Myra was glad to get out on the street. The keen east wind and the rain mixed with hail cut her face and felt good to her. She walked so fast that Gisela found it too difficult to keep up.
She felt as if she were being grievously insulted on all sides, and as if she might avenge herself by letting the rain lash her as she hurried through the cold dark night.
* * *
Myra and Eccarius walked down a street that echoed with the cold and was feathered with a fine frost.
“Did you wonder,” asked Eccarius, “why I spoke so ostentatiously about my friends at the table? It was because I have had a little dispute with Miss Peters. Miss Peters is really a splendid person, but somewhat strict in her judgments. Or I should rather say, is somewhat limited in her understanding of things. What she doesn’t understand she tosses all together into one pot and damns eternally. And among such understandable things, of course, is included a friendship like that of Sophie and Nora. She flung about words like abnormal and perverse and unnatural, and intimated that it was no place for you!”
“For me?” Myra was astonished. “How on earth did you come to be talking of me?”
“To be quite frank, we began with you,” Eccarius explained with a laugh that pleaded for forgiveness. “Yes, yes, one never knows how important one is to others or what interesting conversation one makes. Seriously, we never know who our enemies are or who is going to pick us to pieces next. Conversely, we don’t know our friends either or who is looking out for our weal and woe.
“Miss Peters has a heart of gold and she is concerned about you. She was explaining to me today that it is my duty to open your eyes for you. But if I were to open your eyes about Sophie and Nora, with the best will in the world I could only tell you that they are splendid people.”
“Nora told me recently that she had known you a long time,” said Myra with a gently insistent effort to turn the conversation from herself.
“A very long time.” She sighed with relief as Eccarius changed the subject. “I knew her when she was still the beautiful Nora Zeyern, the most popular of dancers, the most daring of riders! She had hundreds of suitors, and, out of those hundreds, of course, she had to pick Hersfeld!”
He stopped for a moment with a bitter laugh.
“He was diseased, wasn’t he?” asked Myra.
“Oh, if you know that much, there’s no indiscretion in my telling you more. He was ‘cured’ so-called, as he used proudly to relate to anyone who wanted or did not want to listen to him. But not to his wife and her family.”
“Hersfeld was an oldest son and he wanted an heir. And an heir did arrive, but it was covered with pimples from the day it was born. What that most maternal of women suffered with that child can never be told. And all of us, his so-called friends, we looked at the child and looked at one another and knew that it would never be anything else but a child. But not one of us dared say a word to the young mother. Meanwhile she hoped and hoped and cherished the unhappy little worm, rejoicing at the tiniest sign of progress. There wasn’t much progress to rejoice at.
“At an age when other children were running around, shouting and crowing, he would lie on his pillow, hardly turning his head when someone shook something bright before his eyes. ‘He’ll be a thinker,’ Nora said then, and smiled, a heart-rending smile. But when at four years he could not speak a word, and would merely utter an incoherent babble, she hid him and hid herself from the world. She never left her own house, she received no one. She shut herself and her child in the most impenetrable solitude. She still cherished him, played with him, strove tirelessly and futilely to make something human out of him.
“But Mr. Hersfeld needed an heir. In another six months, the unhappy woman was once more in hope—Oh, God, she really did hope.
“At this point a friendly doctor took the matter in hand. That is to say, he let fall a careless, but honestly indignant word about the irresponsibility of bringing babies into the world. And when she questioned him and would not let him go, he asked in great astonishment if she really did not know what was wrong with her child. And since she did not, he told her. Certainly he was entirely within his rights in doing so. But he reproached himself bitterly afterwards. For that very day Nora was hurt by a fall from a hay-loft, and suffered such severe internal injuries that she was never well again. Whereupon Hersfeld procured a divorce!”
“Is he still alive?” asked Myra.
“Why? You made a face when you asked me that as though you intended to kill him if he were. But you can rest easy—he is dead. He came to quite a dramatic end, or rather, his end had quite a dramatic beginning. Imagine, that man intended to marry a second time after he divorced Nora! A beautiful innocent young girl from one of the best families. You have no idea what qualms of conscience Nora suffered at that time. She knew the bride, she knew her parents, and she knew particularly Hersfeld, her former husband. But despite the fact that she knew him so well, she must still have loved him. Somewhere in the innermost recesses of her heart were still the ruins of a strong passion. And it seemed a crime to her to accuse the man. Besides, everybody would have called it an act of petty revenge. On the other hand, it would be a far greater crime to let the poor girl make such a marriage out of ignorance.”
“Good God!” said Myra, “did she do it?”
“Nora was so helpless, she could scarcely move, and the situation was further complicated by the fact that the girl had already been in love with Hersfeld while he was married, and regarded his wife, if not hostilely, at least with suspicion. Nora has often told me that in her desperate dilemma she used to pray for a miracle.
“And the miracle happened. The wedding did not take place—the bridegroom did not appear. When they went to fetch him, he hid himself in the stable and began shooting with his revolver. At last he was overpowered and taken to an institution. He lived a few months longer subject to delusions of persecution and raving madness. Then he died. Softening of the brain. When the cause of his death became known, one of his former cronies observed that it was the first time anyone suspected Hersfeld of having a brain.”
They walked on a while in silence, each wrapped in his own thoughts.
Then Eccarius looked up with sudden resolution. Once more his face was irradiated by that fugitive, friendly smile.
“But you have got me off my subject very insidiously. I’ve told you a long story, but not a word about what I was instructed to tell you. And not only instructed, what I want to tell you of my own free will....”
“Must you?” asked Myra with imploring eyes. “Do you really believe there is anything you can tell me? I know that you mean well by me, and I am grateful to you for it. But I feel so strongly—perhaps because I am so young and have just come of age—that only I can help myself and that I must help myself. I know that I will not always find the best and the shortest way, and I haven’t even any goal, or only insofar as it may be a goal to want to know life whole, as far as it is possible for a woman to do so, its light and its shadowy sides, its merits and demerits. Just as one gets to know a person—whom one loves!”
“If you love life,” said Eccarius with an accommodating persistence, “you must approach it very discreetly. And if you have no goal, or only the desire to see as much as possible in the paths of your own selecting, then you should be careful not to end up in a blind alley from which there is no escape. Don’t be angry with me, but I have been guilty of watching you on the quiet. I’ve seen you twice a day at least in the last two months. In the course of the years I have acquired some little knowledge of people, and the impression you make is not that of a person who loves life, but of one who is not afraid of death.”
Myra was already ringing the door-bell, and she turned to him.
“Is that a contradiction? Can’t one do both—love life and not be afraid of death? Perhaps they belong together. I will make it my motto and write it large over all my days and ways—‘Love life and be not afraid of death.’”
“I know a still better motto,” said Eccarius, “it is possible to turn the sentence about. Then I will make it my motto.”
The maid opened the door. To Myra’s questioning glance Eccarius shook his head slightly.
“Some other time.”
* * *
They were sitting together in the early twilight of a winter’s day, Nora, Sophie, Eccarius and Myra. It was already dark in the room so that it was no longer possible to distinguish the features of the person sitting next one. But nobody wanted the light.
Myra had asked after John. And Sophie told her with anger and perturbation that he was the victim of some very hateful gossip. Someone had informed his friend, the fat old Drencker, in a very ugly way, that his money was making it possible for young Kraft to pursue his studies, or rather that Will Kraft was squandering his, Drencker’s, money at cards and on women.
Nora had defended John. Even though she saw him in no very transfiguring light, and his relationship with Drencker was always incomprehensible and painful to her, she had never ceased to believe that his friendship for Will Kraft was an entirely ideal infatuation.
“And suppose it weren’t!” said Sophie stubbornly. “Whenever a human bargain is struck the buyer is to blame. The person who sells himself is always in extremity. And it is bad enough that it is possible for a rich swine like him to buy a share in a human creature. His demand to have him wholly and solely to himself is insolence!”
“Every transaction must be honest!” said Eccarius in his gentle, reflective way.
“No,” Sophie became excited. “Whoever buys a human being with his filthy money for the gratification of his base little lusts ought to be deceived. There ought to be things that cannot be bought, that really cannot be bought, whether it’s love of honor or fame or talent or nobility—the buyer is always the first on the scene, thumping his money-bags and commanding, ‘I want that, do this for me, I can pay.’ It is not until then that the commodity appears. Do you suppose that the idea would ever enter the head of a poor musician to offer his songs, the most precious things he possesses, to a rich money-grubber so that they may appear under the latter’s name? No, that idea could flower only in the mind of a rich money-grubber.
“I know many such cases—from the most innocent beginnings when the well-fed son of a middle class father has his poor, but talented school-mate compose his love letters for him for a handful of cigarettes—to those first nights at the opera when a gentleman takes his bows as the composer who has never written a line of music, and couldn’t write one. Ah, the world is a rather disgusting place! One can only be happy by having as little to do with it as possible. We sit here on our island, eh, Norina? And many as are the ships that touch here, they all voyage on again. No one may settle on our domain. For the rest, all I have to say is, that Drencker should be happy that his fate is not that of the poor fellow who shot himself a week ago because a gang of extortioners were slowly throttling him, and the unhappy man preferred to be dead than always living in the shadow of the jail.”
Eccarius shook his head. “To think that this medieval punishment still exists!”
“But there must be some protection for children and people not yet of age,” Nora declared, “even when those minors happen to be over twenty-one. There is a very true saying that where there is no accuser, there is no judge. When two mature people live with one another, it is no more the concern of any official body than is the private life of a married couple. Unfortunately, I must say, in most cases. Where there is punishment, there must first have been accusation, and where someone accuses, he must first feel that he has suffered an injustice.”
“Paragraph one hundred and sixty-five is a cloak for scoundrels and extortioners,” Eccarius objected more vehemently than was his wont, “and no protection at all for children of whatever age. Children endure in silence and make no accusations. When a case does come to light, then the world cries out in indignation. But there are thousands of cases of such crimes committed against children which never see the light of day.”
“That can’t be possible,” said Sophie, her voice vibrant with emotion. “In the whole world there cannot be a thousand monsters to whom a child is not something sacred.”
Eccarius laughed, a harsh, lifeless laugh.
“I will describe to you one case, one out of thousands. One case out of the thousands where the criminal goes unapprehended. I knew a family, a well-to-do and respected family, clever, kindly parents, who had four healthy, talented children—boys. The mother could not take care of the needs of four growing boys unassisted, besides it would not have been the proper thing to do, so they hired a maid for the lads. A half-educated person, as is customary, with an agreeable exterior, good references and all possible recommendations. This maid delighted in nothing more than to inform the boys of matters against which they had been carefully guarded. The unhappy children were thus completely under her thumb. They knew that they were doing forbidden things. They were tangled up in the terrible concept of ‘sin’ and prayed to God for succor. The infamous woman had an inexhaustible imagination and constantly invented new devices to whip up the resisting and jaded children. They became more and more miserable. Everything possible was done for them, they were sent to expensive baths—accompanied, of course, by their maid. From time to time, one of the boys would resolve to confess everything to his mother—but he got no farther than the resolve. Such things were too frightful to confess to the gentlest of mothers. Perhaps you can imagine what kind of ‘childhood’ such children enjoyed. Exhausted in body and soul, disinclined to play or work, in spite of their talents hardly able to pass through school, living in everlasting fear of discovery, of punishment, of sickness, of Hell—and never able to withstand their vices, slinking more and more like shadows through the days, living only in the perilous practices of the night.
“When the maid left to continue her work in another family, it was too late. Not one of the four recovered. One shot himself the night after his marriage. The second remained an unhappy monomaniac and after a complete nervous break-down had to be taken to a sanitarium. The two youngest turned their backs on everything that suggested Eros. One, an ascetic, took refuge in a monastery. The other dragged his way through a drab and joyless world, shrinking from all human companionship. The woman is probably an esteemed children’s maid to this very day, under whose prudent care more charges are being ruined.”
Nobody said anything. The darkness had slowly filled the whole room, leaving the windows hardly more than pale gray oblongs.
“Oh,” said Sophie. Myra seemed to hear her voice trembling with angry tears, and seemed to feel her clench her fist. “She ought to be hanged!”
“Then you’d have to hang a great many people,” said Eccarius quietly.
Again the heavy silence weighed on them.
There was a knock, somebody opened the door. A ray of light stabbed the darkness, a voice tore the silence.
“Here is the newspaper,” said the maid, stopping in surprise at the door. “Shall I turn on the lights, madame?”
“Yes, do, Martha.”
The light was like a trumpet blast. They all bowed their heads to escape its glare, knitting their brows and blinking their eyes.
None of them had the courage to look at the others. Sophie took the paper from the maid and began to read aloud, the most indifferent things in the world, things that could interest nobody. But all of them feigned interest, and everybody had something to say, so that a lively conversation ensued, made up entirely of trifling remarks.
Eccarius left before the conversation had died down again.
They continued to speak of various things after he was gone. But they seemed no longer able to sustain an affectedly frivolous conversation. Sophie had a saving idea. She proposed a game of scat so that they could sit together for a little longer and have something to occupy their minds.
But suddenly, in the middle of the game, she let the hand holding her cards sink to the table.
“He has one brother in the insane asylum,” she said as if she had been thinking of nothing else all the while.
“I know,” said Nora just as seriously. “And another in a monastery.”