Lorm and Judith had a magnificent apartment near the Tiergarten in
Berlin.
Edgar Lorm flourished. Order and regularity ruled his life. With
childlike boastfulness he spoke of his home. His manager and friend,
Dr. Emanuel Herbst, congratulated him on his visible rejuvenation.
He introduced to Judith the people whom he had long valued; but she
judged most of them sharply and without sympathy. Her characteristic
arrogance drove away many who meant well. But under the sway of his new
comforts Lorm submitted to her opinions.
But he would not give up Emanuel Herbst. When Judith mocked at his
waddling gait, his homeliness, his piping voice, his tactless jokes,
Lorm grew serious. “I’ve known him for over twenty years. The things
that annoy you endear him to me quite as much as those precious
qualities in him which I know well, and which you’ve had no chance to
discover.”
“No doubt he’s a monster of virtue,” Judith replied, “but he bores me
to extinction.”
Lorm said: “One should get used to the idea that other people don’t
exist exclusively for our pleasure. Your point of view is too narrowly
that of use and luxury. There are human qualities that I value more
highly than a handsome face or polished manners. One of these is
trustworthiness. People with whom one has professional dealings often
refuse to honour the demands of common decency--especially in regard
to the keeping of their given word--with a calm frivolity that makes
one’s gorge rise. So I’m intensely grateful to Herbst, since it means
so infinitely much to me, for this--that our relations have never been
shadowed by distrust, and that our simplest verbal agreements are as
firm and as valid as a written contract.”
Judith recognized that in this case she would have to change her
tactics. She was amiable, as though she were convinced of his virtues,
and sought to gain his favour. Dr. Herbst saw through her, but showed
no consciousness of his insight. He treated her with an elaborate
courtesy that seemed a trifle old-fashioned, and effectually concealed
his reservations.
Sometimes in the evening she would sit with the two men, and join
in their shop talk of playwrights and plays, actors and actresses,
successes and failures. And while she seemed attentive, and even asked
an occasional question, she thought of her dressmaker, of her cook, of
her weekly account, or of her old life, that was so different and had
perished so utterly. And her eyes would grow hard.
It would happen that she would pass through the rooms with a bitter
expression on her face and a hostile glance for the things about her.
She hated the many mirrors which Lorm required, the rugs that had been
recently bought, the pretentious furniture and paintings, the countless
bibelots, photographs, ornaments, books, and piously guarded souvenirs.
She had never before lived in a house where other tenants above and
below reminded her of their repulsive and unfamiliar lives. She
listened to the slightest noises, and felt that she had fallen into a
slum.
It was hardly in harmony with her nature to wait each morning until her
husband happened to rise, to see that the breakfast was complete, to
stand aside while the barber, the masseur, the chauffeur, the messenger
of the theatre, and the secretary had completed their tasks or received
their instructions; to wait again until he returned from rehearsal,
tired, annoyed, and hungry, and then to watch him at luncheon--a meal
that he required to be both rich and exquisite--gobble his food; to
guard him from noise and interruption when he memorized his lines; to
answer strange voices on the telephone, to give information, refuse
invitations, to send the troublesome away and to soothe the impatient.
She was wholly out of her natural element, but she forced herself to
endure even as she had endured bodily pain when the long needle had
been thrust through her arm.
Emanuel Herbst, who was a keen observer and a learned student of human
nature, quietly analysed the relations of this husband and this wife.
He said to himself: “Lorm is not fulfilling her expectations; so much
is clear. She fancied she could peel him the way one peels an onion,
and that the removal of each layer would reveal something so new and
surprising as to make up to her for all she has renounced. She will
soon discover her miscalculation, for Lorm is always the same. He can’t
be stripped. He wears his costumes and puts on make-up. She will soon
reproach him for this very ability to fill empty forms with a beautiful
content, and to remain, in his own person, but a humble servitor of his
art. And the more guilty he becomes in her eyes, the more power over
him will she gain. For he is tired--tired to death of the affected,
the flatterers and sentimentalists, of the sweets and easements of his
daily life. Terribly spoiled as he is, he yearns unconsciously for
chains and a keeper.”
The result of his reflection filled Emanuel Herbst with anxious
apprehension.
But Judith remembered her dream--how she had lain beside a fish because
it pleased her, and then beaten it in sudden rage over its cool, moist,
slippery, opalescent scales. And she lay beside the fish and struck it,
and the fish became more and more subservient and her own.
Her constant terror was this thought: “I am poor, impoverished,
dependent, without security.” The thought tormented her to such a
degree that she once expressed it to the housekeeper. The latter was
astonished and replied: “But in addition to your pin money, the master
gives you two thousand marks a month for the house. Why should you
yield to morbid fancies?”
Judith looked at the woman suspiciously. She distrusted all whom she
paid. The moment they mentioned money she fancied herself robbed.
One day the cook gave notice. She was the fourth since the
establishment of the household. A quantity of sugar was missing. There
was a quarrel, an ugly one, and Judith was told things that no one had
ever dared to tell her before.
The secretary mislaid a key. When at last it was found Judith rushed to
the drawer which it fitted to see whether the stationery, the pencils,
and the pen-points were intact.
The housekeeper had bought twenty yards of linen. Judith thought the
price paid too high. She drove to the shop herself. The taxi-fare
amounted to more than she could possibly have saved on the purchase.
Then she chaffered with the clerk for a reduction, until it was granted
her through sheer weariness. She told Lorm the story with a triumphant
air. He neglected to praise her. She jumped up from the table, locked
herself in her room, and went to bed. Whenever she thought that she had
some reason for anger, she went to bed.
Lorm came to her door, knocked softly, and asked her to open it. She
let him stand long enough to regret his conduct, and then opened the
door. She told her story all over, and he listened with a charming
curiosity on his face. “You’re a jewel,” he said, and stroked her cheek
and hand.
But it would also happen, if she really wanted something, that
she would spend sums out of all proportion to her wretched little
economies. She would see a hat, a frock, an ornament in a show window,
and not be able to tear herself away. Then she would go into the shop,
and pay the price asked at once.
One day she visited an auction sale, and happened to come in just as
an old Viennese bon-bon dish was offered for sale. It was one of those
objects that make little show, but which delight the collector’s heart.
At first the dish didn’t tempt her at all. Then the high bidding for it
excited her, and she herself began to bid for it. It kindled something
in her, and she made bid after bid, and drove all competitors from the
field.
Hot and excited, she came home and rushed into Lorm’s study. Emanuel
Herbst was with him. The two men sat by the fire in familiar talk.
Judith disregarded Herbst. She stood before her husband, unwrapped the
dish, and said: “Look at this exquisite thing I bought, Edgar.”
It was toward evening, but no lights had been lit. Lorm loved the
twilight and the flicker of the fire in his chimney, which was, alas,
only a metropolitan imitation of a log fire. In the rich, red, wavering
reflection of the glow, Judith looked charming in her delight and
mobility.
Lorm took the dish, regarded it with polite interest, drew up his
lips a little, and said: “It’s pretty.” Herbst’s face puckered into
innumerable ironical little wrinkles.
Judith grew angry. “Pretty? Don’t you see that it’s magical, a
perfect little dream, the sweetest and rarest thing imaginable? The
connoisseurs were wild after it! Do you know what it cost? Eighteen
hundred marks. And I had six or seven rabid competitors bidding against
me. Pretty!” She gave a hard little laugh. “Give it to me. You handle
it too clumsily.”
“Calm yourself, sweetheart,” said Lorm gently. “I suppose its virtues
are subtle.”
But Judith was hurt, more by Herbst’s silent mockery than by Lorm’s
lack of appreciation. She threw back her head, rustled through the
room, and slammed the door behind her. When she was angry, her own
manners had, at times, a touch of commonness.
For a while the two men were silent. Then Lorm, embarrassed and with
a deprecating smile, said: “A little dream ... for eighteen hundred
marks.... Oh, well! There’s something childlike about her.”
Emanuel Herbst rubbed his tongue up and down between his teeth and his
upper lip. It made him look like an ancient baby. Then he ventured:
“You ought to make it clear to her that eighteen hundred marks are one
thousand eight hundred times one mark.”
“She won’t get that far,” answered Lorm. “Somebody who has always lived
on the open sea, and is suddenly transported to a little inland lake,
finds it hard to get the new measurements and perspectives. But women
are queer creatures.” He sighed and smiled. “Have a nip of whiskey, old
man?”
Sorrowfully Herbst rocked his Cæsarean head. “Why queer? They are
as they are, and one must treat them accordingly. Only one mustn’t
be under any mistaken impression as to what one has. For instance:
A horseshoe is not birch wood. It looks like a bow, but you can’t
bend it--not with all your might. If you string it, the string droops
slackly and will never propel your arrow. All right, let’s have your
whiskey.”
“But occasionally,” Lorm replied cheerfully, and filled the tiny
glasses, “you can turn a horseshoe into the finest Damascene steel.”
“Bravo! A good retort! You’re as ready as Cardinal Richelieu. Your
health!”
“If you’ll let me be Richelieu, I’ll appoint you to be my Father
Joseph. A great rôle, by the way. Your health, old man!”