CHAPTER XII
In the early autumn of the same year, Richard took a husband's holiday, and went to Ostend, while Lilly lived cheaply and innocently at a bathing-place on the Baltic, where she passed as a widow of good birth and position. She accepted the admiring homage of several spinsters, allowed a young missionary to dedicate a volume of verse to her, and declined an honourable offer from a widower, town-clerk of Pirna, with expressions of esteem and friendship.
Lilly enjoyed those six weeks immensely. The winter that followed differed very little from those that had preceded it. At Christmas, Richard's present to her was a hired carriage with the seven-pointed coronet emblazoned on its panels. He wanted to avoid the unpleasantness of his mother--whose prejudice against Lilly increased from year to year--ordering the family brougham for her own use when he was driving about in it with his mistress. Another present was a sable coat of the newest shape with dozens of tails, that cost a small fortune.
In spite of Richard's reproaches, Lilly made very little use of either of her new acquisitions, for the never-silenced inner voice of fear said to her that this sort of pomp and luxury would make her more and more part of the world she longed to flee from. While Richard aimed with stubborn pertinacity at draining the cup of pleasure to the dregs, Lilly hankered more and more after respectability. It was her last anchor of hope in the barren life which, as the days dragged along, left her tortured and dissatisfied in the midst of music, laughter, and light.
The only person in her set who stimulated her intellect in the least was Frau Jula. She knew how to relate entertaining stories, she showed that she had been at home in different worlds, and that her mind retained the impressions she had received there. But for some time past her silly little curly head had been enveloped in a web of impenetrable mystery. The erotic verse, which she had contributed to modern German periodicals, no longer appeared, and her morbid short stories were nowhere to be met with. When her friends teased her and asked what had become of her art, she would smile like a coy bride, and answer, "Wait and see."
At this time Lilly would gladly have seen more of Frau Jula, for she had long since given up feeling that she was in any way superior to her or more moral. But she did not find it easy to approach her, so she carried the burden of her hopes and fears unshared, and trudged on alone, thirsting by the way.
What now came to pass happened on the nineteenth of March, a date never to be forgotten, because it was St. Joseph's Day. It was a day of soft spring-like breezes and pinkish-grey skies; a day on which Nature's orchestra seemed to be rehearsing for the great symphony of spring.
The grassy slopes of the canal-banks were already beginning to turn green, the wild-ducks, in couples, swam on the smooth surface of the water, and big foam-edged blocks of melting ice floated downstream.
Lilly, filled with vague and wistful longings, could not stand it any longer indoors, and prepared to go out early. She wanted to run, cry, shout, jump hedges, throw herself on the grass anything, she didn't care what, so long as she escaped for a few hours from this prison, which smelt of powder and perfumed paints, and was oppressed by the weight of indolence.
She got ready for a walk and gave a few directions to Adele, the new servant, who was an elderly and rather patronising woman, thoroughly accustomed to service in the households of single ladies. Instead of waiting for her carriage, she took the tramway out to Grunewald. She alighted at the boundary where smart villadom ends, and the maltreated woods rise high above the yoke of the builder, and walked on straight ahead, not knowing where she was going.
A few motor-cars rushed by, and young men in them smiled and beckoned to her. They might have been actual acquaintances or only making fun of her; but, anyhow she thought it wiser to turn off the main-road, so she struck into the sandy path that ran along the lake to the old Jagdschloss. Here far and wide she saw not a human soul.
The chilly March wind swept over the milky-blue water and agitated the reeds and rushes. Ice was still to be seen round the edge of the lake, but it was so thin and pierced with holes that every small ripple that broke on the shore sent up jets of spray. From the pine-branches there sounded now and then the song of a bird, sad enough to extinguish awakened expectations of spring.
"It looks more like spring in the town than here," thought Lilly. But the keenness of the wind, full of the pungent scent of moss and pine-needles, did her good. As she strode along, she met it full in the face. Her cheeks glowed; she felt her frozen blood thaw and send fresh life pulsating through her languid limbs.
Suddenly she burst out laughing. Everything was all nonsense. Her pining discontent, her longing, Richard's snobbish ambition, his mother's everlasting marriage schemes--even respectability was humbug.
What had she to do with it all? She--the free, the wild, the ruined Lilly? There must be something better in store for her, something nobler. Not in Dr. Salmoni's sense--God forbid!--but something hardening, pure, and life-giving, like this March wind sweeping through her veins.
She heard a sound from the top of a pine-tree with which she had become familiar in the park at Lischnitz. It was a kind of whistle, half-defiant, half-enticing, which ended in a sharp "Tschek-tschek." She stopped, looked up, and whistled too. It was a couple of squirrels that had been chasing each other in corkscrew circles round the trunk, and now stood suddenly still in alarm at the sight of her.
"Tschek-tschek!" she cried, to incite the little red-coats to a new game, but, not succeeding, she stooped and picked up a pebble.
Just as she was in the act of throwing it, she caught sight of a pair of eyes fixed on her from behind another trunk--large, questioning, astonished eyes, that narrowed and darkened as they gazed, as if they wanted to look away, but couldn't--a pair of eyes that surely she had known long, long ago.
But no! she had never seen them before; for the young man who had watched with her the squirrels' game and stood with his hat in his hand, still half hidden behind a tree, was quite a stranger to her. If she had ever met him, she would never have forgotten it. It would not be easy to forget that serious, self-contained, Greek young face, with the sensitive, slender-bridged nose and the lustrous eyes of the dreamer.
He was not very fashionably clad, and she liked him for it. He had on a brown overcoat of a not very modern cut, and underneath a suit of rough tweed, quite un-German and still less English.
He seemed gradually to come to life. He put on his hat and emerged from behind the tree-trunk. "Now he is going to speak to me," she thought, and she felt a sickening dread. But no! He lifted his hat, threw her one more long, questioning, earnest look--almost a look of recognition--walked past her, and took the path she had come by.
Lilly, too, would have liked to walk on, but she could not make up her mind, and, not to be caught staring after him, she slipped behind the same trunk which had lately concealed him from view.
She wondered if he would look back. No, he did not do that, and she felt somehow hurt and neglected.
Smaller and smaller grew the tall figure. He strode over the sand with a somewhat heavy step. "He's never been a soldier," she thought. Then she fancied that he stooped and afterwards turned round. Yes, he was making quite a wide and careful survey of the landscape, as if bent on discovering her. But she was safely hidden behind her tree and did not stir.
Then he walked on again and vanished in a bend in the path.
"A pity I haven't got the carriage," she said to herself.
If she had been driving she could have overtaken him without appearing to follow him, and the seven-pointed coronet would have duly impressed him. As it was, he must have formed a bad opinion of her for wandering about alone, whistling like a boy and throwing stones at amorous squirrels. Nevertheless, as she made her way homewards she felt as if some rare and beautiful gift had been bestowed upon her.
Was it possible that she had seen him before? She recalled the young man she had met in the Pragerstrasse, when she was with her husband in Dresden; how he had given her the same sort of look with a flash in it of sad recognition; and how she had wanted to turn round and ask, "Who are you? Do you belong to me? Would you like me to belong to you?" And she had forborne to follow her instinct, because to turn round in the street would have been a crime in the colonel's eyes.
To-day she was free--so free that she could choose her friends as her heart dictated--and yet she had not followed him, but had let him go, he who, whether he was that same young man or not, might perchance belong to her or she to him.
With half-closed eyes she filled in the details of the picture that she had formed of him. His beard was small, dark, and double-pointed, and so closely shaven on the cheeks that it appeared only a blue shadow. Such beards were rarely seen in Berlin, though Italians and Frenchmen wore them. His lips were full, hard, and firmly closed, as if chiselled out of marble; his high, square forehead seemed to give him an aspect of wrath, but not the vulgar wrath of an ordinary mortal towards a poor creature like herself; it was like the wrath of the gods--divine.
So she continued to rhapsodise, forgot where she was going and lost her way, to find herself finally on quite the wrong road. Anything might have happened to her in the woods, where unprotected ladies were not safe at any hour of the day from the attacks of tramps. But she scarcely gave a thought to the risks she had run, got into the first tram she came to, and reached home, exhausted but glowing all over, two hours later than she intended.
She could not eat anything, but threw herself on the chaise longue and dreamed.
The bell sounded, and a man's voice was heard at the door. It couldn't be Richard. He never came before half-past four.
Then Adele came in, and said that there was a strange gentleman outside who wished to know if madame had missed her card-case; he had picked one up in the woods.
Lilly sprang up. The little brocaded case, which she had carried in her hand with her silver chain-purse, was not there; she must have dropped it and not noticed that it was missing in her excitement.
"What is the gentleman like?" she asked.
He was tall, young, and handsome, indeed, remarkably handsome, was the information she received from Adele.
"Has he a dark, close-cut beard?"
Yes, he had.
The delightful shock of the surprise made her stagger.
"Ask him to come in," she stammered, with no thought of how she looked, though her hands went up to her hair.
As he entered the room she could scarcely recognise him, there was such a thick red mist before her eyes.
"I beg your pardon, gracious Frau," she heard him say in the clear calm tones of a man who has no ignoble dealings. "I should not have disturbed you if your address had been on your card as well as your name. I looked you up in the directory, but being uncertain that there were not others of your name ... I ..."
"You are very kind indeed to have taken so much trouble," she replied, and asked him to sit down.
"I am Dr. Rennschmidt," he said, waiting till she had settled herself in a corner of the sofa before accepting her invitation. He drew the card-case from his pocket and laid it on the table.
She smiled her thanks for his courtesy, and then, as it seemed necessary to her to exaggerate the service he had done her, she told him that she specially valued the little card-case as it was a souvenir of her husband, and she would have been very grieved to lose it.
His face grew a shade graver. There was a pause, in which his eyes rested on her features with a steadfast, questioning, almost searching expression. There was nothing in it of the tentative brazen advances that she knew so well in other masculine eyes. His glance was one of pure, disinterested admiration tinctured with reverence.
"Did we not meet a short time ago on the outskirts of the wood?" she asked warily.
He replied eagerly in the affirmative. "If I had not been so awkward I should have asked your pardon then for playing the eavesdropper. I saw how startled you were ... but at the moment I could think of nothing to do but to make myself scarce. It seemed the kindest course to take from your point of view."
His manner of speaking was so joyously frank, it was like a tonic to her, yet withal made her feel slightly ashamed.
"And now you have done something kinder still," she answered, with as much hearty appreciation as if he had saved her life.
"Oh, please don't mention it," he said. "I ought to have turned back at once. But it seemed as if the earth had swallowed you up. I was quite anxious about you."
She smiled to herself in happy trepidation. A little more and she would have confided to him where she had hidden herself.
"What must you have thought of me," she said, "wandering about in the woods by myself?"
"I thought that you did not feel lonely in the society of Nature, otherwise you would have brought a companion."
"You were right," she responded eagerly. "I left my carriage at the Restaurant Hundekehl"--the carriage had to be dragged into the conversation after all--"but it drove back, through some misunderstanding, and I was venturesome. You love Nature very much too?"
"I don't know about 'very much,'" he answered. "I may say in Cordelia's words: 'I love it according to my bond, not more nor less.' Don't you find that love of Nature is neither a merit nor an eccentricity, but simply a vital function?"
"Yes, of course," Lilly faltered, thinking to herself, "How exceedingly clever he is! Will you ever be able to keep pace with him?"
"But to be quite sincere," he went on, "I cannot get used to Nature in these climes. Her poverty oppresses me. I am in the position with regard to her of having outgrown the home of my fathers, for which I heap reproaches on myself. I try hard to get back on the old terms with her, and praise her whenever I honestly can. But first more recent pictures must fade from my mind. You see, I have only just come back from Italy, where I have been living for the last two years."
With a deep sigh she gazed at him, considering him now positively unearthly.
"Two whole years!" she cried.
"I am engaged on a great scientific work," he continued; "for its sake--no, it would be more correct to say for my health's sake--I was sent to Italy. My uncle, who is a father to me, wished it.... And it was Italy that first inspired me with the idea of the work, and afterwards fatherland and my old life and studies, everything else, went to the wall."
As he spoke his eyes flashed with enthusiasm. He seemed palpitating with his great purpose; and the old former yearning for Italian skies awoke and beat its wings within her heart.
"Yes, isn't it true," she cried, infected by his ardour, "that there is the home of all great ideas? There you may feel your utmost. What you have sown there will repay and bear fruit. Isn't it so? I have never been there, but I am quite sure that is how people feel. There, where everything great and beautiful belongs to the soil; there, one's self becomes greater and nobler.... One has no more petty sordid cares. Isn't it true?"
He had listened to her astounded, his eyes beaming and radiant. "Yes," he said almost solemnly, "it is exactly as you say."
She felt a sensation of joy. Wasn't this harmony of thought a confirmation of the affinity that she had from the first moment that she had set eyes on him sought and hoped for? Nothing could ever separate her from him after this. Perhaps he really was the physical embodiment of that shadow belonging to the Dresden days that had taken up its abode in her soul!
"I can't help feeling as if we had met before," she murmured softly, with eyes downcast.
"I feel like that too," he answered, "but it can't be so, for if we had met I could never have forgotten the time and place."
"You were not in Dresden, by any chance, about this time six years ago?" she asked.
He shook his head. "Six years ago I was studying in Bonn. The term was over, it is true, but I went for my vacation to my uncle's. He had just had his place restored."
"Where is it?"
"Near Coblentz."
"Then it couldn't have been. It's strange that we should both feel as if ..." she said.
"There are certain pictures belonging to our psychic existence," he replied, "which seem like memories, and are in reality presentiments."
"I wonder what you mean?"
"I mean that one walks between past and coming experiences as on a tight-rope; that one reels and falls into space so soon as----"
"What?"
"So soon as one----" he broke off abruptly. "Pardon my asking, but are you an artist?"
"Why?" she asked nervously. She felt repelled. Was he making a fool of her?
"I gathered that you were from the plate outside your door."
The plate: "Pressed Flower Studio."
This was being rudely awakened from a pleasant dream to the stern facts of reality. But she must not lose her presence of mind and forfeit his esteem, so she answered carelessly:
"In a way. But mine is a very modest art. Once I worked hard at it, and it made me very happy. I learnt it soon after I became a widow." Her lips refused to utter the phrase, "soon after I was divorced." "I took it up more as a little distraction than as a serious means of earning a living. But then I had trouble with my eyes, and was obliged to give it up."
Three lies in one breath! But why not? She and everything round her was one big lie ... all her gestures and all her thoughts. Only the cry that went up from her soul now, moving her to the depths of her being, was not a lie: "You shall be mine. I will be yours." And so for his sake she went on lying.
"It's painful to me to talk about it," she continued, with her handkerchief pressed against her eyes. "I still fed it so much. I hope you will be so kind as never again to refer to it."
"Never again" had slipped from her. It sounded as if she took for granted that their acquaintance was to continue, and, overwhelmed with shame and confusion, she rose and turned her face aside.
"Forgive me," he said, greatly concerned. "I had no idea ..." He stood up to go.
A voice within her cried, "Stay, stay, stay!" But she was incapable of speaking, and felt as if turned to stone. Had he seen through her lies, divined who and what she was, and didn't wish to stay? She was conscious that her manner grew cold and haughty.
She extended her finger-tips to him. "It was kind of you to come," she said.
This was the moment to invite him to come again, but the words froze on her lips.
His face had grown very pale, and he looked at her with great, inquiring, expectant eyes.
"I hope we shall meet again," he said.
"I hope so, too," she replied frigidly.
He brushed her hand with his lips and was gone.
The end--the end! And all her fault. Happiness had looked in upon her, had lightly laid its hand in blessing on her brow, and then flown away, leaving nothing but this pain, a pain more intolerable than any she had ever known. It clutched at her throat and tore her heart like a physical pain.
During the night that followed she concocted a thousand plans by which she could contrive to find him out and meet him. As a scholar, he would probably be a constant visitor to the library. She would go there to read and study, in the hopes of coming across him. But, simpler still, why shouldn't she write to him?
"I don't love you," she would write. "Why should I love you when I hardly know you? But I feel that I am destined to have some influence in your life, and so ..."
Finally she rejected all her plans, disgusted with her own lack of dignity. No; Lilly Czepanek would not throw herself thus at any man's head.
She became tormented once more with restlessness.
In the daytime she haunted the Leipziger and Potsdamer Strassen, and other parts where metropolitan life is at its busiest. Of an evening, instead of roaming about in distant suburbs as of yore, she kept close to the neighbourhood of her own dwelling, walking up and down incessantly on the solitary banks of the canal with quick, businesslike strides.
In spite of the economy on which she plumed herself, she left the light burning in the corner drawing-room, when she went out, for no apparent object.
It was on the fourth evening after their meeting that while she was pacing the further bank of the canal at about eight o'clock, when the stars hung like lamps in the sky, she happened to see among the trees the figure of a young man, who stood gazing up fixedly in the direction of her flat.
She could see nothing of his face, for his back was turned towards her, and it was dark just at that spot. With a slightly accelerated heart-beat she went on her way, but in a few moments her feet declined to take her further, and she was obliged to retrace her steps. The dark figure still stood motionless among the trees, and regarded, through the bare branches, the light in her corner drawing-room. This time he heard her footstep and turned towards her.
Startled, she recognised his features. He too showed signs of being perturbed, for at first he made a foolish little attempt to look as if he had not seen her, then with an embarrassed smile he took off his hat.
She trembled so violently that she dared not give him her hand. "Dr.--Rennschmidt," was all she managed to ejaculate.
He was the first to regain his composure.
"You will wonder," he began, walking beside her, "why I was standing here in the dark looking over there.... If I said it was by accident, you would scarcely credit it; so I may as well confess at once.... I have been troubled, since we parted the other evening, with the thought that things were not quite all right between us; there was a misunderstanding somewhere, a hitch, a hastiness--I don't exactly know what--but I feel that I owe you an apology for something."
"Why, if that was on your mind," she replied, "did not you come in and tell me?"
"Would it have been permitted?" he asked.
"Why not?"
"Pardon, but I have always believed that what privileges and rights we men enjoy with regard to women are accorded to us by them. For us there exist no others. We may stand here, of course, in the dark and tear our hair ..."
"Have you been doing that?"
"Don't, please, ask for any explanations," he begged. Though his voice did not betray emotion, the arm that touched hers trembled a little.
She stood still, startled, and glanced helplessly down the dark avenue she had come by.
"Does this mean you wish me to leave you?" he asked.
In the light cast by a lamp she saw his eager questioning look.
"Oh no!" she answered slowly, and it seemed as if someone else was speaking for her. "Now we've met, we need not part at once."
"That's what I think," he said, as gravely as if he were making an affirmation.
They walked on together in silence. Then he said in a lighter tone: "There's one thing I ought to draw your attention to. You have left your light burning. If you are so good as to spare me an hour, I am afraid it will cause you anxiety."
"Oh, never mind the light! We'll go and put it out," she exclaimed joyously; and turned on her heel so quickly that he was left two or three steps behind her.
As they crossed the slender span of the Hohenzollern Bridge, he pointed to the sky.
"Jupiter shines on our enterprise," he said. "I like him better than Venus, who gallivants after the sun, and will have a rosy carpet for her feet."
"Show me Jupiter," said Lilly, standing still.
Eagerly he pointed out to her the brilliant ruler of the heavens, and five or six constellations besides.
She clapped her hands with sheer delight. "Now I shall never feel lonely again in my flat," she cried, "when I am alone in the evenings and look out of the window."
While he waited for her at the foot of the staircase, she ran up, turned off the light, and put the latch-key in her pocket. She told Adele she would have supper out, and prepared to be off again.
Her heart was so full of ecstasy that she held on for a moment to the doorpost to prevent herself reeling, and gave a sob. But by the time she got downstairs she was quite herself again.
"If you will do me the honour to trust to my guidance," he said, "I know a corner where no one will disturb us, and where we shall be transported to Italy."
She gave a deep sigh. "Oh, how fond he is of talking about Italy!" she thought. Yet she wouldn't have gone anywhere else for the world.
They pursued their way for five or six minutes along the dark bank of the canal, talking nonsense. Now the medley of lights on the Potsdamer Bridge were quite near, and he stopped before a small dimly lit window in which were displayed a dozen or so of wine-bottles wreathed with green cotton vine-leaves, looking like heads of asparagus popping out of the sand.
"Here Signore Battistini will serve us with a Chianti as good as any to be had in Florence," he declared.
They went in, and threaded their way through a small front room where the proprietor, black as the devil himself, was pasting on labels behind the bar. He was greeted with "Sera, padrone" by Lilly's new friend. They passed into a long room full of rough tables and chairs. The only attempt at decoration were garlands cut out of green glazed paper, which were evidently ambitious of being taken for vines. They twined round the bare gas-brackets and cascaded over hooks on the wall, and in order that there should be no mistake as to what was the origin of all these festive tokens, a placard hung from the middle, wishing all who entered--at the end of March--a belated "Prosit Neujahr."
"How do you like this fairy-garden?" Lilly's friend asked her, as the waiter, black as his master, with eyes like fiery Catherine-wheels, beseechingly held out his hands for her cloak.
At the tables round them sat bushy-haired youths, who rolled long, thin cigars between their teeth, and nearly thrust their knuckles in each other's eyes as they gabbled Italian with fascinating rapidity.
"They are marble-cutters," Dr. Rennschmidt said sotto voce, "employed by our leading sculptors. They earn a lot of money, and when they have saved enough go home to start housekeeping."
Among them were two ladies. They wore their black lustreless hair so low on their foreheads that their eyes resembled torches burning out of a dark forest. They had gold rings in their ears, and their low-cut dresses were clasped by barbaric brooches. They glanced up at Lilly's tall figure with envious admiration, and then began an animated conversation in whispers.
Dr. Rennschmidt bowed to them cordially, with an air that seemed to say he had nothing to conceal and nothing to confess. He told her that they were mandoline singers belonging to a troupe of Neapolitans, whose manager had thrown them over, and they were now in search of an engagement.
"Where am I?" Lilly thought.
It was like a dream, as if magic wings had wafted her into a strange country; only the genial "Prosit Neujahr," on the placard swinging close to her, reminded her that Germany, Berlin, and the Potsdamer Bridge were not far off.
"I have come here every day since my return," Lilly's friend said, as they made themselves at home in a corner. "Nostalgia for the South still afflicts me. The most perfect German cooking has no charms for me now, and I must have my Chianti, To-day we will, however, drink something else, because the palate has to acquire a taste for Chianti."
He beckoned to the waiter, who was called Francesco, just as if he had stepped out of a romance about knight-errantry and brigands--and after a lively discussion between the two a dusty, light-coloured bottle was produced and put on the table. Then came dishes of curious-looking macaroni and meat bathed in orange-red sauce.
Lilly could not remember that she had ever tasted anything half so good, and she told him so; in fact, altogether she had never enjoyed herself so much in all her life. But this she did not tell him.
They wound up with a dish of fruit--called "giardinetto"--mandarins, dates, and gorgonzola cheese. The yellow wine, which had a perfume of nutmegs, frothed in the glasses, radiating tiny bubbles.
Leaning back against the wall, she let her eyes rest dreamily on her new friend. He turned his head from side to side with quick little movements rather like a bird. Everywhere he found something to observe, to remark upon, to absorb him; or perhaps he did it all to be specially entertaining to her. His eyes sparkled with eagerness and zest in life; the wrinkles on his forehead rose up and down, and what she had mistaken for a cloud of wrath was, after all, only the expression of his brain's boiling activity.
He had a dear, funny habit, which heightened this effect: he would put his outspread fingers to his head as if he were going to run them through a mass of hair; but the hair was not there, and so he clapped his hand instead on his bare temples. He seemed compounded of force and resolution, which commanded her admiration and even awe. But his physique was not of the most robust, although a golden-brown hue of health, fresh from the South, tinged his cheek. His throat was delicate, his breath from time to time came in gasps, and when his eyes became veiled with fatigue, after some introspective probings, there was something pathetically boyish about him that awakened maternal tenderness.
"Ah, so this is you!" she thought, and stretched herself in blissful languor. "This is you at last, at last."
"Why do you shut your eyes?" he asked, concerned. "Aren't you feeling well?"
"Yes, oh yes," she said, flattering him with her eyes and mouth. "But do, please, tell me more about the land of my desires, where I have always wanted to go and where I have never been."
She then described to him her youthful longing, which the consumptive master had awakened in her, the longing which had continued to smoulder amidst the ashes of her life's experience.
"In your place I should have tramped there as a barefooted pilgrim," he said.
"Oh, but I've had money enough to go often. I could have afforded it perfectly well. Once I was as far on the road as Bozen. But I had to turn back as a punishment because a young man made eyes at me."
"How sad!" he said, laughing. "That was hard lines on you, harder than you have any conception of."
"I have some conception," she sighed. "I have only got to look at you to be convinced of how hard it was."
"Why me?"
"Because you shine like Moses after he had looked on the glory of the Lord."
He became serious at once. "There are glories here, too, if we have eyes to see them," he said. "But, nevertheless, you are right. I am so chock-full of the life and reflected radiance that I have stored up there, so many sources have been opened out, so many seeds have germinated, that I scarcely know how to use all my vast wealth, I write till my fingers bleed, and there is always more to write.... I want to give, give, and go on giving; but to whom I don't know."
"To me!" she implored, holding out her hands, palms upwards. "To me! I am so desperately poor. Such a beggar!"
With the stern eyes of a visionary he gazed down on her. "You are not poor," he said. "You have merely been allowed to starve."
"Isn't it the same thing?"
He shook his head, still fixing her with his gaze.
"What was your husband?" he asked next.
"I ... am the divorced wife ... of an officer of high rank," she replied, dropping her eyes to the floor.
Thank God! This time she had not lied.
But hadn't she? What was she now? For a moment he pressed her hand, which lay on the table.
"Don't speak of your past if you would rather not," he said; "leave it for the present. When we are old friends it'll be time enough. I'll tell you about myself and how I came to think of my great work."
"The work that you mentioned just now?" she asked, curiously moved by the sudden solemnity of his tone.
Breathing deeply, he stretched out his clenched fists, and his eyes burned into space.
"Yes; the work for which I live ... the work that is my pillar of strength, my goal, my future--my everything ... that stands for father, mother, brother, friend, and love.... For it, this wine was vintaged, this hour created, and you yourself, dear gracious, beautiful one, with your delicate infinite charm, and your two begging hands, which really were made for giving."
"I thought you were going to talk about your work," she said softly.
"I am talking about it--of that and that alone. I want you to know how all that I live and love is part of it. For instance, think of the thousands of times the Annunciation has been painted, sculptured, and sung, and how I have toiled and moiled over the subject, and yet now at this moment when I see your great wistful 'Mary-eyes' fixed on me in half-humble, half-astonished questioning, I feel that the last word has not been said, the highest rung of knowledge has yet to be reached.... So you see how everything must be made to serve my work."
"Are you a poet?" she asked, quite carried away.
He shook his head, smiling. "I am not a poet, I am not an artist, neither am I an historian nor a psychologist; but I have to be all and a great deal more besides, for my work demands it."
Then he told her his whole story. His father, a university professor and distinguished jurist, had died young, not long after the death of his mother, at his birth. His uncle, a wealthy old bachelor who had travelled a great deal both on business and pleasure, had adopted him. He had given him a good education, and since made him an allowance sufficient to indulge his modest whims and requirements. Acting on his uncle's wishes he had gone abroad, and postponed for a time entering on the same academic career as his father, owing to his health having suffered severely from the strain of the examination, which he had passed with honours. His studies and researches in the history of art, which he had always pursued with ardour, had finally drawn him to Italy. More than churches and museums and picture galleries the teeming humanity and charm of personality in the Southern race attracted and enchanted him. It seemed to him as if contact with it awakened in him a new fresh human impulse and consciousness of his own powers. He was more than ever strongly impressed by the original unity of artistic endeavour and personal experience both in history and modern life.... Heroes of mythology and history, characters in poetry and painting, the creators and painters, too, all became to him so objective, so alive, that they seemed a part of his being. He had felt nearer than ever before to penetrating into the emotional world of bygone ages when living in the midst of a people who were saturated with history, yet in their thousand-year-old practice of Art had never lost touch with their own epoch. He learned to discriminate and date at first sight monuments of various periods, and trace them back step by step down the centuries. Creative Art was, and always would be, his inspiration and guide.... Art was able, above all, to wring speech from the dumbness of death, and to create new forms out of the dust of ages. The only thing still lacking was the key to the origin of all this amazing and convincing force. The A B C of the language was not forthcoming.
Lilly, with strained attention, strove to follow him. She had never heard anyone talk like this, and yet much that he said sounded familiar. It seemed to her as if some residue of long-past days left on the floor of her mind echoed to his ideas.
"One day it happened," he continued, "that while I was in Venice I started off on an excursion to Padua. By rail it is about as far as from Berlin to Potsdam. I was not attracted there by its art, for I was still on my honeymoon with the Early Venetians. I went for the sake of completeness. So I found myself in the little chapel where Giotto's frescoes are. You know him?"
"Giotto and Cimabue--of course," she answered proudly.
"Then I needn't explain further. I hadn't much enthusiasm left for him and his school, for, as I said just now, the Quattrocentists had turned my head. Now, please picture a ruined Roman amphitheatre overgrown with ivy--nothing but the outside walls still stand, like the walls of a garden--and somewhere in the middle the little chapel built of slates, every bit as bare as a Protestant conventicle in the royal realm of Prussia."
Lilly smiled. A fling at Protestantism always gratified her, like a personal favour.
"Services are no longer held there. It has been preserved as a national monument. When I first went in I saw nothing for a minute but a blue glory on the walls--a sort of background of light--then picture after picture, in long rows. The history of the Saviour told simply, just as a poor friar would tell it to poor people on Good Friday, provided he was the right sort of preacher."
"But are we not all poor people in the Saviour's eyes?" she ventured to put in shyly.
He paused, stared at her for a moment, and then assented with fervour. "Certainly we are, and not only in the Saviour's, but in those of every great personality, and every great truth.... But that feeling is not easy to cultivate ... the feeling that we must be poor if what is given us is to make us rich. Religion can inspire us with it if it finds the right means of expression. In this case it was found. Here was a poor man speaking to the poor, and therein lay the richness of his gift. Then what in him goes to our hearts and brings tears to our eyes is not his great power, but quite the opposite--his lack of power. Do you grasp my meaning?"
"I think so," she said, her face lighting up. "When someone would beg anything of us and can only stammer out what he has got to say, we are far more touched than if he expressed himself in a stilted speech learnt by heart."
"Yes, that is exactly what I mean," he cried, delighted. "And it is from this bald, hesitating speech that the whole language of Art has arisen. Then, all that preceded it was merely a lifeless copy of worn-out Byzantine models. Here, for the first time, was an artist who, out of the simplicity of his heart, went straight to Nature for what he had to say. For this reason he became the supreme master of them all. And to-day whoever may succeed in depicting with his brush the acme of joy and the acme of sorrow has to thank that little chapel."
"I can well believe," cried Lilly, "that if the ocean had a source, and a man suddenly came upon it, he would feel as you did at Padua."
He caught her arm with both hands in his excitement.
"You have hit on the missing simile," he said, "and it is graphic enough to describe to the letter what took place within me. And yet another source was revealed to me all of a sudden, while I, with folded hands, made the tour of those walls. My work was there, leaping out of nothingness. I said to myself, 'You must write the History of Effects.' The effects, as Art, not only Creative Art, has created, seen, and represented them through the ages. Pictorial Art is only a part, you see; there are besides the elocutionary arts, poetry as well as painting, sculpture as well as music. It struck me that by adopting this method I might succeed in producing a real genuine record of the development of human emotions, which no historian, moralist, or psychologist has ever yet attempted. But why should it not be attempted? Material is hidden everywhere, and awaits elucidation just as fossils lie embedded in the rocks ready for the zoologist's hammer. Tell me what you think of my plan? Is it not worth a lifetime's labour?"
"Indeed, I think it is," she said, with the same solemn air as before. Had she been requested at this moment to sacrifice her own life on the altar of his work, she would have done it without a moment's hesitation.
"Ah! but there is a lot to think over first. One cannot start at a tangent," he continued. "Often Art leads us astray because she has deliberately tried to reflect something quite different from the spirit of her time. Whether she succeeded or not is another question. Often, too, the right channels of expression were lacking. Ah! you and I must have many, many more talks together. Don't look so horrified at the idea. Yes, my dear gracious one, I need you sorely. After this evening I can't do without you, for no one has ever listened to me so intelligently and sympathetically. And I have become such a stranger here, it's almost as if I were a foreigner. All the men I know are so wrapped up in their own interests that they hardly listen to me. Besides, I am conscious that my undertaking is a little mad. But there is solace to be derived from that when one thinks how every great work is supposed to be a little mad till it is finished and has accomplished its aim. Of course, everyone thinks the same about his own work, and I shall get over the feeling in time. But during the period of wrestling, when every day I think I have found a new vein of gold, and perhaps have to reject it afterwards as dross, if I have nobody to whom I can pour out my soul, I get into such a muddle I feel fairly disheartened. And now fate has sent you to me, and the thought of you has prevented my sitting calmly at my desk; a voice has seemed to call me to come out and gaze across at your light. Well, now I have you, I won't let you go in a hurry. I shouldn't, God knows, be so bold if it were for myself alone, but it's for my work. It clamours for you. Good heavens! why are you crying?"
She pressed the back of her hand against her eyes, and said, smiling at him, "I am not crying." But fresh tears gushed forth and dimmed the image of her loveliness.
"I can understand what it is," he said regretfully. "I have been inconsiderate, and by talking so happily of my own work I have revived your grief about your old art. I am very sorry."
She started back as if she had seen a ghost. Then, with a violent effort, she collected herself.
"No, no; that isn't it. Really, it isn't," she assured him.
But he persisted in reproaching himself, and his every word was a stab, when she thought of her own unworthiness.
"Let us go," she begged. "So many conflicting feelings overwhelm me. I am both happy and unhappy.... Outside in the air I shall be calmer."
It was long past midnight when they left the restaurant, A cold wind rippled the water and sighed among the bare branches.
He offered her his arm, and she clung to it as if she had been at home there for countless ages. Neither spoke for some time.
"In five minutes he'll be gone," she thought, and she could hardly bear the pain the threatened parting cost her.
"I have it on my conscience," he said at last, "that I have made so much of my work in our conversation you will think me conceited. I know it's not of greater importance than hundreds of other people's. I believe that in nearly every vigorous-minded young manhood there is such a goal to strive for, and to point the way. One fellow may have a book to write, another a great business to work up, a third may have others dependent on him, and many find it as much as they can do to swim against the current. It's all the same thing. If we let ourselves drift, we're lost; and none of us want to be lost, do we?"
"I think I lost myself long ago," she whispered, shuddering.
He laughed out loud. "You, noblest, tenderest, best of women!"
She knew how undeserved it all was, yet how sweet it was to hear him say it!
They were now walking so close to each other that their cheeks nearly touched. She closed her eyes, drinking in the warm breath of the strong life beside her. She felt that without volition she was being carried away to unknown blissful regions. She only came to herself when they stood before her door.
"When?" he asked.
To-morrow she was not free. She had been invited out.
The day after to-morrow?
Yes, the day after to-morrow she would have the whole evening. He might call for her.
Then, in fear that if she lingered she would say that she could see him to-morrow, she ran upstairs and hid her joy in the solitude of her rooms. She did not turn on the lights; the reflection of the street-lamps playing on the walls and the prisms of the chandelier was light enough.
Then she began to roam through the open doors, from room to room, into the corner where the bed stood, round the dining-table, across the corner drawing-room into the cold guest-chamber where no guest had ever been, up and down, up and down, singing, weeping, exulting. And then out of her tears, her humming and rejoicing, words came suddenly:
"Come, my beloved, let us go forth into the field; let us lodge in the villages. Let us get up early to the vineyards."
No, that was not exactly how it went. Something was not quite right; but she would find out what it was.
She wrenched back the lid of the piano, which hadn't been opened for a long time, and, as if the neglected and silenced old keys had acquired a voice of their own, a perfect volume of sound rushed forth, which she could never have believed herself or the piano capable of producing.
"Let us see if the vine flourish, whether the tender grape appear, and the pomegranates bud forth; there will I give thee my loves."
Yes, that was it! She had got it now--every bar, every note. Where had it hidden itself all these long years? It seemed like yesterday that she had sung it for the last time.
And yet what worlds of suffering lay between!
"No, not suffering! If it had been nothing but suffering," she thought, "'The Song of Songs' would never have become mute."