CHAPTER XVII
Now the way was clear, now the new life might be consecrated with rejoicing and thanksgiving. July came and scorched the deserted streets. Those who remained in the aristocratic West-end, with no employer to ply the lash, spent dreamy days behind closed shutters, and wandered between bedroom and bath.
Lilly did not come to life till evening, when the town breathed out the heat that it had absorbed during the day in a redhot glow, when dusty clouds rolled over the yellow surface of the canal, and behind the parched and prematurely faded chestnuts the red furnace of the sky melted into the reflected lights of the street-lamps.
Then at Konrad's side she strolled through the blue twilight of the streets, using her eyes so as to escape observation from acquaintances who might chance to be about.
They met worthy, middle-class families on their way to the gardens. Lovers joined each other at appointed street corners. And between these two extremes was the floating element of those detached beings who are alone and solitary in crowds, and who yearn to steal from laughing Chance what they have prayed for in vain from sterner gods. A sultry vapour of secret desires hung over the exhausted city, in which conventional reserve and genuine sentiment flickered up and were extinguished as if they had never been.
How long ago seemed the days when she herself had sauntered around, hoping for fate to come her way, yet not daring to compel it. And, with a shudder at the thought of the dangers she had escaped, she clung closer to Konrad's protecting arm.
They always succeeded in finding some private nook after their own heart to dine in, where a gipsy band scraped their fiddles wildly, or Tyrolese played their zithers, or the landlord himself, a musician who had known better days, acted as conductor of an orchestra. In ivy-clad arbours, where the hot breeze stirred the dust on the evergreens in tubs, they could pass the evening hours together without fear of discovery. In the meantime a change had come over their intercourse. There were still instructive and erudite harangues on every conceivable subject, and listening attentively she hung on his lips with as much eagerness as ever, but her holy zeal for scientific studies had evaporated.
That God did not exist, that Fra Filippo Lippi was a scoundrel, that a line gone mad should be consigned to an asylum even if it was modern of the modern, that baroque art had its redeeming qualities--all this and much else that was interesting Lilly had heard many times, but it no longer provoked argument.
Often they looked long and silently into each other's eyes with a tender smile of yearning, as if that were the most eloquent language in which they could converse. Often too his thoughts wandered away on their own solitary excursions, and only came back to her under coercion. Then she was sad and jealous, and begged to go home.
Not till he was pillowed in her arms, lying close to her heart, was she content. The heat of the day had baked the walls through. The curtains were oppressive, and through the blinds a kind of desert cyclone blew; but they took no notice, the sultriness suited their mood.
They dreaded falling asleep as a misfortune, which shamefully abbreviated the hours of their being together, and so they promised that the one who kept awake longer was to rouse the other.
It was she who always kept awake longer; for he was exhausted by the day's work. For him there was no prospect of another doze after breakfast in bed, or of a siesta on the couch as alleviation from the midday heat. And as he lay with tired limbs outstretched, twitching like a noble hound's after a day's sport, she had not the heart to keep her promise. Then she would sit up beside him, and in the light cast from the pink-shaded, dimly burning lamp gaze at him hour after hour without tiring.
There was always something in his face to study. The frown of wrath, or rather of power, between his brows was more sharply defined than it used to be, and still frightened her a little. The muscles in his temples were never at rest, and the firm, curved upper lip trembled at the corners as if he were smiling at her in his sleep. He had become thin. In the haggard hollows of his cheeks were shadows spreading towards the jaws which they darkened, and there was a line of suffering about his nostrils. He was like a young Christ, made to be worshipped.
Often as she gazed at him she thought, "If I killed him at this moment--plunged a hat-pin into his heart--then he would belong to me entirely, now and always."
Then she would grope on his left side for his heart, lay the hollow of her hand against it, and fancy that she held it fast in her power, and with his heart, his love for her, and need never more relinquish either.
Once while she stooped over him, contemplating him thus earnestly, she woke him, and he looked at her in alarm, and, still half-asleep, asked:
"What is the matter? Have I hurt you?"
"Why do you ask?"
"Your eyes have such a curious expression, almost as if you were angry with me."
She made a vow that she would not gaze at him any more, but she could not help herself, and stared at him as much as ever. She loved him so dearly.
It was terrible when a sudden anxiety possessed her that she might lose him. Many a night this feeling of fear came over her with such cruel realism that she could hardly resist the impulse to rave and scream and tear her hair out by the roots. But she must not wake him, so she crept gently closer to his side, put one arm behind his back, and flinging the other across his breast, laid her head under his shoulder, and clung to him so tightly that she felt almost as if she were growing into a limb of his body.
Thus she became by degrees calmer, and could have a good cry, or give herself up to fancying how infinitely happy she would make him.
Never since time began would a son of Adam have been so happy. She would wrap him in a mantle of love, so soft and thick that no rude strokes of fate could penetrate it. She would be his Egeria and inspire his muse; with an invisible aureole surrounding her head she would stimulate and encourage him to noble undertakings and great achievements; she would tend him with the holy devotion of a sister of mercy.... She would attend cookery classes, learn laundry-work and dressmaking. No, it would be better for her to go to University lectures, study science and music, and a hundred other useful things, so that he should never find her a dull companion, or a useless helpmate.
For all this, she must of course be free and get rid of Richard. She thought a great deal about him, too; invariably without bitterness or resentment. Long ago he had been forgiven for setting her feet on the downward path.
"Everyone has his own standard of right," Konrad was wont to say. And, after all, to Richard she once owed her salvation.
The new life was to begin publicly as well as privately, with his engagement, which he wrote was on the eve of taking place. But she still felt hardly equal to a crisis. She shuddered at the thought of all the lies that would have to be told to Konrad as soon as a change took place in her household.
She preferred to avoid as long as possible the inevitable hardships lying before her in the future. Only at night, when she lay on the sleeping man's breast, did she work herself up into an ecstasy of sufficient rapture to look forward to poverty and privations shared with him as a royal inheritance of purple and gold. At three o'clock in the morning, when the lamps outside were extinguished one by one, and the reflection of the first grey shadows of cold dawn lay on the ceiling, she was bound in honour to wake him.
He must not meet other residents in the house on account of his own reputation and hers.
As he dressed, he fumbled, half-asleep, among the ivory coroneted brushes, and managed to complete a hasty toilette in time to reach the nearest Viennese café as soon as it opened for a pick-me-up in the shape of a black coffee.
For from Lilly's arms he insisted on going straight to his desk. She could not talk him out of this insane proceeding. It was an atonement that the night's pleasure demanded from him, and so he would sit brooding among his books and papers till noon, often unable to write a line from fatigue.
She, on the other hand, sank into a profound slumber, from which she was awakened about ten o'clock by the entry of Adele, smiling approvingly, with the breakfast-tray.
Every other night she allowed him to devote to his work. She had no desire to sap his young life's blood. He made her anxious enough as it was. She did not like his hectic colour, nor the glitter in his eye. It disquieted her to see the abrupt changes in his mood from uproarious gaiety to absent-minded self-absorption.
All this should be altered when--what?
Oh! why bother about plans? Why not go on just as she was--loving him and making him happy? She passed her days in half-joyous, half-terrified dreams. She now had lost her zest and delight in mental exertion. There were other things that seemed more important than cultivating her intellect--the abject desire to be ever pleasing to his eyes, to hand him with unfailing regularity the intoxicating draught that held him in her toils. Hitherto she had accepted her personal charms as a matter of course, and valued them little more than anything else that was not seen and of no use. Now the cult of her body became a mania, for she so dreaded falling short of the ideal of her that she knew he had engraved on his heart. The desire to be beautiful, and the necessity of remaining beautiful, drove her to adopt methods which she had hitherto disdained. She took as much pains with herself as a woman in a harem. She perfumed her baths, tinted her nails, lengthened her eyebrows, powdered her arms and shoulders, and continually fancied she saw blemishes which needed new cosmetics to remove.
Then she was overtaken by a dread that all this care might only convert her appearance into that of a beautiful professional harlot. For this reason she left off wearing jewellery, and dressed more quietly than a parson's wife. Only the eye of a connoisseur could detect the amount of artistic ingenuity that her plain garb concealed.
Most of all when she was alone did jealousy occupy her thoughts. Not that she imagined he had anything to do with other women. He was far too noble to be suspected of that. But she was jealous of all that he did, and of all his concerns. It was torture to her to think of his writing-table. Every hour not spent in her society seemed like treachery to their love, and she cherished an hostility towards his friends such as she could never have believed herself capable of. Often, on the nights that he spent apart from her, she would keep watch on his rooms. She would stand opposite the house and look across the street and up at the windows, much as she had once done in the Alte Jakobstrasse. If the lamp was burning in his window she was content, but if she saw him going out or coming in she did not close her eyes all night.
He lived not far away, on the third floor of a Karlsbad lodging-house. It was long before he would allow her to visit him there. Next door to him, he had told her, was an invalid who needed the utmost care; any excitement caused by the sound of strange voices might prove fatal to her. When he spoke of the invalid his eyes avoided meeting hers, and she thought there were a hundred chances to one that he was keeping some secret from her.
When, however, after her persistent entreaties, he admitted her one afternoon she found nothing to confirm her suspicion. She was only besought to speak in a low tone, and she had known she must do this beforehand. His room was little more than a student's den. It was lofty, with two windows, but cheaply furnished--with no sofa and no carpet. On the walls hung rare engravings, and the usual pier-glass was displaced by a valuable copy of the "Madonna de Foligno," which looked down with sublime serenity on the barren wastes of northern Philistinism. Heaps of books were ranged on long low shelves, while others were simply piled on the floor in different corners of the room, covered with pieces of American cloth to keep them from the dust.
The writing-table alone, as might have been expected, boasted a certain luxuriousness. Like the pictures and books, it was Konrad's personal property. It stood, with its handsome carving and wide, open leaf, like a dark and solemn altar in the middle of the room. Not a single photograph of a woman was anywhere to be seen. She had not given him hers, and no other woman's was worthy of a place on his desk. Behind maps and ink-bottles was propped the portrait of an old gentleman in a frame. The face was that of a weather-beaten old gourmet, with beautiful, well-kept white hair, and eyes, peculiar to connoisseurs of women, blinking shrewdly under wrinkled drooping lids.
This was the famous old uncle who had paid for Konrad's education and now supported him.
Lilly was conscious of a profound depression of spirits as she looked at the portrait, as if one glance of those keen old eyes could read her soul and bring to light the secret that she was keeping from her lover with a thousand artifices and subterfuges.
"I'll take care that I never meet him," she thought,
Konrad took from a drawer his proudest treasure, the introduction to his great work, and showed her the closely written sheets of the manuscript.
She let her fingers pass caressingly over it. She regarded it with quite reverent awe. But then all of a sudden the jealousy that had of late been tormenting her soul attacked her with renewed force.
This manuscript was his real love, and she was nothing but a dark, bloodless shadow, who preyed on his nights like a vulture.
"Lock it up again," she said; and she turned despondently to go.
As if the magnum opus was not enough, there was a number of smaller things that kept him drudging. The more his name became known as that of a specialist in literary circles, the more frequently was he asked to contribute articles, and he strove to execute every order he received.
One day it came out what the important post was that he had been offered and had mentioned to her three weeks ago, on their memorable expedition into the country.
"I haven't dared to come to a decision till to-day," he said. "But now I have made up my mind. The editor of the periodical which I am to sub-edit in future has called on me, and left me no loophole for refusing. I was obliged to say 'Yes.' He is a charming fellow! In spite of his great intellectual ability, a man of almost childlike simplicity ... and so frank, so genial.... You must get to know him--if you don't know him already."
"What's his name?" she asked.
"Dr. Salmoni."