She shivered as though a passing chill went through her and seemed to
be waking slowly from her trance. Her eyes did not release me. Suddenly
she became still more sinister.
“If I were wise, I shouldn’t tell you. But I won’t be wise, Harry, not
for this time. I’ll be just the opposite. So now mind what I say! You
will hear it and forget it again. You will laugh over it, and you will
weep over it. So look out! I am going to play with you for life and
death, little brother, and before we begin the game I’m going to lay my
cards on the table.”
How beautiful she looked, how unearthly, when she said that! Cool and
clear, there swam in her eyes a conscious sadness. These eyes of hers
seemed to have suffered all imaginable suffering and to have acquiesced
in it. Her lips spoke with difficulty and as though something hindered
them, as though a keen frost had numbed her face; but between her
lips at the corners of her mouth where the tip of her tongue showed
at rare intervals, there was but sweet sensuality and inward delight
that contradicted the expression of her face and the tone of her voice.
A short lock hung down over the smooth expanse of her forehead, and
from this corner of her forehead whence fell the lock of hair, her
boyishness welled up from time to time like a breath of life and cast
the spell of an hermaphrodite. I listened with an eager anxiety and yet
as though dazed and only half aware.
“You like me,” she went on, “for the reason I said before, because
I have broken through your isolation. I have caught you from the
very gates of hell and wakened you to new life. But I want more from
you--much more. I want to make you in love with me. No, don’t interrupt
me. Let me speak. You like me very much. I can see that. And you’re
grateful to me. But you’re not in love with me. I mean to make you fall
in love with me, and it is part of my calling. It is my living to be
able to make men fall in love with me. But mind this, I don’t do it
because I find you exactly captivating. I’m as little in love with you
as you with me. But I need you as you do me. You need me now, for the
moment, because you’re desperate. You’re dying just for the lack of a
push to throw you into the water and bring you to life again. You need
me to teach you to dance and to laugh and to live. But I need you, not
to-day--later, for something very important and beautiful too. When you
are in love with me I will give you my last command and you will obey
it, and it will be the better for both of us.”
She pulled one of the brown and purple green-veined orchids up a
little in the glass and bending over stared a moment at the bloom.
“You won’t find it easy, but you will do it. You will carry out my
command and--kill me. There--ask no more.”
When she came to the end her eyes were still on the orchid, and her
face relaxed, losing its strain like a flower-bud unfolding its petals.
In an instant there was an enchanting smile on her lips while her eyes
for a moment were still fixed and spell-bound. Then she gave a shake
of her head with its little boyish lock, took a sip of water, and
realising of a sudden that we were at a meal fell to eating again with
appetite and enjoyment.
I had heard her uncanny communication clearly word for word. I had even
guessed what her last command was before she said it and was horrified
no longer. All that she said sounded as convincing to me as a decree of
fate. I accepted it without protest. And yet in spite of the terrifying
seriousness with which she had spoken I did not take it all as fully
real and serious. While part of my soul drank in her words and believed
in them, another part appeased me with a nod and took note that Hermine
too, for all her wisdom and health and assurance, had her fantasies and
twilight states. Scarcely was her last word spoken before a layer of
unreality and ineffectuality settled over the whole scene.
All the same I could not get back to realities and probabilities with
the same lightness as Hermine.
“And so I shall kill you one day?” I asked, still half in a dream while
she laughed, and attacked her fowl with great relish.
“Of course,” she nodded lightly. “Enough of that. It is time to eat.
Harry, be an angel and order me a little more salad. Haven’t you any
appetite? It seems to me you’ve still to learn all the things that
come naturally to other people, even the pleasure of eating. So look,
my boy, I must tell you that this is the celebration of the duck, and
when you pick the tender flesh from the bone it’s a festal occasion and
you must be just as eager and glad at heart and delighted as a lover
when he unhooks his lady-love for the first time. Don’t you understand?
Oh, you’re a sheep! Are you ready? I’m going to give you a piece off
the little bone. So open your mouth. Oh, what a fright you are! There
he goes, squinting round the room in case any one sees him taking a
bite from my fork. Don’t be afraid, you prodigal son, I won’t make a
scandal. But it’s a poor fellow who can’t take his pleasure without
asking other people’s permission.”
The scene that had gone before became more and more unreal. I was less
and less able to believe that these were the same eyes that a moment
before had been fixed in a dread obsession. But in this Hermine was
like life itself, one moment succeeding to the next and not one to be
foreseen. Now she was eating, and the duck and the salad, the sweet and
the liqueur were the important thing, and each time the plates were
changed a new chapter began. Yet though she played at being a child she
had seen through me completely, and though she made me her pupil there
and then in the game of living for each fleeting moment, she seemed to
know more of life than is known to the wisest of the wise. It might
be the highest wisdom or the merest artlessness. It is certain in any
case that life is quite disarmed by the gift to live so entirely in the
present, to treasure with such eager care every flower by the wayside
and the light that plays on every passing moment. Was I to believe that
this happy child with her hearty appetite and the air of a gourmet was
at the same time a victim of hysterical visions who wished to die? or
a careful calculating woman who, unmoved herself, had the conscious
intention of making me her lover and her slave? I could not believe it.
No, her surrender to the moment was so simple and complete that the
fleeting shadows and agitation to the very depths of the soul came to
her no less than every pleasurable impulse and were lived as fully.
Though I saw Hermine only for the second time that day, she knew
everything about me and it seemed to me quite impossible that I
could ever have a secret from her. Perhaps she might not understand
everything of my spiritual life, might not perhaps follow me in my
relation to music, to Goethe, to Novalis or Baudelaire. This too,
however, was open to question. Probably it would give her as little
trouble as the rest. And anyway, what was there left of my spiritual
life? Hadn’t all that gone to atoms and lost its meaning? As for the
rest, my more personal problems and concerns, I had no doubt that she
would understand them all. I should very soon be talking to her about
the Steppenwolf and the treatise and all the rest of it, though till
now it had existed for myself alone and never been mentioned to a
single soul. Indeed, I could not resist the temptation of beginning
forthwith.
“Hermine,” I said, “an extraordinary thing happened to me the other
day. An unknown man gave me a little book, the sort of thing you’d buy
at a Fair, and inside I found my whole story and everything about me.
Rather remarkable, don’t you think?”
“What was it called,” she asked lightly.
“Treatise on the Steppenwolf!”
“Oh, ‘Steppenwolf’ is magnificent! And are you the Steppenwolf? Is that
meant for you?”
“Yes, it’s me. I am one who is half-wolf and half-man, or thinks
himself so at least.”
She made no answer. She gave me a searching look in the eyes, then
looked at my hands, and for a moment her face and expression had that
deep seriousness and sinister passion of a few minutes before. Making
a guess at her thoughts I felt she was wondering whether I were wolf
enough to carry out her last command.
“That is, of course, your own fanciful idea,” she said, becoming serene
once more, “or a poetical one, if you like. But there’s something in
it. You’re no wolf to-day, but the other day when you came in as if you
had fallen from the moon there was really something of the beast about
you. It is just what struck me at the time.”
She broke off as though surprised by a sudden idea.
“How absurd those words are, such as beast and beast of prey. One
should not speak of animals in that way. They may be terrible
sometimes, but they’re much more right than men.”
“How do you mean--right?”
“Well, look at an animal, a cat, a dog, or a bird, or one of those
beautiful great beasts in the Zoo, a puma or a giraffe. You can’t help
seeing that all of them are right. They’re never in any embarrassment.
They always know what to do and how to behave themselves. They don’t
flatter and they don’t intrude. They don’t pretend. They are as they
are, like stones or flowers or stars in the sky. Don’t you agree?”