Her nickname was "Lilly with the eyes." Her schoolmates declared such eyes were absolutely improbable, such eyes _could_ not exist. "Cat eyes," "nixie eyes," are samples of the epithets bestowed upon them.
Some maintained they were violet, some knew for sure she penciled her lids. However that may be, he who looked at her face saw eyes and nothing but eyes, and was content to look no further.
When fifteen and a half years old Lilly pa.s.sed from the first-year cla.s.s into the Selecta, the cla.s.s for advanced pupils, for it had been decided that she was to earn her living as a governess.
With this came a change in many respects; new teachers, new subjects of study, new companions and a new tone in intercourse. n.o.body was addressed by the first name; the throwing of paper b.a.l.l.s ceased, and no one on going home found bits of paper stuck in her hair. Phrases like "sacredness of a vocation" and "consecration of life" were cheapened by repet.i.tion; but so also were love episodes and secret betrothals.
For the first time Lilly experienced a slight feeling of envy--she was neither engaged, nor did the least love affair come her way. Such trivialities as anonymous bouquets or verses bearing the superscription, "Thine forever," with two initial letters intertwined, were, of course, not to be counted.
But her time came. Her love was compounded of marble statues and temple pillars, of evergreen cypresses and a sky eternally blue, of pity and yearning for the far-off, of a pupil"s adoration for her teacher, and of a desire to save.
He was a.s.sistant instructor in science in the girls" high school, and taught in the lower grades, where the ruler is still used on pupils"
knuckles and tongues are stuck out behind the teacher"s back in revenge.
He gave no instruction whatever in the higher cla.s.ses, but delivered lectures on the history of art to the Selecta.
"History of art." The very words are enough to send a shiver of ecstasy through a maiden"s soul. How much greater the charm when a suffering young man with deep-set, burning eyes and a lily-white forehead expounds the subject!
His first name was Arpad.
But there the romance ended. What remained was a poor consumptive, who had painfully earned his way through the university by private tutoring, only to fall a victim to the grave just when he had hoped to reap the scant fruit of the sufferings of his youth. His superiors helped him to the extent of their ability. They a.s.signed him the easiest cla.s.ses, and as soon as they noticed the fever stains burning on his cheeks, they obtained a subst.i.tute in his place and sent him home. But they succeeded in securing only a short respite, during which the dying man became a burden to the teaching staff. Feeling this himself he put forth suicidal energy to disarm whatever criticism might be made against his ability to work. He eagerly a.s.sumed all possible duties in his line, and what the most industrious and ambitious man found too difficult he, who stood with one foot in the grave, with no career ahead of him, gladly took upon his shoulders.
The day the princ.i.p.al introduced him to the Selecta remained fixed in Lilly"s memory. It was between three and four o"clock, the last hour, when the almighty princ.i.p.al"s portly belly unexpectedly appeared in the doorway. He entered followed by the slender, good-looking young man with a slight stoop, who stood at Miss Hennig"s right side during morning services in the main hall and dog-eared the pages of his hymn-book while the anthem was being sung. He wore a tight grey coat, which emphasised his slimness, and his shining modish silk vest cast a false glitter of the world of society over him. He made two or three abrupt bows to the cla.s.s, like a lieutenant, and looked very shy and embarra.s.sed.
"Dr. Malzer," said the princ.i.p.al, presenting him. "He will introduce you to the art of the Renaissance. I should like you, young ladies, to listen most attentively, for although the subject is not obligatory, and you will not have to pa.s.s an examination in it, it is of great importance for general education, and I shall have occasion to test your progress in the literature cla.s.s when we take up, for example, Lessing, Goethe, or Winckelmann."
With these words he strutted out of the room.
The young pedagogue twirled his little blond moustache, which fell in two thin scraggly tufts over the corners of his mouth. A smile both bashful and sarcastic flitted across his face. He looked around irresolutely for the chair, hesitating, apparently, whether to sit down or remain standing.
Meta Jachmann, with her usual inclination to be silly, began to giggle, and soon half the cla.s.s had followed suit. A hot red spread over the teacher"s wan face.
"Laugh, ladies, laugh," he said with a voice which despite its weakness shook his narrow chest. "Persons in your position may well laugh; for a life full of activity and vigour lies ahead of you. I may rejoice, too, for I am permitted to speak to you as soul to soul; which is a piece of good fortune that rarely falls to the lot of a novice in the teaching profession. You will find that out from your own experience soon enough."
The cla.s.s grew still as a mouse. From that moment on he had the girls in his grip.
"But that"s not the whole of my good fortune," he continued. "The theme which the authorities of this inst.i.tution have entrusted to my slender ability--whether from magnanimity toward me, or lack of respect for the subject, I cannot say--is the highest theme which human tradition knows.
Every personal expression in history, however defiant, revolutionary, or alien the voice of the chosen one that uttered it, later exegesis used as moral fodder with which to satiate the ma.s.ses. The only personages with whom this did not succeed were the men of the Renaissance. The nine times wise branded Plato as a shield bearer of Christianity, Horace as a pedant, Augustine as a church saint, Jesus as the Son of G.o.d. But no one has ever undertaken to make of Michael Angelo, of Alexander Borgia, of Machiavelli, anything but an ego, an ego which faces surrounding conditions and the world either as creator or destroyer, relying on the fulness of his own power."
The young souls sat up and listened. Never had anyone spoken to them in such a tone. They felt he was talking his life away, but in the very moment they realised this, they drew a chain of freemasonry about him with which they shielded him.
He continued. With bold rapid strokes, which wrung new life from the dead, he pictured to them the time and the men. The acc.u.mulation of many years of repression now burst from him in pa.s.sionate utterance.
His auditors suspected that here was more than a school lesson, more, even, than the harvest of scholarship. They divined that they were listening to a confession of faith; and they attached themselves to him with all the rapturous abandon of a woman and pupil, most rapturous when they did not understand.
Lilly being one of the younger girls sat nearest to the instructor. She had a vague feeling, as of a flood of new, ineffably beautiful melodies being poured over her. Since everything in her life and imagination had hitherto centred about music, she had first to translate pictures and thoughts into the world of sound, before her perceptions could grasp them.
She turned pale, and sat there squeezing her handkerchief in her left hand. Her eyes staring at him clouded over with moisture in the joy of surmise. She saw his breast working, saw the drops of perspiration on his forehead, saw the flames burning on his cheeks; she wanted to weep, to laugh, she wanted to cry: "Stop!" But she might not. So she sat motionless, and listened to the poor suppressed voice proclaiming the evangel of that old time which is still new. She listened also to another voice which cried jubilantly deep down in her heart: "Let there be----!"
"But how does the world look," he continued, "in which that high-keyed life developed? Like Moses, I have viewed it only from the mountain. I have loitered a little in its outer courts, but I have seen enough for me to know that my soul will never cease to desire it while breath remains in my body. There between cypresses and evergreen oaks, temples and palaces sprang up in white glory from the soil, seeming like a part of it. What is clay here is marble there; what is routine here is free creative energy there; our feeble imitation there is spontaneous growth.
Here laborious, grafted culture, there the grace of a happy nature; here poverty-stricken pursuit of the useful, there voluptuous pa.s.sion for the beautiful; here sober, subtly reasoning Protestantism, there glad, nave, Catholic paganism."
This came to Lilly like a blow on the head. She had been raised by Catholic parents in a Protestant country. Though there had been little place for piety in her home, a great deal of religious enthusiasm dwelt in her soul, fostered by an imaginative faculty and a compelling emotionalism. To hear her Catholicism praised did her heart good, but why it should be linked, almost as a matter of course, with the wicked heathens, whom she had been taught to despise and deplore, was a riddle to her. Her mind was a whirl of anxious thoughts and queries. She was unable to follow the speaker any longer, and lost the thread of his discourse, until after a while she heard him, in soft caressing words, give a picture of the southern country.
She saw the golden-blue summer sky rising over the isles of the blessed, she saw the sun"s b.l.o.o.d.y disk dip into the sea blackened by the breath of the sirocco, saw the shepherd with his flute of Pan pasturing his long-haired goats on the shining meadows of asphodel, saw the evergreen forest clambering up the slopes of the Apennines to their snow-clad peaks. She breathed in the fragrance of the laurels and strawberries and inhaled the olive vapours, which, at the sounding of the Angelus, ascended heavenward in blue pillars, like the offerings of a prayer.
When she glanced up again, she almost started back in fright. A consuming, tortured look of yearning shot from his eyes as they stared with clairvoyant gaze, past them all, into emptiness.
The bell rang, the hour was over. He looked around like a somnambulist roused from sleep, s.n.a.t.c.hed up his hat, and rushed from the room. Sacred silence remained. After a while the tension was broken by a whisper here and there and by a shy fumbling for school-bags.
Lilly spoke to no one, and managed to make her escape into the street alone. Humming and weeping softly she walked home.
The next morning there was profound excitement in the Selecta. The waves set in motion by the great event of the day before continued to vibrate.
Anna Marholz, the daughter of a physician, who was a member of the Board of Health, brought some facts about the young instructor"s life. It was absolutely necessary, she reported, for Dr. Malzer to go to the south.
If he remained at home, he would probably not survive the winter.
Lilly"s heart stood still. The others considered ways and means of helping him. Since he lacked the money and since the city would not a.s.sume the cost of so long a leave of absence, especially as his position was not yet a.s.sured, the means for saving him would have to be obtained privately.
"Let"s form a committee," one girl proposed, and the others seconded enthusiastically.
"Thank G.o.d," Lilly thought. She felt as if his life had already been prolonged by forty or fifty years.
At the ten o"clock recess they lost no time in getting together for urgent deliberation. Officers were chosen, and Lilly had the inexpressible joy of emerging from the election in the dignity of secretary.
A few days later the first meeting took place in Klein"s confectionery shop--they did not venture into Frangipani"s, the resort of military officers and city officials--in the course of which fifteen young ladies consumed fifteen small meringues glaces and fifteen cups of chocolate, business expenses subsequently to be divided among them. Various promising plans were submitted for consideration. Emily Faber suggested that a public reading of Romeo and Juliet with a.s.signed roles be given in the club house, and the leading man of the city theatre be asked to take the part of Romeo. The proposal received unanimous approval; for this leading man was one of the most beloved of leading men that ever found his way into girls" hearts.
Kate Vitzing, whose cousin was tenor of the boys" high school quartette, proposed an amateur concert to be given jointly by the quartette and the Selecta. This, too, was unanimously approved.
Finally, Rosalie Katz, who was of a practical turn, submitted a scheme for printing subscription blanks to be presented to well-to-do citizens.
This plan gave less satisfaction, but in the end the girls agreed that one good thing need not exclude another, and decided to put all three projects into execution.
Lilly conscientiously recorded all the transactions, and her heart went pit-a-pat, "For him!"
The lectures on the history of art followed their regular course; so also the meetings of the aid committee. The consumption of meringues glaces and cups of chocolate remained on about the same level, but enthusiasm for the cause markedly diminished. Not that Dr. Malzer"s subsequent lectures offered ground for disillusionment. Rich alike in substance and figures of speech, they never failed to win the same tense sympathy from the girls. But the plans for helping him had met with serious obstacles.
The much-beloved Romeo had been engaged to perform in another city at the beginning of the autumn, the quartette had been refused permission to cooperate with the Selecta, and a permit from the police department was necessary for a house to house collection. None of the girls dared apply for it.
Thus, the great life-preserving idea gradually petered out, terminating in a confectioner"s bill, of which three marks eighty fell to Lilly"s share. Lilly well knew the way to the p.a.w.nbroker"s, and she did not have to pluck up courage before relinquishing the little gold cross that she wore about her neck, the last remnant of better days. Besides, it was all for his sake.
Autumn came, and Dr. Malzer grew worse. He coughed a great deal, each time putting his handkerchief to his mouth and then examining it furtively.
One day the girls were told that the lectures on the history of art would be discontinued until further notice.
Anna Marholz reported he had had a hemorrhage.
Lilly did not stop to ask for an explanation of what that meant.