CHAPTER VIII
Once more a new life began for Lilly. It was all over with her dreaded loneliness. Regularly every afternoon Herr Dehnicke arrived at tea-time. But he was "Herr Dehnicke" no longer. He was Richard, a dear sweet, beloved Richard, who was received with open arms in the hall, against whose knees she leant on the floor of the drawing-room, and from whose brow the little lines of care were smoothed away with a caressing, "Don't frown, dearest."
How absurd it had been to hoard up her love! You could squander and squander, and always have heaps more to spare. The grande dame and "gracious baroness" pose was whistled down the wind. Now it was she who stooped and made herself small, and asked to be scolded and punished, who looked out fearfully for every shadow of displeasure on his face, and tried to read his wishes before they were uttered. Above all, she wanted to show that she was grateful--oh, so grateful!--for his goodness, and his tenderness in saving her.
No wonder, then, that his attitude of adoring reverence gradually altered, that he began to be exigeant, at times even a little irritable, assuming the airs of a married man, and reminding her of the benefits he had bestowed on her only very occasionally, it was true, but often enough to convert humility that at first was spontaneous into a duty.
Since Lilly had become his mistress his relations to the outside world had undergone a complete change, so that his whole life was differently ordered. In place of the priggish manufacturer of bronze wares, ever vigilant of his middle-class reputation, he had become a recklessly fast man of the world.
He, who once had been shy of appearing with Lilly in the streets or park, now gloried in exhibiting himself to the public as her cavalier. He bought, instead of the serviceable old brougham, the latest thing in luxurious victorias, in which he delighted to drive with her along Unter den Linden to the Tiergarten. He selected for their evening amusement the most fashionable places of entertainment in Berlin, and took seats where they were certain to attract attention from every part of the house. He sat in the front of the stage-box with a swelling shirt-front, his chin carefully shaved, his hands perfectly gloved, and strove to meet the opera-glasses levelled at himself and companion with a blasé indifferent smile.
He ordered his clothes of the London tailors who in spring and autumn visit Berlin in search of custom. He sported a monocle, and stuck his pocket-handkerchief inside his left cuff. The officer was now more than ever strongly marked in him, and he tried to emulate the effeminate charms of the fops in the Guards.
In brief, all his endeavours were directed to proving himself worthy of a mistress of Lilly's calibre. He soon discovered that possession of so perfect a creature, instead of injuring him, cast an undreamed-of glamour over his career, even enhancing the prosperity of his business more than all his expensive redecorations had been able to do.
The world said: if the senior partner in the firm of Liebert & Dehnicke could afford such an extravagance, it must be doing brilliantly. And many a dealer who formerly had favoured his rivals in the trade now came to him, acting on those mysterious motives of suggestion, the laws of which have puzzled the psychologists and historians of all times. He was addressed with increased respect, yet with that confidential air of jovial banter which the world adopts towards a man of proved steadiness and principle when he is caught tripping. He was much more interesting than in the days of his prosaic virtue. People who before had troubled little about him, and had scarcely even spoken to him, now asked when they were to meet him out of business hours, and hinted that they wouldn't mind making a night of it in his company. Such overtures, indeed, became as common as the Liebert & Dehnicke bronzes.
"By rights, you and your expenses ought to be charged to the business accounts," he said once, smiling at Lilly, who learnt not to resent such tactless speeches.
It had become a matter of habit to go out somewhere of an evening three or four times a week, and Lilly quickly got to know every pleasure in the Berlin vortex of dissipation. It was too late this winter for the public balls, at which mysterious women who have lost caste masquerade in silken dominoes. But to compensate for this there were the variety theatres of lax observance, where the latest and spiciest obscenities from the Parisian boulevards were diluted and dished up and offered to hungry pleasure-lovers as highly stimulating to the appetite. There were the night cafés, where pruriency was draped in literary tags, and flighty women escaped from the restraints of middle-class respectability, competed with the professional music-hall stars for the palm of vulgarity. They frequented bars and grill-rooms and back parlours of fashionable restaurants to which the police forbade lock and key, and where, under the scornfully smiling eyes of correct waiters, dull orgies were held. Lastly came those brilliantly lighted cafés, dense with blue cigarette-smoke, where jaded nerves seek a final pick-me-up in association with prostitution as it parades its wares for sale in the market-place and on the house-tops.
For some time Lilly protested against these distractions; for her senses still aspired to a different and higher kind of enjoyment. She cherished, too, vague feelings of regret that this life of dissipation was drawing her further and further away from those laurel flanked stairs, the goal of her secret longing. But when she saw that every wish she expressed for quiet was met with sullen opposition, she slowly abandoned the idea, and relegated all her dreams of better things to a distant future, when she might look forward to a possibility of their being fulfilled. She dared not let her imagination stray further. Besides, how amusing and fascinating nearly always was this new life! She had every reason to be content with it.
They were not often alone together. There were acquaintances wherever they went. They constantly met Kellermann's carnival guests again. They would fall in with one another informally or make appointments beforehand. They formed a little set of themselves, to which new-comers were always hanging on.
One of the elect was that seductive little dark woman with the unsteady bright eyes and the silly laugh, who at the carnival had wanted to make a family party with her friend and Lilly at supper. She was called Frau Sievekingk, and prompted by a desire to "live life" she had left her husband, a doctor somewhere in Further Pomerania, and after various adventures was at present being kept by the wealthy proprietor of a steam-laundry, by name Wohlfahrt. He was as thin as a skeleton, had red hair, and suffered from dyspepsia, remedies for which she carried about with her in her handbag, in the shape of tabloids and quack powders. But this touching and considerate attention did not prevent her from deceiving him with every man who made advances to her. It was universally known, and no one blamed her, for she was a poet, and was obliged to seek experiences to write about. An inevitable result of indulging in what many a one had thought was an absolutely secret liaison with her was to find himself a few weeks later portrayed to the life as the hero of a passionate short story in a modern German magazine, or providing a theme for a lurid love lyric.
Frau Welter, the divorced wife of the famous composer, was another of their intimate circle. Her round, tanned face--she had lately come back from a secret mission to Algiers--formed a comical contrast to her mass of dyed golden hair, which stood out round her head and neck like a halo. It was rather a dangerous thing to become friendly with her. She asked everyone she met to lend her money, though she was well off, and in receipt of a handsome alimony from her husband's relatives. Her generosity was so boundless that she sacrificed all that she had and all that her friends lent her to a pair of ex-lovers, both of whom were scamps. No one exactly knew under whose protection she was living at the present moment. She was often seen with a puisne judge, who looked as if he had swallowed a poker and used his tongue instead of a toothpick.
A thin shrewish little woman, pretty and malicious, with cold steel-blue eyes and sucked-in lips, always wore white silk, and trailed a fan-shaped train behind her: she called herself Frau Karla, but what her real name was no one knew except her lover, a very young, very pale and slim young man, the son of a rich manufacturer. He gratified her absorbing passion for pleasure, being completely in her power, and followed her about till dawn. In an unguarded moment he had rashly disclosed that she was the wife of a well-known Hebrew scholar, who lived a life of seclusion, and imagined that she was employed in visiting society in the west-end of Berlin, while he sat peacefully poring over his philological tables. All the time she was racing about from one haunt of vice to another in suspicious company.
Women of every description moved in this "set," their past and their means of support concerning no one so long as they were pretty and elegant and a little above the thoroughpaced cocotte. Among the men who were not attached as licensed escort to any lady, but who came to fish in troubled waters, was Dr. Salmoni, who at the Kellermann carnival had beaten the big drum with so melancholy a smile. Lilly always felt constrained and tongue-tied in his presence, though there seemed to be some spiritual link between them. Everyone he met came under the lash of his caustic wit, except herself, whom he considerately spared. Sometimes he seemed to be dissecting her with his keen eyes, and would whisper softly in her ear as he passed her, "What are you doing here, fair lady?"
Herr Kellermann appeared pretty often, got drunk, and then made remarks about a chained beauty crying aloud for release, remarks which Lilly was careful not to notice. He found, as a rule, that towards the end of the evening he had no change in his pocket, so that Richard had to pay his bill.
Such was the world in which Lilly passed her days and nights. She received mysterious communications: invitations from men to whom she had never spoken, asking her to meet them; anonymous presents of flowers--from modest bunches of violets to baskets of showy orchids; calls from ladies of doubtful character who were getting up charity subscriptions, and with a meaning smile hoped Lilly would join them--indeed, it was a never-ceasing wave of vicious desire that rolled up to her threshold. For a time she was alarmed, then she became indifferent.
Spring days came, and with them the great race-meetings, at which everyone with any pretensions to smartness put in an appearance.
Since Lilly in shy queenliness had begun to reign at his side, the sporting tastes, which had been latent in Richard hitherto, awoke, and were developed with such passionate eagerness that he would not have missed a race for the world. Though he did not bet, his pockets were crammed with bookmakers' "tips," and he talked of little else than pedigrees and winning chances, Lilly, who understood nothing at all about it, cheerfully listened.
One morning after she had read in the paper the results of the previous day's racing, the following passage caught her eye:
"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.