CHAPTER IV
August Kellermann passed for an artist of considerable reputation, though his pictures did not sell. He was a sharp-witted, sharp-tongued, good-natured person in the middle of the thirties, well-versed in all the vices of the capital. He had a sandy Rubens beard, prominent little eyes, with an eternal weariness in them as if he had never been in bed the night before.
He rented a studio that had once been a photographer's. It was of huge dimensions, like a magnified glass case. He had draped the roof, as a protection from glare and heat, with Turkish rugs propped by poles, giving his studio the air of a Bedouin's tent.
When Lilly stepped out of the dim twilight of the anteroom into the garish brilliance of the studio, which was so lofty it seemed part of the sky, she found him in a plum-coloured overall, with green down-at-heel slippers over which his red plaid socks hung in rucks, seated on the floor, beside an Oriental coffee apparatus, stirring an extinguished spirit-lamp.
"Good Lord!" he exclaimed, without getting up to return her greeting; "this is a visit worth having."
Lilly turned to go away again, and he immediately sprang to his feet, pulled up his trousers, and with a shrug of his shoulders dusted a bamboo chair with his sleeve.
"Sit down, my child. Though I have nearly given up painting for pottery, and couldn't make use of Helen of Troy herself as a model, I am not going to let you slip through my fingers."
Lilly handed him her benefactor's letter of introduction, and pointed out his mistake. "Now he'll change his behaviour," she thought. But nothing of the sort happened.
"What a bore!" he said, scratching his head. "Most noble of women, why are you so beautiful? Ex-general's wife!"--here she was, labelled again--"I should have expected eye-glasses and pimples, and you come along!"
"You probably know my reasons for coming to you?" asked Lilly, too downhearted to resent his manner.
He clapped his fleshy hand to his forehead.
"Let me see! Let me see! The worthy Dehnicke, who is my dry-bread giver--'dry' referring to giver as well as bread--did, I think, mention the matter to me a day or two ago; but I suffer from a congenital dulness of comprehension, perhaps you will kindly ... er ...?"
Lilly explained what she wanted, and he burst into uncontrollable laughter.
"Yes, my fair noblewoman, I'll give you the benefit of my instruction--and would do it, even if you hadn't entered the world like Venus! Such a chance doesn't come in my way every day. I promise to charm sunsets out of the sky and perpetrate them on glass for you in hues so vivid that you'll never care to look a raspberry in the face again."
Lilly was quite aware that if she had stood on her dignity as "noblewoman" she would have at once left the studio. But her desire to turn his readiness to teach her to account was too strong. She could not sacrifice the opportunity so carefully obtained.
"I wonder what Anna von Schwertfeger would say?" she thought. And then, with a toss of her head, she said:
"There are certain preliminaries to be arranged before we go on. First, I wish to know distinctly what your terms are, so that I may make up my mind whether I can afford your services."
He looked a little dashed, and said that he supposed Herr Dehnicke would arrange the matter.
"Herr Dehnicke has nothing at all to do with my financial affairs," she replied. "Should there be any misunderstanding on this point ..." She took up her sunshade; her gloves were already on.
"Now, now, don't be so hasty," he said; and after reflecting a few moments he, named a charge of five marks for the morning's lesson.
"My ruby ring will just do it," Lilly thought, and agreed to the sum.
"Well," he said, "I am curious as to the other preliminaries."
"It's only this. I wish to be treated like a lady."
"Ah, indeed! I'm not refined enough for you, eh? But I tell you I can be as much as you like. I have six degrees of refinement, so you've only got to choose: extra refined, super-refined, highly refined, medium refined, unrefined, and beastly vulgar. Now take your choice."
Lilly was so delighted with this pleasantry and others of the same sort, that she yielded her claims to consideration as a grande dame, and was content to be on terms of "hail fellow, well met" with him so long as he didn't pay compliments. However, her reminder was not without effect, and when she came again the next day he had even put on a pair of boots.
On the whole, he proved to be an intelligent and kindly master, who did not expect too great things of his pupil; and took an encouraging interest in her childish ambition. He contrived a medium out of gelatine especially for her work, which threw up the brilliancy of the transparent colouring, and he was indefatigable in suggesting new combinations.
"I'll make you half a dozen blood-red sunsets," he said, "that will knock all competitors out of the field, including that unconscionable old lady who commits the most glaring impertinences. I mean, of course. Dame Nature."
While she splashed colour on a window-pane he stood smoking Turkish tobacco and chewing ginger before one of the modelling easels that filled the middle of the studio. Here he "pottered" away, as he expressed it, at his modelling in bronze. For the most part it was human figure that he created out of "the depths of his soul," half or three parts life-size: armoured knights with banners, girls in old German dress with problematically outstretched arms, allegorical female forms likewise employed, heralds trumpeting, and now and again impressionist nudity, long, too-slim limbs, and nixie bodies wriggling off into mermaids' tails; ash-trays, finger-bowls, and other utilitarian articles. And all the time there hung or leaned against the walls, covered with dust, half-finished pictures and sketches of daring originality and riotous delight in colour, every one stamped with unpremeditated power and joyous ease in execution. There was a half-ruined chapel in a tropical forest, on the high altar of which a herd of monkeys were gambolling; in a monotonous desert background a group of stubborn-eyed camels drew round the dead body of a lion, sniffing it; best of all was the nude figure of a woman loaded with chains, her white limbs shining out in relief from a rugged barren rock, and round her head swooping a horde of red-eyed vultures. There was much else that showed restrained strength and wealth of imagination; but the woman in chains remained Lilly's favourite.
One day she ventured to ask her master why he left all these things unfinished, instead of working them up for exhibitions.
"Because I have to turn out pot-boilers, you unsuspecting angel," he replied, laughing, and slapped a clod of wet clay against the leg of the allegorical lady whom he had in hand; "because the world wants lamp-stands and flower-vases, but no immortal beauty, with mother-wit inside her body to boot; ... because there are manufacturers of imitation bronze wares who keep you from the workhouse; and because I am a chap with sound teeth who wants a few crusts of life to masticate after twenty years of fasting, and will hunt for once with the worshippers of Dionysus. Can you, with your five-o'clock tea soul, grasp that ...?"
"But could you not at least finish the woman with the chains?" she urged.
He broke into a shrill laugh of self-contempt, and threw himself full length on the fur-covered couch which stood in the most shadowed corner of the glass-walled room. Then he sprang up again and offered Lilly ginger out of the pot he always kept handy.
She thanked him and pressed for an answer to her question.
"Dear God! Have you no conception of how heavily loaded everyone is in this world with his own chains? Divine fire would have to descend from heaven and melt my handcuffs or the goddess herself must appear in the flesh, throw her clothes on that chair, and say, 'Here I am, dear sir. This is the body born from the foam.... Now, fire away; look and paint your fill.'"
He had stopped in front of her, chewing ginger, and raised his clasped hands to her in an attitude of petition.
"How funny you are!" she said in confusion. "What does it concern me?"
"I am not going to say," he said. "I am by a long way too damnably full of respect.... But if one day my chain-loaded beauty is sick of crying to be set free--she cries to be set free day and night, and often keeps me awake--then maybe a miracle will come to pass and someone who is now flushing up to her eyes will come and----"
"I think we had better go on with our work," Lilly cut him short.
From that day she was careful to keep off the subject of the picture, and she did not dare so much as to glance across at it if Herr Kellermann was looking; but, all the same, he made constant allusions to his presumptuous idea, which seemed to obsess him, and at last Lilly had to forbid him to mention it.
Her enthusiasm for her work grew day by day. She was not content with the lessons in the studio, she practised at home, and when she tried her newly acquired talent on the glass plaques she had purchased, the results were, both in her own and Frau Laue's opinion, highly creditable. The sunsets ran blood-red over cornflower blue hills, and in the foreground stood dark silent primæval forests of grass and ferns, shading huts which had been built and brilliantly illuminated apparently by a prehistoric race of men.
She had never shown any of her performances to her master, for he had declared that he could not on principle tolerate such paste-and-scissors atrocities. But Herr Dehnicke would have been interested, she was sure, in her progress, and she would dearly have loved to show him her works of art.
Unfortunately, since his letter of introduction to Herr Kellermann she had heard no more from him, and she felt a little piqued at being so easily forgotten.
One day Herr Kellermann said suddenly: "By Jove! The bronze business has begun to boom all at once. Our Herr Dehnicke keeps me at it with orders. He's up here nearly every day to see how things are getting on."
Something in his manner as he said this, with his eyes blinking at her, made Lilly redden and feel uncomfortable, though it filled her at the same time with a quiet satisfaction. And when at last the seven pairs of glass plaques were finished, she was so brimming over with pride in them that she couldn't keep it all to herself, and boldly wrote him a note on her superb ivory paper, with the seven-pointed gold coronet, of which she had about twenty sheets left. Would he, she wrote, come next Sunday afternoon, as he had been so good as to take an interest in her work?
An answer came at once. Nothing could have given him greater pleasure than her kind letter; he had been longing to come and see her, and he hoped that she wouldn't doubt that it was only out of regard for her wishes that he had kept away.
On the appointed Sunday afternoon he appeared. Lilly arranged a plant of gladiolas in the punch-bowl, and pink carnations round the box containing the specimen lamp-shade. Fastened against the windows by ribbon bows hung the glorious sunsets like conflagrations, casting a magic glow over the room and the tawdry treasures which Frau Laue had preserved with her own character from "better times." Lilly presented a gay and charming appearance in the white lace blouse washed and ironed by her own hands; and when she went to receive her guest, who stood at the door in patent-leather boots, with a top-hat in his hand, she was quite the self-possessed, condescending, unapproachable fine lady who had entered his office a few weeks before.
Her benefactor was all the more embarrassed. He sniffed the frowsy odour which reached Frau Laue's best room from the other part of the house, cast uneasy glances at the walls, and behaved altogether as if he were poaching on forbidden ground.
He could not express how happy he was that she had at last given him permission to call ... he had not wished to be intrusive ... he would have deferred coming still longer if her note had not set his mind at rest ... and so on. He repeated all he had said in his letter in a nervous, stumbling way, which was hardly in keeping with his elegant attire and naturally frigid manner.
She, on her side, thanked him in a friendly tone for all the favours he had done her, and she was sorry to have given him the trouble of coming to see her; and as she said all this she felt, against her will, quite the "Frau Generalin" doing the honours of her drawing-room with sociable courtesy.
By degrees she brought the conversation round to her work, deplored her artistic incompetence, and pointed to the sunsets glowing on the window-panes.
Herr Dehnicke sprang up, and after a moment's silent contemplation burst into raptures of enthusiasm, for each of which he had to draw fresh breath and repeat himself rather mechanically, while he maintained an awkward smile. But Lilly was far too delighted to suspect that his favourable criticism wasn't genuine. He asked if she had shown the transparencies to Herr Kellermann, She confessed that she had lacked the courage. "Besides, I wanted you to see them first," she said.
His eyes did her grateful homage as he remarked, "If you haven't yet done so, I strongly advise you to omit it altogether. The man, obliging as he seems, is really a mass of professional conceit, and he would probably ..."
He seemed afraid to say more.
Lilly plucked up courage to ask casually, as if it didn't matter much, whether he thought she would find purchasers for her work.
He was silent again, and scratched meditatively the place to which the left end of his moustache was glued. Then, putting his round smooth head very much on one side, he said, carefully weighing his words:
"You had much better, dear lady, entrust the sale of your stuff to me. You see, I have my customers, and I know what buying is. I might set your glass-work in bronze frames or something similar, and they would pass, doubtless, as goods of my own."
Gratitude bubbled up warmly within her.
"Oh, will you really do that?" she cried, grasping his hand. "I shall be very pleased to let you, till I have found customers for myself."
The pressure of her hand turned him scarlet to the roots of his hair.
"To achieve that," he said, looking the other way bashfully, "it is above all things necessary that the gracious baroness doesn't hesitate any longer to establish herself in a home that is worthy of her."
"I shall be only too glad," she replied merrily, "when I can afford it."
"It may be years before you can," he interposed.
"Well, I don't mind waiting years."
"Allow me," he stammered, "to remind you once more, that as an old and intimate friend of your fiancé, I am entitled----"
She drew herself up. "If my fiancé," she said, "was, or is ever likely to be, in a position to support me, I perhaps should not refuse; but as matters stand I can permit no one in the world, not even his dearest friend, to make me offers that can only humiliate me in the end."
She turned her face aside to hide how hurt she felt.
He instantly hung his head in penitence, nevertheless there was a gleam of triumph in his eyes.
It was then arranged that one of his vans should call the next day for the transparencies, and business thus being concluded, he begged modestly to be allowed to stay a few minutes longer. He would so enjoy a little chat about the absent friend; he had so few opportunities.
"I shall enjoy it too," Lilly responded, inviting him to sit down. "It's a great happiness for me to find someone who knows my fiancé."
The word "fiancé" now fell glibly from her lips as something quite natural. As the chance of his staying longer had been foreseen and provided for, she had only to ring, and Frau Laue appeared in the famous brown velvet gown with the black sequin square décolletage, which was now decorously filled in with one of Lilly's white silk fichus. She bore a tea-tray with two dainty cups of mocha coffee; and when presented to Herr Dehnicke she made a curtsey, which would have graced a ball at Prince Orloffski's. After she had added a few remarks about the great histrionic artists of the past and the photographs to which they had affixed their autographs at her special request, she retired, as it beseemed her to do.
Then Lilly displayed her charms as a hostess, and with the aroma of mocha coffee the spirit of "better days" pervaded everything.
Nearly a week later the post brought Frau Lilly Czepanek a money-order for two hundred and ten marks, from Richard Dehnicke, of the firm of Liebert & Dehnicke, metal-ware craftsmen, "Due for seven landscapes painted on glass, with dried flowers, sold at thirty marks apiece."
Thus the foundation of a future career seemed to be laid.
CHAPTER V
Bright times followed. With part of the sum she had earned, Lilly invested in new materials, and soon more sunsets flared behind woods of dried grass and flowers pasted on glass.
As she lay sleepless, through the hot summer nights, from overwork, she made plans of all the great things she would do when her art had conquered the world. She would have a workshop like Herr Dehnicke's, and employ a dozen women-hands with Frau Laue as forewoman. Then she would advertise for her lost father, and move her poor insane mother to an expensive private asylum.
She would, of course, provide for Walter too. Now that she had worked herself up into imagining herself his fiancée, it would be her duty, and she cheerfully took the responsibility on her shoulders. He must, however, first make some sign, or how was she to know where he was? She felt sure that one day, when he had no one to turn to, he would think of her, and find some way of communicating with her. Then out of her abundance she would send him money without stint, all that her art poured into her lap.
No, not all. She must think first of that great and sacred task which dominated her life with such a gigantic influence. Whether she traced her father or not, his work, his immortal masterpiece, must never be allowed to sink into oblivion. Awaiting its resurrection, the score of "The Song of Songs" still lay slumbering at the bottom of Lilly's locked box, but it slumbered not quite so dreamlessly as in past years. It began to be restive and to exhort, sobbing and humming an accompaniment to the day's work, breaking out in the night and at other times, when one least expected it, into harmonies and melodies.
From over the sunlit, cornflower blue hills it came, as if wafted by an evening breeze, "How beautiful are thy feet with shoes, O prince's daughter!" and from the dark interior of the mythical woods echoed snatches of song concerning the lily of the valleys and the rose of Sharon. It almost seemed as if the invisible inhabitants of those illuminated pasteboard cottages were singing, as evidence of the pleasant lives they led; and so one day would all the people of the earth enjoy those treasures of song, of which fate had appointed her guardian.
Everywhere she went, whatever she might be thinking of or doing, hope smiled and beckoned to her from all corners of the world. A new, more exalted and pure, life must be coming. That golden thread, which her poor mad mother had severed with the bread-knife, became again interwoven with an ambition to climb upwards, ever upwards, and with presentiments of some sacred blessing to be prayed and struggled for.
A few months more, and all might be accomplished; and on the top of this recovered happiness came another. Wonder upon wonder--her so-called future bridegroom suddenly gave a sign of life.
It was early in September, at about twelve, that Herr Dehnicke appeared unannounced at her door. As she had not quite finished dressing she was at first unwilling to admit him. But when he explained that his mission was urgent, she received him, in her peignoir, with a thousand apologies. He eyed her with shy admiration, and then drew a folio-shaped, strange-looking piece of paper out of his pocket, which purported to be a cheque drawn on the Lincoln and Ohio Bank for two thousand and odd marks.
"What am I to do with it?" Lilly asked.
"Read the letter, which accompanied it, addressed to me," he replied, unfolding a large sheet.
In the letter "Dear Sir" was informed that Mr. Walter von Prell had paid in five hundred dollars to his account, and wished the sum to be handed over to the "Baroness" Lilly von Mertzbach.
Lilly trembled with excitement. She paced up and down the room in a storm of emotion, pressing her handkerchief to her eyes. She had been planning to help him and now he helped her.
A sudden feeling of suspicion took possession of her. She stood still and looked at the cheque and then at Herr Dehnicke. Both stood silent.
"I must ask you to explain," she said at length.
"What is there to explain, gracious lady?" he answered. "I am only the middleman, or, if you like it better, the agent, in a little private business that concerns you and your betrothed alone."
"But why couldn't he give his address?" she exclaimed.
"It looks almost as if he wanted to remove all traces of himself," remarked Dehnicke.
It was all so romantic and adventurous and unlike Walter ... one didn't know what to think.
But there stood the name: "Baroness Lilly von Mertzbach." Walter was possibly ignorant of her having been obliged to renounce her married name. This pointed to the genuineness of the cheque.
Herr Dehnicke had inclined his head to the left side, as usual, and gazed at her with placid deference. He played the part of the middleman, and that was all.
"After this unexpected turn of events," he said in conclusion, "you will, I earnestly believe, no longer hesitate to return to the manner of life suited to your social status, and which is so requisite to the success of your work."
She shook her head, biting her Ups.
Thereupon he became authoritative, more so than she would have given such an exceedingly modest person credit for.
"You really must make the change," he urged her. "You must do it for his sake. I am, as it were, responsible. When he returns with the intention of marrying you, he must not find that you have become déclassée in his absence. As I say, I am responsible."
She begged to be allowed time to think it over.
Henceforth the thought of her distant lover ruled her destiny. What had before been a play of the imagination became almost stern reality. Not that she accepted the story unconditionally of his being at the back of the mysteriously sent cheque. On the contrary, she could not silence a voice that suggested someone might have tricked her, but she could not trust herself to make further inquiries, or to draw conclusions. She dreaded to think what would become of her if she lost the one friend on whom she could at present rely, and in order to dispel all doubts from her mind she worked more industriously than ever--nearly ever week a fresh batch of sunsets was ready to be taken away. In the mean time Herr Kellermann had given her new ideas: a Gothic cathedral perched on perpendicular rocks, a castle with ever so many illuminated windows, and, greatest achievement of all, the moon shining on a calm grey sea, its silver beams represented by pressed fern-fronds.
On the first Sunday in October, Herr Dehnicke called to take Lilly for a walk. He had done it twice before, and Lilly had been charmed to go. Had he offered to take her into the country she would have liked it still better.
The autumn sunlight lay peacefully on the ragged foliage of the stunted town trees, which had been half bare of leaf for a long time. Groups of people sauntered about aimlessly. They looked depressed and bored, for winter was already laying its nipping fingers on men's spirits.
Their walk took them through various crowded streets, and Lilly experienced the pleasant feeling of having someone to protect and look after her in the throng.
Herr Dehnicke, after a long brooding silence, began at last with the question:
"Have you come to any decision about your future abode, dear lady?"
Lilly did not answer. She was firmly resolved to make no change, and yet it was heavenly to be pressed on the point. It made you feel that you were again of some importance in the world.
"If I had the privilege of selecting for you," he said in his unpretentious, formal way, "I believe I could find you a nook which would be to your taste."
"I don't suppose you could," she replied, half in joke. "We are sure not to have exactly the same tastes."
"I am not so presumptuous as to say that we should. But, nevertheless, I have lately seen a small flat which, unless I am very much mistaken, you would be delighted with. It belongs to a customer, a lady, who is travelling."
"Oh, that's a pity! I should like to have seen it, if only to know what you think my tastes are."
He was lost in thought for a few minutes; then he said, "It can be managed. The maid-servant will not be at home to-day as it is Sunday; but the porter's wife, who keeps the key, knows me, and if you like----"
Lilly demurred a little to intruding into a stranger's flat, but Herr Dehnicke overruled her scruples, hailed a cab, and they drove to a westerly quarter of the town, where the houses looked more imposing and the people more distinguished, and where stately chestnuts shading velvety green turf flanked the blue waters of a canal.
"Oh, happy people to live here!" she exclaimed, and then the carriage drew up at the corner of the Königin-Augusta-Ufer.
Dehnicke jumped out and said a few words at the window of the lodge. A key was handed out, and they ascended the carved oak staircase, which was covered with a thick cherry-coloured carpet. How different from the stone flights of steps which led up to Frau Laue's, and were painful to the feet! He paused on the second floor, pulled the bell as a matter of politeness--for it might happen that the maidservant was at home after all--and then, when no one came, put the key in the door and turned it.
Lilly tried to read the name that was engraved on an oval porcelain door-plate, but in the dusk that prevailed on the landing she could not distinguish it.
They entered a very dark little hall smelling of fresh paint, and passed into a carpeted room, on the walls of which were cupboards with glass doors curtained with green silk. The rest of the furniture consisted merely of two armchairs, a few small gilt chairs, and a round, brightly polished dining-table.
"This has been used as a dining-room," said Herr Dehnicke; "but it would do very well for your private studio and showroom."
Lilly agreed, though she would rather have contradicted him.
Opening out of the dining-room on the right was a bedroom, with Rose du Barri chintz hangings, a pink enamelled suite, and a canopied bed with a billowy silk eider-down quilt, and curtains fastened with an old-gold seven-pointed coronet.
"Is your customer nobly born?" asked Lilly, feeling vaguely envious.
"I wasn't aware of it," he answered; "but it's possible she may be."
Lilly sighed a little, recalling her own ivory toilette treasures and her coronet-embroidered underwear lying in Frau Laue's fusty drawers; how beautifully they would fit in here! She inhaled with rapture the delicate lilac fragrance that pervaded the whole room like an aristocratic spring, and, shuddering, she compared it with that plebeian smell which, no matter how indefatigably she aired the Dresden treasures, invaded them with deadly persistency.
"Happy woman!" said Lilly in a low voice.
She rather wondered that the occupant of the flat had left no trace of herself behind--no ribbon, peignoir, or trinket.
"She must have locked up everything, or taken it all away with her," suggested Dehnicke.
Next they went back to the studio, and, passing through its other door, came into a little corner drawing-room, which was completely flooded with rosy sunshine.
Lilly clapped her hands in unbounded delight. There was a soft old-rose carpet with a vine pattern; a charming little crystal chandelier, the prisms of which set rainbow colours playing on the dark polished mahogany furniture; and bronze statuettes representing such subjects as a nymph bathing, a reaper folding his hands in prayer at the sound of the Angelus, and so on. Then there were a few choice paintings on the walls, an escritoire, a little bookcase, and there was even a piano.
"Oh!" sighed Lilly, "a piano!" And she shut her eyes in sheer melancholy bliss at the thought of it.
There were live things, too. In front of one of the three windows was an aquarium, full of sunlight and goldfish, with a palm overhead; and from another window chirruped a tame bullfinch.
Lilly thought of her pale-blue silk domain. In comparison with that, what a plain, confined little nest this was; yet how inexpressibly attractive and cosy when contrasted with the revolting place in which she was dwelling.
"It's a positive paradise!" she said ecstatically, though half crying.
"Here is another room," said Herr Dehnicke, opening a door that Lilly had not noticed. "It can be entered separately from the hall, and was probably intended by the lady for a guest-chamber; but if you settled here, it would come in handy as a workroom for your assistants."
Lilly peeped in. The room was more simply arranged than the others, but with considerable care. Greenish-grey upholstered chairs were set round a wide table, and in one corner was a comfortable-looking brass bedstead.
"The bed, of course, could be taken away," Herr Dehnicke explained.
It really was marvellous how exactly suited everything was to her requirements.
They returned to the drawing-room, and Lilly noticed what had before escaped her attention, and that was an almost life-size portrait in an ornate frame hanging above the sofa, as if every other object in the room was there to pay it homage. The features and figure were, however, hidden by a covering of mauve stuff, which made it impossible to recognise them.
"What does that mean?" Lilly asked.
Dehnicke shrugged his shoulders and pointed to a photograph on the escritoire veiled in the same mysterious fashion.
Lilly, full of curiosity, took hold of a corner of the drapery which screened the big picture from her view, and raised it a little.
"I wonder if I dare?" she asked timidly, as if she were about to commit a crime.
"Certainly, if you care to," he replied; and it seemed as if he were breathing more heavily than usual.
She tugged, tugged energetically; the drapery fell upon her ... and there in front of her eyes stood Walter von Prell, boldly sketched in pastel, wearing the uniform of his old regiment. Walter--her friend and fiancé!
Her knees shook. Icy-cold fingers crept through her hair. She refused to understand--to believe. Then she felt that Dehnicke took her hand and led her into the outer hall. He struck a match, and Lilly could now read on the plate the name she had before failed to decipher,
"Lilly Czepanek.
Pressed Flower Studio."
She gave a shrill cry, rushed back into the little drawing-room, and, burying her face in a corner of the sofa, gave vent to her long-restrained emotions in a burst of hot, blissful tears.
When she looked up again, she saw him standing beside her, unassuming and correct in his bearing, his expression sober and grave.
She was ashamed that she felt so happy, and held out her hand to him in shy gratitude.
"May I venture to hope that in my capacity as Walter's deputy I have succeeded in pleasing you?" he asked.
After that there was no further question of refusing.
CHAPTER VI
The gold-tinted tops of the chestnut-trees faded, and ever wider grew the gaps that autumn's march made in their foliage. At places where a little while ago one saw nothing but a leafy lacework, the ripples of the canal now gleamed through. Along it, heavy barges towed by poles drifted in their laborious fashion, and the shaggy watch-dogs barked up at the windows of distinguished residents. Rainy dull weather stole on the city like a thief in the night, and solitude clutched your heart with its clammy hand.
She had her work, it was true. Her work! Lilly clung to it day and night, as long as the first infatuation lasted and she could build hopes of realising her ambitious plans.
But the eagerly expected "boom" in painted glass with pressed-flower foregrounds never came. The prospectuses she had printed and sent out were ignored, and Herr Dehnicke, who remained her one patron and purchaser, told her in a hurried and nervous way not to lose heart so soon, as the market was decidedly dull at present.
Gradually her zeal began to wane. She had given up going to Herr Kellermann for lessons, his importunities with regard to the release of his "chained Venus" having become too insupportable. She locked her "samples" away in the glass-doored cupboards, and only finished Herr Dehnicke's "orders."
Oh, those cruel, empty days, with no laughter to brighten them and nothing to wait or live for!
In the kitchen a silent young servant held sway. Her eyes had a greedy, far too intelligent expression. The goldfish were fed and given fresh water every morning, and the bullfinch was encouraged to chirp. In the evening, when the chandelier was lighted and radiated its dazzling white light, things were better. Then she would wander from room to room, rearrange ornaments, and say to herself over and over again that no one ever had been so happy as she was, or had a prettier home.
Of what avail was it all--the soft old-rose carpet with its faint vine-leaf pattern, the red-brown shiny furniture and those bronze figures with their shimmering lustre of gold that were nothing underneath but zinc alloy manufactured by Liebert, Dehnicke & Co.? Of what avail the gold-coroneted note-paper, of which Dehnicke had instantly ordered five hundred sheets, on the neat writing-table? There was no one to rejoice in it all with her, no one whom longing could summon to her side. Often she sat down at the piano and let her fingers wander over the notes. But it was not the pleasure to her she had hoped and expected. The rigorous technical training she had once had under her father's tuition had long ago been forgotten. She could not remember one of the things she used to play by heart, and she lacked the patience and nerve to learn new pieces.
It was strange what a fever of unrest attacked her directly she touched the keys. A fierce anxiety, a sense of terror and inward unworthiness overwhelmed her. She could do nothing else but strike the instrument with a bang, and fly from room to room till her feet ached; and she was glad when ten o'clock called her to bed.
In these unemployed, joyless days there awoke in her a piercing, tormenting desire for man's society, a sweet torture of shuddering thrills. For two whole years her senses had lain dormant. What the colonel's senile corruption had kindled, and the autumn weeks of passion lashed into a blaze, had been drowned by tears of remorse--for ever, she had vainly imagined. But here it was risen again, shaming and enrapturing her together, and refusing to be silenced by prayers and self-reproaches. Often she felt as if she must rush into the streets, if only to meet the eyes of a stranger, as in the Dresden days, and see veiled desire leap up in them. But in the streets people were vulgar and rude, and she shrank trembling from going anywhere alone, except to visit her old landlady.
The walk there took her an hour, and before she reached her former lodging she had been accosted by many ingenuous chance admirers; and many experienced flâneurs walked by her side and tried to begin a conversation. She would cross in a hurry to the other side of the street, and wish when she got there that she had spoken to her molesters.
As she lay in bed dreaming with closed eyes, she fancied she saw strong, clear-cut, masculine features hovering round her, into which she looked up with confiding admiration.
She often dreamed too of Herr Dehnicke, the faithful, loyal little business man, who was ready to stand by her so staunchly through thick and thin. Suppose that he were to come to her one day, and in the deprecating, stumbling manner that she had got to like say, "I love you to distraction, and will make you my wife!" What should she say? Every time she contemplated his doing this it brought her a certain sense of comfort.
Of the man who really stood nearest to her, and on whom she had the most claims, she never dreamed. It was true that in her desultory longings those heavenly November nights came back to her vividly, but instead of Walter, any other man might have been their hero. Walter had grown to be a sort of tyrannical ruler over her conscience. Of course, she loved him. How could she help it when he was her destined "bridegroom," working hard for her? Yet often when she stood by the sofa under his portrait, and his cold blue eyes rested upon her with imperious hauteur, she remembered what a scurvy part he had played, and how fickle he had been; and she felt as if she would like to sever every tie that bound her to him, and shake off every thought of him from her like a detestable nightmare.
She wished that Herr Dehnicke would leave off talking of him with devotion and respect, and looking forward to the time when he would have to render account of his modest guardianship of her to his dear friend, on his return in honour and glory to his home and hearth. He came with the utmost punctuality twice a week to see how she was getting on, and to have tea with her. He left in time to be back at his office before it closed. No wonder that Lilly looked on these visits as festivals. He was her only link with the outside world. She had no one but him to bring a little brightness and interest into her life.
She spent hours arranging the tea-table and the lights and flowers for him. For him, too, she stood before the mirror, dressing her hair.
When at last he was sitting opposite her, they talked long and seriously about his business worries, his plans, and the trouble he had with artists who thought it a disgrace to work for the trade, and could only be induced to execute orders when, as it were, he held a pistol to their heads. He spoke of the rivals with whom he competed in business, who built palaces for their workshops in order to dazzle customers, so that he too was forced to transform his good solid old business house into a modern structure with the latest improvements.
His customers too were a source of endless anxiety to him. Some, actuated by the newest ideals in art which were the fashion in the capital, demanded his pandering to the "Secession" movement, and putting on the market long-necked, narrow-whipped bodies in exaggerated attitudes of insane distortion. But the steady public of mediocrity, which was really the purchasing public, would have nothing to say to this trash, and insisted on having knights in armour and their dames in fancy-dress, damsels picking flowers and drawing water, hunted stags and swinging monkeys, the same, in fact, as had been in vogue thirty years before. So he stood, as it were, between two rocks, on one of which he might be wrecked as out of date and old-fashioned, on the other as too advanced and modern. In the latter case he would forfeit most of his old and well-tried patrons. It was extremely difficult to steer a middle course, but it had to be done.
He spoke often, too, of the factory and its hundreds of industrial hands who from early morning till late at night worked for the welfare of the business, and of the alterations which were nearing completion, and which, judging by the architect's designs and the sum which he had spent, ought to be something worth seeing.
"You see what competition compels a man to do," he wound up.
Lilly, with beaming eyes, listened attentively. She took interest in everything. She wanted to hear details of life in the factory with its whirling machinery, clatter of wheels, its hissing furnaces and shrieking files. She never wearied of asking questions about the appearance and behaviour of the workpeople, their wages, their condition, and what became of them afterwards. She felt as if there, in the great hum of the factory, was living reality, while outside her own existence was a shadowy illusion.
"How I envy you," she would exclaim sometimes, "to have so many men's lives in your keeping!"
"They keep you always on the go," he replied; "it's an enormous responsibility and worry."
She was sure he was a benevolent master, even if he would not own it himself. He had such great influence, and his heart was so kind.
He liked to hear her talk like this, though often in the middle of what she was saying he would spring up and walk about the room with excited, short steps, and then stand still in front of her, and stare down on her with gloomy solicitous eyes, as if he could not control his contending emotions.
Lilly appeared to notice nothing, though she knew perfectly well what was passing in his mind at these moments.
"I shall not help him out," she said to herself. "He must do what he likes in his own way, or in future he may cherish resentment towards me." And in palpitating hope she awaited events.
If she could only do away with that ridiculous superstition about Walter, which he probably half believed, like herself, and half bolstered up for the sake of propriety. And then another thing gave her food for reflection. In spite of her often-expressed desire to see the factory, he never volunteered to take her over it. It almost seemed as if he objected to be seen with her on his own premises.
He often talked about his mother, however, and was not shy of confessing how much he was influenced by her, though he made it plain that he would prefer to have more freedom to carry out his schemes and develop his powers.
When his father died--twelve years before--he had not been of age, and had been obliged to submit to his mother's rule. The old lady's régime continued, and every new enterprise was discussed with her, and if she approved it was put into execution, even if he were opposed to it. Lilly felt awaking within her a dull aching terror of the old lady who lived behind the bourgeois flower-pots and issued commands from her armchair, which were obeyed by so great a man as her benefactor. She pictured the moment of making her acquaintance with a sinking heart.
Towards Christmas she was again busy. Two dozen new designs for windows had been ordered, and must be finished before the festive day. A future seemed once more to open before her. For the first time in four years she forgot to send her mother's Christmas present to the asylum. Instead, she made Herr Dehnicke's mother a particularly "poetic" lamp-shade, and sent it anonymously to the house on the morning of Christmas Eve. Why she did it, she did not know herself. Perhaps it was a propitiatory offering such as nervous souls were in the habit of making of old to unknown gods for unknown offences. She had made a little pile of gifts for her friend, though uncertain that he would turn up, and she listened for his ring with a beating heart. Her fears were groundless, for at half-past five he appeared, in the twilight of the hall, as loaded with parcels as old Father Christmas himself!
He had selected them with tact and discretion. There were little things that she wanted for domestic use in the flat, a set of embroidered collars, a Persian lamb boa--to save her sables--a few trifles from the factory to adorn the still bare top of her escritoire. At every exclamation of delight she gave he modestly disclaimed thanks. Everything came, as she knew, from Walter.
"And is there nothing from you?" she asked.
"Nothing!" he replied, and turned his palms outwards.
"Well then," she said, "if you'd like to know, there is something you can give me that Walter can't."
"What can that be?" he asked.
"Take me over your factory."
This time he did not put her off, but fixed a definite day and hour. It should be the first working-day after the new year, when everything would be in full swing again. "Please wear something dark and plain," he added, when it was settled.
"Am I generally dressed loudly?" asked Lilly, horrified. She felt as if someone had boxed her ears.
"Oh, I didn't mean that!" he stammered in confusion; "but you might hurt your good clothes."
At noon on January 2nd she stood in front of the house in Alte Jakobstrasse, which she hadn't seen since her first memorable visit. "After all," she reflected, "it did prove a path of fate in one way." She looked up stealthily at the porcelain flower-pots on the first floor, and started, for she fancied she saw a white head move behind the lace curtains. "That's what comes of having a guilty conscience," she thought, and with a shy sidelong glance of awe she passed the door that led to the laurel-flanked private staircase, which her feet were not worthy to tread till she was again received into the bosom of middle-class respectability.
The other entrance stood hospitably open. The scaffolding had been taken down, walls and pillars gleamed in the mirror-like glory of imitation marble, and the splendour of the courtyard beyond made her feel diffident again. By this time even the grimy old office had been transformed. It now boasted a projecting façade of sandstone, with the busts of famous artists in the niches. The ascent of worn and rickety wooden steps had been replaced by a gorgeous gilded gateway.
Her friend hurried down to meet her, bareheaded, in spite of the biting cold. As he held out his hand in welcome, he cast a furtive searching glance up at the windows. It looked almost as if he too were troubled by a guilty conscience.
He led her first into the show-room. Its brand-new smartness exceeded her expectations. Pillared aisles with vaulted ceilings made it look like a museum. There were interminable avenues of tables and cases, sending forth the sparkle of gold and silver and prismatic hues, the warm glow of deep-red copper fading into the pale green of patina, from hundreds of works of art--products of German industry, those so-called "bronzes," which were to be displayed in shop-windows all over the country, and endow even the cottages of the poor with an air of prosperity.
The subjects included, among others, fat monks and lean beggars, dancing gipsy-girls with tambourines, elegant young men with eyeglasses, postillions blowing horns, chickens picking corn, and hounds retrieving game. There were calendars set in horse-shoes, cigar-clips shaped like champagne bottles, pelicans three feet tall holding aloft lamps in their bills; fancy figures, both male and female, stretching out arms as they had done in Herr Kellermann's studio, but not without reason here, for they all held up vases, candelabra, or basins. Arbours screened loving pairs, and had red electric bulbs hidden in the foliage, goblins sat astride on mushrooms; sea-shells served the purpose of ash-trays; punch-bowls, antique cream-jugs, night-light holders, snakes coiled round flower-stems or china ducks-eggs. The whole gamut of vulgarity and poverty in artistic invention seemed herded together here, ready to be let loose in rampant distribution over all the four quarters of the globe.
When Lilly gave her friend an inquiring or mystified look now and again, as she examined some monstrosity, he shrugged his shoulders and remarked, "That is what the public likes."
In spite of a feeling of being jarred, Lilly would not have minded spending hours amidst this glitter. She would have been in her element if her judgment had been appealed to, and she would have said unhesitatingly, "That is bad, weed it out; throw that away, and that ... and this too." But no one asked her opinion, and everything seemed to get on very well without it.
Her friend next took her across to the factory. Unfortunately the foundry, which was the first stage and basis of all the work turned out, happened to be temporarily closed. But Lilly saw through an open window the black yawning throats of the furnaces and the dirty trucks standing about. Everything was covered with a mist of grey ash--the chimney-pieces, casks, and utensils all seemed to float in the same impenetrable sea of ashen greyness.
They went down some dirty steps and passed through damp cellars smelling of poisonous chemicals, where huge vats containing foul fluids were ranged. Men prematurely aged by work and disease hovered about here looking like ascetic phantoms, when they were only common labourers. As Lilly came in they gave her a quick glance of surprise, and then didn't trouble to look again. They had no greeting for their employer.
"This is the galvanic department," explained Herr Dehnicke. "Here is the nickel-plate bath, the steel bath, the quicksilver, and so on."
He pointed to a loft surrounded by an iron crate, where the wheels of a machine whirled and the light of electric lamps gleamed.
"There the current is generated which galvanises the various baths," he said.
Lilly did not understand, but she took pleasure in the rapid whirl of the wheels and the subdued buzz which they made as they spun round.
"There will be some that whirl more madly still," she thought, and expected to hear, when the next door was opened, a deafening thunder. But nothing of the sort happened. This was the one machine in the whole factory to provide her with entertainment.
In the workroom where the chiselling was done, dozens of men stood at long tables, levelling the uneven surface of the cast metal, and making the separate parts of an ornament ready for joining. This was done in the room adjacent, where the flames of the blowpipes leapt and hissed, and clouds of metallic vapour shot up sparks. Each workman had a little pile of burnished arms and legs beside him that looked as if they had been amputated and had left the body they belonged to behind.
Then they came to the "filigree" department, where all the flowers and foliage were elaborated--the ribbons, tendrils, and arabesques, everything of a light, curly, and daintily twining character. So delicate was the work that it made the men engaged on it look all the clumsier and coarser. They scarcely raised their eyes, and hammered on in a dogged mechanical way.
Lilly, wherever she went, had a keener eye for the appearance and manner of the workpeople than for the work itself. She drew comparisons inwardly, decided who was well-to-do and who the reverse, who pursued his avocation because he liked it, and who only because he was goaded to it by necessity and sickness at home. Each department had its own marked physiognomy. In one the majority would be fresh and active; in another, weary and exhausted. Lilly felt as she had done when Herr Dehnicke first told her about his workpeople: an insane desire to have the wielding of their fate in her hands, to help them when help was needed, to bring sunshine into their gloomy lives, and to be a good angel to the suffering. But she was careful not to confide her absurd notions to Herr Dehnicke.
"Now we come to the most critical part of the business," he said, "the patina application, which gives the figures their style."
He opened the door of a workshop which exhaled the odour of a thousand more poisons. Here women were at work with the men, putting on varnish and acids, rubbing and brushing busily. They looked haggard and tired out. At the sight of Lilly they dropped their implements to stare at her in blank amazement.
"One would have to begin here," she thought, "to win the confidence of all." So she nodded at them pleasantly and spoke a few friendly words. But her little advances were wrongly interpreted. They thought she mocked them, and with an almost contemptuous grimace went back to their work. Lilly's appearance in the packing-room, where women and children alone were employed, produced a happier impression. The girls giggled, whispered, and nudged each other. Only one woman, who was enceinte, took no notice of her. She seemed hardly able to stand on her feet and was near to sinking on the floor. She kept her relaxed pale lips tightly compressed, her cheeks wore a hectic flush, and her arms moved in feverish zeal as she wrapped one sheet of paper after the other round the limbs of the figures standing before her on the table, swaying first to the right and then to the left under her touch.
"May I give her something?" asked Lilly, in an aside to Herr Dehnicke.
"She is being looked after," he answered uneasily, as if displeased, and he quickly led the way to another door.
"This is where the figures are stored," he said, "until sold, with the exception of those, naturally, that are made to order."
Lilly looked down a long dusky gallery and met an icy-cold draught. Ranged on stands and shelves she saw endless regiments of ghostly objects, dwarfs, gnomes, monsters, shapeless in their wrappings of paper, yet looking somehow human, and as if they had been petrified by accident.
"How strange this is!" said Lilly with a slight shiver, and she prepared to walk down the narrow gangway, the windows of which were covered with ice and frost-patterns.
The same moment she observed that her guide gave a start and seemed suddenly to have lost his presence of mind. Then he walked before her and barred the way.
"What has happened?" Lilly asked in surprise.
He coloured, and said: "We had better not go on. We'll go somewhere where there's more of interest to see. There's nothing at all here."
He planted himself firmly in front of her so that Lilly could not catch a glimpse of the shelves along the wall. Of course, this completely aroused her curiosity.
"But I should like to go on," she said, and she assumed the defiant naughty manner which generally gained her the day with him.
"No, no!" he exclaimed hurriedly. "There are secrets of business here that I can reveal to no one. Even the employés are not allowed to come in. I am very sorry, but I really cannot."
"Then you should not have brought me in at all," said Lilly, and she turned back in high dudgeon.
He exhausted every excuse he could think of, his excitement made him hoarse, and he coughed perpetually. He led her up the dirty steps again and over the gorgeous mosaic floor of the courtyard to the shoddy marble entrance, where a bitter wind was blowing.
"You'll catch cold," she said, wishing to hasten her departure.
A brilliant idea occurred to him. "The storeroom was not heated," he said, "so I could not----"
"You should have thought of that sooner," Lilly retorted, as she gave him her hand with a half-conciliating smile. She could not help pitying his helpless confusion.
Nevertheless, she continued to feel hurt and slightly perturbed. The day that she had joyfully looked forward to for months had ended with a contretemps. And no matter how earnestly she pressed him afterwards, she never could cajole Herr Dehnicke into unveiling the mystery of that forbidden room in his warehouse.