"Wanted: lady with knowledge of many languages, Balkan tongues
desirable, secretarial work. Call between 10 and 11. Second
courtyard on left...."
Diana glanced down at her wrist-watch. Nine-thirty! She paid the
bill for her breakfast, left the modest hotel where she had put up,
and struck out through the park towards the centre of the town.
That morning when she had gone to Milan--was it only last
Sunday?--she had been urged onward by an inner force which made her
willingly look forward to undertaking almost any kind of work be it
never so humdrum. She was tired of the south, and was filled with
longing for a northern climate. Such restlessness often seized her
towards May or June, and the north appealed to her at no other time
of the year. She had clasped her hands and had examined them as if
to sample their usefulness; her eyes had travelled up to the massive
line of the Alps, that mysterious wall cutting her off from her
second self in the north. Six years of untrammelled wandering had
taught her to look upon chance happenings as the bridge of fate
leading to the unknown.
"How long ago was it?" she asked herself that evening as she looked
out of the window in the train. "Two years? No, it must be three
since I took up a job because I needed to do so. Lack of money and
the wish no longer to lead a quiet life always seem to coincide!
Should I go to Paris? No, London would be better. But I went to
Paris where I worked under Charpentier at the institute.... What
extraordinary things developed out of that move! Of course the
parting had been easier, Sidney was in good hands, and Father...
Father..."
She laid her hot forehead against the cold window-pane and caught her
own reflection in the glass. Suddenly she became aware of lights
creeping by, slowly and stealthily when they were away there across
the wide fields, and like a flash when they were near the line.
"Other people's destinies are crossing my path through this
transparent pane. Always these alien destinies, which I have not
summoned, move athwart my eyes, and I am doomed, nay rather, I am
blessed in being allowed to let them go by. Stars! I would that the
starlight might once again delight my eyes...."
Diana looked up, but the sky was overcast. On reaching Milan the
other day she found that her total cash amounted to fifteen hundred
francs. One thousand she spent in buying underclothes, two hats, one
evening gown, and a costume for day-time use. She was wearing the
latter now, with a white blouse, a plain straw hat, and comfortable,
low-heeled shoes. Neither jewellery nor flowers were there to
relieve the Puritan simplicity of her toilet. But her efforts to
assume the aspect of an ordinary office girl were unsuccessful. In
the first place she did not trip along, or strut, or slouch; she just
walked. Her carriage, too, betrayed her, for her head was well
poised on the broad shoulders and her elastic body swayed
rhythmically from the slender hips. She looked like one accustomed
to much rowing and riding. Her arched brows gave her away, as did
likewise her hands with their long, delicate fingers and the finely
moulded wrists. Above all, her face denied her assumed profession.
The bronzed profile was that of a young Sicilian, such as Antonello
da Messina loved to portray. Everything in her belied the character
she had endeavoured to suggest by means of clothes and her alias.
"This is a very fine park," she thought, "but the lawns should not
have been fenced in, nor all the paths made into alley ways, nor
every bush clipped into a round. How obsessed the north is with its
dreams of the south! Fearing its own peculiarities it becomes a mere
imitator, and tries to tame all that would fain be wild."
She turned into the central walk which ran in a perfectly straight
line from entry to exit. Here the great town seemed inspired with
the wish to hide its practical, everyday life behind luxuriant trees,
while all the time the electric trams went screeching and roaring
through the ancient forest. Diana sped on.
"Whenever I wake in this city I feel that it is in some small degree
akin to me, that it responds to the northern half of my make-up. Did
ever town spur one on to activity as this one does? Is London or New
York so incorruptible? I am glad that I am going into its very
heart. Here I shall be able to work just like other people; indeed I
must! High time I began again...."
Diana had now been a week at her secretarial post. She had adopted a
new name, determined to forget the past, determined to be an unknown
unit in the metropolis and thus to avoid head-waggings and questions
in regard to her changed circumstances. She was scared at the idea
of repeating previous encounters on the same stage. Since she was
entirely free from sentimentality, she fostered memories only when
they could prove useful to her development. This time, she had
resolved to bury them.
She sat in the little whitewashed room with its two doors always
flung wide, while twenty voices could be heard clamouring
simultaneously, the simplest sentence being uttered with the loudness
characteristic of persons whose profession it is to be ever on the
go. After a while she glanced up, and gazed at the patch of grey
wall to be seen above the reflector which did its best to cast a
little daylight into the dark office.
"It's one o'clock," she mused. "We should be coming from our swim.
Andreas's bathing-wrap would fly open and he'd pick his way gingerly
over the stones.... He never liked them! The Barbary doves used to
fly out of our path and flutter overhead. Domenico would speak of
the wind, and would tell us that the weather had set fair till the
new moon.... Till the new moon, an eternity, two whole weeks! A
fortnight of clear skies and sunshine and wind. When before did the
days seem so long; when before had I ever wished them to be unending?
What if Othello could trace me to this cell? ... He'd lay hold of our
bald-headed editor who always comes singing into the office, and
would shake him by the slack of the trousers! Only for a while, only
for a little while I must hold out here...."
She set to work again. There were articles from Turkish newspapers
to be translated, Serbian reports to run through, Greek pamphlets to
be read. Everything had to be summarized as tersely as possible and
at topmost speed. She found the task interesting, for she knew the
countries well. Certain names would provoke her to laughter, for
though they now stormed through a troubled Europe as signatures to
telegrams, a year ago they were absolutely unknown save in the
locality where their bearers dwelt; the names of petty lawyers,
nervous young deputies, and the like. On the flowery island
confronting Pallanza, she had dreamed away her days in blissful
ignorance of events in the world without, events which her
contemporaries in self-complacent optimism chose to call "historical."
"Fräulein Linke!"
Diana answered promptly.
"Yes, Herr Larisch."
"Have you any Belgrade left? We want another twenty lines of
Belgrade stuff for tonight."
The owner of the voice now appeared in the doorway. The man was big
and shapeless, wore his pince-nez astride a thick nose. His left
hand was in his trouser pocket and was for ever fidgeting with the
contents, while with his right he pulled the collar away from his
neck as if to give himself more breathing space.
"Herr Mailuft has of course gone to sleep at the vital moment, and
yet he's well paid and for a year and a half has had nothing to do
but run up expenses! That comes of engaging literary men to do
journalistic work. Do you know what the fellow did the day the
prince was hunted out of Albania? He sent a long wire describing a
sunset over the mountains of Epirus!"
Diana laughed. The speaker, who was delighted at her appreciation of
his wit, continued:
"You may well laugh. They just sink into places others have prepared
for them, and have no responsibilities. If their work is not done
one day they can just as well do it the next. I wouldn't mind taking
on a job like that.--How do you come to know all their mad tongues,
Fräulein? Have you ever been there? A pretty sort of amusement.
What are those people to us, I should like to know. It's the
diplomats' fault when poor innocent nations are involved in such a
crisis."
By now he had got into his stride, and had no difficulty in pursuing
his discourse.
"The reason is obvious. Not until there is a parliamentary
government which has assumed control over ministers of State and
diplomatists, not until the responsibility of such persons to the
duly elected representatives of the people has been enforced by a
written constitution..."
"No disquisitions here, Larisch; that is the chief's prerogative.
Here's the stuff for your evening edition, just count the words, I
must see where it is best to break off...."
Larisch, crestfallen, withdrew to his own place in the neighbouring
room, thus making way for the newcomer who stepped over to the
writing-table where Diana was at work, and sat down opposite her.
His mocking eyes twinkled at her from behind gold-rimmed spectacles,
yet Diana could detect an underlying melancholy which may have been
due to disappointment at lack of recognition for his talents. He
looked at her placidly and kindly, folded his hands on the table, and
said:
"Do you think Larisch is right?" Without waiting for an answer, he
continued to hold forth in the way natural to those who have the gift
of words and like to hear the sound of their own voices. "As if it
were not thus in every country, as if, indeed, it were not highly
desirable that the few should decide the fate of millions! As if,
for instance, you, my good Larisch," he turned round and raised his
voice, quite disregarding the fact that his words could be heard by
the whole office, "as if you could sit there in peace and quiet were
it not that our honoured father, the blessings of Allah be on him,
pays you a monthly wage of nine hundred marks in beautiful blue
bank-notes counted out to you by a grim-visaged Cerberus at the cash
desk, not to mention pension insurance, Christmas bonuses, and all
the rest...."
"Why are you inditing rhapsodies in terms of contracts?" cried the
oily voice from the next room. "Besides, unless I am well paid for
it, how can I sub-edit the precious material sent in by our worthy
chief?" He modified his voice as he came in with the papers. "It's
poor stuff again today. Not infrequently--what is it Horace
says?--'dormitat Homerus'! 'Thoughts!' said Socrates. 'Thoughts,
Gentlemen, if you please!' exclaimed Lassalle. A polished style is
not enough to get us out of this coil. When I recall the happy days
in which straightforward German was the fashion here! One had not
then to overhaul every sentence in order to see whether Nietzsche
might not have expressed the news-item more pithily. We're too
refined nowadays, old chap...."
He suddenly cut short his eloquence. Scherer, the owner of the
paper, stood on the threshold. The advent of this little god
almighty before whom even the editor, according to Larisch's
mythological hierarchy, was but as Mercury to Jupiter, had become so
rare an occurrence that when he did appear his presence caused no
small amount of perturbation. Scherer, the financier and head of the
great publishing house, was still a comparatively young man. He was
the son of the founder (God rest his soul) of this international
journal; but there was no trace in him of the humble origin of his
forbears, nor, indeed, could one detect any sign of degeneracy in
him. He combined the maturity of a carefully trained successor with
the reposeful qualities of the democrat of the second generation, and
he clothed his whole being with so earnest a philosophical outlook
that he was bound to attract the mistrust of every circle he came
into contact with either in the realm of business or in the realm of
thought.
The two male subordinates stood to attention as the big man entered,
but Diana kept her seat and analysed his character by the mode of his
entry. She looked him squarely in the face, undismayed by his
prestige. His eyes were dark, and it seemed to her that they were
out of place in their blond setting behind the horn spectacles. Or
did they, perhaps, betoken a certain unrest in this head which seemed
cast in metal, and over which an artificial constraint of silence had
been imposed? Diana was quite unaware that she was gazing at him
with as much concentration as a playgoer looking at an actor through
opera glasses. The chief noticed her scrutiny, and thought:
"That's no ordinary secretary."
"Are you the one," he continued aloud, "who sent in this detailed
statement, or, rather, this summary, yesterday?"
The two men withdrew, and closed the door with a great deal of noise
as much as to say that they had not the slightest interest in what
was to follow. Diana nodded. As she recognized her own handwriting
the blood crept slowly upward into her face until she was blushing
all over. Meanwhile, she was thinking:
"A metallic voice. I've no liking for tenors as a rule, but the
voice suits the man...."
"It's very good, Fräulein..."
He waited for her to help him out with the name.
"Linke," said Diana, as if she had never been called anything else.
"Fräulein Linke, excellent. My name is Scherer. Were you ever in
the Balkans? Correspondent?" He took the chair on the opposite side
of the writing-table.
"I've not as yet done any newspaper work. I was travelling."
He looked at her more attentively, and thought:
"Proud. She says: 'Not as yet.' Avoids the word 'never'--which
might serve her very well, for she must know that this first essay of
hers has struck me very favourably."
Slowly, he set about questioning her, testing her:
"You were travelling?"
"Yes."
She threw the syllable into the air, raising her chin in the act and
thus avoiding his scrutiny. The word rang forth with bell-like
purity, shutting the door upon further questions; it verged on
rebuff; was self-confident, full of a sense of responsibility,
determined. A second or two passed while she felt his analytical
gaze upon her. Then the clear-toned voice was saying;
"They told me that a woman had put this report together.... There's
a good deal of noise here.... You are not as a matter of fact
engaged to do editorial work. I'll find you an office over in the
firm.... Will you step across with me?..."
They rose. Diana gathered her papers together. He did not attempt
to help her. Arrived at the door, he made an almost imperceptible
movement to allow her to pass out first.
The whole office was agog. The two eavesdroppers were immediately
surrounded by an inquisitive crowd. It never entered any of their
heads that Scherer had come to make gallant overtures--they knew him
too well! Within their knowledge, there had never been the faintest
rumour of such things in his connexion. What could he be after? Who
was this new employee?
"What did he say?"--"What did she say?"--came from three or four
typists simultaneously. Larisch answered evasively.
"Fish and find out, girls! Do you want a share of the good luck?
You need only come to my department!"
"Your department? Oh, Herr Larisch!"