O my belong too much sorry,And can me no savy, what kind;Have got one olo piccy storyNo won't she go outside my mind.
O my belong too much sorry,And can me no savy, what kind;Have got one olo piccy storyNo won't she go outside my mind.
When he came to the second verse,
Dat night belang dark and colo,
Dat night belang dark and colo,
he tore his wig from his head to heighten the effect; and he now actually looked the very image of an old, nodding "Chinee," with his shiny pate and his bright slanting slits of eyes.
It was a fascinating, an overpowering spectacle.
Never in her life, not even on the professional stage, had she seen a clown's performance so provocative of side-splitting laughter.
She would have died of envy had she not been Lilly Czepanek, the famous impersonator, who when the spirit moved her, needed but to open her mouth to evoke a storm of applause.
Her matchless repertoire had lain fallow too long. But the beautiful Otéro had not yet grown old, Tortajada still set your senses a-whirl with her dancing, and Matchiche had just come into fashion.
Lilly merely had to shove her hat a little further back on her head and lift her black dress—even a Saharet would have had no cause to be ashamed of the silk petticoat she had brought in her trunk—and then off she could go.
And off she went.
Like a whirlwind over the carpet slippery with the yolks of eggs.
"Heigh-ho—olé—olé.
"You must shout olé and clap your hands.
"Olé—é—é!"
The uncle bawled. The floor rocked to and fro in long waves. The lamps and the mirror danced along. All hell seemed to be let loose.
"Do shout, Konni,—olé—don't be so downcast. Olé."
"Uncle, you have this onyourconscience!"
What did he mean by that?
Why did he burst into sobs?
Why was he standing there white as chalk?
"Olé—Olé—é—é—é."
It was nearly noon when Lilly woke in a glow of happiness.
The uncle won over—the last obstacle removed—the future lying before her, a land of blossoms and golden fruits.
What a farce and a lark the dreaded examination had been! What a jumping-jack, what a buffoon he was, that keen, penetrating man of the world, who had probably ground women's destinies as he would munch betel nuts.
When she tried to review the events of the evening before, and arrange them in sequence, it came to her with a slight sense of oppression that at the end everything had resolved itself into a fog, shot with light and echoing with song and laughter, just as had happened yonder—in that other life, when she had romped wildly with Richard and the "crew."
She could not puzzle out how she had mounted the steps and reached her room.
As the fog lifted a little, she saw peering out of it a pale, set face, with an expression of pained surprise; she heard an outcry that sounded like a sob or a groan, and saw herself sobbing next to someone who was kneeling, who pushed her away with his hands.
Had that happened?
Had she dreamt it?
Why, she had sung and danced so beautifully, she had disclosed her greatest talents. Could they by any possibility have displeased him? Had she gone too far in her self-abandonment?
Her anxiety waxed.
She jumped out of bed and dressed herself, possessed by one thought: "To go to him!"
At twelve o'clock the door-bell rang.
It was, it must be he!
But when she hurried to the door to throw herself into his arms with a cry of relief, she found, not him, but his uncle, who stood twirling his hat in his horrid fingers like a petitioner, and looked up at her with an oily, wry smile, most obnoxious to her.
"Is the examination to begin again?" The question rose in her mind. "Or is it just going to begin?"
Her welcome died on her lips.
Without speaking she let him in. She experienced a sickish sensation of vacancy and incorporeality, as if she might melt through the wall into her room.
The old gentleman did not wait for her to open the door to the "best room," but opened it himself, and walked in, as if he were an old acquaintance.
"Where is Konrad?"
"Konrad?" With his little finger he scratched the silk band of his wig. "Oh, thereby hangs a tale." He drew out his watch with the clinking gold chain, and studied the dial. "It is just ten minutes after twelve. I suppose by now he's on his way to the station. Yes, he must be."
"Is—he—going—away?" she asked, her breath beginning to fail.
"Yes, yes, he's going to take a trip. Yes, last night—hm—last night we talked it over. So now he's going to take a little trip."
"That's absurd," she thought. "How can he go away without me?" But she checked herself, and entering into the game, asked with apparent nonchalance, "Where's he off to so suddenly?"
"Oh, just a little trip. Not worth talking about. A favourable opening presented itself. There happened to be a double cabin vacant on the steamer leaving from—thingumbob—well, never mind from where—outside cabin, you know—on the promenade deck—the best situation, you know—the water doesn't splash in and there's plenty of air—and air's what you always want, especially during those four days on the Red Sea."
Then it was true. Her suspicions on awakening were being verified more swiftly than she had thought they would be. It was only the beginning of the test of her character and intentions.
"What do people do in the Red Sea, uncle?" she asked with her most innocent smile.
"What do people do in the Red Sea, child? Four thousand years ago the ancient Hebrews probably asked the same question. And everybody still asks it when he melts into perspiration there. But that's the only way of going to India. And I want to go back to India once again. I'm tired of trotting about on red brick pavements. So I persuaded him to come along for a little while—you know he's overworked; you'll admit that. I think it's the best thing to do in such cases, you see."
Lilly felt a lump in her throat, as if all the gold knobs on his watch chain were choking her.
"Rather a poor joke," she thought, "but goodness knows what he means by it."
Whether she would or no, she had to keep up the game.
"Konrad ought to have been polite enough to come and say good-by," she replied, pouting a bit, as if he were about to start off on a trip to Dresden or Potsdam.
"Why, he wanted to, child; of course he did. But I said to him: 'You see, my boy,' I said, 'it always means such dreadful excitement. It's enough to give you an apoplectic stroke.' He agreed, and asked me to arrange matters with you."
"Well then, let us arrange matters," she answered with the condescending smile that the farce, whatever its nature, merited.
"He is probably down below in a cab waiting for a signal," she thought.
The old gentleman put his stylish Panama beside him on the floor, leaned his short body back against Mrs. Laue's plush upholstery, and tried to assume an expression of sympathy and grief.
The old clown!
"If it were my affair, little one," he began, "I frankly confess I've gone crazy over you. Wrapped up, as I said yesterday. I know women from one end of the world to the other, and it is as clear as cocoanut oil to me: you're first rate stuff. You're fine as silk. But there are people who take themselves seriously and have great illusions, don't you know? People utterly without an idea that a human being is a human being, people who think they're something extra, and want life to dish up extra tit-bits to them. Oh, those people, I tell you, those people! That's the way the great disappointments come about—and reproaches—and despair—and tearing out your hair. He came near giving me a thrashing last night."
"Whom are you talking about?" Lilly asked, growing more and more fearful.
"As if I had led you into overshooting the mark! No, indeed. Nothing of the sort. I don't do such things. I don't set man-traps. And I told him so ten times over. But the misfortune is, we understood each other too well. We both belong to the same business. We're like two old shipmates."
"What do you mean by 'we both'? You and I?" Lilly asked with frigid astonishment in her tone.
"Yes, you and I, my child. Don't fall overboard. You and I. To be sure, you're a splendid beauty of twenty-five and I'm an old fool of sixty. But you and I have gone through the same mill. What need to explain to you at length? Have you ever searched for diamonds? I don't mean at a jeweller's—that you probably have. Well, a diamond lies in hard rock, in funnels, in so-called blue ground. If you come upon a blue ground funnel, you can imagine what it's like. There you squat. I went digging for diamonds once—with twenty men—day and night—for weeks and weeks. The blue ground was there, oh, indeed, it was, but the diamonds had been washed away. Do you see what I'm driving at? The fine ground is still in both of us, but what actually makes it fine, the devil has already extracted."
"Why are you saying all this to me?" Lilly asked. Tears were rising to her eyes from sheer perplexity, because what he said could not possibly have anything to do with the great test.
"I'll tell you, little girl. There are people who think there's no going back on their word. They have to swallow whatever they once put into their mouths. They won't spit it out even if it is a strychnine pill. NowI, on the other hand, think that nobody need consciously plunge into misfortune. Neither you nor he. And since it's best to wash the wool directly on the sheep's body, I came to you to make a little proposition. You see, here's a check book You're familiar with check books, I'm sure. On the right side are printed ciphers from five hundred up to—you can see for yourself. All the ciphers that make the amount higher than the sum written on the check, are cut off to keep little swindlers from cheating a man out of a hundred thousand marks with one stroke of the pen. Now look. This check is dated and signed. All that's missing is the sum, because I should never permit myself to offer you a certain amount. I leave it to you to specify what you think you need for a decent living in the future."
He tore a check from the book and laid it on the table in front of her.
"Thank heaven," thought Lilly, "all my tremours were needless."
It was a clumsy trap. Even a blind man must see that his procedure was nothing more than a test of her disinterestedness.
So, instead of throwing the old man out of doors—which she should have and would have done, had he proffered the check in all seriousness—she smiled and took the check from the table, and methodically tore it into bits, and with the middle finger of her right hand flicked one little pile of them after the other into his face.
He jerked about uneasily in his chair.
"Permit me," he said, "permit me—"
"By no means—I willnotpermit such vile jokes, uncle."
"But you are rejecting a fortune, child. Consider—we've torn you from your moorings. We've thrown you, as it were, on the street. Upon us rests the responsibility of seeing to it that you are not driven to ruin. And if you think that by accepting the check you are lowering yourself in Konrad's eyes, I can swear to you he doesn't know a thing about it. And he never will, I'll swear to that also."
She merely smiled.
His little blinking eyes turned bright and staring. Suddenly there was a cold threat in their look.
"Or—perhaps you intend to hold the boy to his promise and mean to twist his pledge into a halter about his neck? Is that the sort you are—eh?"
"No, I'm not that sort."
Her smile flitted past him and went to meet her beloved, who must soon, very soon, come storming up the stairs. Surely he could not endure waiting down there in the cab so long.
"His word is in his own keeping. He never gave me a pledge. Even if he wanted to, I should never have accepted it. And even if what you said is true, he could go on his trip quite calmly—and return quite calmly. I would never attempt to meet him or reach him by letter, or remind him of what he is to me and will continue to be as long as I live. But I know it isnottrue. He loves me, and I love him. And take care, uncle, not to play such low tricks with his future wife as to offer blank checks and the like. If I were to tell him about it, you'd all of a sudden find you're a lonely old man who can leave his money to a cat and dog asylum."
Now he must see what a blunder he had committed. His mistake annoyed him so that he jumped from his seat with a muttered "Pshaw!" and tramped about the room playing with his watch charm, and murmuring two or three times something like "a hangman's job."
But she probably misunderstood him.
Finally he seemed to have reached a decision.
He stopped close to her, laid his disgusting hands on her shoulders, and said:
"Listen, my dear, sweet little girl. We can't part without arriving at a conclusion. If I weren't such a cursed mangy old pariah-dog, and if over and above this, I didn't have to be considerate of the boy's feelings, the matter would be perfectly simple. I should say: 'Little one, if you want to, come let's go to the nearest magistrate. But hurry, I haven't much time to lose.' Don't stare at me so. Yes, that's what I mean—withme—with me. You wouldn't need to regret it either. As for Konrad, see here, you must really say so to yourself—it won't do—we shouldn't hit it off—it would be harnessing before and aft. Because he is a rising man. He wants to climb to the top. He is still blessed with faith and you no longer possess it. Too early in life you tumbled into the great meat-chopping machine, which finally converts us all into complacent wormy mush. You yourself wouldn't feel happy. You wouldn't be able to keep pace. You would lie on him a lifeless cargo, and be conscious of it, too. I'm not laying so much stress on last night's eye-opener. It's not the appearance of a coast line that counts. It doesn't matter whether it's covered with palms or sand. The important thing is the interior. And in the interior I see steppes—scorched—waste-land—no birds flying across it—a desert where confidence will not strike root. Crawl into whatever shelter life offers you, little one. Cling to those who brought you to the pass you are in. But let the boy go. He's not meant for you. Be frank, didn't you say so to yourself long ago?"
So that's what it was!
No test—
The end. The end.
Lilly stared into space. She seemed to hear a tread dying away—a step lower, another step, another step, and another—growing fainter—ever fainter—as when Konrad had slipped away from her at dawn.
But this time they would never return!
She felt a slight gnawing disenchantment creep about her heart—nothing more. The worst would come later, she knew from of old.
Then she saw herself dancing and yodeling and telling hoggish jokes with her hat tilted to one side and her petticoats raised to her knees—a drunken wench.
She of the "lofty spirit" and "head divine,"—a drunken wench, not a whit better.
Now she knew why he had stood there white as chalk, why that sob of distress had burst from his lips.
And the feeling that poured over her in that second like a stream of boiling water was compounded as much of pity for Konrad as of shame of herself.
"How does he bear it?" she faltered.
"You can imagine how," he replied, "but I think I can pull him through it."
"Uncle—I didn'tmeanto!" she cried with a great sob.
"I know, child, I know. He told me everything."
For an instant wounded pride flared up within her. She stopped, picked up a few of the scattered bits of paper, and held them out to him in the hollow of her hand.
"And you dared to offer me this?"
"Why, what was I to do, child? And whatwillI do with you?"
"Bah!"
She struck at him with both hands; but the next instant threw her arms about his neck, and wept on his shoulder. That was the place perhaps on which Konrad's tearful face had also rested the night before.
Mr. Rennschmidt began to speak again. He made various proposals for her future. He would help her begin a new life, would give her the means for cultivating her great talent for the stage.
But she shook her head at each of his suggestions.
"Too late, uncle. Waste-land, you yourself said, where confidence will not strike root. I might aspire to music-hall fame. But to be quite frank, that wouldn't pay me."
"The damned curs!" he hissed.
"What curs?"
"You know."
She reflected as to whom he could possibly mean.
"There was really only one," she observed. "Oh, yes, and another—and then one more. And later there were two besides, but they don't count."
"It seems to me that's quite enough, little girl."
He stroked her cheeks, smiling kindly, and she did not find his fingers so disgusting.
She even had to smile in response, though she fell directly to crying again.
Mr. Rennschmidt prepared to take leave. She clung to his shoulder; she did not want to let him go. He was the last bridge that joined her departing vessel with the land of happiness.
"What message shall I take to him?" he asked.
She drew herself up. Her eyes widened. She wanted to pour out all her grief. Her squandered love sought for words which would carry it to him purged and sanctified.
But she found none.
She looked about the room as if help must come from some quarter. The pictures of the ancient actors smiled upon her. Those who had once been so eloquent had become dumb, dumb as her own soul. The framed lamp shade greeted her as if the future she had to pass at Mrs. Laue's side was greeting her.
"I don't know what to say," she faltered. Then something occurred to her after all. "Please ask him—please ask him—why he himself didn't come to say good-by. I know him. He is not a coward."
Mr. Rennschmidt made his queerest face.
"Since you're so remarkably sensible, child, I'll tell you. Ofcoursehe wanted to come and say good-by. I even told him I'd try to drag you to the station."
Without an instant's reflection she made a dash for her hat.
"Stop!"
He had laid his hand on her arm.
The little fat figure grew taller.
"You willnotgo."
"What! Konni is waiting for me—Konni wants to speak to me—and I amnotto go?"
"You—will—not—go, I tell you. If you're the brave girl I took you to be, you will not nullify the sacrifice you're making. You can reckon upon it, if he sees you again, you'll both remain hanging on each other."
Her hat slipped from her hand.
"Then—tell him—I'll love him—forever—forever—he'll be my last thought on earth—and—and—I don't know what else to say."
He left the room without a word.
Then she collapsed.
The world went its way, calmly, gaily, busily, as if nothing had occurred, as if no lost happiness were tossing about on the sea of life, disappearing farther and farther in the distance; as if no human being had been thrown into a corner to crouch there and stare at the ground helplessly with dimmed eyes.
Mrs. Laue was pasting pressed flowers; the fried potatoes were sizzling in fat, the lamp in the hall was smoking, and the poor people's odour greeted all who entered its realm.
Lilly did not cry her heart out of her body as when she had been expelled from Lischnitz; she did not sink into a state of apathetic brooding, nor wrestle desperately with fate.
All she felt was a dim void stretching endlessly before her, broken now and again by a sharp outcry like that of an animal bereft of its mate; a sense of faint-hearted acquiescence, a consciousness of inevitable imprisonment, of a fearful descent into dark depths, of a dismal death, lacking strength and dignity.
Between the present and the future, the sort of future that beckoned to her from every street, rose the railing of the bridge she had tried to climb after seeing "Rosmersholm." And when she stared into space with tearless eyes, she saw far below the black, purple-patched water rolling idly along, and heard the iron rail clink under her sole.
This clinking became stronger, and turned into an accompaniment of everything that came and went during the uneventful days.
It drilled her brain, hammered at her temples, and tingled in every pore of her body.
There was a text to the miserable melody.
The text was: "To die!"
Well, then, to die!
What could be simpler? And what more compelling?
But not to-day. To-morrow perchance, or day after to-morrow.
Something might still happen. A letter might arrive, or even he himself. Or if neither of these contingencies came to pass—who could tell what miracle fate held in readiness for the morrow?
To let hour after hour of one additional day pass in the same melancholy monotony.
One evening, a week after Konrad's sudden departure, it happened that Mrs. Laue entered the best room at an unusual time with an emphatic manner, and said: "Now, Lilly dear, you cannot go on the same way. If you were to cry, I shouldn't say anything. Butthisway you'll never come back to reason. There's only one sane and natural thing for you to do, return to your Mr. Dehnicke. If he had an inkling of how things are with you, he would have come to fetch you long ago. So you'll either sit right down and write him a nice letter, or to-morrow morning I'll give up my work and go to see him in his office. I'll get my expenses back."
Lilly felt violently impelled to drive the old woman out of the room, but she had grown too discouraged to do more than turn away in impotent repugnance.
"I haven't much time, I must say," continued Mrs. Laue. "I have to complete the dozen before going to bed. But you can make up your mind to one thing: if he's not here by ten o'clock to-morrow morning, he'll come at twelve at the very latest, because by that time I myself will have gone for him."
Lilly laughed sadly in scorn. So that was the way the miracle looked which fate held in readiness for the morrow.
Should she submit all over again to a man's puny supremacy? Crawl back into the cowardly comfort of perfumed imprisonment? Vegetate among inane festivities, in a sort of doze, or walk the streets when driven by disgust and boredom?
She would not have the force to resist the next day when he came. She knew it well. Richard needed merely to look at her once with that whipped-dog expression which was entirely new to her in him. The very thought of it filled her with humiliating softness. Something was already stirring within her that would compel her to throw her arms about his neck and cry on his shoulder.
It was really not worth while to bide the morrow for so pitiful a reward.
So—she would die—that very day!
That very day.
It came to her like a cup of intoxication.
With clasped hands she ran about the room weeping, rejoicing.
She would be a heroine like Isolde, a martyr to her love.
And the railing of the bridge was waiting. How it would quiver and hum when she climbed on it.
Then the buzzing in her head grew louder. The air was filled with a medley of tones. The walls re-echoed with the refrain—the noise on the streets, the mighty roar of the city—everything sang:
"Die—die—die."
She tore off her gown and dressed to go out.
At first she thought of wearing one of her two ill-fitting dresses, because they had come from Konrad, but she could not prevail upon herself to do so.
"Die in beauty," Hedda Gabler had said.
"Oh, if only I had his picture," thought Lilly, "so that I could take one last look at his eyes."
But all she had from him were his letters and a few poems. They were to accompany her on her last walk.
They were lying at the bottom of the leather trunk which was still hidden in Mrs. Laue's hole of a room, although the need for concealment was past.
When she rummaged for the little packages among the contents of the trunk she came by chance upon the old score of the Song of Songs.
She tenderly regarded the yellow stained roll.
She was no longer angry with her Song of Songs or scorned it, as she had on that unfortunate morning when she had gone to her former home to break her promise to Konrad.
Once again it became a dear, valuable possession, though neither a monitor, nor worker of miracles, nor a sanctuary. It still was an old remnant, but one to be kissed and petted and cried over, because a part of her own life clung to it.
And some of her blood also.
There were the dark stains.
On the day of her going forth they had fallen upon it and on the day of her coming home, the deep waters would wash them away.
Then her mind glided past the score back into the hazy past.
Mists seemed to be lifting and curtains to be drawn aside, and her way seemed to lie behind her like a sharply defined band.
She had been weak. And stupid. And had never considered her own interests. Every man that had entered her life had done with her what he would. She had never closed the doors of her soul, never shown her teeth, never given free play to the power of her beauty; but had always been ready to serve others, to love them, and make the best of everything.
As thanks she had been persecuted and beaten and dragged in the mud her life long. Even the one man who had esteemed her had gone away without saying good-by.
"But," she thought, "I have never hated a single one of them, and I have always had the right to regard myself as above the common, however I have suffered. However I have sinned. And the end was a heaven-sent gift."
Did it not seem as if this Song of Songs, which lay there debased, stained, decayed, like her own life, had in truth hovered over her, blessing her and granting her absolution from her sins, just as in her early dreams and just as in her rhapsodies to Konrad during that hour of blissful self-surrender?
"Yes, you shall come along!" she said. "You shall die when I die."
She carefully rolled and wrapped up the crumbling sheets.
Then she found the letters in the trunk, read them once, and several times again—but she did not understand what she was reading.
It was nearly twelve o'clock when she softly closed the tall door behind her.
Mrs. Laue was still asleep.
Nobody met her on the stairs, and she managed to leave the house without being seen.
Since her flight to Konrad she had not been alone on the street at midnight.
The two long rows of house fronts dipped in garish light—the trolley poles sparking and flashing between—silent, shadowy figures—it was all as if she were looking upon it for the first time.
An oppressive fear beset her.
Her legs felt numb as if wooden stilts had been screwed to them upon which she must hasten on without hesitating or stopping, whether she would or no. And her heels rapped on the pavement, carrying her on, irresistibly nearer and nearer to her goal.
At the approach of each passerby she was impelled to hide herself, in the belief that her appearance betrayed her intentions.
So she chose dark side streets which were being paved and where withering linden trees scattered rain drops.
Her way led past long rows of brick buildings inhospitably set behind dark garden walls, past barns and factories.
And her heels kept rapping: "Tap—tap—tap," as if she were wearing a pedometer which accurately registered every inch shortening her course.
She began to think of roundabout ways of reaching her bridge.
But she cast the temptation from her.
"If it were done, 'twere well it were done quickly," she had read somewhere.
Forward with clenched teeth!
The Engelbecken lay dark and deserted. Yellow lights glinted on the invisible waters.
"It would be easier here," she thought, breathless from the oppression at her heart, and stepped nearer, on the grassy slope.
But she recoiled with a shudder.
It had to be the bridge on the northwest side—fate had willed it so.
It was still a great distance off, about an hour's walk.
She came to livelier streets.
The lamps in front of the dance halls, where fallen women revelled, sent their garish beams out into the night like tentacles.
On, on she must go!
From the open doors of a basement café was wafted a hot garlic-laden vapour.
What smelled like that?
Oh, yes! The little sausages Mrs. Redlich had given her son as a farewell dinner.
Directly in front of her a hose as thick as her arm spurted a cleansing stream over the pavement.
What had she heard hiss and gurgle along the ground like that?
Oh, yes! It had sounded just like that when old Haberland had watered the lawn, with the copper sprinkler.
Suddenly the idea shot through her brain: "None of this is true. I am lying in bed between the bookcases of the circulating library, and the lamp I took from the bracket is smoking back of me,—and it is all in the book I am reading on the sly after Mrs. Asmussen's dose of medicine has happily worked."
The city noises swelled and called her back to life.
She had reached the heart of the city, the vortex of Berlin's unwearying night life.
She passed the Spittelmarkt. Leipziger Strasse unrolled before her, a stupendous scene, with its endless chain of street lamps. A silvery mist enveloped it, or, rather, it resembled a gay picture lightly covered by a layer of mould, dotted with the lights of cafés and cabarets glimmering red.
The numb feeling in Lilly's legs increased. She moved them without realising that she was moving them.
She felt nothing but the throbbing of her heart, which shook her whole body like the vibrations of a mill.
On Friedrichstrasse the people thronged as in the daytime.
Young men rejoicing in the chase followed close upon the heels of their laughing quarry.
The lamplight shone on the silk stockings of damsels as they tripped along.
"Those who have once been completely submerged in this world," thought Lilly, with a shudder of envy, "no longer trouble themselves with questions of honour and death."
Alas, beyond that brilliant whirl came quiet and darkness again, in whose shelter a person may die as he will.
And her heels kept beating: "Tap—tap—tap." She could hear them even in all that noise.
"Couldn't I go to some café?" she asked herself. "What harm if some one were to see me? I should gain a paltry quarter of an hour."
Lights—mirrors—upholstery—curling blue cigarette smoke—a tingling in her parched throat.
Once—once again! Not a quarter of an hour—awholehour—and still longer if she wished it—a poor bit of life which would do nobody any harm.
But she could find no justification for such cowardice and she did not want to be ashamed of herself at the very last.
So on—on.
The laughing crowds of the Kranzlerecke fell behind—the dagger-like lights no longer pricked her.
Lilly scarcely knew where she was going.
She had probably reached one of the quieter cross streets that lead to the northwest side.
The middle of the empty street was dotted with glistening puddles. The pluvial autumn wind came sweeping along between the rows of houses. The dark windows coldly reflected the light of the street lamps. Everything about her seemed lifeless, extinct. Only at rare intervals a phantom glided by, and the cats sped from hiding place to hiding place.
Shivering, Lilly pressed the score closer under her arm.
She passed a florist's shop, where the blinds of the show window had not been drawn. Glancing at her reflection, she was startled to see the prickly foliage of laurels and cypresses.
What had gleamed like that?
Oh, yes! The Clytie that dreamily smiled down from the proud staircase of the house of Liebert & Dehnicke.
Now Lilly Czepanek would never mount those laurel-lined stairs in triumph, nor even crawl to look upon them a repentant sinner.
She reached a bridge.
She crossed it quickly.
That other bridge luring her on lay in remoter solitude, in darker silence.
"You have too much love in you," some one had once said. "All three kinds: love of the heart, love of the senses, love springing from pity. One of them everybody must have. Two are dangerous. All three lead to ruin."
Who had that been?
Oh, yes! Her first flame, the poor consumptive teacher who had lectured to the Selecta on the history of art, and whom she and Rosalie Katz had helped to send to the promised land, the land she herself had never entered.
He had spoken of blue olive vapours—the sea blackened by the breath of the sirocco—and shining meadows of asphodel.
"What kind of meadows could they be—meadows of asphodel?"
How fantastic the foreign word sounded and how full of promise.
But her heels said: "Tap—tap—tap," and the railing of the bridge called to her.
A man spoke to her. Wouldn't she—?
She shook him off like a worm.
She had been given another warning, also with three parts to it.
By whom?
Oh, yes! Mr. Pieper.
She suddenly heard the sententious admonition, in his very words and tone of voice, as if he had uttered it the day before:
"First, exchange no superfluous glances; second, demand no superfluous rendering of accounts; third, make no superfluous confessions."
"If I had not exchanged superfluous glances, I should have seen my promised land. If I had not superfluously demanded the rendering of an account, I should never have been expelled from Lischnitz. And if I had not made superfluous confessions—"
What then?
"Konni, Konni," she moaned. Her yearning welled up hot and painful, and forced her revolving thoughts from her mind.
She walked on reeling.
More streets disappeared in the fog, interrupted at one place by a grass plot with a hedge about it.
What sort of meadows could they be—meadows of asphodel?
Suddenly she stood at the bridge.
Like a thief in the night it loomed up in the darkness of the wide, silent place, where the lights of thousands of street lamps dwindled into tiny sparks.
A pale-faced full moon shone somewhere in the black sky. It was the illuminated clock of a railway station, the body of which was swallowed by the darkness.
Half-past one o'clock.
Lilly saw everything as through a spotted veil.
She was going to turn the corner of the wall. Instead, paralysed by horror, she sank down against it, her heart throbbing powerfully.
"After all I am not going to do it," she said to herself.
"Yet—I will," she answered.
She tried to go on—straight ahead—on the bridge, where the rail awaited her maliciously. But her legs refused to carry her.
The singing in her ears rose to a roar. She stood on the dark, solitary bank wavering.
She took the score in both hands, tore at it, and tried to crumple it into a ball. But it did not give way. Her Song of Songs was stronger than she.
Suddenly her feet moved of themselves, and carried her on—on—whether she willed it or not, past the lamps at the entrance to the rail awaiting her.
Now her fingers grasped the iron top of the railing.
All she could see of the water below was a dark, slimy shimmer. Not even the lamps were reflected in it.
Now, one leap—and the thing was done.
"Yes, I'll do it, I'll do it," a voice within her called.
But she had to send the Song of Songs ahead. It would be a hindrance to her as she climbed over.
She threw it—a bit of white flitted by—a splash below—sharp and distinct, which made her tingle all over like a slap in the face.
When she heard the sound, she knew she would never do it.
No! Lilly Czepanek was not a heroine; she was not martyr to her love; she was no Isolde, who finds the strongest affirmation of herself in the desire not to be.
She was nothing but a poor thing who had been crushed and exploited, and would drag along through life as best she could.
At the same time she began to array all the possibilities of a livelihood remaining open to her.
She wouldnotreturn to the old life of dissipation. That was certain. No matter how much Richard's whipped-dog look might plead and beg.
Anything else would do.
To be sure, she had been completely robbed of her desire to work, and it seemed very doubtful whether it would ever come back to her again.
But after all: something would present itself which would enable her to live in peace and virtue.
Millions of human beings ask for nothing better and call it "happiness!"
She sent one more searching look at the lazy waters, in which the Song of Songs had just disappeared.
Then she turned and went back.
In the spring of the next year the business world of Berlin was surprised to read in the papers that Mr. Richard Dehnicke, senior member of the old, well-known firm of Liebert & Dehnicke, manufacturers of art bronzes, had married the much-talked-of beauty, Lilly Czepanek, and had gone to Italy to live there temporarily.
Those who knew her were not surprised.
She had always been a dangerous woman, they said.