happiness he had bestowed upon her, she was seized with a frenzy, and
throwing her grand manner to the winds and her shame, to boot, she flung
her arms about his neck with a groan of abandon, pressed her body
against his, and kissed his lips, and sucked and bit them.
Under the impetus of this wild, unchaste kiss, he staggered and held
himself erect on her, digging his fingers into the flesh of her upper
arm.
How good it felt, because it hurt so!
"At last, at last!" her heart cried.
Now he knew who she was and what she had to give him.
When she pulled herself together, she saw he had sunk back with his head
leaning against the same tree that had supported her. His hat had fallen
to the ground. His eyes were closed. His face had the ashen hue of
death.
For a few moments all was still. The only sound was the clanging of the
tram bells.
"My love, my love!" she whispered, stooping and then drawing herself
upward on him. "Wake up, my love! wake up, and come!"
He opened his eyes and stared at her with the look of a foolish slave.
"Come, come," she exulted. "Come back, come home. I don't want to roam
about any more--in the woods or restaurants. Come home! Come to me!"
He did not respond. He seemed to have lost his mind completely.
A dull sense of guilt awoke in her, but was instantly stifled by joy.
"Come, come!"
With both hands she drew him away from the spot that had become the
cradle of her bliss--and his, too. Was it remarkable that happiness
should benumb him and rob him of his senses? He upon whom Lilly
Czepanek bestowed herself, Lilly Czepanek for whose favour hundreds had
begged in vain, might well lose his senses. It by no means derogated
from his dignity.
While she drew him along the roads and streets, she let loose upon him
her soul's tempest in a delirium of happy prattle.
Hadn't he an inkling of what he was that he should have harboured such
doubts? She had belonged to him from the very first instant. A miracle
had taken place in her as well as in him. Never had she known what love
was until the day when the squirrels chipped over their heads. The rest
of her life no longer existed for her. _He_ alone was there. He and his
eyes. He and his mouth. He and his will. He and the great, glorious work
which she would toil for like a slave; which she would enrich with her
love, because from old pictures and poems he would gather nothing but
the grey ashes of love. Genuine, young blissful love, _she_ would teach
him, she, Lilly Czepanek, who had waited for him ever since she could
remember, who belonged to him from the beginning, from the beginning of
time, you might say. He could see God had destined them for each other,
because they both thought they had met before, whereas they had never
met in life. At most in dreams. She had seen him in her dreams always,
always. Exactly as in fairy tales.
"Perhaps it is a fairy tale. Tell me, tell me, you whose first name I do
not even know. But no matter. Tell me, it's not a mere fairy tale."
But he said nothing. He walked along like a somnambulist. He followed
her up the steps mechanically, and remained standing stiffly in the
centre of the drawing-room, into which she had led him. When the lights
were turned on, he looked about with a shy, searching glance, as if he
had never seen the room, and could not recollect how he had come there.
She clung to him, and said he should sit quite still and rest, and close
those eyes of his. Then she helped him remove his overcoat, and pressed
him into a seat and kissed him on both "those eyes" until his lids
closed and he reclined there as if actually asleep.
"Now wait, beloved, until I come back."
She ran joyously into the kitchen to order Adele to prepare supper
hastily. Then she hurried into the bedroom, where she changed her
rustling silk dress for a light blue tea-gown, turquoise-studded, in
which, as Richard was wont to say gallantly, she was Venus herself. She
arranged her hair more loosely and discarded her rings The only jewel
she left was a gold bracelet.
Adele, the sulky, had transformed the table as if by magic into a bower
of flowers, and her face was wreathed in smiles; for at last there were
human goings-on in this respectably indecent house. The plated
silverware gleamed on the fresh damask, and the aroma of golden bananas
came from the fruit basket.
He might be content. Lilly was. Her dread had disappeared. She felt
well-nigh victorious. But her happiness was too humble to be totally
unqualified.
Her one pride, greedy for recognition, was that she had so much, so much
to give him.
When she entered the drawing-room, she no longer found him reclining on
the arm-chair. To her terror she saw he was standing in front of the
secretaire--absorbed in contemplation of Richard's picture.
"Oh, if only I had taken it away before!" she thought Now it was too
late.
He let a confused, astonished look glide over the Venus robe, and
fetching a deep breath, grasped both her hands.
"Why did you make yourself so beautiful for me?"
"Just to give you a little feeling of being at home here," she said,
dropping her eyes. "Nothing more. But come. Let's go to supper. We
haven't had anything to eat all evening."
"Eat and drink now? Oh, very well--I'll just sit at table, if you want."
"Then I don't care for anything either," she cried, clinging to him, and
drawing her arm so tight about his neck that the pressure of his body
fairly robbed her of her breath.
Peter, the little ape, who had slept in his corner the whole time, awoke
and whimpered jealously, and stretched his grey arms yearningly between
the bars of his cage, as if wishing to be the third party in the
alliance.
Dr. Rennschmidt heard the strange sound and started.
Lilly smiled and calmed him.
"Later I'll introduce you to all my little ones. My friends must be
yours, too."
He drew himself up to his full height.
"How is that possible? As what would you introduce me?"
Lilly hastily parried.
"Oh, I didn't mean it that way. I merely meant--" She was at a loss what
explanation to offer. Then she felt his trembling fingers clutch her
upper arm. His eyes burned their way into hers.
"Who are you?" he asked.
Her brain reeled.
"Who am I? I am a woman--who loves you--who has never loved anyone
before."
He gratefully caressed her shoulders.
"Understand me," he said. "I am not trying to force myself into your
confidence. But if the relation between two human beings is what ours
has been for the past hour, they want to mean everything in the world to
each other. I have never met a woman like you. I am utterly helpless.
The few little experiences I have had don't count. In Rome a baker's
daughter loved me. She ran away with a marquis. When I was a student I
went through a few similar episodes. I never mingled much in society.
And now all of a sudden I have you in my arms--the noblest, the most
glorious thing I've ever beheld. A creature not of this world. I keep
looking at you as you stand there in your blue peplum--why, it's as if
an old marble statue by Lysippus or Praxiteles had come to life. And
that is to be mine? The mere desiring of it is naked tragedy. We are
both making straight for a precipice, and we don't even resist."
"Why resist?" she cried, in bliss, throwing her head back, as if to toss
from her brow streaming bacchantic locks. "We love each other. Nothing
else concerns us."
He sank into the chair next to her, and pressed his face into both
hands, his body heaving as with sobs.
She kneeled before him, and bent her head, and planted little kisses on
his clenched hands.
"No," he cried, jumping up. "I will not permit myself simply to drift.
If _you_ think as you do, you who are willing to sacrifice
everything--very well! But I, who am the recipient, I must make
everything clear to you, so that you know for whom you are making the
sacrifice. I mustn't leave any possibilities open to mislead you. I'm
nothing but a poor young fellow who lives by his uncle's bounty. I have
no prospects. I can't build on my work. And the few articles I write
don't count. I must first toil for my little place in the world. It may
be ten years before I secure it. And I can't let you support me. Think
what you will of me, but I must tell you: we cannot become husband and
wife."
At first she scarcely comprehended. It was impossible for her to realise
that a man could be so naive, so unworldly as to speak of marriage in
Lilly Czepanek's drawing-room.
She burst into a strident laugh, the overflow of her scorn of her own
worthless life.
"Do you think," she cried, jumping to her feet, "that I'm nothing but an
adventuress who tries to rope men into marriage, one of those
harpies"--Mrs. Jula's word occurred to her--"who pounce upon every
passerby? For what sort of a sorry wretch do you take me?"
He looked into her face with astonished, uncomprehending eyes.
"A woman who loves a man and wants to be the joy of his life is not a
sorry wretch."
Oh, if that was what he meant!
The time when in all innocence she had wanted to be Richard's wife
recurred to her. How long ago was it? How low she must have sunk if this
most natural conception of the relation between man and woman should
have become strange to her!
She shuddered, and was aware of having turned pale.
If only he had noticed nothing amiss. She could stand much, but not
that.
Humbly, in dread of his searching eyes, she replied:
"I merely wanted to let you know that you are free and will remain free
from first to last. You can leave whenever you want to, and nothing will
have been."
"And you?" he asked.
"What do you mean--I?"
"As what will you remain behind if I go?"
"I'll take care of that," she laughed.
The contingency was very, very remote. Why split her head over it now?
But he was not yet satisfied.
"There's something peculiar about you. A whiff of mystery. A--a--how
shall I say? The shadow of a wrong done you. You mingle much in society,
you say. Yet I have the feeling that you are lonely and perhaps
unprotected. Whenever I try to look into you, I feel as if rude hands
had been laid on you. From now on I will stand by to protect and advise
you. But I'm so inexperienced in worldly matters. It can easily come
about that without divining it I may merely add to the mischief in your
life. And I would not for the world--you are holy to me. So you must
tell me now, to-night, whatever you may of what you have gone through
and suffered. Will you?"
Lilly felt evasion was no longer possible. The hour had struck of which
she had lived in dread ever since she had met Dr. Rennschmidt, though it
had seemed indefinitely remote.
One of Mrs. Jula's sayings again flashed through her mind:
"The road back into the community of virtue leads through lies."
It had begun with lies; with lies it would go on.
For an instant the wish shot up within her to tell him the full truth.
But that was madness, suicide. In fact, she need not lie. She need
merely put a different face upon matters, the face they wore when hope
still shone upon her life and she actually was what she now endeavoured
to appear to be.
"It must be darker," she said, extinguishing the chandelier's piercing
white glare. The only light now came from the red-shaded standing lamp,
which cast a flowery shimmer upon them.
Her hands in his, her head leaning against his shoulder, she began her
whispered, faltered confession.
She told of her sheltered, care-free childhood, in which music held
sway, a benevolent spirit and a demon in one; of her father's flight and
the poverty in which she and her mother were left.
So far nothing to conceal or alter. The colonel also remained as he had
been, except that she occasionally promoted him to the rank of general.
It was not until Walter von Prell stepped on the stage the second time
that it became necessary to mix in fresh colours. The mere
acknowledgment that she had frivolously abandoned body and soul to a
tattered and torn jovial ne'er-do-well would deprive her forever of her
friend's esteem. So the sorry little good-for-nothing was quite
naturally converted into a happy, yet ill-fated laughing hero who had
been vanquished merely because all the dark powers combined against him.
Once launched, she sailed serenely on. She represented the parting as
having taken place amid a thousand vows and tears and bridal
expectations. As for the duel, of which she had never learned the
particulars, she exaggerated its horrors vastly, her lover emerging a
total cripple, who left for America resolved not to enter her life again
until he should be in a position to atone for his misdeed by marrying
her. So for the meantime he placed her in the care of a simple, good
young man, who was all nobility and self-sacrifice. For love of the
vanished friend, this young man had taken Lilly's fate into his keeping
four years before, and watched over her and led her into society. With
rare disinterestedness he managed the little capital remaining from her
married days, and always advised her in practical matters. He came every
afternoon for a social cup of tea, and sometimes he escorted her when
she went out in the evening. His circle had become hers, and everybody
they knew honoured and respected the fine relationship existing between
them, the basis of which was his noble loyalty to his friend.
So Lilly Czepanek, with the force of conviction, recounted her life
history. She almost believed in her own words. As a matter of fact, it
was a fair picture of her life, such as Richard had once portrayed it,
before she had begun to slip into the abyss the night of the carnival.
Of Kellermann and Dr. Salmoni and the whole "crew," of course, she said
nothing. But she alluded to her unfortunate art with tears--for the last
time, she said--then it should never be mentioned again.
She concluded. When, with a hesitating feeling of security, she looked
up to him expecting to receive his absolution, she started at the change
in his appearance. His face was livid, his eyes, fastened on the
ceiling, glowed unnaturally, deep furrows of anguish had cut themselves
into his cheeks.
"Doesn't he believe me?" flashed through her head.
He jumped up, and snatched Richard's picture from the secretaire, and
carried it to the light of the standing lamp.
Lilly knew he was thinking of Walter, and timidly interjected:
"That isn't he."
"Then who is it?"
"His friend--the manufacturer."
He cast the picture aside.
"Haven't you a picture of _his_?"
Yes--but where was it? The large pastel was in the lumber room. The
small one very likely was stowed away in some drawer.
"I packed it away," she excused herself, "because I couldn't bear to
have it in my sight all the time."
She did not tell him why the sight of it annoyed her. She preferred him
to assume the cause was her newly awakened love.
How ridiculous, how pitiful it all was!
She longed to sink at his feet and cry to him:
"Forgive me, forgive me--take me as I am, do not spurn me."
Instead, she lied on, shamelessly, desperately, like an ordinary
adventuress on the verge of discovery.
"Will you do me the favour to hunt for the picture?"
"Why do you want to torture yourself?"
"Please, I beg of you."
Further resistance was out of the question. She fetched the key of the
secretary from a basket, opened the drawers at random, rummaged among
the papers without half looking, and actually found it. There it was.
She had not seen it for years.
The white-lashed eyes looked haughty and cunning.
"Lie and deceive, lie and deceive," they seemed to say. "That's just
what I used to do."
"Here it is."
He stepped to the lamp, and stared at the picture long. His lips
twitched from time to time, the picture quivered jerkily in his hands.
"Exactly the way I stood in front of the rich orphan's photograph,"
thought Lilly. But that was long ago.
Then she heard him speak. His voice was hoarse.
"Will you answer a question upon which much depends?"
"Ask it, my love."
"Do you still count upon--upon this young man's return?"
Whither did the question lead? Lilly felt she need merely say "no," and
every obstacle was removed. But if she said no, all her falsehoods about
Walter and his friend would have had no significance.
So she had to choose a middle course.
"Sometimes I have my doubts," she managed to say, lingering over the
words. "I am waiting for two now. My father seems to be gone--gone for
good. And I don't hear from him either."
"Do you consider yourself bound, just as you did then?"
She felt the halter tightening about her neck.
"Tell me."
Something in his tone seemed to bar escape. It left no nook to hide in.
Her answer meant life or death.
She held up her arms as if swearing an oath.
"Since I know you I don't care one way or the other. If you want me to
be true to him, I'll wait for him--till Judgment Day. If you want me to
throw him overboard, I'll throw him overboard."
He threw his head back and closed his eyes, and stood there as he had in
the park. She became alarmed again for his sake.
"Why does he torture himself so?" she thought. Then it occurred to her
for the first time that he took her and everything she had said
seriously; that he, who himself practiced loyalty, assumed that loyalty
was a life principle of hers, too.
Oh, if he knew!
She was so ashamed she did not dare to speak or approach him.
He drew himself up energetically, and his forehead glowed with the
wrathful will, which from the first had intimidated her.
"Listen," he said. "After everything you've told me, I know I acted on a
false assumption. You are _not_ neglected, the world has _not_ done you
wrong. On the contrary, you are protected and cared for, and you're
looking forward to a future, no matter how uncertain it may now be. You
would lose all that through me. The instant your friend were to suspect
my existence, he would, of course, withdraw his support. And all the
others who now constitute your world would go with him."
Lilly wanted to burst out laughing, and give vent to her utter contempt
for everything that had constituted her former life. But another thought
instantly restrained her. Dr. Rennschmidt must continue to think that
Richard should not suspect his existence. To defy her past and present
was to bring about a catastrophe which would irremediably expose the
wretchedness of her situation. She might be his only in dark secret
hours.
He continued:
"What I have to offer in return is nothing. I have nothing but my
work--you know. And even my work is still in the clouds. Why, I'm not
even certain of myself. If I think of what I have just--" He turned his
eyes aside.
"Of course, if you don't love me," said Lilly, dejectedly.
He threw himself in front of her, placing one knee on a vacant part of
the seat of her chair, and putting his arms about her body.
"Have mercy on me. You see how I'm suffering. Don't make it _harder_ for
me. Every day, every hour, I should say to myself: 'Over in America
there's a man toiling and moiling for her. He doesn't write simply
because he's ashamed to admit that he has accomplished nothing on
account of his mangled body.' I can't conceive any other motive for his
silence. A man doesn't forget a woman like you. In the meantime I sit
here with you in secret, and hold you in my arms. I don't know--I--a
person can debauch, he can commit adultery--so far as I'm concerned it
wouldn't matter. But to rob a poor cripple of his all--I think the
lowest scoundrel would draw the line at that. I don't know how I'll get
over it--" He collapsed. His forehead hit against the arm of
Lilly's chair, and dry sobs shook his body. "But--it would be
better--immediately--on the spot--better than later--when it's too
late--for both--of us."
The blow had fallen. How cleverly she thought she had garbled the truth,
and here she was caught in her own net of lies.
"For God's sake," she screamed, "do you mean to say you will--"
He rose to his feet.
"Farewell," he said. "Think of me in peace. Thank you."
"If I tell him the truth, he'll be all the more certain to go," she
thought, looking about helplessly.
His hands, stretched toward her, were waiting, his eyes hung on her
thirstily, as if to drink in the picture forever.
"I will plant myself at the door," she thought, "and throw myself on
him, and stifle him with kisses."
But the desire not to lose his respect made her small and timorous.
"Not this instant," she implored, clasping his hands. "One hour--one
parting hour--just one."
He gently extricated his hands from her grasp, and turned to the door.
Raised to her full height, Lilly stood in the centre of the room in her
blue Venus robe and held out her hand to him. The wide sleeves fell
away and revealed the mature womanly beauty of her arms.
"If he sees me this way," she thought, "he will still be mine."
But he did not turn about. He reeled. His forehead struck against the
half-open door.
All of a sudden he seemed to have been wiped out of existence, and with
him the light of the world. A swarm of bees buzzed about her head, and
in the darkness enveloping her, she sank through the floor, deeper,
deeper, into the canal--a club dealt her a blow on her forehead--and all
was over.
* * * * *
At first it sounded like a chirping of birds, then like the murmur of a
mighty throng in some wide sunny place; and then only two voices
sounded, one a man's, the other a woman's. They kept up an eager,
whispered conversation.
The cook--Maggie--and the lackey with the mischievous smile. Of course,
that's who they were.
The colonel would enter the next instant and want her to be his wife.
Something cool and damp dropped soothingly on her aching head. Just as
then.
"So I'll have to go through all that again," she thought in terror, and
she began to cry and entreat:
"Oh, colonel, please let me go. I'm much too bad for you! Oh, _dear_
colonel."
"For God's sake, she's raving!" said the man. After all he wasn't the
horrid lackey.
Oh, how deliciously at ease she lay in the spell of that voice, in which
a home-like note quivered solicitously.
"He didn't go at any rate." The thought tranquillised her, and she
settled herself more comfortably on the pillow they had placed under her
neck on the floor. If she had known his first name, she would have
spoken to him. Why, how disgraceful not to know his first name yet. So
she merely raised her arms a little toward him.
Instantly he was kneeling beside her, stroking her hands.
"Keep real quiet," he said, "real, real quiet."
"Will everything be all right now?" she asked, smiling up to him in
blissful peace.
Yes, yes, everything would be all right. Ways and means would be found
for their remaining together--like two friends, like a brother and
sister. They wouldn't part--no, no, they wouldn't part. Nobody need be
tortured so terribly as that.
Lilly shuddered and thought of the moment when the light about her had
gone out, and she had sunk into the wet, slimy depths.
Thus life would have been without him.
But now they would wander toward the dawning sun hand in hand like
brother and sister in innocent gaiety, liberated and purified.
Inconceivable happiness!
Strange that neither of them had hit upon the idea sooner.
She groped for his arm and with a contented sigh nestled her cheek in
his hollow hand.
But Adele, who all the while had considerately been looking out of the
window, thought the compress ought to be changed, because the wound on
Lilly's forehead was still bleeding.
CHAPTER XIV
Each spring in a man's life has its peculiar aspect and its peculiar
history. Each spring finds him different, each stirs new depths and
opens fresh, hidden wounds. One spring passes by like a dull, vapid
game, because he himself just then happens to be dull and vapid. Another
tortures him with a thousand fruitless admonitions, because he cannot
pay off a penny of the debt he owes himself. A third finds him listless
and sodden as a field which cannot recover from the winter stress. And
again the spring-time chants deceptive hymns of liberation and
redemption in his heart, as if _it_ had the power to liberate and
redeem.
But most beautiful is that spring of which we are scarcely aware for all
the spring joy within us; whose bourgeoning seems but a reflection of
our spiritual bourgeoning, and which is but the accompaniment of the
mighty growth that broadens our minds and souls and fairly bursts the
bonds of our being.
Such a spring broke upon Lilly.
Everything took on a new aspect. Never had the morning sun painted such
crinkly, laughing grotesques on the walls. Never had rainy days
enveloped the world in such languishing violet twilights. Never had
people's faces been brightened by so much expectant festivity. Never had
the din and bustle of the streets revealed so much joyous, purposeful
activity.
Why, all of a sudden Lilly also was overwhelmed with work.
Every hour was filled with urgent occupations. If anyone in the last few
years had dared to tell her that the day would come again when with
burning cheeks and a heated brain she would indiscriminately cram names,
dates, biographies, lists of great men's works, poetical quotations, and
foreign terms, she would have laughed him to scorn.
But it would never do to loaf now. She must be ready with a response on
any occasion, just as she had been when he asked her about Giotto. All
her eagerness for knowledge, which a feeling of spiritual isolation and
aimless endeavour had dammed up within her for years, now gushed out.
Her mind, insatiate as a fallow, unfertilised field, absorbed whatever
was thrown upon it. She scarcely needed to put forth the least effort.
If she merely imagined herself repeating it to him, it remained in her
memory.
She went at her studies with the utmost secrecy. Konrad--yes, his name
was Konrad--must not suspect that her wisdom had just issued brand-new
from the laboratory. She also kept her visits to the museums a secret.
He was to suppose she had always been thoroughly familiar with the
masters. In addition she had to practice many a piece of early music
which he wished to hear for his work. And often she blessed her father's
strict hand which had held her down on the piano stool throughout many a
long night.
Lilly and Dr. Rennschmidt saw a great deal of each other--every other
evening of course. He avoided coming afternoons, which, he knew,
belonged to her betrothed's friend. But often he ran up to her in the
middle of the day to bring her a book or some flowers and ask her for a
bit of music. No matter how much she pressed him, he never remained for
a meal. In fact, he seemed not to feel quite at ease in her apartment.
He would walk up and down incessantly, pretty soon glance at the clock,
and take leave. At first she felt hurt, then she asked him teasingly
whether he thought he was in an enemy's country, and finally she adopted
the policy of _laissez faire_.
Oh, she did not yet thoroughly understand him. Each day laid bare new,
unusual sides of his being.
He was still very young. Not only in years. She had met many a cold,
blase old man of twenty-five. His youth was deep-seated. He thought
passionately. Lilly had never seen such fervour expended on pure
thinking. Ideas seemed to him like tangible beings with which he had to
strive breast to breast, and which he drew to himself if they proved to
be friendly to his intellectual attitude, or rejected if hostile.
Similarly, great thinkers and creators of the past were either allies or
enemies. He associated with them as with teachers and comrades, adoring
or despising them, submitting to their reprimands, or turning them into
laughing-stocks.
His thoughts and speech were in a constant state of flux with
counter-currents and a whirl of contradictions. He was like a man
forcibly cleaving a way, or giving merciless chase. He never remained
indifferent or apathetic to a phenomenon, spiritual or physical.
Everywhere he saw problems to be solved and vexed questions in regard to
which he must take one side or the other. He either loved or hated. He
scarcely knew a stage between.
And Lilly followed him with all the ardour of a pupil and lover. She
planted each idea of his in her being and let it take root or die as
chance willed. No need to cherish it; she enjoyed sufficient wealth
without it.
He spoke little of his personal matters, not from distrust or reserve,
but because he deemed them of small importance. Lilly had to extract
jots of information by questioning.
He was very enthusiastic about his parents, though their pictures seemed
to have faded in his mind or lost form.
His uncle had taken their place, the self-made man and globe-trotter who
had made Dr. Rennschmidt his heir, and who even during his lifetime
allowed him means for a modest, yet care-free existence.
Lilly could not fathom the inner relationship of the two men. Sometimes,
it seemed, Dr. Rennschmidt cherished a tender love for the old man. Then
again he was skeptical, almost bitter in his judgment of him. Evidently
a profound difference existed in their natures, though they struggled
for compromise.
He had few friends--chiefly old fellow-students--and he never paid
purely social visits. As a result he could spend all his leisure hours
with Lilly.
They sat in the restaurants, generally the little Italian bodega, until
the waiter turned out the lights over their heads, to their invariable
surprise--they had just come.
Or they bought their suppers for a few pennies at a delicatessen shop,
and escaped the city dust in the Tiergarten, where they hunted up an
empty bench somewhat removed from the public ways, yet not in too
secluded a spot. It was not until love couples began to wander by in the
dark like shades of the netherworld that they felt wholly concealed; and
if others seated themselves on the same bench, they little objected,
knowing well that love couples would never remain beside them long. They
had much more urgent need of the night and solitude than Lilly and
Konrad.
While the light green leaves, still stemless, gradually melted into a
dark, shadowy, jagged mass, and the sunset flames above merged into the
sombre purple of night, and the nightingale sang for them sometimes only
a few feet away, they would sit there shoulder to shoulder waiting for
the stars to dot the twilight, each evening later and fewer in number.
Their winged thoughts travelled far into the realms of music, painting,
northern sagas and Italian landscapes. Questions of infinity arose,
hesitating and halting, and were promptly disposed of with the sure,
clear discernment of a happy, youthful latitudinarianism. Lilly was now
accurately informed of the meaning of the universe and immortality and
the soul and God.
Often she felt as if she had been left alone to freeze in a vast, icy
waste where there was no Father, no life after death, and certainly no
St. Joseph.
"What you believe, I suppose, is atheism, isn't it?" she asked
timorously.
"If that's what you want to call it," he laughed.
So, from now on Lilly was an atheist, one of those who in the eyes of
the Church were roasting in nethermost hell. But if excommunication did
not drive _him_ to despair, she, too, could suffer it. She would even
endure a Fatherless condition.
Her one regret was for St. Joseph.
Although he had not entered her thoughts for many a day, none the less
it was a pity never again to be able to run to him in sorrow or joy,
never, at least, without having to feel ashamed of herself, and that
exactly at a time when she needed him so urgently, when her experiences
fairly overwhelmed her with their force and number.
She felt a desire to be lulled and calmed, and the lofty art that Konrad
spread before her eyes by no means soothed her; rather, it goaded her
on, though, to be sure, to fresh delights.
They went to what few concerts the late season still offered, and heard
the Eroica and Brahms' Second Symphony and an unutterably exquisite
production by Grieg.
They would take their stand in the cheaper part of the house, where they
both delighted to be, and listen with the backs of their hands touching
as if by chance. A slight pressure conveyed the feelings awakened by
some subtle charm or expressive bit.
What wonderful hours those were!
And what wonderful hours when she sat at Konrad's side in the pit (where
none of the "crew" could see her). As she learned to know Shakespeare's
characters belonging to every age and time and Wagner's luminous
fairy-tale realism, she understood fully how infinitely poor her
previous life had been.
He took her to see the moderns also.
Of all the plays Rosmersholm affected her most.
She, Lilly, with her secret guilt, was Rebecca. He in his unsuspicious
purity was Rosmer. His high-pitched spirituality had an increasingly
strong influence on her, as Rosmer's on Rebecca. But if the filth of her
existence should gradually roll from her upon him, would she not be his
evil demon, his ruination?
The thought was intolerable. She wept so bitterly during the performance
as to attract general attention, and Konrad offered to take her out. She
indignantly repudiated the suggestion.
On going home she staggered along the river side, still sobbing. He had
chosen that way because it was darker and quieter, and he half carried
her on his arm.
On the Spreebruecke she stopped and stared down into the dark, living
depths. He let her have her way, but when she began to climb up on the
railing--to see what it was like--he forced her down from the precarious
position.
"What's the difference?" she thought. "When he finds it all out, I'll
have to go down there after all--and alone."
From that evening on the effort to keep him free of the slightest
suspicion as long, as long as possible troubled her more than ever,
occupied her thoughts every moment of the day.
Her great ignorance caused her no shame--nevertheless she fought against
it with all her might--but she lived in constant terror that the
slovenly, cynical tone to which she had gradually habituated herself
through long intercourse with the "crew," might crop out in her
conversation.
The bit of carefully cherished rigour and good-breeding which she
fetched out from among the remnants of her former spiritual state did
her sluggish being good. And so she acquired some of that "grandeur"
which she had demanded of herself at the beginning of her relations with
Konrad. This time, however, it was not empty affectation, but an inner
quality, a natural outcome of the finest and tenderest feelings, which
she might still call her own.
Much that had long dominated her thoughts became unintelligible to her,
especially the tendency caught from her friends, to transfer everything
entering the circle of her thoughts to the realm of the erotic.
In astonishment she beheld world upon world opening up beyond the narrow
whirlpool in which she had been carried around and around. Such a wealth
of great and beautiful things to taste and enjoy was suddenly spread
before her, that she did not find the time to feel ashamed of what had
been.
But when she recalled how she had once dared to kiss him, shame ran hot
through her body. That moment of wild abandon, she feared, might ever
remain a stain upon his image of her.
Yet there was not the slightest indication that he did not think of her
with the same respect as she of him. This mutual esteem always hung
between them like a gauze veil, obscuring the beloved man's face as
behind a mist of mingled happiness and anxiety, though at the same time
removing the sting of self-reproach from Lilly.
They were never more to talk of love. Love gave way to a sweet,
fraternal, though somewhat constrained relationship. The word
"friendship" was frequently on their lips. They praised its hallowing
force with a most serious mien, as if they had not the faintest notion
of what it meant.
It was difficult, however, for Lilly to endure Konrad's bodily
proximity. The one caress he permitted himself was to lay his arm
lightly on her shoulder when they sat side by side. Though Lilly then
longed to press closer up to him she finally moved farther away, because
the constriction of her breast mounted by degrees to veritable torture.
She never ventured in the very slightest to think that some day he might
become her lover. When unable to fall asleep, she pictured herself
drowsing off with her head under his shoulder--that was bliss enough.
Her fancies scarcely ever strayed into forbidden territory. The chastity
of her maiden days, which the colonel's senile greed had rudely
violated, once again laid its merciful veil about her tremulous soul. In
fact it was all as in the long-forgotten days of her girlhood--the
golden wealth of thoughts and sensations, the witching glamour about
each little object, the delightful importance of the tiniest incidents,
the hopeful disquiet hoping for she knew not what.
If only there had been a single human being in whom to confide her joy
and fears, her happiness would have been complete.
The desire waxed so strong within her as to be nearly uncontrollable.
She had found herself more than once on the brink of telling her secrets
to Richard--a quick way of ending them.
One day she decided to visit her former landlady and acquaint her with
her great experience.
The old friendship between Mrs. Laue and Lilly had never wholly died
down. Though they saw little of each other, Lilly had kept herself alive
in the old lady's memory by sending messages and little gifts.
The tenant _pro tem._ of the "best room" opened the door for Lilly.
Mrs. Laue, as always, was sitting at her long white work table tapping
busily with her wet finger-tips now on a pressed flower, now on a gluey
bit of paper. She did not suffer herself to be interrupted, not even
when Lilly on taking a seat beside her pushed toward her the sweets she
never failed to bring.
"No, thanks, child," said Mrs. Laue. "Each bite more is one flower less.
People like myself have to wait for a holiday before we can eat. We have
nobody to provide for us and keep us like a princess. I'd like to be in
your shoes just one day before I lie in my grave--go out walking early
in the morning--with nothing to do but feed a couple of gold fish."
"As if that were happiness," sighed Lilly.
"Do you mean to complain of your lot?" cried Mrs. Laue indignantly. "If
I were in your place, I'd thank the Lord every hour of the day for
having sent me such a friend."
"Do you think that would satisfy all your hopes?"
"Why, what else do you want?" Mrs. Laue--ceaselessly tapping--rebuked
her. "He can't marry you any more--that's out of the question. Besides
marriage would be nasty after all you've gone through. But listen to me.
Be careful! If you always behave yourself nicely, he will make you an
allowance, and you'll have something to live on all your life."
"So, I'm just to aim for an old age pension?"
"Well, what else?"
"I can conceive of many other objects in life."
"What? Work? Try it. See what it's like after you've been nothing but
emotions for years. Or take another lover? Then you'd be sure of a fine
time. Let me tell you one thing, child; never for a single instant think
of another man. If you were to do that, you'd deserve to paste flowers
like me--sixteen hours a day--until you die."
While incessantly pasting one flower after the other, she poured out a
volume of well-intentioned admonitions.
Lilly rose shivering.
There was nothing to be hoped for from that quarter. She looked about
her with a sudden feeling of estrangement.
"I'll never come back here again," she thought.
* * * * *
The next morning the uneasy desire to open up her heart and obtain
counsel again awoke, even stronger and more tormenting than before. Her
friend Jula occurred to Lilly.
To be sure, the clever, hot-blooded little woman had held herself aloof
from the crew's jaunts. Her friends had not the least idea of what she
was doing, and her red-head, when appealed to, became reticent. But
Lilly felt sure Mrs. Jula would not withhold the bit of comprehending
sympathy she needed.
It took Lilly a long time to find her.
The coquettish yellow silk nest her red-head had fixed up for her near
the "Linden" was empty.
Mrs. Jula had migrated to a suburb, the porter informed Lilly. She had
thought the neighbourhood too dangerous; which made no sense, because
the street was never empty, day or night.
Lilly smiled. The porter gave her the address, and she drove out to Mrs.
Jula.
In a little bosky corner where the poets and philosophers dwell, Lilly
found a very sober little house, brimful of books and manuscripts and
busts of eminent men.
Mrs. Jula seemed to have undergone a great change. She no longer wore
her curly hair in a disorderly pompadour about her forehead, but
smoothly parted and drawn down over her ears. This gave her a
disquieting touch of virtuousness, although that way of wearing the hair
was just then the height of fashion in the very world in which virtue
for esthetic reasons has little value.
Though she came to meet Lilly, as always, with outstretched arms, her
cordiality seemed not wholly genuine; and though she beamed with delight
at seeing her friend again, her expression was somewhat distraught, as
if she were holding much in reserve.
"Without asking Lilly about herself or paying any attention to her
appearance, Mrs. Jula burst into an account of her own affairs.
"You'll be tremendously surprised, but I can't help it," she said. "I
never kept my little scruples of conscience a secret from you--they were
really superfluous--my sins had never been so dreadful--"
"Hm, hm," thought Lilly.
"So you shall be the first of our former circle--"
"Former?" thought Lilly.
"--to learn of my return to a decent existence. Well, not to beat about
the bush, I'm going to get married."
"Your red-head?" asked Lilly, happy and sympathetic.
"Well, not exactly." Mrs. Jula regarded her finger-tips with a
condescending smile. "My red-head has given me his blessings, but that
ends his role."
"Then who is he?" asked Lilly, struggling to overcome her bewilderment.
Now Mrs. Jula hung back a bit after all.
"You see, it's a long story," she said hesitatingly. "To understand it
thoroughly you'd have to know more of the circumstances of the past two
years of my life. Did you ever happen to hear of an authoress by the
name of Clarissa vom Winkle?"
Lilly recalled having seen the name in puritanic family sheets, which
she had looked through in cafes and confectionery shops.
"Now listen: that Clarissa vom Winkle, who won a very acceptable
reputation for championing the cause of simple, bourgeois morality as
against the pernicious new-fashioned ideas of love--that Clarissa vom
Winkle am I."
Lilly was too strongly under the spell of her own fate properly to
appreciate the humour of Mrs. Jula's avowal. Just a glimmering suspicion
dawned upon her mind of the monstrous farce we human beings figure in at
life's bidding.
"Now on that account you're not to think me a convert or a bigot or
something of the sort," Mrs. Jula continued with a certain little air of
dignity, which became her as well as her quondam cordial cynicism.
"There never was a special Day of Damascus in my life. I've always had,
as it were, two souls in my breast; the one which--" she hesitated a
moment--"well, which you know; and another which craves self-restraint
and white damask and so on. That's the reason your unsuspicious loyalty
always impressed me so, my dear. You probably recollect that I urged you
to cling to your loyalty through thick and thin, because--you can't deny
it--it's the crown of a woman's life. That's just what I said. Do you
remember?"
Lilly was unable to recall such sentiments, but she did recall many
others scarcely harmonising with them. She began to feel quite uneasy.
Her friend's new conception of life seemed ill adapted for a source of
peace to her in the joyful stress that had led her to seek sympathy with
Mrs. Jula.
"Well, to continue," said the little lady. "I was always able to sell my
essays and novels quickly, especially if I took them to the editors
myself, and I found I was on the road to accumulating a tidy capital. My
red-head became little more than an ornament. That's the beautiful thing
about virtue. For the person who understands it, it is much more
lucrative than sin." She ran her little red tongue over her lips in her
knowing way, but maintained a perfectly demure face. "And then it was in
disposing of my works that I met my husband to be. You know--I'm at last
divorced from that old horror up there. This one is the editor of a new
magazine for women. It stands for quiet domesticity and already has very
good advertisements. He's a man of great intellectual gifts, and very
firm moral principles, which, I suppose you've noticed, have not
remained without influence on me."
She made a little double chin and folded her hands in her lap.
"And how did you manage to separate from--your old friend?" asked Lilly,
from whose mind all these curious facts had almost driven her own
concerns.
"Separate? What are you thinking of?" rejoined Mrs. Jula, beaming again
with sunny foolishness. "I wouldn't be as heartless as all that. Even if
I did say his role had ended, you're not to take it so literally. What's
the poor dyspeptic fellow to do if I refuse to set a place for him at my
table now and then? Why do you look so surprised, Lilly? Something of
the sort can always be managed. In the first place, I swore to my
betrothed that my red-head had never been more to me than a brotherly
friend. All of us women swear such things and don't even blush."
Lilly nodded thoughtfully. That evening, had Konrad demanded it, she
would have sworn an oath without a moment's hesitation.
"In the second place--I'm telling you this in confidence--he contributed
a considerable sum toward establishing the magazine. So the two
gentlemen are partners. I arranged matters that way intentionally,
because it seemed to me the best guarantee of a continuance of
all-around friendly relations. Don't make such large eyes, dearie. Life
is made up of compromises. Every bird feathers its nest. And if you
think I'm afraid of disclosures, I shrug my shoulders. Tragedy is a
matter of taste. _I_ don't like it. So it doesn't exist for me. I always
say to myself: you must wear a smile on your brow, but beneath the smile
your brow must be of iron."
Lilly experienced a sickish sensation.
"If that's the price to pay for uprooting tragedy from one's life," she
thought, "then I'd rather have unhappiness--I can swallow it--than all
this happiness."
She rose.
No matter how high above her this woman towered in force of intellect
and will, no matter how firmly she stood on the ground of virtuous life,
she was no longer suited to be Lilly's friend.
"I sincerely hope you will never be mistaken in your confidence," said
Lilly.
Mrs. Jula threw up her hand contemptuously.
"Bah," she said, "_those_ men! A man who knows the world is a woman
eater, and your 'pure' man is a simpleton. I can always get along with
both classes."
"There may be a third class," said Lilly, irritated, as if Konrad had
been insulted.
"Possibly," rejoined Mrs. Jula, shrugging her shoulders. "I've never
come across it." Then putting both hands on Lilly's waist: "Tell me,
child, perfectly frankly: if you look at me this way and compare me with
what I used to be, does it seem to you that I'm posing?"
"To be quite candid," Lilly admitted, "it seemed to me so at first."
Mrs. Jula sighed.
"It's very hard to adapt your figure to a dress that wasn't made for
you. Everybody has a certain moral ambition, the so-called non-moral
person most of all. But there's one thing I'd love to know: what is
really the more valuable in me, my former sinning or my present virtue."
She smiled up at Lilly with a melancholy yet sly expression.
This time Lilly did not respond. Beyond that complacent little
scatterbrain her own happiness rose lofty and threatening as a
storm-cloud.
When out on the street the feeling of restless isolation took stronger
hold of her than ever. Yet she was glad she had not spoken. She knew
that if she had held up her beloved's picture to Mrs. Jula's sly
understanding, it would have come back to her desecrated.
Now there was actually not a soul to whom she could pour out her heart.
A few days later in glancing over the paper, as was her daily habit, her
eyes were caught by a sentence which suddenly sent a ray of light into
her soul: "St. Joseph's Chapel--Muellerstrasse--evening services," and so
on.
Then her old, long-forgotten friend was still alive. He even possessed
his own church here in cold, heretical Berlin.
In all the years she had been in Berlin she had not entered a church.
After having seated herself among the Protestants at Miss von
Schwertfeger's advice, she had felt she was a renegade, and had not
ventured to seek solace in religion.
And now she was an atheist.
But the name St. Joseph in the paper warmed her heart. She felt as one
who has wandered long in foreign lands and suddenly among a throng of
strangers beholds a dear face from home.
Now she knew to whom to turn without fear of having to depart
misunderstood and unheard. Even if the great scholars had done away with
him a thousand times, he still existed for her stupid, surcharged heart,
ready to receive the confession of her happiness.
Muellerstrasse was somewhere on the extreme north side, "somewhere around
Franz-Josephs-Land," her green grocer, to whom she had applied, informed
her.
She went through a maze of streets, from one electric tram to
another--past the Reichtags buildings, the Lessing theatre, and the
Stettin station--along the endless chausse. Beyond the Weddingplatz,
which the Berlinese consider the end of the world, was where
Muellerstrasse began.
Nobody had the slightest notion of where a St. Joseph's chapel was, not
even dwellers in the immediate vicinity. Finally somebody remembered
seeing "a Catholic something or other," and Lilly at last found the
object of her search.
A low frame structure which might have been taken for a barn, and some
blossoming trees set between towering tenements.
The side door was open. Pine wreaths said "Welcome." Lilly saw a simple
white hall permeated with the sepulchral smell of incense, laurel, and
freshly cut pine, and in the background a niche decorated to resemble
the starry heavens. Beyond the wooden balustrade separating the
pictureless shrine of the high altar from the hall, rose two glorious
palms. The low rumble of an organ came from the choir. The organist had
probably stayed after the funeral to dream a bit.
In suspense Lilly's glance glided along the walls in search of her
saint's abiding place. Was he smiling and holding up his finger here,
too, with the same benevolent, threatening manner as the good old uncle
in St. Anne's?
There was no place for side altars. The space was completely filled with
benches. But that large picture there in the garish frame, with a
console-table beneath covered with dusty bouquets--
She saw it--and started in terror.
Her saint, her dear, beloved saint, was simply ridiculous.
He had a sharp-nosed, wax-doll face with a golden yellow beard and eyes
cast down in pious modesty, and he was smiling mawkishly. The infant
Jesus clad in pink triumphed on his left arm, while his right arm gently
clasped a spray of lilies.
Lilly's disgust turned into pity.
How remote, how inconceivably remote, was that world in which one
implored St. Josephs for signs of favour.
Could it be that her good, true monitor in St. Anne's had been just as
comical?
Perish the thought. He should not be, he must not be so absurd. There
must be _one_ place to which one's memory could travel homeward in hours
of pleasant mourning.
The organ was playing the prelude of a beautiful mass by Scarlatti,
which Lilly well knew from of old. Gradually she began to feel at ease.
She kneeled on the last bench, closed her eyes, and tried to imagine
that instead of that blond caricature, her old friend was looking down
upon her.
A saying of St. Thomas Aquinas occurred to her, which she remembered
from her Sunday school lessons: "God has granted other saints the power
to help us in _certain_ circumstances; to St. Joseph he has granted the
power to help us whatever our need."
Once he had been so powerful in her life.
She spoke to him across the hundreds of miles and hundreds of years that
separated her from the altar in St. Anne's--the last time on earth, she
was fully aware. There was no longer place in her soul for such
childishness. And just because it was her farewell, she told him without
reserve of her great experience--how infinitely happy she now was--how
everything that had lain dead within her blossomed forth with fresh
life--and how the entire universe was one great symphony of joy.
And she told him of the monstrous deception she was practising, and her
fear of discovery--and the sweet, impatient tremour for which there
could be no image or name.
Then she told him she no longer believed in him in the least--she had
become an "atheist."
Then, reconciled, she laid the carnations she had brought along for the
poor out-of-the-way saint among the dusty bouquets and left with
lightened heart, smiling at the spring which smiled upon her.
* * * * *
Beside this Lilly, whom the stormy wind of her new life bore aloft to
the heavens far above all earthly hindrances, a second Lilly lived, who
spent every other evening with her old friends, and was the marvel of
her circle, because of her triumphant mood, her merry wit, the youthful
liveliness of an awakening intellect.
When Richard came for his afternoon tea, he met with daily surprises. In
place of the dragging gloom, which had long coloured her days, he found
sprightliness and activity, a creature of novelties never still an
instant. Though now and then abashed at his inability to keep pace with
her, he gladly accustomed himself to this side of her being, and praised
the magical qualities of the haematogen which the physician had
prescribed that spring instead of the usual iron.
The same scene was enacted each evening that Richard wanted to take
Lilly out. At first she pleaded a cold or said she was not in the mood
for meeting people. But once she had consented and was in the swing, she
played with her admirers as with puppies, and awed the ladies by telling
them things to their faces. Sometimes, to be sure, she sat as formerly,
absorbed in dreamy silence, though now, if anyone attempted to liven her
up, she no longer blushed and suffered herself to be teased without an
attempt at self-defence. She paid back every intruder with such prompt,
haughty satire that the men soon found it wiser to leave her to herself.
In all this time she drank herself into a state of exaltation only once,
and that on the day on which--at last!--she decided to tell Richard of
the existence of her new friend.
She had wrestled with herself for two months. Sometime or other it had
to be, she knew; for what if they were seen together! But since she
could not decide in what form to clothe the avowal, she had deferred it
from day to day.
Chance helped her out of the dilemma. One day Richard, in order to
obtain her judgment, brought along some sketches of vases which had been
submitted to him for purchase. On leaving he forgot to take them along.
Konrad happened to see them, and in a few rapid strokes drew the outline
which corresponded to the original draught, and which the artist in
developing the plan had failed to insert.
The next day when Richard saw the work he looked at Lilly in
astonishment. The corrections were splendid--who had made them?
Lilly, still suffering from the intimidation induced by her bungled work
on the transparencies, did not dare to tell him she herself had. So
taking heart she said:
"My teacher, who's giving me lessons in the history of art."
"Since when, I'd like to know?" asked Richard, his eyes growing round
and severe.
In her great embarrassment she took to scolding as best--or as
worst--she knew how.
"Do you think I can stand such a dull, inane, idle existence? Do you
think it's a crime for an unoccupied young woman to strive for a bit of
culture? Don't you think I'd be a better friend if I could keep pace
with you and other clever people than if I go to my ruin jabbering a lot
of nonsense and dressing myself up for show and behaving like any silly
thing?"
The turn about "clever people" flattered him.
"All very well and good," he replied more mildly, "but why didn't you
tell me before?"
She concocted a long story.
About three months before she had read an advertisement in the
_Lokalanzeiger_ in which a young scholar offered his services to
gentlemen and ladies possessed of a thirst for knowledge. She wrote to
the scholar, he came, and the lessons began. Pupil and teacher had grown
to be friends. Though their friendship, of course, was of a purely ideal
nature, she dreaded awakening Richard's jealousy; so she had decided not
to tell him until time should prove beyond the shadow of a doubt the
absolute purity of her endeavours.
He wrinkled his forehead, and a cunning grin, inexplicable to Lilly,
played about his mouth.
"So your friend's a young scholar?" he asked. His eyes twinkled, and he
looked at her sidewise, his head inclined entirely to the left.
"Yes."
"He's going to be _Privatdozent_, I suppose?"
"He's not quite certain, but he probably will."
"And I suppose he's highly intellectual and scintillating and superior?"
She turned her eyes heavenward.
"I've never in my life met a man who--" She stopped in fright. It was
scarcely the better part of wisdom to give reins to her enthusiasm.
"Hm, hm," he said, as one who finds long harboured suspicions confirmed.
His face was quite red, and he gnawed the ends of his moustache.
"I knew it!" cried Lilly. "You're jealous after all."
She felt as if a bitter injustice were being done her.
He said nothing more, and left lowering.
An hour later a package from Messrs. Liebert & Dehnicke was left at the
door.
Lilly opened it and found it contained a man's suit, which she
recognised as one Richard had frequently worn the previous summer.
A letter accompanied the package.
"Dearest Lilly:--
As I promised you that time, I shall always be ready to come to
the assistance of your affinities with old clothes. To further
their progress I shall also be glad to provide them with old
boots.
You see how jealous I am.
Your Richard."
In the exuberance of her delight Lilly drank to excess that evening.
Never--not even when she had danced for Dr. Salmoni--had she allowed her
imitative faculties such full play. She was in a state of mad
self-abandon.
In conclusion she danced on the tops of the tables set close together, a
wild Salome dance, which had just then come into fashion.
Between her clenched teeth she zimmed strange oriental melodies.
"What's that she's mumbling?" the spectators asked.
Later they put the question to her.
But she had lost her senses. She was unconscious.
CHAPTER XV
The peaceful golden light of a Sunday morning in June pierced the
railroad station's sooty glass roof.
Such an amount of blush brightness was gathered under the three great
arches where they led into the open, that as the train glided beneath
them you thought you were dipping into a sunny sea.
The gay ribbons of the dressed-up girls fluttered against the decent
Sunday suits of the attentive youths, each of whom felt himself to be an
indispensable master of ceremonies.
There were athletic clubs and rowing clubs and smoking clubs and singing
societies, and an entire department store.
In the midst of the jolly, noisy throng a quiet, happy couple walked
along looking about cautiously and keeping at a certain distance from
each other, so that nobody could be sure whether or not they belonged
together. They made for one of the front coaches.
Lilly walked ahead. Again she saw the faces of persons coming toward her
grow rigid with a sort of solemn tenseness--a mute homage which she well
knew, but which she had never accepted with so much joy as then, since
the one man in the world whom she wanted to please was witnessing her
triumph.
In his honour she had clad herself completely in festive white--a linen
crash suit, an embroidered linen blouse, and a white straw hat with a
white veil about it. She wore the hat low on her forehead, and beneath
it her shining brown hair rolled in large waves. She carried a white
zephyr shawl on her arm against the evening coolness, since they had
arranged not to try to catch a certain train home, but remain in the
country until they wearied.
They sat in opposite corners of the third-class compartment smiling
slyly and saying not a word.
They were riding into the unknown.
"Follow me," he had said. "I'll give you a surprise. We will go on a
voyage of discovery. I myself am by no means certain of my goal.
Otherwise it wouldn't be a voyage of discovery."
The feeling of giving herself up without question was new and delicious.
About an hour must have passed and the compartment had long been empty,
when he nodded to her to get out.
"Where are we?"
"What difference does it make where we are?"
Oh, he was right! Lilly never so much as glanced at the name of the
station.
They walked along the uneven street of a bare little town. The sunshine
lay on the yellow house fronts like a soporific. The shop doors were
locked and sheets were stretched across the lower halves of the display
windows to proclaim the Sunday.
Organ tones came from around the street corners like a dull breeze. A
turkey cock strutted up from out of a gateway and gobbled at them--no
more organ tones.
The houses grew less frequent. From the fields came a whiff of ripening
grain, but the heavy fragrance of the yellow lupine overwhelmed it.
Meadows of clover spread their white-dotted rugs, and in the background
black firs rose from the summits of sand-coloured hills.
They stepped merrily along the unshaded road, on which little eddies of
silvery white dust chased ahead of them.
Konrad knew and saw everything--how the falcon flapping its wings stood
still in the air--how the wild rabbit lifting its little white rump
leapt away in droll haste--every minute there was something new.
Since the days at Lischnitz Lilly had never walked out in the blossoming
spring.
"Oh, if I had had a guide like him," she thought, "it would all have
been so different."
In the pine woods, which gave out a hot breath, a squirrel ran past them
almost over their feet, shot up a tree trunk, and at about a man's
height from the ground stood still as if turned to stone.
Lilly and Konrad looked at each other mindful of the moment they had
first met.
Lilly moved up to within a few feet of the squirrel, but it did not
budge.
"I feel as if we were enchanted," she said. "If it were to speak to us,
I shouldn't be a bit surprised."
Heaving a sigh of bliss she threw herself on the grey, crackling moss.
Konrad followed her example. Shading their eyes with their hands they
lay on their backs and blinked up at the sun which flickered down on
them through the sparse fir boughs.
They had both nearly forgotten the squirrel's presence, when a sudden
chip sounded close over their heads. They looked up and saw the little
fellow scampering up the trunk. Until that moment he had stared at them
too frightened to stir.
"There you have it," said Konrad, "if we shoot our human language at
them, they'll take good care not to speak to us."
"We're enchanted at any rate," laughed Lilly. "I at least have never in
my life been stretched out so comfortably and had the sun shine on me
so. Have you?"
"Oh yes," he rejoined. "I recall one time at least quite definitely."
"How? When?" Lilly inquired, all jealousy. She was jealous of every
happy moment in his life which she had not created for him.
"Oh, there's not much to tell. It was in Ravello, a rocky nest not far
from Amalfi, high over the sea. A perfect fairyland. Full of old,
Moorish palaces, partly inhabited, partly in ruins. There are marble
courtyards with trellised iron railings, ruined fountains with myrtle
and laurel growing around in rank profusion and little white climbing
roses covering everything. There was one place in particular which I
would have given my life to be able to enter. It had a small, mysterious
gallery which stood out against the deep blue sky like a silver web. An
iron gate as high as a house separated me from that gallery. Since there
was nobody about to see the street Arab escapade--only a few peasant
labourers in the olive plantations live there--I actually climbed over
that gate one day."
"Glorious!" cried Lilly.
"Yes, I got in. After making a professional inspection of the beautiful,
strange motifs, I lay a long time on the warm stone steps, and let the
sun shine down on me just as we are doing now under these Brandenburg
firs. And--think of it! the little bluish-green lizards that you love so
came gliding up slowly, cautiously, and ran straight over me."
"Oh, heavenly!" said Lilly rapturously.
"Lying there that way with the old marble fountain making music in my
ears, I fell asleep--a thing one had better not indulge in, because one
may get a sunstroke that way even in midwinter. I'm sure I should have,
if some tourists hadn't come along and thrown sticks and stones at me.
When I awoke I felt dizzy and I saw red. I couldn't dream of climbing
over the gate again. The tourists had to fetch the gate key from the
sindaco, and to cap the climax I had to appear before him for a
hearing--Who are you? Don't you know trespassing in the garden is
forbidden? But thank the Lord, he didn't send me to jail, because all
the people tapped their heads and said: '_e matto_, he's crazy.'"
"No harm," laughed Lilly. "You got what you wanted; you entered the
forbidden garden. Other people have to be content with standing outside
the railing."
"A pleasure we shall probably enjoy to-day," he observed, and Lilly
choked down her curiosity.
"At any rate," he continued, "it doesn't hurt if one practices standing
outside now and then. Heaven knows, the very happiness toward which you
crane your neck usually is a forbidden garden."
Lilly looked at him.
What did he mean by that?
Their eyes met in shy understanding.
That hopeful disquiet, which she did not venture to call by its name,
quivered through her like a fit of fever.
"Come," she said, jumping to her feet and hurrying on without looking
back at him.
The woods grew thinner. They now walked along a thicketed swamp where
birches gaily shot up their slender white columns from mossy pediments.
The warm noon air vibrated in wavelets. From somewhere came the sound of
a church bell, but no farmyard was visible far or near, and suddenly
they struck a cross-road, and did not know which way to go.
"We are called upon to decide," he said, and listened a while in the
direction from which the sound of the bell came. Then he turned to the
right.
"I wish," he went on, "I wish there were a bell to sound the way for me
in life."
Then he told her he was standing at a cross-road. He had been offered a
position, which in view of his youth was not of slight importance. But
before accepting it, he had to make sure whether at the same time he
could continue with his life-work.
"It must be a very high position, isn't it?" Lilly asked proudly. Had
the world felt impelled to make him Minister of Fine Arts, or Emperor of
China, she would not have been a bit surprised.
But he hesitated to reply, and finally said:
"I'd rather tell you about it when it's all settled."
She had to be content.
Roofs gleaming red crept over the tops of the bushes. On the edge of the
horizon sparkled a lake, nothing more at that distance than a fine
silver thread.
"Is that it?" asked Lilly.
"Possibly."
"Oh, don't put on such a mysterious air," she rebuked him teasingly. "Up
to now I've been very good and haven't asked a single question. But do
at last tell what you have up your sleeve."
"Afterwards, when we're there," he laughed. "I know you. I shouldn't
like to make you jealous before the time's ripe."
Oh, if a woman _was_ in the case!
Another woman!
She gave no outer signs of her emotion, but as she walked along she felt
quite ill, partly from hunger, partly from distress.
The lake in its light blue summer beauty now lay before them with its
greyish-green girdle of reeds and its glistening play of light.
Not far from the bank, on an eminence encircled with bushes, stood an
inn, a reddish-yellow atrocity, built in that barbarous style for frame
houses half-way between a palace and a barn.
But three or four wide-spreading ancient lindens surrounded the inn, and
the white benches beneath offered pleasant seats according with Lilly's
and Konrad's mood.
To the left the lake stretched into the hazy distance; to the right,
beyond the reeds, in the cove, lay a peasant village, with its mossy
green thatched roofs and its blunt, weather-beaten spire half hidden in
the bushes and reeds.
And nearby, only a few hundred feet away, rose the mighty trees of a
park, from the interior of which here and there came a gleam of columns
and bridges and white, vine-clad walls.
Probably the "forbidden garden," in front of whose railing she was to
stand that day.
How beautiful and how mysterious.
Anglers came up from the lake, red as lobsters and panting with thirst,
the sole guests, it seemed, besides Lilly and Konrad. The stream of
Sunday excursionists had not yet flowed into that quiet corner.
But the bill of fare offered a dizzying abundance of good things--too
bad they had come all at once. The landlady who handed them the card
with smiling obsequiousness, was an artful city product.
Konrad wanted Lilly to arrange the menu, but she refused. The thought of
the woman in the case oppressed her sorely, and, as through a dark veil,
she looked on the laughing world, which willingly threw its early summer
treasures at their feet.
"At last we're here," she said sighing. "Now do confess: what sort of a
woman is she?"
He burst out laughing.
"So you know there's a woman in the case?"
"What else would make me jealous?"
"She has the right to make you jealous, I must say, I've never seen
anything more beautiful in my life. It's a pity she's of marble."
Oh, if that was all.
"I am and always will be a goose," laughed Lilly, and he kissed her hand
in apology.
While awaiting the fish they had ordered, he told her the history that
led up to their present pilgrimage.
In Rome he had once noticed an antique bust of a woman in an art
dealer's show window. The head was badly mutilated, but of such lofty
sombre beauty that he kept returning to the window to feast his eyes
upon it. One day he found the dealer and a German gentleman engaged in
an eager conversation, which, however, never progressed, because the two
did not understand each other. He offered his services as interpreter,
and to his dismay learned that his beloved was being bargained for. The
German was a baron, courteous and evidently a man of some culture. In
defiance of his own feelings Konrad tried his best to arrange the sale,
and for his pains received an invitation to view the bust in the baron's
park--he was to convince himself that the beautiful head was destined
for no unworthy setting.
"Why, then, it's not a forbidden garden after all," cried Lilly,
blissfully stretching her arms toward the mysterious green walls. "We
have the right to enter it."
But Konrad looked thoughtful.
"It's not so simple as all that. Remember--as what shall I introduce
you? You're not my wife. I can't say you're my sister, as you and I
pretend, and we're both too young for any other relationship."
A sudden bitterness welled up within her. Again she felt scorned,
outlawed, expelled from the community of the virtuous.
"You should have left me at home," she burst out. "I'm nothing but a
burden to you."
"Oh, Lilly," he said, "what do I care for all the marble women in the
world! I'd rather stand outside with you than be shown the honours of
the entire place."
Reconciled and grateful, she stroked his hand hanging at his side.
At this point--at last! the carp was served.
* * * * *
Two hours later they were walking along an endless wall about nine feet
high with never a break in it to peep through.
But at the corner of the park to the right the wall came to an end
giving place to a high mossy wooden fence, which allowed them a view
some distance into the interior.
Ancient plane trees arched over shady nooks with lindens and elms
forcing themselves between. Large-leafed vines with great violet eyes
draped the open grassy places. In the background on a hillock about
which towered sombre spruces stood a small, solemn round temple with
Tuscan columns and a gleaming green roof.
"She must be in there," said Konrad. But the temple was empty.
So they continued their search. Not a single opening in the foliage
escaped them. Here something gleamed and there and there--a Ceres, a
satyr blowing his pipe of Pan. In a cypress thicket they caught a
glimpse of a wayside shrine of Our Lady, but the woman's head they were
seeking was nowhere to be seen.
They walked on. A stream flowing from within the park crossed the road.
An unsightly plank bridge, such as is to be seen on every highway, led
across.
But a few hundred feet away, inside the park, another bridge boldly yet
gracefully threw its shining white arch over the running water.
"The bridges in Venice look like that," he said.
"That is the way the gods went to Walhalla," she said.
With a sigh they stopped and pictured the delights of crossing that
bridge.
Still nothing to be seen of their marble bust.
Beyond the plank bridge, where the village began, the park receded some
distance from the road. A row of tall serious Weymouth pines ran along
the other side of the fence.
The village street was gay with Sunday life. The sound of a piano and a
fiddle came from a dancing hall, interrupted every now and then by the
roll of bowling balls.
Lilly and her friend passed without giving heed to these things. Their
wishes were still fastened upon the forbidden garden. Each moment
increased their longing.
Hidden between the village lindens crouched crumbling stone posts to
which the decaying fence pales clung with difficulty.
Here the foliage in the interior was impenetrable to the eye. Ivy and
clematis serpentined from trunk to trunk, and lilacs and spiraeas grew in
rank profusion between.
The lord of the garden seemed to have drawn an inner living hedge about
himself and his companions to conceal them in laughing seclusion.
Once more they walked along in vain endeavouring to get a peep into the
interior.
Presently they came upon an ancient, three-winged gate, which with its
vases and columns, its cracked belfry, and its wrought-iron lace work,
was half sunk in blooming acacias.
Here at last they could get a good view of the park.
In sombre solemnity tall pines led straight to the castle. But even here
they were unable to obtain a glimpse of the buildings, which probably
stood off to one side hidden behind trees and bushes. The only
architectural bit their searching eyes discerned was a columned terrace,
where cherubs fluttered their snowy white wings.
"Oh, how beautiful!" sighed Lilly, and pressing her face between the
iron bars she jestingly whined and begged to be let in.
"That's just the way I stood outside the gate in Ravello. Now you know
what it's like."
His words brought to Lilly the realisation that she had long known what
"it was like." She was familiar with the feeling. She had often stood in
the very same position.
But where, where?
Where had cold iron pressed her cheeks just as now?
Oh, yes. Many and many a time she had stood at the iron grating of the
door leading to Mrs. Dehnicke's staircase, that proud, laurel-shaded
staircase which her desecrated feet were never to tread.
That, too, was a forbidden garden!
Forbidden gardens everywhere!
"Shouldn't we go?" she asked softly. "It will simply depress us to
remain here."
Hand in hand they returned the entire distance they had come, keeping
as close as possible to the enclosure and speaking of anything but their
hearts' desire.
Nevertheless, their eyes remained fastened on the goal of their
aspirations; and the yearning they both felt, though neither of them
would express it for fear of hinting reproaches, threw a fairy film of
gold over the universe.
* * * * *
Evening came.
Violet shadows lay upon the meadows, the coppery pine trunks glowed like
torches. As the sinking sun dipped into the reeds, the lake lost its
cool blue silvery sheen and adorned itself with a net of reddish gold.
It looked as if it had sportively drawn to itself the fulfilment of all
earthly promises.
The two could no longer bear it on land.
Down at the bathing pavilion, where a merry lot of people were splashing
about in the evening coolness, there was a boat to be hired for very
little.
Konrad took the oars and Lilly seated herself at the tiller.
Water plants plashed lightly against the sides of the boat, and the bow
cut through a waving carpet of pollen.
Among this year's tender green reeds stood the yellowish-grey
weather-beaten remnants of last year's growth. Dark bulrushes edged the
shores, and the water-flag planted its golden tents between.
Over the reeds and bulrushes they could see the massed park trees rising
toward the heavens like purple walls.
When Lilly told him to look there, he observed indifferently:
"Oh, no use, it's out of the question."
Nevertheless he continued to cast sidelong glances that way.
Lilly in her slight experience with boats did not know how to manage
the tiller, and after trying a while she threw the rope down and spread
her white shawl on the bottom of the boat to make a cosy nest for
herself.
She lay crouched at Konrad's feet with her back to the seat in the
stern, and with her eyes lost in the blue depths she began to plan a
different future, some way of saving herself by a desperate leap into
the land of the virtuous.
She would give music lessons--her knowledge sufficed for beginners--and
with her savings prepare for the stage, for which her talents eminently
fitted her--or, better still, take up scientific studies, because she
must keep intellectual pace with him. She must be a suitable friend so
long as he needed her friendship.
Or--not to wound the sensibilities of others--she would leave Germany,
earn her living as a teacher of German, and when he should summon her,
return a new, purified being.
Or--oh dear, "or!"
To lie and dream and drink the cup of her present joy to the dregs.
Discovery and death--the one involved the other--would come soon enough.
The sun dissolved behind a blood-red curtain. Violet vapours closed
down, enveloping things far and near. The entire world seemed to have
thinned into light and air. The reeds alone, with their slender black
stalks standing out against the evening glow like a dainty railing of
wrought iron, retained their corporeal aspect.
The foliage of the park slowly melted into a mass of darkness.
Now the park seemed to be doubly a forbidden garden, filled to the brim
with thrills and mysteries, sunk forever in the realm of the
unattainable.
As the boat glided slowly along the edge of the reeds a blue cove
suddenly opened up, making a wedge-shaped cut into the land on the park
side. It seemed to continue inward without end.
For a few moments Konrad remained motionless, his oars suspended. Then
he jumped to his feet with an exclamation of joy.
"What's the matter? What's the matter?"
"You remember the stream flowing out on the other side of the park?"
"Certainly."
"It must have flowed in somewhere--eh?"
"Of course."
He pointed to the gleaming tip of the cove.
"There it is."
"You think we shall after all--?"
The thought was too bold for utterance.
"Now, by water, in this boat, we shall cross that whole dark region from
one side to the other."
In her rapture she jumped up with a little outcry of delight, and fell
upon his neck, naturally, as if they had never exchanged vows and
pledges.
The boat gradually slipped into the current and floated between meadows
set with willows where the evening mist lay like white swathes. Beyond
stood gleaming peasant huts; and fishing nets draped the fences.
Then, at a bend in the stream, a mighty arch of foliage opened up before
them.
"O Lord!" cried Lilly.
"Psst! We must keep very quiet now," he said, "else we'll be turned out
after all."
He dipped his oars so lightly that the sound might have been taken for
the splash of a leaping fish.
He rowed through the gate of leaves under branches joined overhead in a
mazy thicket. It was dark as night in this spot, though here and there
on the right a gleam of the summer twilight pierced through the foliage.
They also caught a glimpse of lights and heard talk and laughter and the
sound of clinking glasses and, intermittently, a chord, as if someone in
the midst of conversation carelessly ran his hand over the keys.
Here the trees and bushes were wider apart, and they had an unobstructed
view of the castle--a broad, two-storey building. Its ponderous
simplicity pointed to the time when the grandees of Brandenburg had not
yet possessed a feeling for art. But on the terrace were the cherubs who
had greeted them from a distance in the afternoon.
Between their white bodies at a long table in the flickering lamplight
sat a chattering, laughing, singing company, apparently drinking in the
intoxication of the summer evening with their wine.
"He, too, might be sitting there, if I weren't a mill-stone about his
neck," thought Lilly, and she felt as if she ought to beg his pardon.
The current carried the boat on. The banquet scene vanished like the
vision of a moment.
Passing that end of the castle in which the kitchen and pantries lay,
where ministering spirits ran busily to and fro, they dipped once more
into silence and darkness.
To the right of them back of the many-windowed edifice, was a lawn with
old statues and ivy-draped urns--to the left a world buried in darkness.
A line of lindens, hundreds of years old, bordered the stream and
stifled every ray of light in its dark halls.
Perhaps this was where the marble bust was hidden. Lilly peered into
every recess, though furtively, so as to reserve the pleasure of
discovery for him.
They now approached the daintily arched bridge they had seen from afar
in the daytime.
It did not lead to Walhalla, but from a spiraea bush to a hemp bush, and
beneath it slept a pair of swans, who awoke at the stroke of the oars
and with outspread wings swam behind the boat begging for bread.
"Swans! The one thing lacking!" Lilly rejoiced softly, and sought in
vain for a crumb. She turned to look after the swans and her neck
touched his knees.
"May I stay this way?" she asked a little anxiously.
"If you're comfortable," he answered. There was a yielding tone in his
voice which ran warm through her body.
She unpinned her hat, and laid it on the back seat. Now she was free to
lean her head lightly against him. With sweet alarm she felt his hand
quietly stroke her head.
But he seemed taciturn and self-absorbed, as if a burden were weighing
upon him which he was not strong enough to shoulder.
And again she felt, as ofttimes, that a veil hung between them, a veil
seldom lifted aside, which obscured the true features of his being, no
matter how closely her love drew her to him.
"Oh, if only he were gay!"
The park came to an end.
The red evening glow, no longer shadowed by a mass of foliage, shone
upon them insistently. The magic spell threatened to be broken. The
world took on its ordinary aspect.
"Come, turn," she asked softly.
He rowed back again into the blissful night.
Now he had to strive against the current, and could not avoid the sound
of splashing.
"If only they don't catch us," he said.
"Oh, they are too happy," rejoined Lilly, "they wouldn't do anything to
a happy person."
"It seems almost like an enchanted castle, but who can tell--it may be a
delusion."
"Why?"
"Oh, the most grievous wound may be hidden under powers, and many a man
hides himself behind beauty because he has buried his powers."
The doubt displeased Lilly.
"But they should be happy," she exclaimed softly. "Those who can spare so
much as they have given us to-day have enough left for themselves."
"Illogical conclusion, darling," he replied. "You can enrich a beggar
and still remain as poor as a church-mouse."
"Are _we_ beggars?" she asked, raising herself up to him tenderly.
"No, by God, we are _not_ beggars," he replied drawing a deep breath.
There was silence for a time. Then it seemed to Lilly something warm and
moist fell upon her forehead.
For God's sake! He was crying! Crying with happiness. How had she
deserved it--she, Lilly Czepanek--she--?
To hide her own tears she crouched down again. It was in overflowing
measure--unendurable. She wanted to sob, cry aloud, kiss his hands. Yet
she was forced to clench her fists and stuff her gloves between her
teeth, to keep him from seeing what was going on within her. It was a
God-send that as they slowly approached the castle again, the sound of a
woman's singing reached them. Full ringing tones, which in the ascending
notes struck her heart like a lash.
What was she singing? Wasn't it from Tristan? Lilly had never heard the
opera, but it could only be from Tristan.
She raised her head questioningly.
"Isolde's _Liebestod_," Konrad whispered in her ear.
He turned the boat toward the shore in the deepest darkness. They must
not lose a note.
Up there on the terrace the laughing and talking had ceased. The
nightingale alone, in the linden thicket, would not be silenced, and
mingled its sweet ecstasy with the exultation in death of the woman who
like no other creation of God or man teaches us that the desire not to
be is the most exalted affirmation of to be.
Lilly, her whole body quivering, put her hand over her shoulder to grasp
his. She had to hold on to him. Otherwise she felt she would sink into
the void. She did not grow easier until she felt his warm fingers
between hers.
The song ended. The mighty arpeggios of the accompaniment died away.
There was no applause. Each of the merry guests had realised his
indebtedness to the occasion.
Konrad pressed her hand and withdrew his, and took up the oars again.
The forbidden garden began to disappear.
The reddish dusk of night lay upon the meadows. Not sound far or near.
Nevertheless the world seemed filled with the music of harps and ringing
songs.
"We haven't _seen_ your marble woman," Lilly whispered, stroking his
knees, "but I keep thinking that was her voice."
"I, too," he burst out passionately. "And she wasn't singing for the
good folk up there, but just for us."
"Oh, if only I could sing it like her," sighed Lilly.
"Try."
She remembered bits here and there, but was unable to gather them into a
whole. Besides something else forced its way between, which now gushed
up mightier than all else.
With the Song of Songs of the greatest and richest her own poor Song of
Songs mingled, undesired, uncalled.
And she sang into the deep silence:
Tell me, O thou whom my soul loveth,
Where thou feedest?
Where lettest thou thy flock rest at noon?
For why should I appear like a vailed mourner--
She stopped.
"What is that?" he asked. "I don't know it at all."
"It is--my--Song of Songs," she rejoined fetching a deep breath.
Never before had she uttered the name to a human being.
"Your Song of Songs?" he asked, bewildered.
Lilly realised an hour like this would never come again. It was the
moment to confide to him the secret of her youth.
"Drop the oars and listen. I will tell you something. It may sound silly
and stupid to you, but to me it was always like something sacred."
Without speaking he laid the oars down.
"You must sit next to me," she said, "so I can look at you."
He cast a searching glance in all directions.
The boat had long been quietly drifting again on the mirror-like lake,
upon which all the light of the summer night had gathered in
scintillating blue and purple spots. Nowhere the slightest sign of
danger.
Then he did as she had asked.
They nestled on the boat bottom pressed close against each other with
their heads leaning against the bench on which Konrad had been sitting.
And she told her tale.
Told of the legacy her vanished father had left, what power had always
emanated from it; how it had completely filled her girlhood years,
though later it had acquired a far loftier and more mysterious
significance, becoming a symbol of her deeds. When her life sank into
chaos and nothingness it remained dumb, often for years. But if her soul
began to soar, when her hopes and activities harmonised then all of a
sudden it reappeared, and with its soft song drowned the world's evil.
It had not been able to guard her against guilt or disgrace, but it had
kept her free inwardly and susceptible to the influence of the One who
would some day come to her.
And now that he actually had come, she felt that this hour of fulfilment
had struck both for her and her Song of Songs. It must now go forth into
the world and conquer all hearts and bring purification and upliftment
to its creator and herself.
In her enthusiasm she forgot the time and the place and the whole world.
The one thought obsessed her: to throw more of her inward self, of what
was most holy to her, at his feet. But she had said everything, more
than she had ever deemed herself likely to tell a living soul, more than
she had known of herself up to that hour.
He now held in his hands whatever there was of good and lofty and
hopeful still within her. The other--the lazy, the impure, that which
had ruined her heart and life--no longer existed. It no longer concerned
her.
While speaking, though she would have liked to look at him, she had not
dared to; but now that she was finished she ventured to turn toward
him.
She saw his eyes resting upon her with a singularly confused and drunken
look, such as she had never before seen in him. He usually held his
feelings as it were in his clenched fists.
Her heart began to throb, and the hopeful disquiet for which she had no
name and no object became so strong that she felt she should have to run
to the other end of the boat to keep from stifling at his side.
Then she saw him close his eyes and throw his head back hard against the
bench.
"You'll hurt yourself," she whispered. And so far from fleeing him, she
laid her arm like a pillow between his neck and the cutting edge of the
bench.
His head rested on her bosom, and he breathed heavily.
"Shall I sing some more of it?" she asked, bending over him tenderly.
"Yes, yes, yes," he burst out.
So she sang in a low caressing voice, as if they were lullabies, all
those arias and odes which no mortal ear had heard from her lips since
the day when her mother's soul had gone down into eternal night.
She sang of the "lily of the valley" and the "rose of Sharon" and the
verse in which all the witchery of spring is concentrated:
For, lo, the winter is past,
The rain is over and gone;
The flowers appear on the earth;
The time of the singing of birds is come,
And the voice of the turtle is heard in the land;
The fig putteth forth her green figs,
And the vines with the tender grape give a good smell.
Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.
She sang more and still more. If she asked him "Enough?" he merely shook
his head, and nestled closer.
Once she gave a fleeting glance upward, and noticed they were wedged in
among the reeds, and night had completely descended.
But what cared she? Somehow or other they would manage to get home.
There was little more of it to sing. "Set me as a seal upon thy heart"
and "How beautiful are thy steps in sandals, O prince's daughter." And
then the verse the beginning of which so well suited the day:
Come, my friend!
Let us go forth into the field,
But when it came to
Let us see if the vine have blossomed,
Whether the young grape have opened,
she could scarcely go on.
Whether the pomegranates have budded,
There will I give my caresses unto thee.
She was unable to continue. Her breath began to give out.
"Why don't you sing?" she heard him ask.
A buzzing of bees, a ringing of bells all about.
"Be brave!" her soul cried, "Else you will lose him."
She felt two twitching lips grope for hers.
A swift end to all bravery.
* * * * *
It was long past midnight when they landed. The bathing pavilion stood
there dark and deserted; but lights were still shining in the hotel.
Very timidly they rang the bell.
"We always keep a room for belated young married couples," said the
obsequious, smiling hostess.
CHAPTER XVI
It would be wide of the truth to aver that no happy star favoured
Lilly's ripened love.
In the first place Adele proved to be a circumspect ally, thoroughly
accustomed to be uncommunicative and passionately devoted to the cause
of Lilly's lover. In the second place Richard, who had gone to his
mother in Harzburg that epoch-making Sunday, had remained away the
greater part of a week instead of one day. And in the third place, upon
visiting her on his return, he was so preoccupied with himself and his
own affairs as not to notice in the least Lilly's guilty embarrassed
reception of him.
He affected a highly lofty mien and talked through his nose, as always
when he pulled his soul together, as it were, and became vividly
conscious of having once been a cavalry officer. He even wore his
monocle again hanging down over his navy-blue silk waistcoat.
All of which taken in conjunction with the crafty expression with which
he blinked his eyes and steadily looked past Lilly and dropped his head
on his left shoulder, gave sufficient ground for the welcome assumption
that he had delayed the visit to his mother and, instead,--like Lilly
herself--had taken a side excursion _a deux_ into the blossoming world
of spring.
The conjecture, however, proved to be false.
Richard had been in Harzburg the whole time and intended to return the
very next day for a longer stay of at least four weeks.
"What's the matter?" he exclaimed in alarm.
Lilly, overwhelmed by the veritable tempest of happiness that burst upon
her, had reeled and sunk on the arm of a chair.
She instantly collected her wits again and denied that she had been
overcome. Nevertheless, he remained full of solicitude, kissed her on
her neck again and again, and would not permit her to go to the trouble
of pouring out the tea for him. A guilty conscience peeped from every
pore of his being.
"Unfortunately," he said, trying to return to his former lofty manner,
"unfortunately there's no longer a chance of our taking a trip together.
Anyhow--we've gotten too used to each other. Both of us will have to
practise getting along without each other. It's highly desirable we
should. We certainly should."
His words sounded like familiar music coming from a great, great
distance.
"Confess," she said smiling. "What is it this time?"
Out he came with it, stuttering and choking over his words.
An American heiress--of German extraction--millions and millions--not
millions of marks, but millions of dollars--very stylish and chic--a
wonderful piece of luck--mama in a quiver to have it go through--her
parents favourably disposed--she, too, evidently not disinclined. This
time or never.
"Congratulate you," said Lilly, giving him a friendly handshake.
He looked at her with large, astonished, and somewhat reproachful eyes.
"Is that all?" he asked.
"Why--what else?"
"How can you remain so cool? Doesn't the thought that your old friend is
about to leave you move you in the least? I took you to be more loving,
more sympathetic. I certainly did."
"Please remember," said Lilly, "you reproach me the same way each time
you make up your mind to marry because I don't want to be a hindrance to
you. You always act as if _I_ had dismissed you, and not you me."
He burst into expostulations.
"Dismiss--what language you use! You haven't the least idea of what's
going on within me--how I struggle and wrestle with myself. Why, I
haven't slept for nights thinking what will become of you. But you
behave as if it didn't concern you in the least! Altogether
you're--frivolous! You have no feelings--now you know it."
While he spoke, pictures of her approaching freedom danced before her
eyes--nights of unshackled, glowing love, days full of sweet, vague
dreams.
What followed lay as far off as the end of the world.
Smiling good-humouredly, she listened, and never even responded.
"Though your future doesn't seem to worry _you_," he continued to
upbraid her, "_I_ must give it all the more consideration. I must
provide for you, and mama quite agrees with me."
The word "mama" tore her from her world of dreams.
Since the terrific encounter in Richard's office, it had scarcely ever
passed their lips. They had employed a thousand circumlocutions and
substitutes which they understood and which each appreciated in the
other.
Now "mama" suddenly rang in her ears, the symbol of her disgraced
existence.
"Oh," she cried, "if she's in it, it's bound to be humiliating to me.
I'll tell both of you one thing: take good care not to make a
proposition to me about money, or support, or anything of the sort. I'd
consider it an outrageous insult, for which you could _never_ make
amends."
He ran up and down the room wringing his hands.
"What are you talking about again! Quite apart from the fact that I'd be
eternally disgraced in the eyes of the world. Woman, don't you know
you're ruined if I turn you adrift empty-handed? Don't you know where
you'd go to? To the bars and brothels! Don't you know it?"
In blissful absentmindedness Lilly looked past him and his gallant zeal.
"There are other ways," she whispered half to herself.
"What ways?" he cried, "Marriage, forsooth? What decent man would marry
you after you've been my mistress for four years?"
"There are other ways than that, too," she repeated still smiling.
She saw a life full of fight and vigour, a tossing hither and thither
through storm and stress, a jubilant triumph which led her into the
community of those who were as proud and true as _he_.
But all that would come later, much, much later. Why think of it now?
Richard put his own construction upon her words. He fixed his eyes upon
her suspiciously, and stopping in front of her, asked with a shudder:
"I say--are you going to do something foolish?"
She burst out laughing. Probably he already saw her beautiful corpse
taken from the water and stretched on the bier.
"No, I won't do anything foolish. Certainly not for your sake. And even
if I intended to, I'd have the good taste not to threaten you with it."
He drew a deep breath of relief, though by no means quite calmed.
"At any rate," he said, "I greatly dislike your poking here alone.
You'll simply get the blues and feel irritated at me. I say, while I'm
gone, wouldn't you like to take a little trip to a bath--Ahlbeck, or
Schreiberbau, or some other place of the sort, where respectable people
go?"
Nothing on the surface but a faint twitch of her eyelids betrayed the
laugh of scorn that shook her internally.
"You know," she said, "I don't like to make up to people, and so I'd be
all the more alone."
He wrinkled his forehead lost in thought.
"Well--then--" He hesitated and chewed his words as people are wont to
do when they dread their own bravery, "--then--it would be best if
you--come and stay near--"
"Near--near what?"
"Oh, don't act that way. You know what I mean."
"I do, but I cannot believe it."
"What's so awful about it? I could look after you now and then--or talk
over matters--different things."
"And show her to me so as to get my opinion and my blessing--eh?"
"Well and supposing it's so? The way we are to each other--the way we
haven't done a thing for years without asking each other's advice,
what's so monstrous about it?"
Lilly felt a patronising pity arise within her. She stroked his hands
and said:
"Dear friend, I don't think I'd furnish the right sort of assistance to
you in your courtship."
Her superior tone increased his ill-humour.
"Goodness gracious! 'Assistance,' 'courtship!' You talk as if you were
on the stage. Altogether you're so puffed up--so puffed up! Of course
you simply want to revenge yourself on me by making me angry. I must say
it's not at all noble of you at such a time."
She laughed and stretched herself. How low it all was! How ridiculous!
And how indifferent to her! After all did it concern her?
To be alone--alone with him! There was nothing else in the world beside
that.
"Then you don't want to?"
She shook her head, "No."
"Very well."
He prepared to leave in anger, but lacked the strength.
"Lilly."
"Hm?"
"I'd like to avoid any misunderstandings. You seem to think I'm not in
earnest this time."
"By no means, Richard. I wish you all possible happiness. But really,
with the best of intentions, I can be of no service to you in this
affair."
"Of service to me! Of service to me! Who's speaking of service to me?
Mama was quite right. If I break off this time, there won't be anything
else for me any more. So make it quite clear to yourself. In a few weeks
all's over between us."
"So much the better," she came near saying. But she saw the tears in the
corners of his eyes, and refrained from hurting him.
Four years lived together lay behind them. He was too tightly tied to
her apron strings. She felt she ought not to let him go without her
advice and encouragement.
So she spoke to him as to a child. She said his mother was right,
praised his project, and counted up all the reasons why it absolutely
had to be. In order to calm him as to her own attitude, she recalled how
it had always been her ambition to let him feel his freedom and never
stand in his way. She also assured him she would cherish friendly
sentiments for him until the end of her days.
Finally, on parting, they both wept.
CHAPTER XVII
Now the way was clear. Now she might consecrate the new life and rejoice
in it.
July came and scorched the deserted streets.
The denizens of the aristocratic west side who remained in town with no
employer to drive them dreamed away idle days behind drawn shades,
hovering between the couch and the bathtub.
Lilly did not awaken to real life until evening came, when the world
endeavoured to throw off the heat it had absorbed during the day, when
dusty yellow vapours rolled on the turbid water of the canal, and beyond
the chestnuts, the leaves of which were already beginning to wither, the
red glow of the heavens melted into one with the winking lights of the
street lamps.
Then she strolled at Konrad's side in the blue twilight of the streets,
always alert to escape the observation of acquaintances.
Staid middle-class families promenaded to the beer gardens, love-couples
met at the appointed street corners; and among them surged the mass of
those whom life has left solitary with shy passionate yearnings, and who
hope to steal from smiling chance that for which they no longer dare
implore sterner gods. Over the exhausted city hung a sultry haze of
secret desire, in which formal restraint and genuine feeling flickered
and went out, leaving no sign of ever having been.
How remote those days when Lilly herself wandered about in the same
fashion, hoping for the intervention of fate, yet lacking the courage
to compel it. And shuddering at dangers she had escaped, she clung
closer to Konrad's protecting arm.
She and Konrad always managed to find a secluded nook where gypsy bands
played their fiddles, or Tyrolese strummed their dulcimers, or the host
himself, some musician come down in the world acted as orchestra leader.
In the ivy-hung corners between laurel trees planted in green painted
tubs they had little fear of discovery.
Their intercourse had undergone a change.
There were still instructive discourses upon all sorts of subjects and
Lilly intently hung upon Konrad's lips; but her holy ardour for
knowledge had cooled down.
That God does not exist, that Fra Lippo Lippi had been a
good-for-nothing, that baroque art has it good points, and that a line
gone crazy ought to be sent to the madhouse, even if it poses as
ultra-modern, these and many more novel, interesting things Lilly had
long known. But they no longer evoked discussion.
Often their eyes would meet and linger with a soft yearning smile in
them as if that were the most eloquent language in which they could talk
to each other. And often Konrad's thoughts went their own way, returning
to Lilly only under compulsion. She would then grow melancholy and
jealous, and insist on leaving.
She would not feel thoroughly content until he lay comfortably in her
arm, on her heart.
The walls were permeated with the day's heat; the curtains threatened
suffocation; a veritable sirocco blew through the cracks of the
shutters. But Lilly and Konrad suffered no discomfort. The glow accorded
with their mood.
It was the greatest disaster for either of them to fall asleep, and thus
shamefully curtail the time they spent together. So they agreed that the
one who remained conscious longer should rouse the other.
Lilly was invariably the one to remain awake. Konrad was exhausted by
his work, and in the morning he could not doze off again after a cup of
tea in bed, or in the afternoon rest on the couch. And when he lay there
next to her with twitching limbs, like a thoroughbred hunting dog, she
felt much too sorry for him to keep her promise.
She would sit up in bed, and never weary of gazing at him in the dim
light of the red-shaded candle.
There was always something in his face to study--the strong-willed fold
between his brows, deeper than before and still somewhat intimidating;
the muscles of his temples incessantly working; and the curling upper
lip, the right end of which every now and then twitched as if he were
smiling at her in his sleep. He had grown thin. His skin had lost its
firmness, and on his cheeks lay shadows which darkened at his jaws.
There was a line of suffering about his nostrils. He looked like a young
Christ, created just to be adored.
Sometimes while staring at him, she thought:
"If I were to kill him now, run a hat pin through his heart or something
of the sort, he would belong to me, to me alone, forever."
Then she would hollow her hand and place it on the left side of his
breast and fancy she held his heart and with his heart his love, which
she need never more give up.
Once while she bent over him, he awoke with a start.
"What's the matter? Did I do anything to you?" he asked.
"Why?"
"Your expression is so strange, almost as if you were angry with me."
She resolved not to stare at him any more. But she could not resist; she
loved him too dearly.
It was horrible when dread seized her that she might lose him. Many a
night it attacked her with such awful force that she felt like screaming
and raving and tearing her hair. But it would be wrong to rouse him. So
she gently laid her head under his shoulder, one arm under his back, the
other across his breast, and pressing close against him told herself she
had grown into one with him.
Then gradually she grew calmer and could find comfort in tears, or in
picturing to herself how happy she would make him, unspeakably happy.
She would envelop him in a mantle of love, so soft and thick as to
prevent fate's rude blows from reaching him. She would be his muse,
would wear an invisible aureole about her head, enkindle the desire
within him for a thousand great deeds; she would give him the devoted
care of a Sister of Mercy, would learn to cook and make her own dresses.
No--rather attend scientific courses at the university, and study music.
Oh, she would do many more things, that he should never weary of her.
For all this, of course, she would first have to be free, with relations
between her and Richard entirely broken off.
She often thought of Richard also, but without a shadow of blame. She
had long forgiven him for having led her to the brink of the abyss.
"Each person acts according to the law of his own being," Konrad had
said.
Besides, Richard had once been her saviour.
So far as the outer world was concerned, the new life was to begin as
soon as Richard announced his engagement. He had written that his suit
was progressing, and by right her free life with Konrad ought already to
have commenced, but Lilly did not feel equal to a crisis. She shuddered
at all the lies she would continually have to dish up to Konrad, once a
change took place in her household.
She avoided facing the poverty that was bound to come. It was only at
night when she had worked herself into a joyous ecstasy on the sleeping
man's breast, and her future with him stretched before her in gold and
purple, that privation seemed to her the very sum and substance of
happiness and plenitude.
At three o'clock in the morning, when the street lamps went out one by
one, and the grey of dawn came creeping over the ceiling, Lilly would
have to awaken him.
He must not meet any of the tenants of the house. She owed it to his and
her own reputation.
While dressing he groped about, drunk with sleep, among Lilly's ivory
toilet articles, still resplendent with the seven-pointed coronet, and
managed to get himself into shape for a stimulating cup of black coffee
at the nearest Vienna cafe.
For he felt that from Lilly's bed he must go to his desk with all
possible speed.
He could not be dissuaded from this madness.
The passionate hours of the night demanded atonement; an idea to which
he clung tenaciously, no matter that he spent the early morning hours in
vain, wearisome brooding over his papers.
Lilly, on the other hand, fell into a deep sleep, from which Adele
roused her at about ten o'clock, when she brought in the breakfast tray,
smiling contentedly.
Lilly let Konrad have every other night for himself.
She did not want to suck his lifeblood away. Even so he gave her
sufficient cause for worry. His colour was bad, his eyes vacillated, his
mood varied abruptly from violent gaiety to vacant-eyed self-absorption.
All that would surely be different when once--what?
To think of nothing, to plan nothing, to wish for nothing. Just to love
him and know he was happy.
She spent her days dreaming both pleasant and tremulous dreams. Her
intense fervour for mental occupation had departed. Besides, all sorts
of new and important things intervened to distract her; especially the
need to please him, to hand him daily the draft that intoxicated him and
kept him her own.
Hitherto she had taken the beauty of her body as a matter of course, and
had paid as little regard to it as to a hidden and useless object. Now
she felt she must constantly take thought of the ideal he treasured in
his mind, must try to resemble it--she well knew that in reality she
approached it a little only when drunken bliss exalted her above herself
and the stale and unprofitable flats of her life.
Thus arose an eager cult of her flesh, something she had always
despised.
She took care of her body like a woman in a harem, perfumed her baths,
manicured her toe nails, lengthened her eyebrows, and powdered her arms
and shoulders. Every day she discovered new blemishes, which discouraged
her and for which she sought new remedies.
At the same time she was ever haunted by the fear that through sheer
attention to her toilet she would acquire the look of a beautiful
prostitute. So she locked away her jewellery and dressed very simply.
None but the connoisseur could discern how much artistic care had gone
into the creation of this faultless simplicity.
When she was alone what troubled her most was jealousy. Not that she
suspected him of relations with another woman. He stood too high in her
estimation for that. But she was jealous of everything he did. The
thought of his desk fairly tortured her. Each hour he spent away from
her seemed traitorous to her love, and she thought of his friends with a
hostility of which she had never deemed herself capable.
On the evenings she was left alone, she held watch over his room from
the opposite side of the street, where she stood pressed in a doorway
exactly as formerly in Alte Jakobstrasse.
When his lamp was lighted she was satisfied, but when she saw him come
or go at a late hour, she did not sleep the whole night.
He lived a short distance from her in a third-storey room. It was long
before he permitted her to call on him.
In the room next to his, he explained, lay a sick woman who had to be
kept from the slightest excitement. The sound of a strange voice might
aggravate her condition.
While telling this to Lilly he strangely avoided her eyes and she felt
that a hundred chances to one he was keeping something from her. But
when upon her insistence he admitted her to his room one afternoon she
found nothing to confirm her suspicions. She merely had to speak very
low; which she had known beforehand.
His room was just an ordinary student's room. It had two windows, a high
ceiling, cheap furniture, and no couch and no carpet. But valuable
engravings adorned the walls, and the customary pier-glass was hidden
behind an old copy of the Madonna di Foligno, who looked down in serene
loftiness upon the poverty of northern philistinism. There were long low
bookcases full of books; and more books, for which there was no room on
the shelves were piled up high in the corners, protected against dust by
pieces of crushed oil-cloth, such as pedlars use for wrapping about
their wares.
As was to be expected, the desk was the only article that displayed a
certain luxuriousness. Like the pictures, it was Konrad's own property.
With its noble carving and broad top, it stood in the centre of the
room, solemn as an altar.
Not one woman's picture to be seen on it. Lilly had not given him hers,
and evidently others were not deemed worthy of the place of honour.
There was only one photograph, that of an old gentleman, framed with
glass, which stood back of the blotting pad and the ink well. A
weather-beaten, epicurean face, with fine snow-white hair, and shrewd
eyes beneath half-sunken lids, eyes peculiar to old connoisseurs of
women.
It was the picture of the uncle who had paid for Konrad's education and
supported him.
Lilly felt a dull oppression, as if those eyes were looking her through
and through, and needed but a glance to unveil the great secret that she
concealed from her lover with a thousand subterfuges.
"I'll be careful never to meet him," she thought.
Konrad took from a drawer his precious treasure, the preliminary work on
his great history of human emotions, and showed Lilly the reams of paper
closely covered with writing.
This work was his real love, and she, Lilly Czepanek, was nothing but a
dark, bloodless shadow, which greedily glided through his nights.
"Put it back again," she said discontentedly, and turned away to take
leave.
But even his great work was not enough for Konrad. In addition, he
drudged over a number of short articles. As his name become known in
professional circles, he received an increasing number of orders, all of
which he accepted and tried to fill.
And one day Lilly found out what the important position was of which he
had spoken three weeks before on that never-to-be-forgotten excursion.
"I couldn't make up my mind until to-day," said Konrad. "But now I have
actually decided to take the position. It is assistant editorship on a
magazine. The editor-in-chief called on me himself, and wouldn't let go
of me until I said yes. A fascinating fellow. In spite of his great
intellectual ability, a man of childlike innocence. And so frank and
friendly. You must get to know him immediately, if you don't already."
"What is his name?"
"Dr. Salmoni."
CHAPTER XVIII
No. It came about differently.
Fate did not lay its clutch upon her with such rude hands.
Lilly was spared the disgrace of being caught like a criminal, and by an
act of volition was enabled to prove that she was not unworthy of the
great passion that had blessed her life.
After the mention of Dr. Salmoni's name Lilly feared to venture out on
the street with Konrad. She imagined that each person coming behind them
must be the dreaded man, who had once stolen upon her in front of the
house on Alte Jakobstrasse and might be following her now as he had
then.
In order to save herself this torture she finally told Konrad that a
lady of her acquaintance had visited her the day before and had asked
with marked emphasis about the slim young man with whom she had always
appeared.
The effect of Lilly's lie was terrifying.
Konrad said nothing and ate nothing. He paced up and down the room with
a wild, hunted expression, and went away at the very moment when their
happiest hours were wont to begin.