“Have you come to that conclusion?” Voss jeered. “I’ve known it long. The way to hell is paved with work; and only hell can burn us clean. It is well that you have learned that much.”
III
Crammon and Johanna Schöntag were sitting in a drawing-room of the hotel. They had had dinner together. Johanna’s companion, Fräulein Grabmeier, had already retired.
“You must be patient, Rumpelstilzkin,” said Crammon. “I’m sorry to say that he hasn’t bitten yet. The bait is still in the water.”
“I’ll be patient, my lord,” said Johanna, in her slightly rough, boyish voice, and a gleam of merriment, in which charm and ugliness were strangely blended, passed over her face. “I don’t find it very hard either. Everything is sure to go wrong with me in the end. If ever unexpectedly a wish of mine is fulfilled, and something I looked forward to does happen, I’m as wretched as I can be, because it’s never as nice as I thought it would be. The best thing for me, therefore, is to be disappointed.”
“You’re a problematic soul,” said Crammon musingly.
Johanna gave a comical sigh. “I advise you, dear friend and protector, to get rid of me by return post.” She stretched her thin little neck with an intentionally bizarre movement. “I simply interfere with the traffic. I’m a personified evil omen. At my birth a lady by the name of Cassandra appeared, and I needn’t tell you the disagreeable things that have been said of her. You remember how when we were at target practice at Ashburnhill I hit the bull’s-eye. Everybody was amazed, yourself included; but I more so than any one, because it was pure, unadulterated chance. The rifle had actually gone off before I had taken aim. Fate gives me such small and worthless gifts, in order to seem friendly and lull me into security. But I’m not to be deceived. Ugh! A nun, a nun!” she interrupted herself. Her eyes became very large, as she looked into the garden where an Ursuline nun was passing by. Then she crossed her arms over her bosom, and counted with extraordinary readiness: “Seven, six, five, four, three, two, one.” Then she laughed, and showed two rows of marvellous teeth.
“Is it your custom to do that whenever a nun appears?” Crammon asked. His interest in superstitions was aroused.
“It’s the proper ritual to follow. But she was gone before I came to one, and that augurs no good. By the way, dear baron, your sporting terminology sounds suspicious. What does that mean: ‘he hasn’t bitten yet; the bait is still in the water’? I beg you to restrain yourself. I’m an unprotected girl, and wholly dependent on your delicate chivalry. If you shake my tottering self-confidence by any more reminiscences of the sporting world, I’ll have to telegraph for two berths on the Vienna train. For myself and Fräulein Grabmeier, of course.”
She loved these daring little implications, from which she could withdraw quite naïvely. Crammon burst into belated laughter, and that fact stirred her merriment too.