"He"s dying, he"s dying!" was the cry in her soul.
After dark she stole to his house (Anna Marholz had found his address in one of her father"s books). A weary, green-shaded lamp was burning in his room. Not a shadow stirred, no hand appeared at the window-curtain.
But the little lamp continued to burn patiently for hours and hours, despite its weariness, all the time that Lilly trotted up and down the damp street in front of his house, full of conscientious scruples for having robbed her toiling mother of her help.
The adventure was repeated the following evenings, and anxiety waxed in Lilly"s soul. She pictured him lying there gasping for breath, with no woman"s hand to wipe the death sweat from his brow.
On Sat.u.r.day her solicitude drove her from her work-table early in the afternoon. To patrol his house in broad daylight was impossible, but she ventured to pa.s.s it once, and lacked the courage to return. Then she was seized by a heroic resolve. She went to the florist"s shop, and sacrificing the two marks eighty left over from the transaction of the little cross, she walked back to his house with a brownish yellow bouquet of drooping autumn roses.
Without stopping to think she ran up the steps, and rang at the door of the second story, where she had seen the green lamp.
An old woman in a soiled blue ap.r.o.n and mumbling her lips opened the door. Lilly stammered Dr. Malzer"s name.
"In the rear," said the woman, and shut the door.
Then the little green lamp did not burn for him. An old woman lived there, who wore a dirty ap.r.o.n and whose lips kept mumbling. For a week she had been worshipping a false idol. Disappointed, she was about to steal down the stairs, when her eye caught his name among four door-plates. Her heart leapt, and before she knew it, she had knocked.
A brief interval elapsed before his head appeared behind the door, which he held only partly open. The lapels of his grey coat were raised to cover his neck, which apparently was collarless. His hair was in wild disorder, and the ends of his moustache were more matted than ever. And how his eyes glared as they seemed to demand in embarra.s.sment, "What do you want?"
"Miss--Miss--Miss--" he stammered. He appeared to recognise her, but failed to recall her name.
Lilly wanted to give him the bouquet and run away, but she remained rooted to the spot as if paralysed.
"You have been sent here by your cla.s.s, I presume," he said.
"Yes, yes," Lilly answered eagerly. That was her salvation.
"Otherwise, you see, it would be impossible for me to invite you to come in," he continued with a shy smile. "It might have very serious consequences for both of us. But as a delegate--" he reflected a moment--"come in, please."
Lilly had imagined him living in high, s.p.a.cious apartments, surrounded by carved bookcases, vases, globes, and busts of great men. In dismay she observed a little room with only one window, an unmade bed, an open card table, a clothes-rack, and a small book-stand holding mostly unbound and crumpled old volumes. Such were his quarters.
"He lives more wretchedly than we do," she thought.
At his invitation she seated herself on one of the two chairs, feeling less embarra.s.sed than she had expected to. Poverty shared alike brought them nearer to each other.
"How lovely in the young ladies to remember me!"
Lilly recollected the flowers she still held in her hand.
"Oh, excuse me," she said, proffering them.
He took the bouquet without a word of thanks, and pressed them against his face.
"They don"t smell," he said, "they are the last--but my first. So you can imagine how precious they are to me."
Lilly felt her eyes growing dim with joy.
"Are you still in pain, Dr. Malzer?" she managed to ask.
He laughed.
"Pain? No. I don"t suffer from pain. A little fever now and then--but the fever"s pleasant, very amusing. Your soul seems to soar in a balloon away over everything--over cities, countries, seas, over centuries, too; and often great persons come to visit you, persons, if not so beautiful--that is to say--I beg your pardon--"
His compliment frightened him. Why, he was the teacher and she the pupil.
In the midst of his embarra.s.sment a certain blindness seemed suddenly to drop away from him. He stared at her with eyes burning like torches in two blue hollows.
"What is your name?" he asked in a voice even shriller and hoa.r.s.er than usual.
"Lilly, Lilly Czepanek."
The name was not familiar to him, as he had been in the city only a short time.
"You intend to become a teacher?"
"Yes, Dr. Malzer."
"Do you know what? Get yourself exiled to Russia and throw bombs. Go to a pest-house and wash sores. Marry a drunkard, who will beat you and sell your bed from under your body. _Don"t_ become a teacher--not _you_."
"Why not just I?"
"I will tell you why. A flat-breasted person with watery eyes and falling hair who can only see one side of a subject--such a creature should be a teacher. Somebody without the blood and nerve to live his own life can teach others to live--he"s good enough for that. But he whose blood flows through his body like fluid fire, whose yearning spurts from his eyes, to whom the problems of life exist for seeing and knowing, not for paltry criticism, he who--but I mustn"t talk to you about that, though I should very much like to."
"Please do, please," Lilly implored.
"How old are you?"
"Sixteen."
"And already a woman." His eyes scanned her in pained admiration. "Look at me," he continued. "I, too, was once a human being--you wouldn"t believe it--I, too, once stretched two st.u.r.dy arms longingly to heaven; I, too, once looked with desire into a girl"s eyes, though not into such as yours. Let me prattle. A dying man can do no harm."
"But you shall not die," she cried, jumping from her seat.
He laughed.
"Sit down, child, and don"t excite yourself about me. It doesn"t pay. A friend of mine once broke the back-bone of a cat that had gone mad. He did it with one blow of a stick. The cat couldn"t run away, she couldn"t howl, she couldn"t do anything but just remain on all fours and cough and choke and cough and choke--until the second blow came. That"s the way it is with me. There"s nothing to be done. Go away, child, I"ve already made my peace, but when I look at you my heart grows heavy again."
Lilly turned her face away to hide her tears.
"Must I?" she asked.
"Must?" He laughed again. "I shall feed on every minute of your presence as a hungry man feeds on the crumbs he digs out of his pockets. You sat on the left end of the first bench. I remember. I said to myself, "What a pair of improbable eyes! Such eyes the magic dogs of Andersen"s tales must have, eyes to which you would like to say, Please don"t make such big eyes. And from being thought big, they grow still bigger and bigger.""
Now Lilly laughed.
"You see," he said, "I have made you merry again. You must not carry away too deathlike a picture from here. Our lessons were beautiful, weren"t they?"
Lilly answered with a sigh.
"When I spoke of Italy, you gasped a couple of times from sheer longing.