"Among charming representatives of the society that does not know what
ennui is, we again saw the beauty of imposing type who has of late
graced various functions, bringing with her an aroma of the beau
monde, of which it is said she was once an ornament. Her favourite
colour seems to be violet, and in accordance with a famous precedent,
she might appropriately be dubbed 'La dame aux violettes.' At all
events, we congratulate our metropolis on the acquisition of this new
luminary, who is certain to add lustre to its reputation."
"Who could that have been?" Lilly thought, with a slight pang of jealousy, and she tried to recall to her mind the forms of all the women she had admired the day before. But among them she could not identify the heroine of the paragraph.
Then suddenly the blood mounted hotly to her cheeks. She looked at the Redfern coat and skirt of violet cloth, which she had hung on a chair after taking it off yesterday. It was now more than two years old, but so perfectly cut and finished that it could rival any of the most chic creations of the spring. She had worn it several times following because she had not another tailor-made gown to equal it, and Richard's pocket must not suffer from her extravagance in dresses. There could be no further doubt. She it was who was meant, and no other.
Her first thought was, "How pleased Richard will be!"
But she, too, was pleased. Frau Laue's boldest prophecies seemed to be coming true. She had awakened to find herself famous. She was actually in the newspapers!
If only it had not been for that strange inexplicable feeling of fear, which was always crouching at the bottom of her heart, and came creeping to the surface whenever some unexpected event advanced her a little further on the road to fame and happiness! All the time that she had been going out in the world at Richard's side, nothing had happened to her that was not a source of joy, pride, and hopefulness. Everyone seemed to respect her, everyone flattered her. Torturing uncertainty and contempt of herself had given place to a calm appreciation of her own value in the sight of strangers. Yet that dull harassing fear was ever present. Nothing really silenced it.
Richard came earlier than usual that afternoon, waving the Monday paper up at her from the street. When they had embraced each other a dozen times at least, and read the paragraph over twenty times, he became taciturn and moody, and with his arms crossed in a Napoleonic pose he paced the room with short ringing steps. It was plain that his brain was bursting with ambition.
Then there was a ring, and little Frau Sievekingk was announced. She had often looked in before to have a friendly chat with Lilly, but they had not become more intimate in consequence. To-day she came at the right moment to share in the exultation over Lilly's newly acquired fame.
Her grey velvet bolero suit shimmered in the evening light, and her jaunty scarlet toque, with its drooping plumes, fitted on to her dark curly coiffure like a cap of flame.
She held out her hand to Lilly with her most alluring smile, but, when she turned to Richard, there flashed in her shifty bright eyes a gleam of determination similar to that with which she intimidated her red-headed lover into taking his tabloids for dyspepsia. As since the carnival they had continued outwardly to maintain the sham of a platonic friendship, Richard meekly took up his hat, as if giving Lilly a cue to ask him formally if he could not stay longer. But the little woman forestalled them.
"Don't pretend," she said, "that you are not perfectly at home here. As if I didn't understand! Please call each other by your Christian or pet names, and I'll seem as if I hadn't heard."
Both smiled, and while Lilly gave her guest a cup of tea, he toyed with the newspaper in question, a little obviously, for he wanted to find out whether Frau Sievekingk had heard anything of their great triumph.
"That is just what I've come to talk about," said the little lady, "that rubbish in the paper. I suppose you think an awful lot of it?"
Richard made a gesture of protest, but smiled complacently.
"To speak frankly, I should have credited you with a little more sense."
"Would you really?" Richard exclaimed, aghast, and Lilly jumped. The crouching fear that had made itself felt earlier seemed to tell her that even this piece of undiluted good fortune might conceal a sting.
"Please listen to what I am going to say," the little visitor continued, and her eyes flashed now not shiftily but steadily. "I have experience in these matters, for my red-headed boy tried the same game on with me at first.... I wonder if the thought has ever occurred to you, Herr Dehnicke, that when one of the élite, as is that sweet exquisitely unique creature sitting there, entrusts herself to your care, you have taken a gigantic responsibility upon your shoulders? Do you men think we exist merely to feed and advertise your vanity? We're not milliners or chorus girls who want to be dressed up in silks and chiffons simply that the world may see what a dog you are. We may have lost caste, it is true, but that doesn't mean we are by a long way come down to what you would like to treat us as."
Richard struggled to retort, but could not find words.
Then she bent tenderly towards Lilly, and continued: "A poor butterfly of aristocratic lineage comes flitting along unsuspectingly and says, 'Take me--you can do what you like with me.' And what are you going to do with her? Are you going to make a bad woman of her, or rather what the world accepts as a bad woman? No! I won't be contradicted. That's a good beginning," and she pointed to the paper; "if once the scorpions of the Press busy themselves about us, then the gallants of the Guards are on our track. Then God help you! They are far handsomer and more gallant than any of you, and if we must be driven into the ranks of the cocottes, we'd rather know by whom and for whom. Afterwards you find yourselves chucked, a stale joke of the day before yesterday--nothing more."
All this confused Lilly and turned her giddy. She could not have believed that anyone would dare to speak to Richard in such a tone, and she laid her hand protestingly and comfortingly on his shoulder, fearful that he would be angry and assert his dignity as host.
But he did nothing of the sort.
"I am willing to be guided by you," he said humbly, "if you'll only tell me what----"
"If you don't know what you ought to do, I'll tell you. You ought not to trot her out and put her through her paces as if she were a prize animal, exposing her to the gaze of any gaping crew. Don't put her in the front of your box at the theatre for every roué to look at through his opera-glasses."
Richard manned himself to parry her attack.
"If I may venture to ask the question, are you not to be seen everywhere?" he asked.
"Yes, certainly, because I want to see as well as be seen. That is why I ran away from my brute of a husband and chucked respectability. Still, I don't sit in the front of boxes, and I don't let myself be trotted up and down a race-course. I am a Bohemian; Lilly, on the contrary, with her placid refined nature, is a home-bird, and should be treated as if she were your legal wife.... We neither of us want to descend to the demi-monde--that is to say, what we call demi-monde here in Germany; in the French sense we are already there. Now I have said my say, Herr Dehnicke."
Richard stood up. He had grown very red, and was biting his moustache with impotent resentment.
"I have always put her welfare before everything," he said. "Besides, I have only acted according to her wishes; have I not, Lilly?"
Lilly felt she couldn't contradict him. She did not desire to see him further humiliated, and said nothing.
"And if you acted a thousand-fold according to her wishes," answered the little woman for her, "you were wrong. You should have said, 'My child, you don't understand this sort of life; as we are not married--which, mark my word, would be far the best for both of you--we must live at a moderate pace, otherwise I shall do you an irreparable injury and drag you into the mud.'"
Tears sprang to Lilly's eyes at the mention of the word "married" in relation to herself and Richard. To hide her emotion she went hurriedly to fetch his overcoat, for it was a quarter to six.
She accompanied him to the door, and kissed him affectionately; she did not wish him to think that she bore him any grudge.
To her guest, she stood up for him zealously. He had been very kind and good to her, he had not meant any harm, and he had saved her from an evil fate.
"I didn't come here to make mischief," the little woman said, laughing, and asked if she might sit on a little longer. She mentioned, too, that her name was Jula, and expressed a desire to be called by it in future.
They now sat hand in hand on the sofa--above which Walter's portrait had been replaced by a very mediocre sheep-shearing scene--and nibbled cakes from the little glass plates on their laps. For the first time Lilly enjoyed the sensation of possessing a friend of her own sex, for she had always been too much in awe of Fräulein von Schwertfeger to regard her in that light.
The bullfinch sang a piteous little song of spring, and the sparrows answered from the chestnut-trees outside. The May sunshine reflected tremulous spirals on the walls, and now and again a flash of gold lightning raced across the aquarium, stirring the green sedges and grasses.
This was an hour for confidences.
"Didn't I put on airs just now?" Frau Jula said. "But it was necessary, my sweet. You, like me, are standing on the brink of a precipice. One little push and over we go, and then no one can pick us up again. If we had any character to rely on it wouldn't be so bad ... but we don't know how to be faithful, and, what is more, we don't want to be."
"How can you say that?" cried Lilly in horror.
Frau Jula showed the point of her little red tongue between her lips.
"Just wait a bit, my dearest. The men we meet are scarcely calculated to make us think that we are ordained for the pleasure of one only. In fact, the only way to appreciate them is to take them in the plural. Oh! I could open your eyes to a thing or two; but I don't want to frighten you ... besides, the plural number is dangerous.... Each man we give ourselves to takes away a bit of what is best in us. Yes, our best, though I can't exactly define it. It's not self-esteem, because that survives sometimes; it's not purity, we don't care a pin about purity; and it's not happiness. I tell you, we should be bored to death if we stuck to one man. I have talked about it to a lot of women, and they all agree on that point. Some of them think it's better not to fall in love at all, and only do it for fun; others swear by the grande passion that will consecrate everything. No two people think quite alike. And now I should like to give you a few hints, because the day will come when you are sure to need them. Don't let them give you presents--that is to say, not things of value. Flowers are permissible, but not too many. And don't give them presents, because only honest married women can afford to do that. Beware, as a rule, of the lover offering gifts, for that simply breeds cocottes. As I say, married women may do what is not fitting for us to do; they have to be revenged for being tied by the leg to the 'one only.' We, on the other hand, are free, and can go when we like. We may do everything but that; we mayn't do that."
"Why mayn't we?" asked Lilly, becoming suddenly conscious of her chains.
"Married women may do anything; they may be divorced a hundred times and hold their heads as high as ever.... But in our case it is always a plunge lower; the oftener we change, the more we become common booty. It's all very well if we have money of our own, but you and I haven't. They hover about us, watching like vultures ... and they say to themselves, 'If so-and-so can keep her, and so-and-so, why shouldn't my good money buy her?' For this reason a woman should cleave closely to the one she has got--no matter how small and despicable he is, or how much she may loathe him in her secret soul."
"I don't quite understand you," said Lilly. "Surely the one you have is the one you love."
"What! Have you loved every one of them?"
"Good gracious! There haven't been so many," Lilly answered. "Besides my husband the general"--she could not resist pronouncing the "proud" word--"there was only one other, and this one."
"Nonsense!" exclaimed Frau Jula, genuinely indignant. "Are you setting up to be a model of virtue?"
Lilly assured her that she had spoken the truth.
Frau Jula had difficulty in grasping it. "Then you don't belong to us at all! You ought to be a judge's wife."
Lilly laughed. After believing herself condemned for ever on account of her immorality, it was refreshing to find someone who ridiculed her for being too good.
"Ah! if I were to tell you the stories of all the women who are around us, you would be surprised," Frau Jula went on. "Some will only look at girls. Some let furnished rooms to students, that are only taken by those they fancy; others"--here she lowered her voice to a whisper--"others find their lovers in the streets."
Lilly shuddered. "What? Have I sat next them, perfectly unsuspecting?"
Frau Jula's eyes burned into vacancy. "It's awful, isn't it?" she said, and laughed. "I don't care so much; you see, I have my poetry the sort of thing that gives me absolution. For its sake everything is sacrificed. One must have sensations. I must feel my blood run quicker ... I must study human nature; there is something new in everyone.... No matter how wretched a specimen a man is, with brains and soul that might be packed into a thimble, he can give you an hour of ecstasy--one hour in which bells chime, in which the spheres are full of organ-sounds. And the more you have, the more life you live, the more souls do you creep to the other side of. Doors are flung open: all secrets are revealed.... And if you can hear a stranger's heart beating, can feel his heart-beats in your fingertips--then he is yours, part of yourself. Then you live one life more. Yes, that is life--really life."
She put up her arms and clasped her hands at the back of her neck.
Lilly said to herself that she couldn't take this talk seriously, but she felt hot and cold waves pass over her.
"I don't understand at all what you are talking about," she said, rising.
Frau Jula didn't seem to hear. Her eyes were full of mystic fire. She looked like a priestess sacrificing to strange gods.
It struck eight. The maid servant who had been laying the table in the next room had set a place for the lady, who didn't seem inclined to go, and now came in to announce that the repast was ready.
"Will you stay and have supper with me?" Lilly asked against her will.
Frau Jula at last collected herself; she neither accepted nor declined, but got up and removed her scarlet toque from her dark locks.
"I am quite mad, am I not?" she asked, and the silly but alluring smile played about her lips again.
With a sigh of relief, Lilly opened the dining-room door.
The table was covered with a sheeny damask cloth, on which leaves of light were cast by the hanging lamp. The bright-coloured dinner service, copied from an old Strasburg pattern, had been bought by Lilly cheap at a sale, and the plate, including the castors and the sugar-tongs, shone as brightly as real silver, and could only be distinguished from it by the absence of a mark. The idea was, that when Richard stayed to meals he should find all as well ordered and spick-and-span as at his mother's table.
Frau Jula gave an exclamation of delight. "Oh, how charming you have made it all--so dear and cosy! I do believe I am right in saying that you were born to be a married housewife. You should see my rubbishy place! But what is the good of keeping up appearances when my red-headed boy ruins his digestion at restaurants, dining on lamb kidneys au lard and truffles? When he is at home I make him gruel and bread-crumbs, and give it to him straight out of the saucepan, without any ceremony or laying of table."
"Thank goodness," Lilly thought, "she is her natural self again."
The meal was quite unpretentious, consisting of cold meat dishes and baked potatoes, with the remains of a tart for sweet. But Frau Jula ate with a greater relish than she had known for years, and commented on everything.
Lilly told her that for the sake of economy she ordered her meat from the country. She would gladly give her friend the address.
"I guessed you did that," said Frau Jula, with a soft sigh, her eyes meditatively fixed on space.... And after a pause came the confession in a low voice. "It was the same there."
"Where?" asked Lilly.
"At home, where we lived."
Then suddenly she hurled away her napkin, jumped up, and went to the open window. She wrung her hands, beat her forehead, and called hysterically into the evening air: "I am going to the bad as fast as I can--utterly to the bad!"
"What is the matter with you?" Lilly stammered. She was so shocked that she too sprang up and went to the window.
"I want to go back to my husband ... to my husband.... My husband is a monster, a beast, it's true. Life there is simply death ... that's all perfectly true. Yet I want to go back to my husband.... Here I shall go under--under."
Lilly laid her hand caressingly on her neck.
"Why, dear," she said consolingly, "you have just been giving me such useful instructions as to how to avoid going under. And, then, you have in your literary art a mainstay, which I lost long ago." Sighing, she glanced at the curtained cupboards, where the last of her pasted sunset forests glowed in obscurity. "No, no; you will not go under. You will rise higher and higher, to the very top, and from there look down on other poor women."
Frau Jula sobbed on her shoulder. "Never now, never!" she cried. "I can't get out of this whirlpool. It's poisoned me; my brain is poisoned. I am going to the bad! I am going to the bad!"
Lilly put her arm gently in hers and led her back to the sofa-corner in the unlighted drawing-room, where she had been sitting before.
"Ah, here it is nice and dark," she said, whimpering like a child. "Here I can tell you everything, but shut the door; there mustn't be a gleam of light."
Lilly closed the door of the "pattern" room. Now they were sitting in the dark. Only the late evening twilight, which from the canal penetrated the still scanty branches of the chestnuts, cast a greyish shadow on her tear-stained face.
"Just now," began Frau Jula, "I spoke of women who sought their love adventures in the streets, and you started up in horror. Do you know who one of these women is? I am one."
"Oh, my God!" exclaimed Lilly.
"Yes, I am one. The evening that my red-headed boy leaves me alone, I put on dark things and drive into districts where nobody knows who I am. When I meet someone whom I like the look of, I give him a glance that makes him turn round and speak to me; then I go with him into a common inn, or to a little confectioner's, anywhere he likes, or I sit with him on a seat in the dark ... and if I like him still better than I thought ... I will just go with him anywhere--anywhere he asks me to go."
"Oh, how dreadful that is!" said Lilly, and pressed her hands to her eyes. Now she knew why a few months ago something had seemed to draw her more and more powerfully to the streets, why a pleasant thrill had passed through her when someone had addressed her in the dark; only, of course, she had been too nervous to answer.
"And now I have told you this, and you know what I am, you won't want me to sit on your beautiful sofa any more!" cried Frau Jula. "Say it plump out, and I'll go." She caught beseechingly at Lilly's hands.
Lilly felt like a good Samaritan who, having come across someone grievously afflicted, was bound to do the best she could for her.
"What makes you do it?" she asked gently. "You are not so lonely. How have you come to it?"
"Yes, how have I come to it? Can you say how you have come to what you are? It's all very well for people to reproach us with weakness; but one necessity leads on to another, one wish gives birth to more wishes, and one always thinks one is doing right."
"That is true enough," Lilly faltered, recalling the decisive moments of her own life.
"I have always persuaded myself that I must do it for the sake of my poetry. I must have experiences, pictures, and what the French call frisson. But all that is nothing but an excuse, a mere pretext. The truth is that you just seek and seek. Your own husband is not what you want, your red-headed boy isn't either, and all the rest aren't--your sportsmen, merchants, and lieutenants. But you think he must be somewhere. Perhaps he's that stranger at the next table? You are almost sure he is, so you become acquainted with him, and find that he isn't. It's none of the worthy ones, for however much trouble they may take to possess us they take no trouble to find out if there is anything worthy in us. And so you have to go on searching. Perhaps it will be someone in the street? It becomes at last a positive fever ... it consumes and burns you up. Often I can't sleep for thinking of the next dark night when I shall be wandering about looking ... Don't you see? It must end in ruin to me, body and soul. And this evening, when I saw your daintily laid supper-table, all at once a longing came over me for my home and husband. Yes, I am periodically tortured with that longing. He has weak eyes, and smells of carbolic. Oh, that vilest of all vile smells! How much I should like to smell it again! I shouldn't even mind his throwing his stethoscope at me as often as he likes. He has written asking me to go back.... I can go back if I choose ... and yet I don't go. I stay here and perish. Oh, life is farcical!"
She rose and fumbled for her hat and hatpins, which lay on the table.
Lilly couldn't bear her to go in such an agitated state of mind.
"If you feel that it is a poison in your blood, that it must ruin you, why don't you guard against it? Why don't you conquer the feeling? Force of will can do a lot."
"I have often said so to myself," replied Frau Jula, "but I have never had anyone to confide in about it who could help me. Now I have found you it will be easier. Now I almost feel as if I could--could conquer it."
"Will you promise me to try?" asked Lilly, holding out her hand.
"Yes, I promise," she cried, and shook hands joyously. "You are going to be my saviour. You are already. And to thank you, I will keep a sharp lookout that you aren't spoilt. You shall never be what I am, and what the others are."
"Oh, I can look after myself," murmured Lilly.
"Ah, so you say! But when the dreary void comes, and he grows more and more unsatisfying and colourless, you have nothing to say to each other, and you mustn't have children.... None of us have them, because we all know how to prevent their coming. He lets you have no part or lot in his affairs, and you feel behind everything how his family hates you. They think we are a species of harpy. And then how constantly he proclaims his intention of marrying when he wants most to annoy us! And, above all, there's the longing ... it's like an everlasting dead gnawing toothache ... yes, it's just like toothache. Wherever you are, it torments you. For life cannot end like this, you say to yourself; something must happen at last. Oh, it's ten times worse than marriage! Wait and see if it isn't...."
Lilly's heart became ever sorer at her words. A wild misery clutched her.
"Pray say no more," she begged. "If it's to be, it'll come soon enough. I don't want to think about it."
"You are right, darling," said Frau Jula; "it does no good." And she took her leave.
"You won't forget your promise?" Lilly reminded her from the top of the stairs.
"Never; no, never! I swear it." And she glided out.
With a whirling brain, Lilly went back to the darkened drawing-room and leaned absently and dejectedly out of the open window to breathe in the freshness of the evening air.
She watched the tiny woman who had just come out at the front entrance trip lightly and gracefully along the pavement.
A man in a tall hat and patent-leather shoes passed her, then hesitated, stopped, and turned back again. As he came up with her he lifted his hat with exaggerated courtesy.
By the light of the street-lamp Lilly saw her face upturned to his, full of curiosity, and with an ingratiating smile, and then they walked on--together.
CHAPTER IX
Richard was reluctant to conform to a more temperate manner of life. He was still eager to be seen with Lilly and to have her admired. But little Frau Jula's lecture had really touched his conscience, and he had not the nerve to set it at defiance.
Nevertheless, he sulked and brooded and yawned, and seemed so bored that Lilly, to cheer him up, was on the point of volunteering to accompany him to the next race-meeting, when news reached her that her mother was dead.
She cried a great deal, and her grief was in proportion to the tenderness of her heart, which was very soft. But in reality her mother had been dead to her for so long that the sorrow she felt at her actual death could not be very deep or lasting.
Before starting for the West Prussian asylum to attend the funeral, her chief anxiety had been to get as simple mourning as possible, for she was ashamed not to have done more for her mother, and did not wish to give cause for scandal by being too elegant as she stood at the pauper grave. All the same, the officials and doctors at the asylum were most deferential to her, and appeared to regard her as some exquisite black bird of Paradise.
It was not till after she had spent three very hot spring evenings, praying and meditating, beside the small heap of gravel, that she returned to Berlin, full of serious thoughts and re-awakened memories.
While away she had thought she hated Richard, but when she found him waiting for her at the station, she sank into his arms helplessly, craving for his sympathy. For now she had no one else but him; he really was her all on earth.
It was an understood thing that for the next few months nocturnal dissipations should cease on account of her mourning, and to his credit Richard showed her every consideration in the matter. He sat at home spending many quiet evenings with her, reading books that he couldn't appreciate and playing backgammon; and would go to sleep on the sofa rather than attempt to beguile her into the gay world. But in order that he should not be quite lost to that world, it was agreed that he should have every other evening to himself.
The notoriety that his beautiful mistress had acquired smoothed the way for him. He was elected to the Club that he had long hankered after, through the support of two of her aristocratic admirers, without a single blackball. So now it was open to him to enjoy the supreme felicity of losing part of his firm's hardly earned fortune to young scions of the nobility, foreign attachés, and other superior beings.
Lilly was not pleased to hear of his losses, which he confided to her with much feigned growling and grumbling. She practised economy more assiduously than before to try and make them good. He laughed at her efforts, and declared that she cost him no more than an extra cigarette a day; but her conviction that she was a burden on the firm of Liebert & Dehnicke remained deeply rooted.
On the quiet evenings that he recruited from his nights of dissipation their business conversations were resumed. Lilly liked to "talk shop," and she displayed a keen commercial as well as artistic faculty.
Richard frequently brought with him sketches of models, and they would sit with their heads bent together over unrolled charts, planning and consulting like a pair of partners. Those hours were almost blissful, and she never tired of asking questions about the factory itself. How many hands, male and female, were employed there at the present moment? Was that man or woman or this one there now? She didn't know their names, but could describe their faces exactly. What work had they chiefly on hand? Had the supply of certain models run out? Thus she kept herself au courant with the inner life of the business.
The factory was her ill-starred love, as she often said in joke to Richard. If she was allowed to call for him after business hours at the office, it was the greatest treat he could give her. If she could have had her way she would have found an excuse for going daily to the factory; but Richard didn't wish it. The employés, he said, had long ago got to know what their relations to each other were, and he must be careful not to lay himself open to disrespectful gossip.
She was sure that this could not be his only motive. There was something else behind. She had realised for some time that his mother was not well disposed towards her. Once he had talked about her quite freely and openly, but now he avoided the subject, even when Lilly asked direct questions.
It was likely enough that he was afraid of raising the old lady's ire by giving his mistress the run of his office, so she had to content herself by taking interest from a distance in the welfare of the little kingdom.
On the evenings that she was left alone, she was in the habit of making ten-o'clock pilgrimages to the Alte Jakobstrasse on her own account.
She would take up a position on the opposite side of the street and gaze reverentially across at the old grey house, with its wonderful modern embellishments. She admired the imitation marble pillars, which now gave an air of splendour, in the style of the Renaissance, to the entrance. She stared up at the floor where his mother made her home, and withdrew timorously into the darkness of a doorway when a woman's threatening shadow was cast on the drawn curtains. When it grew late and people ceased to come in and out of the house, she would boldly cross the street, slip up the steps to the front-door, and with her face pressed against the iron gate peep at the interior of the staircase landing, whence came the sheen of laurels, the milky radiance of the Clytie bust, and the dark, rich chequered glow of the stained-glass windows, an impressive combination that recalled the dim religious light of a chapel.
Those front-door steps grew to be a sort of sacred pilgrims' way, along which penitents crawled on their hands and knees; the stained-glass became a heavenly glory; the Clytie a benedictory saint.
Towards autumn Richard was called out to serve at the manœuvres. His letters were curt and few, and their tone could not disguise his bad temper. The last was dated from the hospital, as he was on the sick list, owing to a fracture of the knee-joint caused by a fall from his horse. It would prevent his riding again for a long time, perhaps for ever.
When he came back in October he was still compelled to wear a knee-cap, and sent in his resignation. The accident really proved a piece of good fortune, for rumours of his relations with the divorced wife of the commander of the regiment had got afloat, and in consequence he was being cut by his fellow-officers. His superiors were only waiting for confirmatory evidence to call him before a court-martial, a proceeding which would certainly have deprived him of his commission in the Reserves. He thus escaped by the skin of his teeth public disgrace, and his surly reproachful manner to Lilly was meant to show how much he had sacrificed for her sake.
The news of the colonel, which he had gathered indirectly, filled her with dismay. The old martinet had turned Fräulein von Schwertfeger out of the castle, having become obsessed by the suspicion that she had acted in collusion with the guilty lovers. He now lived the life of a misanthropic recluse, and it was feared he might go out of his mind. A message of evil indeed from that past of sunshine.
As winter approached, one of Frau Jula's prophecies seemed as if it were coming to pass. Richard began to discuss his matrimonial prospects with Lilly, not to annoy her, it is true, but simply because it had become a habit to unburden his mind to her about everything that troubled him.
His mother had invited an orphaned heiress on a visit to their house. Of course, she had done it solely for his benefit, and no other reason. He had to sit next her at meals every day. She was a rather pallid girl and had hair the colour of straw. She looked at him with big strange eyes, and seemed to ask, "When are you going to propose?" And his mother was for ever preaching to him.
Things couldn't go on as they were. Another winter like the two last and every decent family among their acquaintance would be pointing the finger of scorn at him--so his mother said--and it was enough to drive a fellow distracted. Lilly felt as if icy water was streaming down her back. But she maintained a brave face, and showed no more inward emotion than if they were discussing a model for a new "bronze."
"Do you think you could care for her?" she asked.
"Good God! What do you call 'caring'?" he answered, staring beyond her vacantly. "You talk as if I were serious about it. I believe you wouldn't mind getting rid of me."
He pretended to be angry, and Lilly reasoned with him coolly. He mustn't imagine for a moment that she would stand in his way. She had nothing but his happiness at heart. It would make her proud if he gave her his confidence and did not take this step--now or later--without talking it all over with her first.
He was touched, kissed her, and replied that so far it was all in the air.
But the conversation left Lilly beset with dread as if by a nightmare. Her one coherent thought was, "If he leaves me in the lurch now, what will become of me?"
Grief for her mother's death was nothing compared with this martyrdom of anxiety. The vultures that Frau Jula had spoken of occurred to her--all those greedy vultures, in white shirt-fronts and black coats, hovering round to offer her their "good money" directly her friend and protector should have deserted her. And then she thought of those other vultures in Kellermann's picture, cowering on the sun-baked rocks, ready to pounce on the naked beauty directly she became defenceless.
"Her chains are her weapon of defence," Lilly said to herself, "and so it is with me. As soon as I am free, I am lost."
The next day neither of them alluded at first to the dangerous topic, but Richard was absent-minded and ill at ease. Then Lilly took heart and said huskily, "I see, Richard, you are still undecided in your mind. Won't you bring me a photograph of her to see? No one knows you as well as I do, and no one will be able to judge better whether or not she is suited to you."
He vehemently denied that he was trying to make up his mind. The girl was nothing to him. She was an empty-headed doll. But his indignation was not genuine, and his eyes were fixed on space. For "the doll" had five millions.
And the next afternoon he brought her photograph. Without taking it out of the soft paper in which it was wrapped, she laid it aside. Merely touching it made her hands tremble. She was afraid that her first glance at it would betray her inward agitation.
"Aren't you going to look at it?" he asked, a little disappointed.
"There will be time enough when you are gone," she replied, and congratulated herself on her smile of indifference.
When he was in the hall she called after him:
"To-morrow I will tell you what I think, you know."
Then she rushed back to the photograph, not omitting, however, to wave from the window to Richard, a duty which had become a habit with her.
"And now ... now the photograph!" Oh, what a good, calm, rather delicate-looking girlish face it was, looking at her with sorrowful though nice eyes. The fair plaits of hair, as thick as a man's wrist, were twisted round the back of the head in country fashion; a timid smile played on the full-lipped mouth. It was the face of a lovable child. Happiness would make it bloom like a spray of lilac put in water. It indicated a nature reposeful, not too gifted, housewifely, and clinging. Exactly what he wanted.
She placed the picture on a chair and threw herself on her knees before it. She prayed and wrestled with herself, but in the end she could not help saying to herself again, "Exactly what he wants; what he would never find a second time if he hunted all the world over."
And she had five millions! If she did not give him up now she would indeed be one of those harpies, to whom, according to Frau Jula, she and her kind were likened in respectable family circles.
"But he is mine; I have the right of possession! What good would his five millions do me if through them I go to the bad altogether? Why should I sacrifice myself for him or anyone?"
The word "harpy" continued to ring persistently in her ears.
She thought of the Furies depicted in the illustrated mythology books, the terror of all school-children, with their beautiful hair and murderous claws.
"What I have is mine! I have a right to keep it, a right to tear it to pieces too."
Oh, what a night that was. She lay in bed with her knees drawn up to her chin and her face buried in her lap, sobbing. She stuffed her clothes into her mouth, tore them out again, and sobbed anew; and at last, towards morning, a resolve was born of her tears, her shudders, her prayers, and bitter strife with herself--a resolve that seemed to bring release and salvation: "This afternoon, when he comes, I will tell him." But no! Why wait till the afternoon? Why let him cross the threshold first? How easily might the influence of their wonted association bring the great work of self-sacrifice to nothing! She must choose another place, somewhere less familiar, from which she could quickly escape as soon as she felt his presence made her falter.
She had been forbidden, it is true, to visit his office without special permission; but if she chose the luncheon hour, and found him sitting quietly resting in his private back room, this would be the most favourable and easiest opportunity for an interview. No one would notice her going in, and she would not be disturbing him. Besides, so sacred a resolve as hers justified every step she might take.
She spent the morning in arranging and packing up his letters. She intended to restore these to him with the photograph of his future bride, so that his mind should be set at rest concerning them once for all.
Then she dressed more carefully than usual, and washed away the traces of her tears with milk of lilies. She waved her hair so that it descended over her neck in full ripples, such as she had seen in Greek statues. She felt, indeed, like one of those marble women of ancient Greece, so serenely elevated was her frame of mind above earthly happiness and sorrow.
She drove to the office. As the clocks chimed a quarter-past one she stood at the pillared portico. No one was about in the yard; only the porter took off his cap with a friendly smile. To him she was still the "boss's" ladylove.
It was a pity that she did not take the precaution of being announced.
The door of the outer office was standing open, as usual when he was still at work in his room. She knew the secret catch that opened the wooden rail of partition, and passed through. She knocked cautiously at the further door. To-day it was shut, which was not usual.
He said, "Come in."
She went in, and stood face to face--with his mother.
This was the first time she had ever seen her. She was quite different from what she had expected. Instead of the tall, thin, silver-haired, stately old lady her imagination had pictured, she saw sitting at his writing-table a stout woman of middle height, with grizzled locks under her black lace cap. A pair of cold grey eyes looked up at her with a surprised and indignant glance.
"This is his mother," she thought.
Richard jumped up from his revolving-chair, and Lilly, speechless with terror, stared at the old lady, who in her turn sprang to her feet. An expression of fury and scorn blazed in the cold grey eyes.
"This is really a charming state of things," she cried, turning her head from one to the other with sharp, angry jerks. "Charming! I am not even safe in my own house, it seems.... I must ask you, Richard, not to expose me again to a meeting with a person of this description."
And while Lilly timidly and respectfully made room for her to pass, she swept to the door with a snort of rage.
"What are you doing here? What do you mean by coming here?"
Never had he shouted at her like this before.
He stood in front of her with his hands thrust deeply into his trouser-pockets, biting the ends of his moustache, while his head was so much on one side it almost lay on his shoulder. He looked like a savage, infuriated bull.
She wanted to hand him the photograph and packet of letters, and tell him everything, but her limbs and tongue seemed paralysed.
"I ... I ... I only ..." she stammered with a sob.
"I ... I ... I only ..." he scoffingly mimicked her. "I only wanted to wriggle myself in here. I ... I ... would like to be mistress here. Isn't that it, eh? ... No, no, my angel; we must put an end to this at once.... Your so-called ill-starred love of my factory always struck me as a bit suspicious. Get out of here! Get out, I say! Get out!"
And the next minute she was out--out in the street.
She still held the packet in its tissue-paper wrappings convulsively between her cramped fingers. Staggering, she walked on, past staring red houses that threatened to fall on her. She saw a truck loaded with sacks of flour scattering white clouds. A pulley screeched in a factory yard. Every time she saw anyone coming towards her she swerved into the gutter, shrinking away in fear from the jeers of the passer-by. A skein of wool that someone had lost lay on the pavement. She picked it up and thought of hanging herself, for something must be done.
It was all very well to be abandoned and deserted; when your time came you could expect nothing else, and must resign yourself to fate--but to be stormed at and flung off, to be kicked out as if you were a burglar, to be despised and spat upon like the lowest woman in the streets--oh, that was too much!
She must do something to be revenged on him. And even if such a revenge would no longer affect him, that didn't matter. He should at least be convinced that he was to blame for everything. When she was wallowing in that mire of which he had formerly expressed so much horror on her account--when she was there ... Yes, something must be done, now, at once--some suicidal act which would make her worthy of the gross treatment she had received at his hands--something to free her from these torments, these horrible torments!
Her heart hung in her breast like a painful tumour. She could have outlined it with her finger, it felt so sharply prominent. It was as if some claw held it in its clutch. And then again the vultures occurred to her--the vultures crouching on the rocks in Kellermann's picture.
They were crouching to spring on Lilly Czepanek. Whom else? Ah, now she had it! The thought flashed through her brain like an arrow. She called a cab and drove quickly to Herr Kellermann's house.
She ran up the stairs, which little more than eight months ago she had descended, steeped in bliss, at Richard's side. She stood in the unaired, dark ante-room with its fusty smell, and knocked with a faltering hand at the studio door.
Herr Kellermann sat on the floor in his tartan socks and down-at-heel slippers making coffee, as on her first visit. He had a rather bloated look, but seemed pleased with himself.
"Good heavens!" he exclaimed, drawing the collar of his night-shirt together. "What brings you hither, lovely goddess, so suddenly? Have your setting suns been rising again?"
She said nothing, but laid her hat and cloak on a chair and began to unfasten her blouse. She looked round for a screen, but there wasn't one, for the models who frequented this studio were not generally troubled with shyness.
He sprang up and stared hard at her. Then, when he understood what she intended to do, he burst into a sudden shout of joy.
"What did I say? Wasn't I right? Ha, ha! It has come to that, has it? We are crying aloud for release. We want to be set free, eh?"
"I am not crying aloud for anything," said Lilly. "Kindly turn your eyes the other way till necessary," The corners of her mouth curled in scorn.
He seized the picture, blew the dust off it adjusted his easel, laughing and chuckling to himself. "I knew she'd come. I said she'd come!"
Lilly fumbled at the strings and buttons of her garments. Then she slowly cast them from her one by one. Thus she stood, in the garish light of the studio, pricked by a thousand needles of shame, and exposed her unclothed body to the artist's gloating gaze.
The next afternoon Richard came to tea as usual. His eyes were red and watery, and he looked depressed, but his manner did not betray the least consciousness of anything out of the ordinary having happened.
She had hardly expected that he would come at all, and received him in chilly surprise.
"Oh, about yesterday," he said carelessly. "Mother and I had a beastly row. I had to promise her that you wouldn't come to the factory again. So now we won't allude to it any more. The little girl with the fair hair leaves us this evening. Give me a kiss."
So they kissed, and everything was the same as ever.