The very day after her arrival Mrs. Asmussen provided her with some singular experiences.
During the working hours the worthy dame had for the most part kept out of sight. When Lilly went in for supper she found her mistress dreamily inclined over a steaming cup of tea in a room pervaded by a pleasant aroma of lemon and rum.
"I suffer very much from a catarrhal affection of the mucous lining of my nose," explained Mrs. Asmussen, blinking at Lilly with somewhat watery grey eyes. "So I must take some medicine which one of the most eminent physicians in the city prescribed for me."
Lilly stirred her mush while Mrs. Asmussen sipped tea, every now and then giving vent to a distressed sigh.
"Have I told you about my daughters?"
"Oh, certainly," said Lilly, respectfully.
In the morning, too, Mrs. Asmussen had spoken of scarcely anything but those miserable creatures and the contemptible wretch they called father.
"I don"t think it"s possible for you to get even a remote conception of the charm of those two girls. They are my own flesh and blood, and modesty should forbid me to speak of them this way. However, from a purely objective point of view, I may say that never, never in the wide world have I ever seen, even from afar, two young ladies endowed with such striking qualities of mind and character. Such tender filial devotion, such self-sacrificing industry, such touching modesty, so much genuine feeling in all the small relations of life, such quiet strength in the judgment of great questions, have never before, I warrant, been united in two such youthful souls. Let them be an example to you, my child. You are far removed, far, far removed from those models of maidenhood."
In her astonishment and shame Lilly dropped her spoon. The old lady went on:
"It was with a bleeding heart that I had to part from them. As for them, they cried day and night before leaving me. But what was to be done?
They had to go to their father. Have I ever told you about my splendid husband? An untoward destiny has separated us, but his love, I know, clings to me, and I will love him all the days of my life. Oh, what a man he was! My child, pray to the Lord that he may make you worthy to become the wife of such a man. Alas, I was not worthy, no, not I!"
Two tears of infinite contrition ran down her cheeks.
She related a good deal more on this second evening concerning the virtues of her two daughters, her husband"s n.o.bility of character, and her own unworthiness.
After she had taken several more doses of the medicine prescribed by one of the most eminent physicians of the city, she finally wept herself to sleep.
The next morning she began the day"s work by bursting into a rage because Lilly had used the broom, which was to remain undisturbed behind the door, for sweeping the library.
"This broom is here for only one purpose--to beat those two monsters when they come to my door. And if you, wretched creature, take hold of it once again, you will be the first to make its acquaintance."
Lilly now began to divine that the strange world was not so roseate as her eagerness for experience had led her to picture it.
But worse was to come.
Mrs. Asmussen, who seemed to be greatly concerned for the salvation of Lilly"s soul and the purity of her virgin fancy, immediately forbade her to read any of the books in the library.
"Experience with my daughters," she said, "taught me where such misconduct leads. And I will see to it that you are spared a similar fate."
So long as the work of ordering the books and the ledger continued, the temptation to disobey this mandate did not arise very frequently. But when fall came, when despite increase of custom, unoccupied hours grew more frequent, and the lamp hanging over the counter shone invitingly, when Mrs. Asmussen from day to day succ.u.mbed earlier to the effects of the medicine prescribed by one of the most eminent physicians in the city, and fell into an untroubled dream existence, curiosity and loneliness drove Lilly irresistibly on to commit the sinful deed.
The final impulse was given by a girl of about her own age, who had come one rainy October evening to exchange the first volume of a novel for the second. But the second had been loaned already, and the girl actually cried in disappointment. She couldn"t bear waiting, she said.
She _had_ to know how the story ended. She would _die_ if she didn"t.
Lilly good-humouredly advised her to go to one of the other circulating libraries, which were said to be larger and more aristocratic. She even returned the three marks deposit for use at the other place. Happy in reawakened hopes the novel-reader left.
Lilly examined the torn and soiled volume on all sides and took a cautious peep between the covers.
"_Soll und Haben_, by Gustav Freytag," was on the t.i.tle page. She recalled that even the girls of the first year high school had gone into raptures over the book. But the seamstress"s daughter had had no time for reading novels.
Lilly glanced timidly at the first page, then slipped to the gla.s.s door and listened for a while to Mrs. Asmussen"s peaceful breathing--now, with sails spread, she launched forth on the high seas of romance.
When she finished the volume at four o"clock in the morning she could have torn her hair in sheer desperation at having so lightly put the sequel into the hands of some stranger, who might not bring it back. She mapped out ways and means of unearthing his name and address and slipping to him secretly in order to hasten the return of the book. Then she fell asleep.
She spent hours going over the ledger time and again to find the name.
In vain! The entries were made by numbers, not by t.i.tles, and each time she skipped the number of _Soll und Haben_.
So, like a toper who seeks intoxication in a new drink, she greedily devoured another book.
From now on Lilly"s life was one great orgy, and bore all the marks of such an existence--blurred eyes, aching limbs, huge bills for midnight oil, and spying and lying every few minutes to allay Mrs. Asmussen"s suspicions.
One winter morning the dreadful crime came to light.
The fire in the library stove would die out about midnight and Lilly"s feet would then grow cold. So she got into the habit of reading in bed, with the lamp, which she removed from its hanging socket, set on the broad window-sill directly back of her head. She indulged in the luxury even though reduced to the bitter necessity of getting out of bed later to replace both the lamp and the book, for nowadays Mrs. Asmussen was frequently at her post earlier in the morning than Lilly. But Lilly, for the sake of the few extra hours thus gained, would not have been deterred from allowing herself this great joy, even if it had involved going out on the icy street in her nightgown.
But once she started up from sleep in terror to find Mrs. Asmussen standing at the bottom of the bed all dressed. A black strap lay across her white shirt, and the lamp, which she had gotten up at one o"clock to refill, was still burning behind her.
Never having been beaten in her life, she refused at first to take it seriously when Mrs. Asmussen, despite her corpulence, suddenly jumped over the bottom of the bed and squatted on the covers like a great turkey and began to strike her over the ears with the black strap.
Bad times set in.
Of what avail that Lilly felt genuinely repentant and swore to herself to reform. She was so steeped in the new pa.s.sion, so absorbed by that lovelier existence, where people experienced and loved, suffered and enjoyed, where there were no pert servant girls who came to exchange books, no wet umbrellas, no second volumes loaned out, no ledger numbers not to be found, no mush, and no blows, that she could not have returned to her former self had she had the self-renunciatory ability of a martyr and saint.
To such an extent was she dominated by her fancy that what was her actual existence, moving on from day to day in monotonous prison-like loneliness, seemed to her a dream, an oppressive death stupour, painless, but also pleasureless. Her being did not expand in real life until the sticky pages of a novel began to rustle in her hand.
Intimidated and unresisting as she was, she did not find the courage to justify what was holiest to her even in her own eyes. She felt it to be a sin on which her hungry soul fed as on manna.
Mrs. Asmussen had bethought herself of a diabolic way of still further humiliating Lilly. Like many a believing Protestant, she regarded religion solely as a scourge. Hitherto she had not shown the least solicitude concerning Lilly"s piety, but now she began each meal with a long prayer of repentance, and while the steam curled invitingly from the soup tureen, she would beseech G.o.d with sighs and tears to raise Lilly from the depths to which she had sunk.
And woe to Lilly if caught backsliding!
That first chastis.e.m.e.nt was not the last. Every pretext was seized for beating and cuffing her. Storms of abuse showered down on her unprotected head. She did not dare breathe until the medicine prescribed by the eminent physician began to have its soothing effect.
Then she would pounce on the first book she came across, and amid the forging of signatures and broken marriage vows, amid death by poisoning and the mad acts of love, she would suffer and triumph, triumph and die, blissful in her sufferings, intoxicated to the very end.
CHAPTER VII
It was on a March afternoon, when the sun was shining with young impertinence and the heat was untimely.
The black slabs of snow at the edge of the pavement had melted into gleaming puddles, and a sparkling shower fell from the icicles clinging to the roofs. Over to the south-west the red evening glow lay spread on the house fronts like gay rugs separated by an oblique line from the shadow of the walls on the near side. The window-panes glowed as if they were suns radiating their own light, and the sparrows chased one another along the dripping eaves.
But best of all in this sorry spring of city streets was the rare spicy smell of thawing. Even the vapours rising from the gutters, now running again, gave an inkling of greening meadows and bursting boughs.
Lilly, who had gone out on hardly more than three occasions the whole winter, sat behind the counter and looked through the window longingly.
Everywhere she saw that windows and doors had been opened wide, everywhere b.r.e.a.s.t.s hungering for air greedily drew in the breath of coming spring. So she, too, opened the cas.e.m.e.nt wide and gave the door to the hall a push, which sent it flying back and knocked down the broom, standing at its post, as always.