"Yes, you shall come along!" she said. "You shall die when I die."
She carefully rolled and wrapped up the crumbling sheets.
Then she found the letters in the trunk, read them once, and several times again--but she did not understand what she was reading.
It was nearly twelve o"clock when she softly closed the tall door behind her.
Mrs. Laue was still asleep.
n.o.body met her on the stairs, and she managed to leave the house without being seen.
Since her flight to Konrad she had not been alone on the street at midnight.
The two long rows of house fronts dipped in garish light--the trolley poles sparking and flashing between--silent, shadowy figures--it was all as if she were looking upon it for the first time.
An oppressive fear beset her.
Her legs felt numb as if wooden stilts had been screwed to them upon which she must hasten on without hesitating or stopping, whether she would or no. And her heels rapped on the pavement, carrying her on, irresistibly nearer and nearer to her goal.
At the approach of each pa.s.serby she was impelled to hide herself, in the belief that her appearance betrayed her intentions.
So she chose dark side streets which were being paved and where withering linden trees scattered rain drops.
Her way led past long rows of brick buildings inhospitably set behind dark garden walls, past barns and factories.
And her heels kept rapping: "Tap--tap--tap," as if she were wearing a pedometer which accurately registered every inch shortening her course.
She began to think of roundabout ways of reaching her bridge.
But she cast the temptation from her.
"If it were done, "twere well it were done quickly," she had read somewhere.
Forward with clenched teeth!
The Engelbecken lay dark and deserted. Yellow lights glinted on the invisible waters.
"It would be easier here," she thought, breathless from the oppression at her heart, and stepped nearer, on the gra.s.sy slope.
But she recoiled with a shudder.
It had to be the bridge on the northwest side--fate had willed it so.
It was still a great distance off, about an hour"s walk.
She came to livelier streets.
The lamps in front of the dance halls, where fallen women revelled, sent their garish beams out into the night like tentacles.
On, on she must go!
From the open doors of a bas.e.m.e.nt cafe was wafted a hot garlic-laden vapour.
What smelled like that?
Oh, yes! The little sausages Mrs. Redlich had given her son as a farewell dinner.
Directly in front of her a hose as thick as her arm spurted a cleansing stream over the pavement.
What had she heard hiss and gurgle along the ground like that?
Oh, yes! It had sounded just like that when old Haberland had watered the lawn, with the copper sprinkler.
Suddenly the idea shot through her brain: "None of this is true. I am lying in bed between the bookcases of the circulating library, and the lamp I took from the bracket is smoking back of me,--and it is all in the book I am reading on the sly after Mrs. Asmussen"s dose of medicine has happily worked."
The city noises swelled and called her back to life.
She had reached the heart of the city, the vortex of Berlin"s unwearying night life.
She pa.s.sed the Spittelmarkt. Leipziger Stra.s.se unrolled before her, a stupendous scene, with its endless chain of street lamps. A silvery mist enveloped it, or, rather, it resembled a gay picture lightly covered by a layer of mould, dotted with the lights of cafes and cabarets glimmering red.
The numb feeling in Lilly"s legs increased. She moved them without realising that she was moving them.
She felt nothing but the throbbing of her heart, which shook her whole body like the vibrations of a mill.
On Friedrichstra.s.se the people thronged as in the daytime.
Young men rejoicing in the chase followed close upon the heels of their laughing quarry.
The lamplight shone on the silk stockings of damsels as they tripped along.
"Those who have once been completely submerged in this world," thought Lilly, with a shudder of envy, "no longer trouble themselves with questions of honour and death."
Alas, beyond that brilliant whirl came quiet and darkness again, in whose shelter a person may die as he will.
And her heels kept beating: "Tap--tap--tap." She could hear them even in all that noise.
"Couldn"t I go to some cafe?" she asked herself. "What harm if some one were to see me? I should gain a paltry quarter of an hour."
Lights--mirrors--upholstery--curling blue cigarette smoke--a tingling in her parched throat.
Once--once again! Not a quarter of an hour--a _whole_ hour--and still longer if she wished it--a poor bit of life which would do n.o.body any harm.
But she could find no justification for such cowardice and she did not want to be ashamed of herself at the very last.
So on--on.