"Well, did he, or didn"t he?"
"Yes--but--"
"Very well, yes. That"s all I want to know. Then he describes the dangers threatening us provided we continue to live in chains. His pet abomination is duty. He cannot bear it. As if we were so awfully particular about our little bit of duty. Lordy! Well, is that the way it went?"
"Yes--but--" stammered Lilly.
"Good. Then _he_ will deliver us. _He_ will guide us. He"s the mountain guide ordained. "Upward--up to the heights!" _N"est-ce pas?_"
Lilly turned her face away to conceal her blush of shame.
"Next in turn come the books. Miserable palaver written by immature little scribblers in imitation of the great Nietzsche. Nevertheless we all fall into the trap. It gets into our blood like Spanish fly. It quite befuddles us. The thing that so infuriates us afterwards is that we actually believed in the scoundrel"s woebegone pathos, although the mangiest cynicism crops out of every pore of his body. But we"re such sheep, and he"s so clever--so clever. Yes, he is clever. You must give the devil his due."
"But how does he manage," asked Lilly, who no longer dared to shield him, "how does he manage to make it appear that he lived through our entire past with us?"
"Yes, child. People in similar circ.u.mstances usually have similar experiences. He can easily reconstruct our past--of those of us who came from the country. I"m a landed proprietor"s daughter. Didn"t he tell you in a by-the-way that he had pa.s.sed a great part of his youth in castles?"
Lilly a.s.sented.
"Later I learned he had been private tutor to a Jew living on a leased estate near Breslau. But they bounced him pretty soon because he was saucy."
In the midst of her sad disenchantment Lilly had to burst out laughing.
"Fine," said her friend in approval, stroking her hands. "You may well feel happy. I wish someone had come to me the same way. Because afterwards, oh, how it hurts!"
"Yes, tell me, how is it--afterwards?" asked Lilly, hesitatingly.
"Very simple. After he"s gotten what he wants, finis. He b.u.t.tons up his coat, says in a voice quivering with emotion, "_au revoir_," but there never is a _revoir_. You never see him again."
"Impossible!" cried Lilly, horror-stricken. "A man can"t treat a woman so currishly."
"You--_never--see--him--again_, I tell you. What do you suppose? The man has weightier matters to attend to. I wrote my fingers sore--not a line in reply. Mrs. Welter lay on his threshold. Karla got the jaundice, she was so furious. And so on. But his name is eel. When you meet him later in company, you don"t read the faintest recollection in his eyes. At the very most he "jollies" you like the rest."
Lilly, alarmed, brought it home to herself that she, too, had "later"
encountered a conscience in company and had forcibly extinguished every recollection, no matter how much the conscience besought her with his comically mournful glances. One person behaved like the other in this world where you threw your dignity away like an ill-fitting dress.
She hid her face on the sofa arm shaken with a storm of shame and guilt.
"Never mind," Mrs. Jula comforted her. "Nothing has happened yet."
The bell rang.
Lilly hurried to the kitchen to tell the maid to dismiss the visitor, but Mrs. Jula restrained her.
"What"s gotten into your head?" she whispered. "Would you have him think you"re afraid of him? That way you"ll never be rid of him. Laugh at him.
Do you understand? _Laugh_ at him--long and hard."
Lilly wanted to run after her and beg her to remain. Was she, Lilly, his match? He was already entering the room.
Drawn to her full height she looked at him as at a dead enemy.
"My dear child," he said, kissing her hand, which she quickly withdrew.
He had exercised great care in dressing. He wore straw-coloured gloves, and held his silk hat pressed to his breast. His monocle danced on his white waistcoat. An air of smug self-confidence, of unpretentious mastery enveloped his being like a mild glory. The way he settled himself comfortably in his chair, the way he amiably crossed his legs indicated that of course she had been subjugated.
Lilly was no longer fearful or timid, nor did she experience the pangs of disillusionment. She was simply possessed of cool, conscious curiosity.
She followed each of his movements with astonished eyes, as he pa.s.sed his hand over his shining hair cut brush fashion, and pulled his trousers up and exposed the red-dotted stockings on his ankles.
She kept saying to herself:
"So _that"s_ what you are, _that"s_ what you are."
He began to speak in a soft, compa.s.sionate, caressing voice, while his peering eyes glided up and down her body.
"You"re excited, dear child. I understand. When two people like us are brought alone together for the first time in their lives, their feelings run away with them. Don"t be ashamed. What led us to each other is such a delicate, subtle understanding--the fluid between us is of such a rare, fleeting quality--"
"Yes--fleeting, especially," thought Lilly, "--that it would really be a shame if we did not taste every drop of it. And a superabundance of feelings would simply be a hindrance to the spiritual epicureanism in both of us, particularly in me."
As he spoke, slightly smacking his lips and swaying back and forth, the refrain of a Viennese ditty in her repertoire occurred to her: "I have much too much sentiment."
"He has much too much sentiment," she said to herself, and smiled involuntarily.
He saw the smile, which she tried to conceal by lowering her face, but he misinterpreted it.
"There is a coy virginity about you," he said with an admiring shake of his head, "which always fills me with astonishment."
"Oh, you jackanapes," thought Lilly, and smiled again.
Now he hesitated a bit. He had not had all his experience for nothing, and a flash of greed and suspicion darted from between his lids.
"Oh," he continued, "has some of the delightful humour that you surprised us with last night remained over for to-day?"
"Perhaps," she replied with an upward glance which was almost coquettish.
"Oh, splendid!" he cried. His face now brightened into a mischievous smile, in which gaiety and devilishness counterbalanced each other. "Are you one of those who can laugh in her sleeve at--at--how shall I say?--at the whole humb.u.g.g.e.ry of it all--and at yourself? At yourself, my child, that"s the main thing. Then you and I are one--nothing divides us. Then--"
"May G.o.d forgive me," she thought, and held her handkerchief to her mouth to suppress her t.i.ttering.
"Laugh at him," Mrs. Jula had said.
But he seemed to take it as an invitation, as a delicate, friendly hint to cut the preamble short; for he sprang toward her and clasped her body.
She pushed him back--she wrestled with him.
Tears of shame and indignation welled up in her eyes.
"What sort of a thing have I become?" a voice within her cried, while she struck at him with her fists.