CHAPTER X
He took a step forward, her room evidently his destination.
“Mistvich!” Bertha said, at the same time retreating into the passage-way.—“Go!”
Got into the room, he did not seem to know what next to do. So far he had been evidently quite clear as to his purpose. He had been feeling the same necessity as her—he, to see his victim. He had not known what he wanted with her, but the obvious pretext and road for the satisfaction of this impulse was the seeking of pardon.
She had a moment before felt that she must see him again, at once, before going further with her life.—He, more vague but more energetic, had come at the end of twenty minutes. They were now together, quite tongue-tied. Once he was there, the pretext appeared unnecessary. The real reason might be found. The real reason no doubt was an intuition not to lose her absolutely, the wisdom of his appetite counselling.
He stood leaning on his cane, and staring in front of him.—Bertha stood quite still, as she would sometimes do when a wasp entered the room, waiting to see if it would blunder about and then fly out again. He was a dangerous animal, he had got in there, and might in the same manner go off again in a minute or two.
Now was the chance she had been fretting for to wipe out in some way what had happened;—not to seem, anyhow, to have taken it all as a matter of course.—But it was too convenient. She had never reckoned on his actually coming and putting himself at her disposition in this way. He stood there without saying anything, just as though he had been sent for and it were for her to speak.—She would have been inclined to send him back to his room, and then, perhaps, go to him.
Constantly on the point of “throwing him out,” as her energetic German idiom put it, it yet evidently would then, in the first place, be the same as before. Secondly, she was a good deal intimidated by his unexplained presence. She had a curiosity about him,—curiosity rather as to how what had happened to her could be straightened out or a little sense in some way got into it. The material of this modification was in him and only there.—She hated him thoroughly now. But this new and distinct feeling gave him at last some reality.—Her way of regarding Kreisler was that of the girl a man “has got into trouble,” and to whom she looks to get her out of it.
So she stood, anxious as to what he might have come there to do, gradually settling down into a “proud and silent indignation,” behind which her curiosity might wait and see what would transpire.
Kreisler had at length, having allowed her to stay unexplained by his side for a week or so, divined some complication. Her case might possibly be similar to his? She did not interest him any the more for this. But communication would not be, perhaps, absolutely useless.
His only possibility of action at present was to act violently, in gusts. He did not know, when he began an action, whether he would be able to go through with it.—He could not now prevail upon himself to go through the senseless form of apology or anything else. He had got there, that would have to be sufficient.
But the situation for Bertha became urgent, too. The difficulty was that there was nothing adequate to be done, that she could think of, in any way in proportion to the enormity of the occasion. Yet, to escape from the memory of Kreisler, what had happened must be wiped out, checkmated, by some action. She was still stunned and overwhelmed with the normal feminine feelings proper to the case. But yet even here there was an irregularity. Another source of infinite discomfort was that she could not even feel, as she should normally, the extent of the outrage, although it was evident enough. She had an hysterical inclination, in waves of astonishment, to accept its paradoxical and persistent appearance. This appearance Kreisler’s peculiar manner, her own present mind and the unexampled circumstances gave it. It was nothing,—a bagatelle!—Pooh! it is nothing, after all! How can it be of any importance, seeing that⸺?—This was one of those things that seem to have got into the category of waking by mistake. It had nothing to do with life’s context. And yet it was life. She must deal with it.
She had wished to free Sorbert. That had been the beginning of all this. It was with idea of sacrifice in her mind that she had committed the first folly on the boulevard.—Well, she had succeeded. What did Kreisler mean?—At last his significance was as clear as daylight. He meant always and everywhere merely that she could never see Tarr again!
She now faced him with fresh strength, her face illuminated with happy tragic resolve.—Supposing she had given herself to a man to compass this sacrifice? As it was, everything, except the hatefulness and violence of the act, had been spared her. And in telling Sorbert that there was something, now, between them, she had been driven to something, she would be nobly lying, and turning an involuntary act into a voluntary one.
She could now, too, be tragically forbearing even with Kreisler.
“Herr Kreisler, I think I have waited long enough. Will you please leave my room?”
He stirred gently like a heavy flower in a light current of wind. But he turned towards her and said:
“I don’t know what to say to you.—Is there nothing I can do to make up to you—? I shall go and shoot myself, Fräulein! I cannot stand the thought of what I have done!”
This was perplexing and made her angry. He appeared to possess a genius for making things complicated and more difficult.
“All I ask you is to go. That will be the best thing you can do for me.”
“Fräulein, I can’t!—Do listen to me for a moment.—I cannot even refer to what has happened without insult in the mere direction of the words.—I am mad—mad—mad!—You have showed yourself a good friend to me. And that is the way I repay you! Were you anywhere but here and unprotected, there would be a man to answer to for this outrage. I will be that man myself!—I come to ask your permission!”
His appetite, waking afresh, was the only directing thing in Kreisler at present. With hypocritical—almost palpably mock—eloquence, he was serving that.
This talk alone would have been of little use or consequence to Bertha. But coming in conjunction with her new independent reinforcement, which alone would have been enough to shape things to a specious ending, it was in a way effective.—The new contradiction and struggle in her mind was between her natural aversion for Kreisler now and her feeling of clemency towards him in his now beautiful usefulness.
She was very dignified, wise, and clement when she answered:
“Let us leave all that, if you please.—It was my fault.—I should have known better what I was doing. You must have been mad, as you say. But if you wish to show yourself a gentleman now, the only obvious thing is to go away, as I have said, and not to molest or remind me any further of what has passed. There is nothing more to say, is there?—Go, now, please!”
Kreisler flung himself on his knees, and seized her hand, she receiving this with astonished, questioning protestation.
“Fräulein, you are an angel! You don’t know how much good you do me! You are so good, so good! There is nothing you can ask of me too much. I have done something I can never undo. It is as though you had saved my life.—Otto Kreisler you can always count on!—The greatest service you can do me, that I humbly beg you may—is to ask some service of me, the more difficult the better!—Good-bye, Fräulein.”
Giving her hand a last hug, he sprang up, and Bertha heard him next stormily descending the stairs, and then farther away passing rapidly down the avenue.
Bertha was distinctly affected by this demonstration. It put a last brilliant light of grateful confusion on all the emotions emanating from Kreisler. The sort of notion he had evoked in parting that they had been doing something splendid together—a life-saving, a heroism—found a hospitable ground in her spirit. Taking everything together, things had been miraculously turned round. Her late blackness of depression and perplexity now merged in steadily growing relieved exaltation.