CHAPTER III
Bertha held out her hand brutally, in a sort of spasm of will: said, in the voice of “finality,”
“Good-bye, Sorbet: good-bye!”
He did not take it. She left it there a moment, saying again, “Good-bye!”
“Good-bye, if you like,” he said at length. “But I see no reason why we should part in this manner. If Kreisler wouldn’t mind”—he looked after him—“we might go for a little walk. Or will you come and have an apéritif?”
“No, Sorbert, I’d rather not.—Let us say good-bye at once; will you?”
“My dear girl, don’t be so silly!” He took her arm and dragged her towards a café, the first on the boulevard they were approaching.
She hung back, prolonging the personal contact, yet pretending to be resisting it with wonder.
“I can’t, Sorbert. Je ne peux pas!” purring her lips out and rolling her eyes. She went to the café in the end. For some time conversation hung back.
“How is Fräulein Lipmann getting on?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t seen her.”
“Ah!”
Tarr felt he had five pieces to play. He had played one. The other four he toyed with in a lazy way.
“Van Bencke?”
“I have not seen her.”
That left three.
“How is Isolde?”
“I don’t know.”
“Seen the Kinderbachs?”
“One of them.”
“How is Clara?”
“Clara? She is quite well, I think.”
The solder for the pieces of this dialogue was a dreary grey matter that Bertha supplied. Their talk was an unnecessary column on the top of which she perched herself with glassy quietude.
She turned to him abruptly as though he had been hiding behind her, and tickling her neck with a piece of feather-grass.
“Why did you leave me, Sorbert?—Why did you leave me?”
He filled his pipe, and then said, feeling like a bad actor:
“I went away at that particular moment, as you know, because I had heard that Herr Kreisler⸺”
“Don’t speak to me about Kreisler—don’t mention his name, I beg you.—I hate that man.—Ugh!”
Genuine vehemence made Tarr have a look at her. Of course she would say that. She was using too much genuineness, though, not to be rather flush of it for the moment.
“But I don’t see⸺”
“Don’t; don’t!” She sat up suddenly in her chair and shook her finger in his face. “If you mention Kreisler again, Sorbert, I shall hate you too! I especially pray you not to mention him.”
She collapsed, mouth drawn down at corners.
“As you like.” In insisting he would appear to be demanding an explanation. Any hint of exceptional claims on her confidence must be avoided.
“Why did you leave me?—You don’t know.—I have been mad ever since. One is as helpless as can be—When you are here once more, I feel how weak I am without you. It has not been fair. I have felt just as though I had got out of a sick-bed. I am not BLAMING you.”
They went to Flobert’s from the café. It was after nine o’clock, and the place was empty. She bought a wing of chicken; at a dairy some salad and eggs; two rolls at the baker’s, to make a cold supper at home. It was more than she would need for herself. Sorbert did not offer to share the expense. At the gate leading to her house he left her.
Immediately afterwards, walking towards the terminus of the Montmartre omnibus, he realized that he was well in the path that led away, as he had not done while still with her. He was glad and sorry, doing homage to her and the future together. She had a fascination as a moribund Bertha. The immobile short sunset of their friendship should be enjoyed. A rich throwing up and congesting of souvenirs on this threshold were all the better for the weak and silly sun. Oh what a delightful, imperturbable clockwork orb!
The next day he again made his way across Paris from Montmartre at a rather earlier hour. He invited himself to tea with her. They talked as though posing for their late personalities.
He took up deliberately one or two controversial points. In a spirit of superfluous courtesy he went back to the subject of several of their old typical disputes, and argued against himself.
All their difficulties seemed swept away in a relaxed humid atmosphere, most painful and disagreeable to her. He agreed entirely with her, now agreeing no longer meant anything! But the key was elsewhere. Enjoyment of and acquiescence in everything Berthaesque and Teutonic was where it was to be found. Just as now he went to see Bertha’s very German friends, and said “How delightful” to himself, so he appeared to be resolved to come back for a week or two and to admire everything formerly he had found most irritating in Bertha herself. Before retiring definitely, like a man who hears that the rind of the fruit he has just been eating is good, and comes back to his plate to devour the part he had discarded, Tarr returned to have a last tankard of German beer.
Or still nearer the figure, his claim in the unexceptionable part of her now lapsed, he had returned demanding to be allowed to live just a little while longer on the absurd and disagreeable section.
Bertha suffered, on her side, more than all the rest of the time she had spent with him put together. To tell the whole Kreisler story might lead to a fight. It was too late now. She could not, she felt, in honour, seek to re-entangle Tarr, nor could she disown Kreisler. She had been found with Kreisler: she had no means of keeping him away for good. An attempt at suppressing him might produce any result. Should she have been able, or desired to resume her relations with Tarr, Kreisler would not have left him uninformed of things that had happened, shown in the most uncongenial light. If left alone, and not driven away like a dog, he might gradually quiet down and disappear. Sorbert would be gone, too, by that time!
Their grand, never-to-be-forgotten friendship was ending in shabby shallows. Tarr had the best rôle, and did not deserve it. Kreisler was the implacable remote creditor of the situation.