration travel over her, and then drew a
broad, strange-looking piece of paper from his pocket, which proved to
be a check on the Lincoln and Ohio Bank for two thousand and some odd
marks.
"What shall I do with it?" asked Lilly.
"Read the letter it came enclosed in," he replied unfolding a large
sheet.
"Mr. Richard Dehnicke, Dear Sir," was informed that Mr. Walter von Prell
had deposited five hundred dollars to be paid over to Baroness Lilly von
Mertzbach.
Lilly was shaken by a storm of gratitude.
She ran up and down the room pressing her handkerchief to her eyes.
_She_ had wanted to provide for him, and now _he_ was providing for
_her_.
Suddenly she was fairly overwhelmed by a feeling of distrust.
She came to a standstill, and looked from the check to Mr. Dehnicke and
back at the check again.
Both were wrapped in silence.
"Do explain," she cried, utterly perplexed.
"What is there for me to explain?" he rejoined. "I am merely the
middleman, or, if you will, the agent in the affair, which really
concerns no one but you and your affianced."
"If at least he had given his address," cried Lilly.
"It almost looks as if he wanted to eradicate all trace of himself," Mr.
Dehnicke observed.
It was so romantic and so unlike Walter--how could she help being at a
loss!
But there was "Baroness von Mertzbach." Walter was the only person not
likely to know of her having had to renounce her married name. That, at
least, was an indication of the genuineness of the remittance.
Mr. Dehnicke inclined his head to the left as usual, and regarded her
with calm indifference--he was the innocent middleman, nothing more.
"After this unexpected turn of events," he finally said, "you will, of
course, no longer refuse to take up the sort of life that accords with
your social position and is so essential for the sale of your works."
She shook her head, biting her lips.
Hereupon he became insistent, more insistent than she had thought his
modesty would permit him to be.
"You _must_. For his sake you must. I am responsible to him for that. If
he should return and want to marry you, he must not find a declassee. I
am responsible to him for that."
Lilly asked for time to consider.
From now on her distant lover held sway over her life with a certain
emphasis. What had been mere fancy became reality.
Not that she thought of him unqualifiedly as the real sender of those
mysterious five hundred dollars. On the contrary, the voice would not be
silenced that said to her: "You are being played with." But she was
afraid to listen to it, or even draw inferences and come to conclusions.
For if she were to lose the single friend she had, then what?
In order to down all her doubts and scruples she worked diligently, and
nearly once a week had batches of sunsets ready to be taken away. And in
the meantime Mr. Kellermann had brought her new motifs: a Gothic
cathedral perched on perpendicular rocks, a hunting lodge with many
gleaming windows, and--_chef d'oeuvre_--the moon rising over peaceful
waters, whose silvery sheen was broken by fern fronds.
October came.
The first Sunday of the month Mr. Dehnicke called to take Lilly out
walking. He had come for her twice before, and Lilly had accompanied him
gladly. Had he offered to take her to the country, her happiness would
have been complete.
The autumnal sun lay peacefully upon the tattered leaves of the bare
little trees that edged the square fountain. Groups of people sauntered
by aimlessly, looking bored and depressed. The winter was already laying
its icy touch on men's spirits.
Mr. Dehnicke and Lilly went along many strange streets all filled with
human beings; and Lilly was happily conscious of having a leader and
protector at her side in all that bustle.
Mr. Dehnicke, who had been brooding over something a long time, finally
began:
"Have you reached a decision yet as to your way of living in the
future?"
Lilly did not reply. She was fully determined to reject every offer on
this point. But it is heavenly to have someone begging of you; you feel
you are of some value in the world.
"If I had the right to make a choice for you," he continued in his
modest, prim way, "I think I could find a little corner that you would
delight in."
"I'm not so sure of that," she rejoined, half in jest. "You seem to
assume that our tastes are absolutely similar."
"Oh, no! I'm not so presumptuous. But recently I saw an apartment that I
think would please you, unless I'm very much mistaken. It belongs to a
lady customer of mine who left town."
"What a pity! I should like to have seen it, if for no other reason than
to find out whether you have a correct estimate of me."
He reflected.
"I think it can be arranged. I think I can take you to see it. The maid,
to be sure, won't be in, because it's Sunday, but the porter's wife
knows me and will give me the key. So if you want to--"
Lilly hesitated to force herself into the home of an absolute stranger,
but Mr. Dehnicke overbore her objections, summoned a cab, and ordered
that they be driven to the western section of the city, where the houses
are statelier and the people look more aristocratic and a row of
glorious chestnut trees planted in velvety grass hang over the blue
waters of a canal.
"Oh, what a joy it must be to live here!" she cried.
The cab drew up at a corner house on the "Koenigin-Augusta-Ufer."
Dehnicke went to the porter's lodge and spoke a few words through the
window. A key was handed to him, and he led Lilly up the carpeted stairs
of carved oak. How easy to ascend them, and how different from the bare
flagging at home, which hurt one's feet.
He stopped at a door on the second floor, and politely rang in case the
maid should be in after all. But no one answered the ring, so he
unlocked the door with the key.
In the meanwhile Lilly tried to read the name posted alongside the door
on a porcelain plate, but unsuccessfully, owing to the dim lighting in
the halls.
They entered a narrow, dark anteroom smelling of fresh paint, and passed
through it to a room with one window. Here tall closets with glass doors
curtained with green silk were ranged against the walls. The furniture
consisted of nothing but two armchairs, a few small gilt chairs, and a
large, dark, highly polished dining-table.
"This is really a dining-room," said Mr. Dehnicke. "But it wouldn't be
bad for a sample room and private studio for you."
Lilly, who would have enjoyed contradicting him, was compelled to agree.
Adjoining the dining-room on the right was the bedroom with
strawberry-colored cretonne drapery, old rose enamelled furniture, and a
broad, canopied bed with a puffy silk counterpane and curtains held
together by a dull gold seven-pointed coronet.
"Does your customer belong to the nobility?" asked Lilly, seized by a
vague feeling of envy.
"Not that I know of. Her husband isn't a nobleman. But maybe she herself
is of noble extraction."
Lilly heaved a little sigh, recalling her ivory toilet articles and her
underwear embroidered with a coronet lying in Mrs. Laue's musty drawers.
How well they would suit a place like this! She rapturously breathed in
the delicate lilac perfume which penetrated the entire room like the
aroma of an aristocratic spring, and shuddered as she compared it with
the poor-people's odour that was invading her Dresden treasures with
deadly certainty, no matter how persistently she aired them.
"Happy creature!" she said softly.
It struck Lilly as peculiar that no traces were to be seen of the life
and activity of the mistress of the place, not a silk ribbon, no
matinee, or nightgown, not a bit of underwear.
"She probably locked everything away, or took everything with her," said
Mr. Dehnicke.
They returned to the dining-room, and through the other door on the
left entered a small drawing-room at the corner of the house. It was
flooded with sunlight.
Lilly clasped her hands rapturously.
She looked at the delicate old rose carpet with a pattern of vaguely
outlined vines, at the dear little crystal chandelier, whose prisms
radiated all the colours of the rainbow, at the dark reddish mahogany
furniture with bronze statuettes on the dainty tables--a woman about to
dive into water with outstretched arms, a reaper folding his hands in
prayer at the sound of the Angelus, and similar subjects. There was a
little bookcase, a lady's secretaire, paintings on the walls, and even
an upright piano.
"A piano!" sighed Lilly closing her eyes in mournful bliss.
There were animate objects, too. In front of one of the three windows
stood an aquarium with a broad-leaved palm rising over it, and the
sunlight gleaming on the water and the gold fish. A canary bird chirped
at them from another window.
Lilly recalled her light blue realm. In comparison how plain and compact
all this was--like a bird's nest--yet how inconceivably charming when
contrasted with the horror she now dwelt in.
"Why, it's a veritable paradise!" she said gaily, though tears were
rising in her eyes.
"Here is one more room," said Mr. Dehnicke, opening a door which Lilly
had failed to notice. "It has a separate entrance from the hall of the
house. The lady probably uses it as a guest room, or something like
that. If you were living here, it would do admirably for a place for
your assistants to work in."
Lilly looked in. The room was more simply furnished than the others,
though not without care. In the middle of the floor stood a wide table
with greenish grey upholstered chairs standing about it, and in a corner
was a comfortable iron bed.
"If you had it, of course, the bed would have to be removed," explained
Mr. Dehnicke.
It was really remarkable how well the apartment suited her purposes.
They returned to the drawing-room. Lilly was struck by something she had
not observed before. A long picture in an ornate carved frame hung over
the sofa, forming, as it were, the centre about which all the rest of
the furnishings were grouped. But the picture itself was concealed
beneath a curtain of lavender crape.
"What's that?" Lilly asked.
Mr. Dehnicke shrugged his shoulders and pointed to the top of the
secretaire, where a photograph, the only ornament there, had the same
mysterious veil.
Seized with curiosity Lilly tried slightly to raise the lower end of the
covering over the large picture.
"I wonder whether I may," she queried timidly, as if about to commit a
theft.
"If you have the courage," he replied, apparently breathing a little
more heavily than usual.
She tugged--tugged more violently--the crape fell off--and before her
hung her friend and betrothed, Walter von Prell! There he stood in the
uniform of his former regiment, boldly and carelessly dashed off in
crayon.
Lilly's knees trembled. Cold shivers ran through her body. She refused
to believe, to understand. Then she felt Mr. Dehnicke take her hand and
draw her to the outside hall.
He lit a match.
On the porcelain plate she now read what she had previously been unable
to decipher:
Lilly Czepanek
Pressed Flower Studio
She uttered a cry, rushed back into the drawing-room, threw herself in
the corner of the sofa, and wept the hot, blissful tears of desire and
yearning that had so long been repressed.
When she ventured to look up again, she saw Mr. Dehnicke waiting before
her, modest and correct, with his sober, serious face.
She was ashamed of herself for being so happy; and full of qualms she
held her hand out to him gratefully.
"May I hope that in my capacity of Walter's representative I have
chanced in a measure to satisfy your taste?"
There was no more thought of refusing.
CHAPTER VI
The mottled golden tops of the chestnuts grew paler, the gaps ever wider
that the autumn ate into the foliage. Where a soothing green had cut off
the view, now glittered the bright wavelets of the canal. Long barges,
laboriously pushed by poles, trailed along in their cumbersome fashion,
and the shaggy watchdogs barked up at the aristocratic windows.
Grey, rainy days came stealing upon the city like an enemy, and
loneliness laid its octopus clutch on Lilly's breast.
But her work! Yes, she had her work. So long as the first infatuation
had lasted and Lilly felt she might hope for some realisation of her
plans, she had clung to her work day and night.
But the hoped-for turn of events never came. The announcements she had
had printed remained unheeded. Mr. Dehnicke, sole purchaser of her
goods, begged her--with a hesitating, embarrassed manner, to be sure,
yet explicitly enough--not to be hasty, since the general state of the
market was dull.
By degrees her zest in her profession began to languish. She gave up
going to Mr. Kellermann for lessons, especially since his insistence
upon setting free his "chained beauty" grew steadily more annoying. She
locked the half-filled sample closets and completed none but the pieces
Mr. Dehnicke ordered.
Oh, those dark, pitiless days, which no laughter brightened, no waiting
shortened, and no purpose bound together.
The kitchen was ruled by a young maid, ever silent, whose eyes were
greedy and too knowing. Each morning, while the little canary peeped,
the fish were given fresh water.
It was somewhat better in the evening when the lights were lit and the
crystal chandelier radiated a brilliant white light. Lilly would then
wander from room to room changing the position of this or that ornament
and constantly reassuring herself how beautifully she lived and how
happy she was.
But of what avail was the old rose carpet with its vague vine pattern,
the wine-coloured furniture, and the bronze bodies looking as if a
golden breath had blown over them? Those bronze bodies whose innermost
being after all was nothing more than a zinc alloy, having originated in
the factory of Liebert & Dehnicke. Of what avail the charming secretaire
and the writing paper with the golden coronet stamped on it, of which
Mr. Dehnicke had immediately ordered five hundred sheets? There was
nobody to rejoice with her, nobody whom her longing brought to her side.
She would often seat herself at the piano and let her fingers stray over
the keys. But she did not get the pleasure out of playing that she had
anticipated. Her father's discipline had long lost its effects. She had
forgotten the pieces she had once known by heart, and she lacked the
calm and patience to learn all over again.
Yes, it was strange what disquiet would seize her the instant she
touched the keys, a feeling of dread, an anticipation of impending
danger, a consciousness of her own unworthiness.
She could not keep on; she had to shut down the lid and take to
wandering again from room to room until her legs wearied and ten o'clock
summoned her to bed.
In those joyless, unoccupied days, a piercing, stinging desire for man
awoke in her, causing her nerves to tingle and a sweet, tormenting
shudder to thrill her body.
The whole of the two long years her senses had been mute. Tears of
regret had drowned that which the colonel's senile depravity had
enkindled, and the weeks of love with Walter von Prell had fanned into
lively flames. Drowned it forever, it seemed. But there it stood again,
transporting and shaming and refusing to be silenced by prayers or
reproach.
Often she felt she would have to run out on the street just to catch the
glance of any stranger--as in the Dresden days--and see desire flare up
in eyes veiled with yearning.
But the people she might encounter on the street were rough and common.
The mere thought of them made her tremble.
The only time she went out was to visit her former landlady.
The walk lasted a full hour, and before she had reached her former home,
many a naive admirer, many a keen _boulevardier_, had bobbed up beside
her and tried to enter into a pleasant conversation. She always ran to
the other side of the street, shaking herself. Sometimes, yes,
sometimes, she would have liked to reply.
When she lay in bed with closed eyes, she dreamed of strong-willed,
sharply cut men's faces, to which she looked up in yielding happiness.
She often dreamed, too, of Mr. Dehnicke, good, sound, loyal Mr.
Dehnicke.
If he were to come to her some day and falter in that guilty way of his
which she liked so well: "I love you inordinately, and want you to
marry me," what would she say to him?
Each time she thought this a furtive sense of comfort stole over her.
As for the man who by full right stood closest to her, she never dreamed
of him. Sometimes, it is true, when her longings did not know where to
strike root, those anxious yet blissful November nights would recur to
her. But the part of hero might have been played by any other man as
well as Walter.
Walter himself had grown to be a sort of tyrannical conscience with her.
She loved him--of course! How could she help loving him? He was her
"betrothed," and he was working for her. But sometimes, when she stood
in front of the sofa and felt his cold, blue eyes resting upon her
haughtily and masterfully, and she recalled the sorry, inconstant little
fellow he actually had been, she felt a desire to shake off everything
that came from him and held her under a spell, as one tries to rid
oneself of a preposterous nightmare.
If only Mr. Dehnicke had not kept alluding to him with so much devotion
and respect, treating himself as the modest agent, who would have to
render account to his dear friend, when that dear friend would return in
honour and glory.
Mr. Dehnicke came punctually twice a week to inquire after her health
and drink tea. He would leave in time to reach his office before it was
closed for the day. These scant hours were always a festival for her.
What wonder? She had no one beside him. He was the only person who bound
her to the rest of the world and brought incident and interest into her
life.
She spent hours in fixing up the tea table, in trying different ways of
lighting the room, in arranging the flowers, and standing before the
mirror--for him.
When he came at last and sat opposite her, they conversed long and
seriously about the cares that oppressed him, the plans he was revolving
in his mind, his disgust at the artists who considered it a disgrace to
work for the trade, and did so only if the pistol was held to their
heads, and then disdainfully, clenching their teeth; his trashy
competitors, who built palaces in order to throw dust in the eyes of the
buyers, and who thereby had forced him to transform his good old
business place in accordance with modern ideas of decoration.
Most distressing of all was his clientele. The artistic ideals of the
metropolis in a measure made a moral demand upon him to go over to the
secession and place on the market long-necked, narrow-hipped bodies in
distorted attitudes. The real public, however, the well-intentioned
public with purchasing power, would have nothing to do with all that
rubbish. It clung to knights and high-born dames, to maidens plucking
flowers or carrying water, to fighting stags and swinging monkeys. So he
stood between the devil and the deep sea. On the one hand was the danger
that people would ridicule him as old-fashioned, on the other hand, the
danger of losing most of his old hereditary customers. So he had to
steer carefully along a middle course, and that was extremely difficult.
He also spoke frequently of the factory, with its hundreds of
industrious hands, who laboured day after day for the prosperity of the
house; and of the alterations being made in his yard and sample room,
which, to judge by the architect's plans and the sum he calculated they
would cost, would produce something worth seeing.
But what doesn't competition force a man to do?
Lilly listened with shining eyes.
She shared in all his activities. She wanted to see everything and
experience it with him, not only the renovation of the sample room, but
also the doings in the factory with its machines, its clatter of wheels,
its hissing of flames, and screeching of files. She never wearied of
questioning. She had to know how the workmen looked and behaved, their
wages, their lot in life, and what became of them. She felt that there
in his factory was real existence, while her life was nothing but a
dull, idle waking dream.
"Oh, how happy you must be," she often cried out admiringly, "to have so
many souls in your keeping!"
"If the whole bunch of them didn't keep you in a stew all the time," he
rejoined.
But she would not admit the qualification.
He was certainly a beneficent god to them all, she said, even if he did
not feel it himself. He must be, because of his power and his good
heart.
Mr. Dehnicke gladly listened to such expressions. While she was speaking
he would jump up abruptly, as if seized by a mighty, revolutionary idea,
pace up and down the room excitedly, then stop in front of her and stare
down at her with a dark solicitous look in his eyes, apparently unable
to reach some great decision against which he was struggling.
Lilly pretended not to notice his behaviour, though she knew exactly
what was fermenting in his soul.
"Let him alone, don't help him," she thought. "He must do whatever he
wants to do of his own impulse. Otherwise he will bear me a grudge."
If only there hadn't been that hateful sense of duty toward Walter,
which, like herself, Mr. Dehnicke probably felt only in part, and
shammed as a matter of decorum.
There was something else that gave her qualms. Although he had promised
to, he had never fulfilled the wish she had expressed to see his
factory.
However, he spoke openly of his mother, and did not shrink from
confessing how greatly she had influenced him, though Lilly could read
into his words that he wished for more freedom to develop his powers.
When his father had died twelve years before, he had been a minor, and
had had to yield to his mother's guidance. The old lady continued to
maintain her authority. Dehnicke discussed each undertaking with her,
and if she approved, it was executed, even if he did not concur.
Lilly felt a dull terror arise within her of that old lady who sat
commandingly in her arm-chair behind those respectable porcelain flower
pots, and directed the conduct of so powerful a man as Lilly's
benefactor.
Her heart would contract when she imagined her first meeting with the
old lady.
* * * * *
Before Christmas Lilly had more work to do. Two dozen transparencies had
been ordered and had to be completed before the holidays. 24x30=720.
Well, she could see ahead again.
For the first time in four years she forgot to send her mother a
Christmas gift. To compensate, she made a particularly "poetic" lamp
shade and had it delivered anonymously to Mr. Dehnicke's mother the day
before Christmas. She herself did not know why she did this. Perhaps it
was a sort of propitiatory offering, such as timid souls were wont to
sacrifice to unknown gods as an expiation for unknown sins.
Counting upon her friend's coming, though by no means certain he would,
she had made a little heap of her gifts for him, and at the fall of dusk
with throbbing heart began to listen for the ring of the door bell.
Her fears were idle. At half past five he appeared loaded with parcels.
He had displayed tact in his choice of the simple presents--things she
still needed in the apartment, a few embroidered collars, a boa, because
she had to be careful of her sables, and a few little pieces from his
factory to adorn the empty top of her secretaire. At each of her
exclamations of delight he protested mildly. The things really came from
Walter, as she knew.
"And what comes from you?" she asked.
"Nothing," he replied, turning his palms upward.
"I know of something you could give me that Walter has nothing to do
with."
"What's that?"
"Show me your factory."
This time he did not evade her request. A date was immediately set--the
first workday after New Year, when everything would be in running order
again.
Then Mr. Dehnicke added with an embarrassed air:
"But please wear something dark and simple."
"Why?" asked Lilly, frightened. "Do I usually dress conspicuously?" She
felt as if some one had boxed her ears.
"Oh, not that. But your good clothes might be soiled."
* * * * *
On January the second at about noon Lilly stood in front of the house in
Alte Jakobstrasse, which she had not seen since she had paid Mr.
Dehnicke that memorable first visit in his office.
"It has almost turned out to be a path of destiny after all," she
thought, and looked up furtively at the porcelain flower pots in the
second story windows. She started. It seemed to her a white head had
moved behind the lace curtains.
"That smacks of a guilty conscience," she thought, and with awed,
sidelong glances walked past the door that opened upon the broad,
laurel-lined staircase which her unworthy feet might never tread until
she had been received into the circle of bourgeois virtue.
But the carriage gate stood hospitably open. The scaffolding had been
removed, and the imitation marble of walls and columns shone
challengingly in their variegated colours. The magnificence of the
courtyard beyond oppressed her heart again.
The office building had also undergone changes. The dun-coloured plaster
had given place to a broad sandstone facade adorned by the busts of
eminent artists; and gilded railings gleamed where once the
sorry-looking iron staircase had been.
There was her friend hurrying down the steps to meet her.
Despite the stinging cold he wore no hat. In holding out his hand to her
he cast a furtive look of scrutiny at all the windows. It seemed he,
too, had a guilty conscience.
He first led her to the sample room. Its brand-new magnificence exceeded
her boldest expectations. Columned halls with coffered ceilings
stretched out in a long vista as in a museum. There were endless rows of
tables and cases, on which, gleaming with gold and silver lights,
sparkling with crystal prisms, glowing with the hot red of copper, or
shading off softly into the light green of the patina, stood thousands
of works of German art and industry, "imitation bronzes," destined to
fill the show windows of shops and carry the semblance of display-loving
prosperity into the huts of the poor.
There were corpulent begging friars, dancing gypsy girls clad in
boleros, ogling dandies, postillions blowing horns, pecking chickens,
dogs fetching game, calenders set in horse-shoe frames, cigar clips in
the shape of little champagne bottles; tall pelicans holding lamps in
their bills; figurines of men and women stretching up their arms, just
as in Mr. Kellermann's studio, though here not aimlessly, since they
bore aloft vases, candelabra and bowls. There were arbours screening
love couples, with red electric bulbs hidden in the foliage; brownies
beside shining mushrooms, sea shells to serve as ash trays, snakes
writhing about the chalices of flowers, or about porcelain eggs, or
copper dice. The whole pitifulness of a vulgar sense of art seemed to
have crept into this glittering conglomeration and been concentrated
there ready to scatter to all quarters of the globe.
When Lilly gave her friend a questioning or astonished look because of
some monstrosity, he shrugged his shoulders and observed:
"That's what the people want."
Despite some dissatisfaction with what she saw Lilly could have walked
up and down for hours amid all that sparkle. She felt she belonged there
by right. Had she been asked for her opinion she would have said without
a moment's reflection: "Throw this away, and this, and this." But nobody
appealed to her judgment, and everything went its way without her.
Mr. Dehnicke then took her to the factory.
Unfortunately the foundry, in which the basic part of all the work is
done, happened just then to be closed. Through an open window Lilly saw
the black gaping depths of the hearths, about which dirty troughs were
standing, and over all, over chimney-hoods and vessels, a thick layer of
ashes.
They descended a flight of dirty steps and passed through damp rooms
smelling of all sorts of poisons, where rows of mighty vats stood filled
with vile fluids, and elderly men bustled about, who looked like sombre
scholars, whereas they were nothing more than mere labourers. At Lilly's
entrance they cast a look of surprise at her then concerned themselves
about her no further. And they did not greet their employer.
"This is the galvanising room," explained Mr. Dehnicke, and continued as
they walked past the vats, "The nickle bath, steel bath, silver bath,
and so on."
Up in a loft surrounded by an iron netting, the wheels of a machine
whirled, and vari-coloured electric bulbs glittered among them.
"That's where the electric current is generated which goes through the
different baths."
Lilly did not understand, but she enjoyed the inconceivable rapidity
with which the wheels span around and the buzzing sound they made.
In the room where the chasing was done many men stood at long tables
industriously at work smoothing down the unevennesses of the cast metal,
and preparing the separate parts of an ornament for joining. The joining
was done in the next room, where the flames of the blowpipes darted and
hissed and little clouds of metallic vapour shot sparks into the air. At
each workman's place lay small heaps of burnished limbs, which made one
feel sorry for the truncated body from which they seemed to have been
severed.
In the next room the thinner parts were beaten into shape in iron dies.
It was here that the flowers and foliage were made, the ribbons and
vines and arabesques, everything that curled and dangled daintily. The
workingmen looked all the coarser and unwieldier by contrast. They
scarcely glanced up when Lilly and Mr. Dehnicke entered, and continued
to hammer as if stupefied into dealing those blows.
Lilly had a keener eye for the appearance and bearing of the men than
for the work they turned out. She made comparisons, decided who was well
off and who in distress, who took pleasure in his work and who went
through the day's toil doggedly, because driven to it by need. Each shop
had its peculiar physiognomy. In one the majority looked fresh and
agile, in another galled and weary.
And now, as often before when Mr. Dehnicke had spoken to her of his
employes, a senseless desire arose in Lilly to watch over the fate of
all these people, help where help was necessary, bring sunshine to the
gloomy, and relief to the suffering. But she took good care not to
acquaint Mr. Dehnicke with her absurd ideas.
"Now we will see the most delicate of all the operations," said Mr.
Dehnicke. "It is putting on the patina, which gives the pieces their
real style."
He opened the door to the next shop, and the smell of a thousand poisons
again assailed Lilly's nostrils.
Here there were women at work also, side by side with the men. They
applied varnish and acids and brushed and rubbed. They looked sallow and
jaded. At Lilly's entrance they were so taken aback that they dropped
their brushes and cloths and stared at her in utter astonishment.
"One would have to begin with these to win the confidence of all," Lilly
thought, and gave them a cordial nod.
But they seemed to take her greeting as mockery or blame, and turned
back to their work with a grimace well-nigh scornful.
In the packing room, where women and children were employed exclusively,
Lilly's appearance produced a happier impression. The girls laughed and
whispered, and nudged one another with their elbows.
The only one who paid no attention to her was a pregnant woman, who
seemed to find it difficult to keep from sinking to the floor. She held
her drooping lips tightly compressed and a vivid red spotted her cheeks.
Nevertheless her arms moved in feverish haste wrapping one paper wisp
after the other about the limbs of the figure standing on the table in
front of her, and inclining now to the right, now to the left under her
manipulations.
Lilly led Mr. Dehnicke aside and asked:
"May I give her something?"
"She's being provided for," he replied, unpleasantly affected, it
seemed. He quickly opened another door.
"This leads to the store room, where the pieces are kept until sold,
with the exception, of course, of those which are made to order."
Lilly looked down a dimly lighted corridor, from which the cold air blew
upon her. On the shelves and stands stood endless rows of phantom
beings, shapeless in their grey paper envelopes.
"Oh, how queer," said Lilly, shivering a little, and preparing to walk
along the narrow passageway. The very same instant, however, she noticed
her friend start as in fright, and cast a helpless look about him. Then
he stepped in front of her and blocked the way.
"What's the matter?" asked Lilly, surprised.
He turned colour and said:
"We had better not go in there. We'll go somewhere else. Besides,
there's nothing to look at there, not a thing. You yourself see there
isn't."
He planted himself squarely in front of her, so that she could not
possibly look down the long line of shelves.
This, of course, merely heightened her curiosity.
"But I would like to," she said, and assumed the over-bearing, haughty
expression with which she was wont to get her way with him.
"No, no," he burst out hastily. "It's a business secret. I mayn't
betray it to a soul. Even the employes are not allowed to come here.
Really I can't permit it."