Chapter VI
"There are delicate boundaries within the realm of the eternal womanly,"—thus Niebeldingk reflected next day,—"in which one is sorely puzzled as to what one had better put into an envelope: a poem or a cheque."
His latest adventure—the cause of these reflections—had blossomed, the evening before, like the traditional rose on the dungheap.
One of his friends who had travelled about the world a good deal and who now assumed the part of the full-blown Parisian, had issued invitations to a house-warming in his new bachelor-apartment. He had invited a number of his gayer friends and ladies exclusively from so-called artistic circles. So far all was quite Parisian. Only the journalists who might, next morning, have proclaimed the glory of the festivity to the world—these were excluded. Berlin, for various reasons, did not seem an appropriate place for that.
It was a rather dreary sham orgy. Even chaperones were present. Several ladies had carefully brought them and they could scarcely be put out. Other ladies even thought it incumbent upon them to ask after the wives of the gentlemen present and to turn up their noses when it appeared that these were conspicuous by their absence. It was upon this occasion, however, that some beneficent chance assigned to Niebeldingk a sighing blonde who remained at his side all evening.
Her name was Meta, she belonged to one of the "best families" of Posen, she lived in Berlin with her mother who kept a boarding house for ladies of the theatre. She herself nursed the ardent desire to dedicate herself to art, for "the ideal" had always been the guiding star of her existence.
At the beginning of supper she expressed herself with a fine indignation concerning the ladies present into whose midst—she assured him eagerly—she had fallen through sheer accident. Later she thawed out, assumed a friendly companionableness to these despised individuals and, in order to raise Niebeldingk's delight to the highest point, admitted with maidenly frankness the indescribable and mysterious attraction toward him which she had felt at the first glance.
Of course, her principles were impregnable. He mustn't doubt that. She would rather seek a moist death in the waves than…. and so forth. Although she made this solemn proclamation over the dessert, the consequence of it all was an intimate visit to Niebeldingk's dwelling which came to a bitter sweet end at three o'clock in the morning with gentle tears concerning the wickedness of men in general and of himself in particular….
An attack of katzenjammer—such as is scarcely ever spared worldly people of forty—threw a sobering shadow upon this event. The shadow crept forward too, and presaged annoyance.
He was such an old hand now, and didn't even know into what category she really fitted. Was it, after all, impossible that behind all this frivolity the desire to take up the struggle for existence on cleanly terms stuck in her little head?