Often in the night Susan would sit in some dark corner, and out of her
deep brooding name her brother’s name. Her thoughts turned about a
reunion with him. Her service to Eva was but a violent interruption of
the accustomed life at his side.
She loved Eva, but she loved her as Lucas Anselmo’s work and
projection. If Eva gained fame it was for him, if she gathered treasure
it was for him, if she grew in power it was for him. Those who
approached Eva and felt her sway were his creatures, his serfs, and his
messengers.
After the incident with Christian Wahnschaffe, as Susan crouched at
Eva’s feet and, as so often, embraced the girl’s knees, she thought:
Ah, he has breathed into her an irresistible soul, and made her
beautiful and radiant.
But always she harboured a superstitious fear. She trembled in secret
lest the irresistible soul should some day flee from Eva’s body, and
the radiance of her beauty be dulled, and nothing remain but a dead and
empty husk. For that would be a sign to her that Lucas Anselmo was no
more.
For this reason it delighted her when ecstasy and glee, glow and tumult
reigned in Eva’s life, and she was cast down and plagued by evil
presentiments when the girl withdrew into quietness and remained silent
and alone. So long as Eva danced and loved and was mobile and adorned
her body, Susan dismissed all care concerning her brother. Therefore
she would sit and fan the flame from which his spirit seemed to speak
to her.
“Just because you’ve chosen the Englishman, you needn’t send the German
away,” she said. “You may take the one and let the other languish a
while longer. You can never tell how things will change. There are many
men: they rise and fall. Cardillac is going down-hill now. I hear all
kinds of rumours.”
Eva, hiding her face in her hands, whispered: “Eidolon.”
It vexed Susan. “First you mock him, then you sigh for him! What folly
is this?”
Eva sprang up suddenly. “You shan’t speak of him to me or praise him,
wretched woman.” Her cheeks glowed, and the brightly mocking tone in
which she often spoke to Susan became menacing.
“_Golpes para besos_,” Susan murmured in Spanish. “Blows for kisses.”
She arose in order to comb Eva’s hair and braid it for the night.
The next day Crammon appeared. “I found you one whose laughter puts
to shame the laughter of the muleteer of Cordova,” he said with mock
solemnity. “Why is he rejected?”
His heart bled. Yet he wooed her for his friend. Much as he loved and
admired Denis Lay, yet Christian was closer to him. Christian was his
discovery, of which he was vain, and his hero.
Eva looked at him with eyes that glittered, and replied: “It is true
that he knows how to laugh like that muleteer of Cordova, but he has no
more culture of the heart than that same fellow. And that, my dear man,
is not enough.”
“And what is to become of us?” sighed Crammon.
“You may follow us to England,” Eva said cheerfully. “I’m going to
dance at His Majesty’s Theatre. Eidolon can be my page. He can learn to
practise reverence, and not to chaffer for horses when beautiful poems
are being read to me. Tell him that.”
Crammon sighed again. Then he took her hand, and devoutly kissed the
tips of her fingers. “I shall deliver your message, sweet Ariel,” he
said.