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 k.n.o.bs 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 a.s.sume 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 t.i.t-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.
Now _I_, on the other hand, think that n.o.body 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 will _not_ permit 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 is _not_ true. 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--with _me_--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 pa.s.s 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!