CHAPTER X
The twigs of the chestnuts had again put on their yellow gloves, and many a leaf started on a whirling journey down the canal. Once more the vista of grey water through the opening in the branches widened, tame wild-ducks foraged along the banks, and the barges, sinking deep into the water under their cargoes of odoriferous summer fruit, drifted lazily to market. The world muffled itself up for coming winter days, and the purveyors of pleasure in the capital were astir.
In seemly half-mourning the round of dissipation began again, Richard objecting to being kept in a glass case any longer. But this time they ceased to aspire to stage boxes and the gorgeous luxury of distinguished night restaurants. Having established a reputation through the ownership of a famous and withal inexpensive "horizontale de grande marque," one could afford to remain on the level of a middle-class "smart set," where German champagne is drunk and Kempinski's proves a lodestar. They passed countless hours of reckless debauchery in cabarets and theatres where smoking was allowed, in snug corners, and in eminently respectable-looking private back rooms. Women who had felt themselves a little de trop in the other society were more festive hare than ever before, and the men congratulated themselves on not "bluing" so much money.
The people you met remained pretty much the same. Only a few dandies fell off, not being able to conceive an existence of pleasure from which the joy of being patronised by cavalry officers in mufti was absent. Lilly followed the crowd, imagining there was no choice. She sat for the most part saying little, but smiling a great deal in a friendly way. She let the men pay her as much attention as they pleased, but responded without enthusiasm, and she listened indifferently to the women's confidences. She was popular with her feminine compeers, who all recognised in her the amiable quality of not wishing to poach on their preserves.
It might have been thought that she was stupid and lacking in animation if occasionally she had not thawed under the influence of champagne, which was capable of working an amazing revolution in her. Then she seemed gradually to awake from her torpor, her eyes grew brilliant, her cheeks rosy. She would laugh shrilly and say madly improper things, even repeating the colonel's old Casino jokes, till as last she was worked up into a state of rapture, in which she sang comic songs in a tremulous twittering falsetto, mimicked well-known actors and actresses, and even broke into more daring dances than were ever seen on the variety stage.
It was extraordinary how retentive her memory was. Without knowing it, she never forgot anything that she had once heard. In her normal condition she remembered less than other people. Wine had first to sweep away the barriers of reserve which, as a rule, dammed her flow of wit.
Her associates soon discovered this phenomenal peculiarity in her, and tried by a hundred devices to bring her into a condition that provided them with such rare entertainment. But she resisted with all her strength, and so she waged a perpetual warfare in which she could not count on Richard as an ally, for he liked his fair mistress to be applauded for her talent as well as admired for her beauty.
The next day she invariably felt limp and depressed, and sometimes when her mind's horizon was bounded by a red forest of high kicking legs, and the silly patter of suggestive songs rang in her head, a low voice of exhortation made itself heard within her. "Once you were different," it said. "Once you looked up to the heights and aspired to better things." But she dared not listen to this voice.... She felt she was unworthy because she was defenceless and had no one to hold out to her a protecting hand.
Sometimes, on the nights that she was free to do as she pleased, she slipped out, as if she were doing something wrong, and went to the gallery of a good theatre where she would not be known, or to the orchestra of a concert-hall where music students of both sexes congregated, sitting on steps and railings with the score on their knees, following every note.
What she saw and heard made no deep impression on her. She felt disquieted and out of her element, and fixed her attention on some young man, whose bold profile or mass of artistic curls struck her fancy.
"He is one of the gifted," she thought, with a torturing pain at her heart, and she gazed at him so long and earnestly with languishing eyes that at last he returned her glance with fiery fervour.
Yet, however hotly she might burn with eagerness to be spoken to by him, she dared not give him further signals of encouragement, with Frau Jula's awful example before her mind's eye.... And so she had to rest content with the beating of her heart, which in itself alone caused her delight.
So steeped was she now in the erotics of the world she moved in, that the slightest rise in the temperature of passion was interpreted by her as a complete drama of love and longing. Oh, the longing, that eternal gnawing toothache, to which Frau Jula had referred; how well she knew what it was now! It had come on her like a thief in the night, filling her hours of rest with a panorama of flaming visions, changing her waking hours into a drowsy trance.
She waited, and no one came. No one took the trouble to lift her lost soul out of the dust. Only one person, who watched her keenly, appeared to have any conception of what was going on within her.
This was Dr. Salmoni.
A great man was Dr. Salmoni in the estimation of those intellectual circles in Berlin of which he was a luminary. He was the editor of an art magazine once notorious for its revolutionary doctrines and the zeal with which it attacked the great gods of the old school, and set up new idols for the multitude to worship. But it was not Dr. Salmoni's way to burn incense long at any shrine; when he saw the mob kneeling before the fetishes of his own creation, he tore them down, too, and ground them under the heel of his vituperative invective. His hate was a thing to be lightly borne, his witticisms fizzled out and did not hurt, no one believed his calumnies. More dangerous was the benevolent kindness which he expended on all those whose reputation he intended to ruin. Praise from Dr. Salmoni sounded like a death-sentence in certain ears.
This distinguished man now, as in former winters, patronised occasionally the harmless amusements of the little circle whose strong point could hardly be called intellect. His appearance was hailed with respectful enthusiasm; everyone made room for him, and hung on his lips in anticipation of scathing personal remarks when he leaned back in his chair with his melancholy sympathetic smile and stroked his pointed reddish beard. But he did not always fill the rôle of jester expected of him. He would sometimes engage in a tête-à-tête conversation, or sit alone, lost in silent meditation.
He could even show, when he liked, a playful naïveté, such as a leopard displays when it gambols with puppies. He seldom spoke to Lilly. But his penetrating eyes often wandered over her face with a scrutinising glance. She felt every time he did this that he amused himself by skimming the emotions of her soul.
One evening he sat down next her, and asked if she would cut up his meat for him, as he had unfortunately sprained his wrist in strangling a certain celebrity.... Next, in growing intimacy, he desired her to feed him, which he might easily have done himself with his left hand, which was not disabled.
Thus they found themselves conversing seriously for the first time. Lilly trembled at the honour. She was afraid of not distinguishing herself.
"I am quite astonished," he said, "that, after knocking about with this ribald crew for over two years, your eyes do not betray you."
"How should they?" she asked.
"Kindly look one moment at the women collected here"--and he indicated with his finger Frau Jula, Welter, and Karla, and two or three more. "How they roll their eyes! how they look up under them! All that is the lingo of ... I was going to say vice; but I detest expressions that are so guiltless of nuances, so I will say instead, the lingo of a criminal phantasy. Do you understand?"
"I think so," murmured Lilly.
"Now you, my dearest lady, still retain something of the childlike innocence of former years in your glance. Not all, but something. A soupçon of contempt has crept in. No, contempt is not exactly the right word. On the outskirts of deserts there are certain salt pools that are green, dark, and empty, because the ground is poisoned. Do you grasp what I mean?"
"I'm not sure that I do," she said.
"All the same, it's marvellous. Your soul seems to be a filter; it only assimilates what it likes. Or perhaps you have a private source of succour to draw on that puts you on a higher plane than us, some crystallised immovable ideal ... some fixed star to shoot at ... some sublime Song of Songs."
Lilly started so violently that a low cry escaped her lips, loud enough, however, to attract the eyes of the company towards her.
"I have only trodden on this lady's foot," explained Dr. Salmoni, "and she was ingenuous enough to think I did it by mistake."
Everyone laughed.
"A joke sufficiently clumsy to satisfy them," he said in a whisper, leaning close to her shoulder. "I'll make believe not to have heard your involuntary confession. I only value intended avowals. I am not going to ask you to-night, as I asked you once before, what you are doing here. I ask instead: What have you got to lose here? And I can give the answer myself directly: Your style--your style stands in peril. You are on the brink of losing your style, and becoming guiltless of style, and that is a misfortune and a crime at the same moment. Style is to me equivalent to virtue, greatness, sincerity, religion, power, and a few other things all combined--a divine quality. Keep to your last, spiritually and physically. There is line in that; an excellent thing to preserve. Swing yourself up, if you like, to the peaks of a healthy and joyous viciousness--tant mieux. You can either dress your hair like a nun's or let it float over the pillow like a bacchante's--but be sure which you decide on."
"I think just now that you pleaded the cause of nuances," Lilly said, feeling her wits sharpened by his, "and now you are talking platitudes."
"Hear, hear," he answered approvingly. "That's capital! But no, no, dear gracious one; I am not talking platitudes. I preach simply, 'Will,' the will to personality. In truth, there's room for plenty of nuances. You have the stuff in you for a grande amoureuse; but, alas! not the courage."
"And that shows I haven't the stuff," she retorted, giving him a radiant look.
He laughed like a schoolboy. "Yes, yes. We all get old sometime, and listen to little virtuous women lecturing us on logic."
And he chivalrously allowed her the satisfaction of having got the best of him in repartee.
During the next few days Lilly reflected a good deal on what they had talked about. How could he know so much about her? It was almost as if he were in league with supernatural agencies. "Will to personality," he had said. The phrase made her happy. Once more she began to ascend to the heights.
Another time, when they followed a party of their friends at midnight along the lively Friedrichstrasse, he adopted a different tone.
"I have a queer sort of feeling, dearest lady," he said, "that you are afraid of me."
"I?" she said, catching her breath nervously. "Why should I be afraid of you?"
"Because you know that I have a message for you. A message of redemption for which in your secret heart you don't feel ready."
"I don't understand you," she faltered. But she understood perfectly what he would say. She knew what part he might play in her life if----
"I am a man tuned in a minor key," he continued. "I don't like playing my emotions on a trumpet, otherwise your ears might have tingled ere this. Anyhow, I will say this, that I think it a scandal that a woman like you, made to walk in high places, one capable of noble thought and elevated enjoyments, should be bribed by a few pickled herrings into living a stupid burlesque of a life.... I am not going to blame anyone, but, my dearest lady, I assure you it is impossible to drain life's ecstasy to the dregs in lukewarm dishwater ... and, after all, intoxication is the main thing, so long as the blood leaps in our veins."
Lilly trembled on his arm. They overtook a throng of gay night-revellers young fellows who were shouldering their walking-sticks, and looking dreamily before them with dizzy eyes. One whistled Wagner, another sang a student's song. Pretty women of the town, coming towards them, gave them alluring glances from dark-rimmed, passion-lit eyes ... more followed, youths and men, girls little more than children, all infected by the same transports. It was like a figure in a sylvan dance in which everyone offered each other hand and mouth, body and soul.
"What am I to do?" she asked in a low tone, dropping her chin on her heaving breast.
"I'll tell you," he answered, with a smile which concealed dark hints. "You must learn to lead another life at the same time as this one--a life that belongs to you alone ... you and a few choice friends. Do you understand? You must do what a Frenchman once advised: lay out a secret garden, in which you tend in peace all your favourite thoughts and wishes. Above all, the things that are forbidden, and which you have privily gathered together.... Do you understand?"
"All forbidden things have brought me unhappiness," she said hesitatingly.
"You mean that the law that forbids them has made you unhappy," he replied; "it's not easy to distinguish between the two. At all events, believe this, my dear child: that until we make self-culture a religion, till we have erased the little word 'duty' from our vocabulary, we are not on the right road. We are simply bruising our feet by stumbling over the débris with which others block our way under the pretext of making it smooth for us."
"But sometimes they do make it smooth," she answered, thinking of all the benefits she had received at Richard's hands.
He smiled at her with indulgent pity. "You seem to be suffering from a sickness that I call 'chain-madness,'" he said.
"What is that?" Lilly asked again, seized with a dismayed suspicion that he possessed some occult power, and that he divined the shameful part certain chains had played in her life.
"It is said," he continued, "that slaves who have worked in the galleys for years, when they are liberated, miss their chains, and complain loudly that their legs and arms feel as if they were chopped off.... Your beautiful arms, dear lady, were made to stretch upwards. Why don't you exercise them more?"
"And my long legs were made for running away," she supplemented with a tortured laugh, "Only, where am I to run to? that is the question."
"Why be in such a hurry and talk of running away yet?" he asked, stroking the hand lying in his arm, as if he were talking to a child, "You'd only run into the arms of another so-called 'duty.' First, you must acquire inward freedom first you must forget how to be at the beck and call of those who themselves should be under command."
"Teach me the way," she burst out.
"I will lend you a few books," he said, as if deliberating.... "Books that will lead you back to yourself. Tomorrow morning I will----"
At this moment they were separated.
That night Lilly, when in bed, lay with folded hands smiling up at the ceiling. Was she not once more ascending to the heights?
The next day, as the time for his call drew near, she was overcome by a new dread. She was afraid of him, of Richard, of herself.
This would be the first visit she had received in secret, the first to break up the tranquillity of her home. So, when she beheld him get out of a cab with several books under his arm, she ran to give instructions not to let him in.
When he had gone she pounced eagerly on the books that he had left for her. Some were printed in Roman characters and looked at a first glance terribly scientific. But they proved readable. She dipped first into one, and then into another, and what she read made her blood flame and rise to her head like sweet wine.
In all, there was a great deal about the "power to will," the "super-man," the "right to live," and the "gospel of passion." In all, the purely beautiful was lauded as the end and aim of human endeavour. In all, the word "individuality" occurred over and over again, and in every conceivable connection. They all taught you to look down with vindictive pride on your fellow-creatures, and to despise them as a debased, tortured, and enslaved race. You wandered in glorious isolation, accompanied, perhaps, now and then by one or two kindred souls of lofty superiority, on storm-swept mountain-tops, breathing an eternally rarefied ether.
In these pages was an unending offering-up of incense to self, an insatiable self-conceit, a glorification of murder and arson, pæans sung on such themes as lusts of the flesh, chambering and wantonness.
Thus Lilly's soul became enveloped in a veil of intoxication and ravishing dreams. She felt as if she were seated in a sapphire-blue haze, which a far-off glow shot with purple threads. She heard music, hot and wild, storming on in angry dissonances like armies of mænads tearing down all obstacles in their way. She felt herself climbing steep craggy rocks, getting higher and ever higher. She fought against dizziness, and dared not look back for fear of being dashed to pieces in the abyss below. But she did not lose her footing; she cut and tore her hands in clinging to the sharp edges and swinging herself up--up! Now she was at the top and laughed. Oh, how she laughed down on the poor scum of humanity who crept about down there in misery and wretchedness, letting themselves be trampled on and crushed for the sake of their crumbs of daily bread! ... And then, again, a great pity overwhelmed her. Why should she alone stand on these wild, gold-shrouded summits, while all those others had no prospect of a near salvation? She would have liked to hold out her hand to her poor oppressed and hungry brothers and sisters, and help them to climb up too. But they would not be able to understand her or her message of redemption. Yes, that was what he had called it, a "message of redemption." She saw their emaciated faces wet with the cold sweat of death, their glazed fixed eyes, that still could not turn their gaze from the glittering coin of their wretched living wage. She saw women in the last stage of pregnancy, thin and distended at the same time. She thought of the poor factory girl in Richard's packing-room, whose feverish hands made the doll that she wrapped in paper sway and dance. She thought of the others who had glanced at her with shy hate and hopeless envy in their weary eyes.
Once more her affection for the factory, which she supposed on the day of her shame and humiliation had received its death-blow, awoke within her with a tender sadness, like the trembling hope of spring in our souls when the February snows begin to melt.
This had certainly not been the object of Dr. Salmoni's loan of books. Nevertheless, they discharged their mission admirably in another direction. The dull gnawing "toothache" became a raging torment. The wish for a man--any man but Richard--who would understand and sweep her along with him, this wish possessed her with such overmastering force that she had scarcely strength left to writhe under its lash.
Surely somewhere the one, the only one, existed? Surely some kind wave of this human ocean would one day wash him to her feet?
One evening she dressed herself in quiet dark clothes, as much like a dressmaker's apprentice as possible, and slipped out into the street, as she had been in the habit of doing when Richard's warehouse drew her towards it with a thousand magnetic threads.
She had no talent for taking walks without knowing where she was going. So, obedient to the dictates of her reawakened infatuation, she found herself treading the familiar way to the Alte Jakobstrasse. After outmanœuvring the advances of two old dandies and an impertinent counter-jumper, she halted opposite the latticed gates of the pillared entrance.
She crouched for a long time in her sheltering doorway on the other side of the street, and stared at the building with which her fate had so indissolubly associated her. To-night, too, there were lights burning in his mother's apartments. Two jets of the chandelier threw out a steady flame like her cold clear eyes; the others were not lit, probably from motives of economy. All that was to be seen of the factory itself was the top of its huge chimney towering above the roof of the dwelling-house. A grim greeting, yet a greeting of some sort. Gladly would she have renewed acquaintance with the dear, forbidden, laurel-flanked stairs, but she had no longer sufficient courage at her command to cross the street.
Then, feeling as if she had performed some virtuous deed, she turned to go home.
She repeated the pilgrimage on three lonely evenings during the course of the week, and began to regard these aimless rambles as a necessity of existence. It happened once, when she was taking up her position in the protecting darkness of her favourite doorway, that a gentleman of elegant appearance and slender figure, who had come from the same direction, paused and took off his hat. She recognised Dr. Salmoni. So horrified was she that she forgot to acknowledge his greeting. If he were to betray her to Richard, she was doomed. He would imagine that jealousy or something worse drew her to shadow his house.
"Ah, my charming lady," he began, mouthing his words in a self-satisfied way, "there is really something refreshing in meeting you opposite the world-renowned art emporium of Liebert & Dehnicke. As you know, I am a modest not-inquiring person with a soul, as it were, still unbreeched, so I refrain from asking you what has attracted you here--what impulse of the heart. You know the old fairy-tale of the queen who set forth to find her king, and ended in finding a swineherd.... Likewise it is possible that a pearl of great price may have strayed into a bronze manufactory. I should never have permitted myself the pleasure of following you intentionally. A certain dumb harmony of line fascinated me and led me on--perhaps a suggestion of brilliancy behind. But one should never shoot a hare out of season. Let your fruit ripen, dearest lady, is a very sound maxim, not only in relation to soi-disant love--but the question is, whether it is worth while to believe in maxims. They smack of respectability, and respectability smacks of Virginian tobacco, which stinks, and is praised far and wide by the multitude, simply for that reason.... I hope you appreciate the deep truths that lie hidden in what I am saying, gracious lady?"
"I wish to move from this spot at once," she said. "Suppose that we were seen here together?"
"As far as that goes, it's the one place where we may be seen together with impunity," he laughed with boyish glee, "for only the most cussed imagination would surmise that we had selected this house for a secret rendezvous. But we'll move on, if you wish."
He offered her his arm, which she refused.
Then they walked together through crooked dark back streets towards the west-end. He went on talking steadily. One thought seemed to lead to another. Sometimes it seemed to Lilly as if he had forgotten her altogether in letting off his fireworks of speech. He revelled in the play of his own wit. For a long time his conversation seemed to have no connection with her and her pitiful existence. But she was mistaken; his gold was coined for her, and he expended it so lavishly that her brain had not room enough to assimilate it all.
He walked beside her with an elastic, somewhat jumpy step. His cane, the knob of which he held in his pocket, flicked his shoulder. His white silk muffler gleamed, and that was all she could see of him. He talked on and on. How he talked! Often she felt as if she were being slapped, oftener as if she were caressed. When Richard and his friends were the target of his jeers, she would gladly have contradicted him; but he mentioned no names, and, after all, she had often thought the same.
Tentatively he played on her aristocratic antecedents. He depicted scenes from country life, and said there was no pleasure to equal rides à deux in the rosy freshness of early morning. It seemed as if he had been present at everything she had ever done.
"I have lived a great deal in castles," he said, in explanation. "I know the life well."
Her past, too, it would seem. So he went on searching into her soul. When he began to speak of the books which he had lent her, without commenting on her refusal to see him the morning he called, she made a mild protest.
"Pray never lend me any more of the same kind!" she implored.
"Why not?"
"They puzzle me and make me ill.... I don't know how to describe it. You said they would help me to find myself ... but, on the contrary, they seem to estrange me from everything that I had always thought before was pure and holy."
"Perhaps that is so," he replied, and his walking-stick danced; "perhaps this is the first step that I demand of you in the ascent to a higher life.... By-the-by, let me tell you a little story that comes in à propos here. There were once two old zealous missionaries who were conscientiously fired with the desire to spread Christianity in Central Africa.... Such freaks are really quite superfluous, but they exist, and we have to put up with them. In order to render their work of conversion the more solemn and convincing, they took with them a small portable organ. They dragged it, sweating, hundreds of miles, through deadly tropical heat into the heart of the interior, where the poor naked savages resided, on whom they had designs. There they set up the organ and started their services, but no sooner had the poor naked savages heard the first notes than they took their cudgels and brained the two zealous missionaries, because of the evil spirits shut up in the musical-box. In the same manner life deals with us, my dear lady, when we try to play it on the good old organ of our exploded moral prejudices."
Lilly felt powerless to cope with such an overmastering intellect. In silent submission she bowed her head. And as he now, without asking her consent, laid her hand in his arm, she dared not withdraw it. They passed grimy factory walls, the dreary blackness of which was here and there illumined by the milky blue light of a lamp-post, scaffoldings stretched skeleton arms against the lurid cloudy sky, and now and then they heard the bells of the electric tramcars as they ran along parallel routes.
"Where are we going?" she asked nervously.
"We are avoiding human society," he answered. "And if I were to take advantage of the present situation, I should profit by your feeling lost and in need of my protection. But I am not a designing nature. In all that concerns the emotions I am a mere babe.... I simply take what heaven lets fall. Are not you constituted in the same way?"
"No, I am too stolid and heavy," she said, ready to open her heart to him. "I think over things ever so much."
"It depends what you think," he said gaily.
She wanted to speak out, to tell him everything, and she felt as if she must lay her heart on his open palm so that nothing should be hidden from him. But humility and awe of his stupendous cleverness sealed her lips.
"Why do you trouble yourself about an idiot like me?" she asked, in order to show at least how humble she was.
"Because I may have a mission to fulfil in your life," he answered. "Perhaps, I say, for one never can tell what reflex action of the emotions may bring about. Certain psychological moments will show us."
She did not understand the meaning behind this remark, but a timid feeling of happiness that so infinitely great a man should be generously interested in her crept over her.
"You are in his power," she thought; "he can make of you anything he likes."
As he drew her arm a little closer to his, her pressure in response brought his hand for a moment in contact with her bosom. She was overcome with terror that he might think she was throwing herself at his head. What if she went home with him, that he asked her ...
"I will take the tram," she said hurriedly. "I am tired."
He whistled for a cab, which was approaching out of the fog.
"No, no!" she cried, with no other thought than that of preserving the gift of his friendship as it was, intact. "Not with you. I must go home alone. You know what people are; besides ..."
She wrenched her arm out of his, and ran to the next stopping place so quickly that he could scarcely follow her before she had jumped on the first car that came up. The smile with which he looked after her was, however, not a disappointed one.
He intended to triumph, and would triumph.
Lilly Czepanek was once more travelling upwards to the heights.
Three days later they met again, but this time at a large social gathering. The party had come from a café chantant in the northern part of the town, and were to wind up the evening in the private back room of a middle-class public-house.
By an unlucky chance the seat she had carefully kept for him by her side fell to someone else's share. This put her out; but there was champagne to cheer up everyone.
Lilly, out of defiance and boredom, drank far more than was good for her. Her eyes began to blaze with a challenging merriment; her cheeks took on the rosy-apple hue which all her friends delighted in. Her laughter became shriller, her movements more and more animated. Suddenly there was a loud call for "Lilly." Lilly was to perform.
Her heart misgave her. Not once, as yet, had she dared to recite in his presence. Indeed, no one had thought of asking her when he was of the company, for he was always the centre of attraction. Then she felt, "To-day I can do anything--to-day I will show him what there is in me."
She stood up, tossed back the hair from her forehead, and shook herself ... shook off every vestige of the everyday Lilly; the Lilly subject to fits of depression and faintheartedness; the vacillating, inanimate Lilly.... Now she was off. She first plunged into an imitation of "La belle Otero," and crowed and whooped so that her audience laughed till it cried.... Then she mimicked a star of the cabarets, ... sucked her thumb in babylike simplicity and piped, "Let me in, I say, into your room to-day." In a comical double-bass she growled, "An ambassador would a-wooing go." Half-hidden behind the hatstand she cooed the song of the passionate love-pigeon, "Gurr ... gurr ... keak." Finally they begged her to dance. At first she protested, but in vain; she had to give in. Tables and chairs were moved out of the way, and making her own dance-music between her teeth, she whirled madly round the room, till half-fainting she collapsed into a corner.
The applause seemed as if it would never stop. The women devoured her with kisses, the men stroked her arms and hair, and Richard stood silent and pale with pride, in his Napoleonic attitude, and gnawed his moustache ends. Dr. Salmoni, however, kept in the background, smiled a melancholy modest smile, and looked as if he had nothing on earth to do with what had passed. Only one brief glance of understanding, that he threw at her like a laurel-wreath, told her that he knew for whom she had let herself go. When the party broke up, she was still glowing with ecstasy from head to foot.
Yes! this was the genuine intoxication, of the charms of which he had lately spoken to her; it was like a hissing flame darting through your heart and limbs.
It was he who helped her on with her fur coat, for Richard was engaged in paying the bill; and while he carefully placed the sable boa round her shoulders, he whispered close to her ear, "May I call to-morrow?"
"Yes," she said, terrified at herself; and then, in defiance of her own cowardice, she turned brusquely on her heel and shouted back in his face four or five times, as if in wrath, "Yes, yes, yes, yes!"
"What is the matter with her?" people asked each other.
But she laughed a short, hard laugh. What did she care for them? Was she not once more scaling the heights?
The next morning all seemed like a fantastic dream. Only one fact stood out clearly. He was coming to call!
She stretched herself in shy conceit as the applause of last night echoed in her ears. Now he knew what she was. No dull, tame, half-developed creature; no servile, sheep-like nature, whose fixed horror of fate made her the voluntary slave of every convention. But, on the contrary, a free, proud, luminous super-being, one of those perfectly complete, mænad-like women who dance on the edge of precipices and mock at death, even when he holds them in his clutches.
Then she became faint-hearted once more. After all, what was there to boast of in having sung a few songs and danced an outrageous dance under the influence of champagne? She had only behaved like a common music-hall diva, and reaped the undesirable plaudits of a half-inebriated audience! Was that all one had to do to belong to the elect, the laughter-loving, powerful souls of Dr. Salmoni's literature?
No, oh no! that could not be the key! After such an exhibition he would feel nothing but scorn or, at best, pity for her.... And if he came to-day it would be only to tell her what he thought of her. He would show her how degraded she was, and then benevolently go his way quite unconcerned.
She wouldn't endure that. She would cling to him, and cry, "You have promised to lead me to the heights out of this barren miserable existence. Now keep your word! Don't forsake me. I'll do everything you wish. I will be your slave, your dog; only don't forsake me."
In feverish expectation she dressed, waved her hair, reddened the lips that dissipation had paled, and altogether made herself as beautiful as possible.
Towards twelve there was a ring. Was it he?
No; instead of Dr. Salmoni, Frau Jula had come to call. What did she want all of a sudden? They had, as if by mutual agreement, avoided each other since that evening of confidences. And here she was now, without even going through the formality of being announced! Her air was cordial, almost affectionate, and she craved a chat.
Lilly hesitated.
"I won't keep you long, my sweet one. I can see you are expecting a visitor."
"I didn't know that I was," she said, conscious that she blushed.
"Don't deny it, dear.... I know that Dr. Salmoni is coming.... I know, too, exactly how you feel. I, too, have gone through it, and stood, getting pale and pink in turns, as I watched for him.... My morning dress, certainly, was not such a ravishing reseda as yours; it was only claret colour ... but that is all the same; he doesn't mind us in claret colour."
"What do you imply by that?" faltered Lilly.
"What do I imply? ... Why, simply this. Our circle for Dr. Salmoni is a kind of fish-pond of pretty light women, in which he angles from time to time, till he hooks something that his appetite fancies. At present he is hooking you, my dearest."
"That is slander!" cried Lilly, flaring up. "He has never made love to me, nor has such a thing been even mentioned between us."
"Because it isn't necessary," replied Frau Jula; and she laughed maliciously. "The man does not trouble himself with such trifling preliminaries. He knows that at the right moment we shall rise to his bait."
Lilly felt herself getting more and more angry.
"Between him and me nothing has passed but discussions on purely intellectual subjects, such as a freer, prouder, and higher human ideal; and if you, and people like you, can't understand such language; if you are too----"
"Stop, my dear, please," said Frau Jula, "Don't be insulting! There is no occasion. I have come to you with the best intentions. For anyone else I would not have taken the trouble; I should only have smacked my lips. But you--well, I am fond of you, even if you prefer to have nothing to do with me. And you he shall leave alone. And yesterday, when I saw to what a pass things had come, I could give myself no peace.... I felt compelled to come ... before it was too late."
"But, indeed, you are mistaken," said Lilly; nevertheless, she cast an anxious look at the clock.
Frau Jula, whom this did not escape, made a grimace,
"Directly there's a ring, I'll slip out through the next room, but by that time I shall have achieved my object, I hope.... You see, child"--she sank into the sofa-corner and drew Lilly down beside her--"we poor women have all longed to raise ourselves again, so long as we were pretty faithful to one person.... And then Dr. Salmoni enters. He has to angle longer for some of us than others, but he doesn't mind how cheaply he gets us. He has, too, various baits. For a cold-blooded lump like Karla he doesn't go the same way to work as with us, naturally. With us he begins in this way: 'My gracious one, I am always amazed to find you in such an environment as this. Tell me, what are you doing here?'"
Lilly looked startled.
"Well, was that it? or wasn't it?"
"Yes, but ..."
"It was. That's enough. Next comes his depicting of the dangers we encounter if we continue to live in bondage.... He is especially down on duty. Duty he can't tolerate; it is obnoxious to him. As if we were so terribly particular about our little bit of duty, forsooth! Now then, wasn't that it? Am I not right?"
"Yes, but ..." stammered Lilly.
"I thought so. And next he says he wants to set us free ... to lead us upwards on high. He is the personal conductor to the heights. Isn't it so?"
Lilly turned her head aside to conceal the blush of shame that suffused her neck and face.
"And then the books! Wretched trash written by little raw scribblers in imitation of our great Nietzsche! But we all fall into the trap; it works up our blood like cayenne pepper; we get quite maudlin over it. What enrages us afterwards is that we were actually such geese as to believe in his scoundrelly sentiment, although the scurviest cynicism exudes from all his pores. But one is so stupid, and he is so clever. Yes, to give the devil his due, he is clever."
"But how does he manage it?" asked Lilly, who dared no longer stand up for him. "How does he seem to know everything about your past, as if he had lived it with you?"
"Yes, child, it's strange. But, you know, people whose circumstances are the same generally have the same experiences. It is easy enough for him to reconstruct our past when we tell him we've lived in the country. I am a landed-proprietor's daughter. Didn't he, by-the-by, tell you he had passed much of his time in castles?"
Lilly nodded.
"That's because he--I found it all out later--was tutor to some Jews who rented a place near Breslau; but they soon gave him the sack for his impudence."
In the midst of her agony of disillusionment Lilly could not help laughing shrilly.
"That's capital!" her friend approved. "You can think yourself fortunate. If only someone had come and warned me! for afterwards, how it hurts!"
"What happens afterwards?" Lilly asked, hesitating.
"It's very simple afterwards. When he's got what he wants, it's over. He buttons up his coat, says in a voice of deep emotion, 'Au revoir'; but it never comes, his au revoir. You never see him again."
"That isn't true; it can't be true!" cried Lilly in horror. "Surely no man can be such a cur to a woman!"
"You--never--see--him--again," repeated Frau Jula. "Why should you? The creature has other matters of more importance to attend to. I wrote my fingers to the bone. Not a line in response!... There's no getting at him. Frau Welter lay on his doorstep, Karla got the jaundice from fury, and so on. But the man's an eel. Later, if you meet him at a carousal, there's not the faintest recollection in his eyes ... he just treats you as he treats the rest."
Startled, Lilly recalled how she too had adopted a like course of action, and appeared at a carousal without betraying the slightest memory of what had passed before, although he had turned on her petitioning tragi-comical glances. Yes, everyone was as bad as everyone else in this world, in which one cast off one's dignity like a worn-out dress. She buried her face in the sofa-corner, overcome with shame and consciousness of guilt.
"Never mind," comforted Frau Jula. "It's all right now." And then there was a ring.
Lilly rushed to the door to give instructions as before, that she was "not at home," but Frau Jula restrained her.
"What are you thinking about?" she whispered. "Don't let him think you are afraid of him. If you do, you won't be rid of him for a long time. You must laugh at him. Do you understand? Laugh at him pitilessly with all your might."
Lilly would have liked her to stay and help her out, but she had already slipped away. Could she possibly outwit him single-handed?... He was now in the room. Drawn to her full height, she received him as a deadly enemy.
"My dearest child," he said, and kissed the hand which she quickly drew away from him.
He was very choicely dressed. He wore straw-coloured gloves, and held his silk hat against his breast. His eye glass danced on his white waistcoat.
A serene self-confidence, an air of supreme mastery of the situation, illumined his person like an aureole. The manner in which he nestled comfortably against the cushions of his chair, and crossed his legs with easy self-assurance, showed plainly that he regarded her as his certain prey.
Lilly was no longer nervous and in doubt. Her soreness of heart and disappointment had vanished. She felt nothing but a cold calculating curiosity. She followed his every movement with calm amazement, as he passed his hand over his glossy bushy hair and hitched up his trousers to display his silk socks with red clocks. And all the time she kept saying to herself, "So this is what you are! This!"
And then he began to talk in his low deliberate caressing voice, while his piercing eyes wandered up and down her. "You are excited, my dear child, and I am not astonished. When two people such as we are find themselves for the first time absolutely alone together, they are apt to betray their emotions. Don't be ashamed of yours.... The tie that has bound us together is so subtle and delicate an understanding--the magnetic fluid between us is of such a rare and fleeting nature--" "Yes, very fleeting," thought Lilly---- "that it really would be a pity if we did not taste and enjoy it to the dregs. Any restraint of feeling might easily prove a hindrance on your side, as well as on my own, to the full rapture of this hour of spiritual hedonism."
He almost smacked his lips as he said this, and rocked from side to side. Lilly thought of the refrain of a Viennese song in her repertoire: "I have much too much feeling."
"He has much too much," she said to herself, and she could not help a smile flitting across her face.
He saw the smile, which she tried to hide by bending her head, and he misinterpreted it.
"There is a delightful virginal coyness about you," he said, with an admiring oscillation of his head, "that never fails to excite my wonder."
"Oh, you mountebank!" thought Lilly, and smiled again.
Now he was slightly perplexed, for his wide and varied experience had taught him something. He shot at her from under his lids a glance of suspicion and thwarted greed.
"Or have you," he continued, "kept over for to-day some of the charmingly graceful humour which you developed last night with such unexpected élan?"
"I may have," she replied, with an upward glance which was almost arch.
"Most excellent!" he cried, his face breaking into a roguish smile in which there was a touch of devilry. "Are you, then, one of those who know how to laugh in your sleeve at--how shall I express it?--the whole farce and hypocrisy of it all ... at yourself too, my child--at yourself, mind; that is the main point, ... If so, you and I are one, one in body and soul ... nothing divides us any more ... then ..."
"God forgive me!" she thought, and held her handkerchief pressed against her lips to stop her giggling. Had not Frau Jula said, "Laugh at him; laugh at him pitilessly with all your might"?
For his part he seemed to accept her suppressed laughter as an allurement, a gentle signal to cut short ceremonious preliminaries, for he chose this moment for springing at her and laying his arms about her waist.
She repulsed his attack fiercely and struggled with him. Tears of humiliation and fury coursed down her cheeks.
"Have I come to this?" a voice cried within her as she struck at him with her fists. In the midst of the tussle she succeeded in reaching the bell.
The maid-servant came in. He picked up his hat from the floor and, murmuring something that sounded like "Canaille!" disappeared.
He disappeared too for ever from the little circle, which he had at times honoured with his presence.
Lilly gave up attempting to scale the heights.