Norbert Hanold’s eyes opened to a width never before attained by them, and then he said, “Bertgang—then are you—are you—Miss Zoë Bertgang? But she looked quite different——”
The two dangling feet began again to swing a little, and Miss Zoë Bertgang said in reply, “If you find that form of address more suitable between us, I can use it too, you know, but the other came to me more naturally. I don’t know whether I looked different when we used to run about before with each other as friends every day, and occasionally beat and cuffed each other, for a change, but if, in recent years, you had favoured me with even one glance, you might perhaps have seen that I have looked like this for a long time.—No, now, as they say, it’s pouring pitchforks; you won’t have a dry stitch.”
Not only had the feet of the speaker indicated a return of impatience, or whatever it might be, but also in the tones of her voice there appeared a little didactic, ill-humoured curtness, and Norbert had thereby been overwhelmed by a feeling that he was running the risk of slipping into the rôle of a big school-boy scolded and slapped in the face. That caused him to again seek mechanically for an exit between the pillars, and to the movement which showed this impulse Miss Zoë’s last utterance, indifferently added, had reference; and, of course, in an undeniably striking way, because for what was now occurring outside of the shelter, “pouring” was really a mild term. A tropical cloudburst such as only seldom took pity on the summer thirst of the meadows of the Campagna, was shooting vertically and rushing as if the Tyrrhenian Sea were pouring from heaven upon the Villa of Diomede, and yet it continued like a firm wall composed of billions of drops gleaming like pearls and large as nuts. That, indeed, made escape out into the open air impossible, and forced Norbert Hanold to remain in the school-room of the portico while the young school-mistress with the delicate, clever face made use of the hindrance for further extension of her pedagogical discussion by continuing, after a brief pause:—
“Then up to the time when people call us ‘Backfisch,’ for some unknown reason, I had really acquired a remarkable attachment for you and thought that I could never find a more pleasing friend in the world. Mother, sister, or brother I had not, you know; to my father a slow-worm in alcohol was far more interesting than I, and people (I count girls such) must surely have something with which they can occupy their thoughts and the like. Then you were that something, but when archæology overcame you, I made the discovery that you—excuse the familiarity, but your new formality sounds absurd to me—I was saying that I imagined that you had become an intolerable person, who had no longer, at least for me, an eye in his head, a tongue in his mouth, nor any of the memories that I retained of our childhood friendship. So I probably looked different from what I did formerly, for when, occasionally, I met you at a party, even last winter, you did not look at me and I did not hear your voice; in this, of course, there was nothing which marked me out especially, for you treated all the others in the same way. To you I was but air, and you, with your shock of light hair, which I had formerly pulled so often, were as boresome, dry and tongue-tied as a stuffed cockatoo and at the same time as grandiose as an—archæopteryx; I believe the excavated, antediluvian bird-monster is so called; but that your head harboured an imagination so magnificent as here in Pompeii to consider me something excavated and restored to life—I had not surmised that of you, and when you suddenly stood before me unexpectedly, it cost me some effort at first to understand what kind of incredible fancy your imagination had invented. Then I was amused, and, in spite of its madness, it was not entirely displeasing to me. For, as I said, I had not expected it of you.”
With that, her expression and tone somewhat mollified at the end, Miss Zoë Bertgang finished her unreserved, detailed and instructive lecture, and it was indeed notable how exactly she then resembled the figure of Gradiva on the bas-relief, not only in her features, her form, her eyes, expressive of wisdom, and her charmingly wavy hair, but also in her graceful manner of walking which he had often seen; her drapery, too, dress and scarf of a cream-coloured, fine cashmere material which fell in soft, voluminous folds, completed the extraordinary resemblance of her whole appearance. There might have been much foolishness in the belief that a young Pompeiian girl, destroyed two thousand years ago by Vesuvius, could sometimes walk around alive again, speak, draw and eat bread, but even if the belief brought happiness, it assumed everywhere, in the bargain, a considerable amount of incomprehensibility; and in consideration of all the circumstances, there was incontestably present, in the judgment of Norbert Hanold, some mitigating ground for his madness in for two days considering Gradiva a resurrection.
Although he stood there dry under the portico roof, there was established, not quite ineptly, a comparison between him and a wet poodle, who has had a bucketful of water thrown on his head; but the cold shower-bath had really done him good. Without knowing exactly why, he felt that he was breathing much more easily. In that, of course, the change of tone at the end of the sermon—for the speaker sat as if in a pulpit-chair—might have helped especially; at least thereat a transfigured light appeared in his eyes, such as awakened hope for salvation through faith produces in the eyes of an ardently affected church-attendant; and as the rebuke was now over, and there seemed no necessity for fearing a further continuation, he succeeded in saying, “Yes, now I recognize—no, you have not changed at all—it is you, Zoë—my good, happy, clever comrade—it is most strange——”
“That a person must die to become alive again; but for archæologists that is of course necessary.”
“No, I mean your name——”
“Why is it strange?”
The young archæologist showed himself familiar with not only the classical languages, but also with the etymology of German, and continued, “Because Bertgang has the same meaning as Gradiva and signifies ‘the one splendid in walking.’”