"What"s he like?" he asked.
In her endeavour to keep the two mythical beings quite distinct, she began to sing the "other one"s" praises much too emphatically. He was a highly endowed and quite prominent scholar, who had just completed his university course, and now stood at the entrance to a brilliant career--a paragon of knowledge and intellect and heaven knows what else.
What was his specialty?
She really did not know. Something awfully erudite, at any rate. And he would surely choose an academic career. Nothing else was worth while for him.
Lilly talked herself into such a tangle of lies that finally she scarcely knew what she was saying.
Richard, who in the consciousness of his intellectual poverty, felt a tremendous respect for a great mind, grew red in the face and looked uneasy and nettled.
"I suppose he"ll be wanting to visit you?" he asked.
"Certainly," she replied, rejoiced at having steered in this direction so smoothly.
"Congratulate you on your affinity," he said with a mocking bow, and added, laughing: "Provided I needn"t meet him."
Perfect.
The next morning a man employed in the factory brought Lilly a huge bundle from Mr. Dehnicke. It contained a fine summer suit in the latest style looking almost new; shirts, a pair of boots, and blue, silky underwear.
Richard seemed to want to prove his magnanimity in a particularly striking way, because prodigality toward the poor was not in his line.
The next difficulty was to turn the garments over to Fritz Redlich without offending him and having him refuse them.
When he visited her three days later she took occasion, after dinner, to show him through the rooms. He must see how she lived, she said.
When she came to the door of a lumber room she opened it quite naturally as she had the others. There among discarded waists, broken vases, withered plants, and similar litter, hung the suit.
"I brought it along by mistake, and some more men"s clothes, when I left the general"s house," she explained. "It"s getting worn just hanging here."
Mr. Redlich"s small, sickly eyes became bright and greedy.
Perhaps he knew some one who could make use of them?
"Not that I know of," he replied disdainfully, though unable to withhold a glance at his own trousers.
Perhaps he had met some one to whom he would be doing a favour if he gave him the suit?
No, he could think of no one.
Despite her fear of hurting him, Lilly said straight out, she didn"t believe she was mistaken--a remarkable similarity of figure--though the general had measured a bit more about the waist--and if he wanted to entrust the suit to an inexpensive tailor--
The suggestion angered him. Did she think he was a charity case? n.o.body could cla.s.s him so low as that. He was a man of firm principles, and his principles would never permit him to wear a person"s cast-off clothes.
With a sigh Lilly desisted from her project.
But he could not make up his mind to take leave. He sat in the drawing-room an interminable time. Finally she had to hint to him to go, because Richard might enter any moment.
At the head of the stairs outside her door, he turned and asked, stuttering, whether the next time he might come in the evening.
"Haven"t you leisure any more in the middle of the day?" she demanded, taken aback. For Richard"s sake she did not care to receive visitors late in the day.
No, not that. So far as leisure was concerned, it was--it was--. He hung on, and Lilly listened fearfully for sounds on the staircase below.
"Then what is it?"
"I should like to think the matter over very carefully, and--and--"
"Well, and?"
"And if it"s dark, perhaps I could take the package right along with me."
With that he jumped down the steps.
"The poor fellow, how he must choke down his pride!" she thought, looking after him.
The same evening she sent him all the clothes by express, and pinned a letter inside, in which she excused herself again and again for enclosing a twenty mark note, in the first place, for a hat, in the second place, to spare him difficulties with the tailor.
When he reappeared a few days later, he was scarcely recognisable. The suit fitted him to perfection, and in order to keep the tips of his boots from turning up--they were too long for him--he had stuffed them with cotton wads.
Even the maid sent him friendlier glances.
A pity he would not part with his beard and the tousled shock of hair.
But for that disfigurement you might even appear on the street with him.
His cheeks had filled out, and his eyes had improved, thanks to the help of the physician to whom Lilly had dragged him by main force; and gradually his manners softened down. He no longer gulped his food, or picked his teeth with his finger nails; and he learned how to drink claret.
His inner being, like his external appearance, also began to reflect the peaceful comfort of the hospitable home. He abused with discrimination, and sometimes even the crime of happiness seemed pardonable in his eyes.
He displayed delightful tact in never probing into Lilly"s situation, and she was grateful to him.
Although she avoided questioning him as to his own doings, occasional allusions and complaints of his enabled her to piece together a picture of his unsuccessful career.
After two years of starvation, he gave up the teaching profession, and, consciously sacrificing his convictions, took up the study of theology in his native city for the sake of one or two scholarships.
"After all!" thought Lilly, deeply stirred. She recalled the red, sunny morning when the Sunday chimes sent up their greeting from out of the green valley.
But his supreme sacrifice seemed to have done no permanent good. During the last year he had kept himself alive by occasionally addressing envelopes, and in other mysterious ways, concerning which he was not explicit.
"Nevertheless," he said, "I maintained my dignity. And even if I am poor and despised, I know my worth, indeed I do."
He paced the room, fiery and lowering. When he threw out his chest and ran his hand through his mane, he almost resembled the young hero who had once filled Lilly"s enthusiastic fancy with pictures of inordinate ambition.
To complete her work and lead him entirely back to happiness, she tried to find out what lot in life he desired for himself.
He wanted to go away. Leave Berlin! He wanted to feel himself a man again, who does his duty and knows where he belongs and is permitted to breathe pure air.
"All of us want something lovely like that," she thought.