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.