“Ecoutez—listen,” she began, leaning towards the greater number of them, seeming to say, “It’s really simple enough, as simple as it is disagreeable: I am going to settle the question for you. Let us then discuss it no more.” It would seem a great effort to do this, too, her lips a little white with fatigue, her eyes heavy with disgust at it all: fighting these things, she was coming to their assistance.
“Listen: we none of us know anything about that man”; this was an unfortunate beginning for Bertha, as thoughts, if not eyes, would spring in her direction no doubt, and Fräulein Lipmann even paused as though about to qualify this: “we none of us, I think, want to know anything about him. Therefore why this idiot—the last sort of beer-drinking brute—treated us to his bestial and—and—wretched foolery⸺”
Fräulein Lipmann shrugged her shoulders with blank, contemptuous indifference. “I assure you it doesn’t interest me the least little bit in the world to know why such brutes behave like that at certain times. I don’t see any mystery. It seems odd to you that Herr Kreisler should be an offensive brute?” She eyed them a moment. “To me NOT!”
“We do him too much honour by discussing him, that’s certain,” said one of them. This was in the spirit of Fräulein Lipmann’s words, but was not accepted by her just then as she had something further to say.
“When one is attacked, one does not spend one’s time in considering why one is attacked, but in defending oneself. I am just fresh from the souillures de ce brute. If you knew the words he had addressed to me.”
Ekhart was getting very red, his eyes were shining, and he was moving rhythmically in his chair something like a steadily rising sea.
“Where does he live, Fräulein Lipmann?” he asked.
“Nein, Ekhart. One could not allow anybody to embroil themselves with that useless brute.” The “Nein, Ekhart” had been drawled fondly at once, as though that contingency had been weighed, and could be brushed aside lightly in advance. It implied as well an “of course” for his red and dutiful face. “I myself, if I meet him anywhere, shall deal with him better than you could. This is one of the occasions for a woman⸺”
So Bertha’s story had come uncomfortably and difficultly to flower. She wished she had not waited so long. But it was impossible now, the matter put in the light that Fräulein Lipmann’s intervention had caused, to delay any longer. She was, there was no doubt about it, vaguely responsible for Kreisler. It was obviously her duty to explain him. And now Fräulein Lipmann had just put an embargo on explanations. There were to be no more explanations. In Kreisleriana her apport was very important: much more definite than the indignation or hypothesis of any of the rest. She had been nearer to him, anyway. She had waited too long, until the sea had risen too high, or rather in a direction extremely unfavourable for launching her contribution. It must be in some way, too, a defence of Kreisler. This would be a very delicate matter to handle.