Chapter II: Part 2

“Ah, ha!” He crossed his legs, sticking the cherry bag between his knees, to leave both hands free. “Psychologically I understood your refusal. It is your innate feminine delicacy in preferring etherealised sensations.... Or perhaps you do not care to eat the worms. All cherries contain worms. Once I made a very interesting experiment with a colleague of mine at the university. We bit into four pounds of the best cherries and did not find one specimen without a worm. But what would you? As I remarked to him afterwards—dear friend, it amounts to this: if one wishes to satisfy the desires of nature one must be strong enough to ignore the facts of nature.... The conversation is not out of your depth? I have so seldom the time or opportunity to open my heart to a woman that I am apt to forget.”

I looked at him brightly.

“See what a fat one!” cried the Herr Professor. “That is almost a mouthful in itself; it is beautiful enough to hang from a watch-chain.” He chewed it up and spat the stone an incredible distance—over the garden path into the flower bed. He was proud of the feat. I saw it. “The quantity of fruit I have eaten on this bench,” he sighed; “apricots, peaches and cherries. One day that garden bed will become an orchard grove, and I shall allow you to pick as much as you please, without paying me anything.”

I was grateful, without showing undue excitement.

“Which reminds me”—he hit the side of his nose with one finger—“the manager of the pension handed me my weekly bill after dinner this evening. It is almost impossible to credit. I do not expect you to believe me—he has charged me extra for a miserable little glass of milk I drink in bed at night to prevent insomnia. Naturally, I did not pay. But the tragedy of the story is this: I cannot expect the milk to produce somnolence any longer; my peaceful attitude of mind towards it is completely destroyed. I know I shall throw myself into a fever in attempting to plumb this want of generosity in so wealthy a man as the manager of a pension. Think of me to-night”—he ground the empty bag under his heel—“think that the worst is happening to me as your head drops asleep on your pillow.”

Two ladies came on the front steps of the pension and stood, arm in arm, looking over the garden. The one, old and scraggy, dressed almost entirely in black bead trimming and a satin reticule; the other, young and thin, in a white gown, her yellow hair tastefully garnished with mauve sweet peas.

The Professor drew in his feet and sat up sharply, pulling down his waistcoat.

“The Godowskas,” he murmured. “Do you know them? A mother and daughter from Vienna. The mother has an internal complaint and the daughter is an actress. Fräulein Sonia is a very modern soul. I think you would find her most sympathetic. She is forced to be in attendance on her mother just now. But what a temperament! I have once described her in her autograph album as a tigress with a flower in the hair. Will you excuse me? Perhaps I can persuade them to be introduced to you.”

I said, “I am going up to my room.” But the Professor rose and shook a playful finger at me. “Na,” he said, “we are friends, and, therefore, I shall speak quite frankly to you. I think they would consider it a little ‘marked’ if you immediately retired to the house at their approach, after sitting here alone with me in the twilight. You know this world. Yes, you know it as I do.”

I shrugged my shoulders, remarking with one eye that while the Professor had been talking the Godowskas had trailed across the lawn towards us. They confronted the Herr Professor as he stood up.

“Good-evening,” quavered Frau Godowska. “Wonderful weather! It has given me quite a touch of hay fever!” Fräulein Godowska said nothing. She swooped over a rose growing in the embryo orchard, then stretched out her hand with a magnificent gesture to the Herr Professor. He presented me.

“This is my little English friend of whom I have spoken. She is the stranger in our midst. We have been eating cherries together.”

“How delightful,” sighed Frau Godowska. “My daughter and I have often observed you through the bedroom window. Haven’t we, Sonia?”

Sonia absorbed my outward and visible form with an inward and spiritual glance, then repeated the magnificent gesture for my benefit. The four of us sat on the bench, with that faint air of excitement of passengers established in a railway carriage on the qui vive for the train whistle. Frau Godowska sneezed. “I wonder if it is hay fever,” she remarked, worrying the satin reticule for her handkerchief, “or would it be the dew. Sonia, dear, is the dew falling?”

Fräulein Sonia raised her face to the sky, and half closed her eyes. “No, mamma, my face is quite warm. Oh, look, Herr Professor, there are swallows in flight; they are like a little flock of Japanese thoughts—nicht wahr?”

“Where?” cried the Herr Professor. “Oh yes, I see, by the kitchen chimney. But why do you say ‘Japanese’? Could you not compare them with equal veracity to a little flock of German thoughts in flight?” He rounded on me. “Have you swallows in England?”

“I believe there are some at certain seasons. But doubtless they have not the same symbolical value for the English. In Germany—”

“I have never been to England,” interrupted Fräulein Sonia, “but I have many English acquaintances. They are so cold!” She shivered.

“Fish-blooded,” snapped Frau Godowska. “Without soul, without heart, without grace. But you cannot equal their dress materials. I spent a week in Brighton twenty years ago, and the travelling cape I bought there is not yet worn out—the one you wrap the hot-water bottle in, Sonia. My lamented husband, your father, Sonia, knew a great deal about England. But the more he knew about it the oftener he remarked to me, ‘England is merely an island of beef flesh swimming in a warm gulf sea of gravy.’ Such a brilliant way of putting things. Do you remember, Sonia?”

“I forget nothing, mamma,” answered Sonia.

Said the Herr Professor: “That is the proof of your calling, gnädiges Fräulein. Now I wonder—and this is a very interesting speculation—is memory a blessing or—excuse the word—a curse?”

Frau Godowska looked into the distance, then the corners of her mouth dropped and her skin puckered. She began to shed tears.

“Ach Gott! Gracious lady, what have I said?” exclaimed the Herr Professor.

Sonia took her mother’s hand. “Do you know,” she said, “to-night it is stewed carrots and nut tart for supper. Suppose we go in and take our places,” her sidelong, tragic stare accusing the Professor and me the while.

I followed them across the lawn and up the steps. Frau Godowska was murmuring, “Such a wonderful, beloved man”; with her disengaged hand Fräulein Sonia was arranging the sweet-pea “garniture.”

“A concert for the benefit of afflicted Catholic infants will take place in the salon at eight-thirty P.M. Artists: Fräulein Sonia Godowska, from Vienna; Herr Professor Windberg and his trombone; Frau Oberlehrer Weidel, and others.”

This notice was tied round the neck of the melancholy stag’s head in the dining-room. It graced him like a red and white “dinner bib” for days before the event, causing the Herr Professor to bow before it and say “good appetite” until we sickened of his pleasantry and left the smiling to be done by the waiter, who was paid to be pleasing to the guests.

On the appointed day the married ladies sailed about the pension dressed like upholstered chairs, and the unmarried ladies like draped muslin dressing-table covers. Frau Godowska pinned a rose in the centre of her reticule; another blossom was tucked in the mazy folds of a white antimacassar thrown across her breast. The gentlemen wore black coats, white silk ties and ferny buttonholes tickling the chin.

The floor of the salon was freshly polished, chairs and benches arranged, and a row of little flags strung across the ceiling—they flew and jigged in the draught with all the enthusiasm of family washing. It was arranged that I should sit beside Frau Godowska, and that the Herr Professor and Sonia should join us when their share of the concert was over.

“That will make you feel quite one of the performers,” said the Herr Professor genially. “It is a great pity that the English nation is so unmusical. Never mind! To-night you shall hear something—we have discovered a nest of talent during the rehearsals.”

“What do you intend to recite, Fräulein Sonia?”

She shook back her hair. “I never know until the last moment. When I come on the stage I wait for one moment and then I have the sensation as though something struck me here,”—she placed her hand upon her collar brooch—“and... words come!”

“Bend down a moment,” whispered her mother. “Sonia, love, your skirt safety-pin is showing at the back. Shall I come outside and fasten it properly for you, or will you do it yourself?”

“Oh, mamma, please don’t say such things,” Sonia flushed and grew very angry. “You know how sensitive I am to the slightest unsympathetic impression at a time like this.... I would rather my skirt dropped off my body—”

“Sonia—my heart!”

A bell tinkled.

The waiter came in and opened the piano. In the heated excitement of the moment he entirely forgot what was fitting, and flicked the keys with the grimy table napkin he carried over his arm. The Frau Oberlehrer tripped on the platform followed by a very young gentleman, who blew his nose twice before he hurled his handkerchief into the bosom of the piano.

“Yes, I know you have no love for me, And no forget-me-not. No love, no heart, and no forget-me-not.”

sang the Frau Oberlehrer, in a voice that seemed to issue from her forgotten thimble and have nothing to do with her.

“Ach, how sweet, how delicate,” we cried, clapping her soothingly. She bowed as though to say, “Yes, isn’t it?” and retired, the very young gentleman dodging her train and scowling.

The piano was closed, an arm-chair was placed in the centre of the platform. Fräulein Sonia drifted towards it. A breathless pause. Then, presumably, the winged shaft struck her collar brooch. She implored us not to go into the woods in trained dresses, but rather as lightly draped as possible, and bed with her among the pine needles. Her loud, slightly harsh voice filled the salon. She dropped her arms over the back of the chair, moving her lean hands from the wrists. We were thrilled and silent. The Herr Professor, beside me, abnormally serious, his eyes bulging, pulled at his moustache ends. Frau Godowska adopted that peculiarly detached attitude of the proud parent. The only soul who remained untouched by her appeal was the waiter, who leaned idly against the wall of the salon and cleaned his nails with the edge of a programme. He was “off duty” and intended to show it.

“What did I say?” shouted the Herr Professor under cover of tumultuous applause, “tem-per-ament! There you have it. She is a flame in the heart of a lily. I know I am going to play well. It is my turn now. I am inspired. Fräulein Sonia”—as that lady returned to us, pale and draped in a large shawl—“you are my inspiration. To-night you shall be the soul of my trombone. Wait only.”

To right and left of us people bent over and whispered admiration down Fräulein Sonia’s neck. She bowed in the grand style.

“I am always successful,” she said to me. “You see, when I act _I am_. In Vienna, in the plays of Ibsen we had so many bouquets that the cook had three in the kitchen. But it is difficult here. There is so little magic. Do you not feel it? There is none of that mysterious perfume which floats almost as a visible thing from the souls of the Viennese audiences. My spirit starves for want of that.” She leaned forward, chin on hand. “Starves,” she repeated.

The Professor appeared with his trombone, blew into it, held it up to one eye, tucked back his shirt cuffs and wallowed in the soul of Sonia Godowska. Such a sensation did he create that he was recalled to play a Bavarian dance, which he acknowledged was to be taken as a breathing exercise rather than an artistic achievement. Frau Godowska kept time to it with a fan.

Followed the very young gentleman who piped in a tenor voice that he loved somebody, “with blood in his heart and a thousand pains.” Fräulein Sonia acted a poison scene with the assistance of her mother’s pill vial and the arm-chair replaced by a “chaise longue”; a young girl scratched a lullaby on a young fiddle; and the Herr Professor performed the last sacrificial rites on the altar of the afflicted children by playing the National Anthem.

“Now I must put mamma to bed,” whispered Fräulein Sonia. “But afterwards I must take a walk. It is imperative that I free my spirit in the open air for a moment. Would you come with me as far as the railway station and back?”

“Very well, then, knock on my door when you’re ready.”

Thus the modern soul and I found ourselves together under the stars.

“What a night!” she said. “Do you know that poem of Sappho about her hands in the stars.... I am curiously sapphic. And this is so remarkable—not only am I sapphic, I find in all the works of all the greatest writers, especially in their unedited letters, some touch, some sign of myself—some resemblance, some part of myself, like a thousand reflections of my own hands in a dark mirror.”

“But what a bother,” said I.

“I do not know what you mean by ‘bother’; is it rather the curse of my genius....” She paused suddenly, staring at me. “Do you know my tragedy?” she asked.

I shook my head.

“My tragedy is my mother. Living with her I live with the coffin of my unborn aspirations. You heard that about the safety-pin to-night. It may seem to you a little thing, but it ruined my three first gestures. They were—”

“Impaled on a safety-pin,” I suggested.

“Yes, exactly that. And when we are in Vienna I am the victim of moods, you know. I long to do wild, passionate things. And mamma says, ‘Please pour out my mixture first.’ Once I remember I flew into a rage and threw a washstand jug out of the window. Do you know what she said? ‘Sonia, it is not so much throwing things out of windows, if only you would—’”

“Choose something smaller?” said I.

“No... ‘tell me about it beforehand.’ Humiliating! And I do not see any possible light out of this darkness.”

“Why don’t you join a touring company and leave your mother in Vienna?”

“What! Leave my poor, little, sick, widowed mother in Vienna! Sooner than that I would drown myself. I love my mother as I love nobody else in the world—nobody and nothing! Do you think it is impossible to love one’s tragedy? ‘Out of my great sorrows I make my little songs,’ that is Heine or myself.”

“Oh, well, that’s all right,” I said cheerfully.

“But it is not all right!”

I suggested we should turn back. We turned.

“Sometimes I think the solution lies in marriage,” said Fräulein Sonia. “If I find a simple, peaceful man who adores me and will look after mamma—a man who would be for me a pillow—for genius cannot hope to mate—I shall marry him.... You know the Herr Professor has paid me very marked attentions.”

“Oh, Fräulein Sonia,” I said, very pleased with myself, “why not marry him to your mother?” We were passing the hairdresser’s shop at the moment. Fräulein Sonia clutched my arm.

“You, you,” she stammered. “The cruelty. I am going to faint. Mamma to marry again before I marry—the indignity. I am going to faint here and now.”

I was frightened. “You can’t,” I said, shaking her.

“Come back to the pension and faint as much as you please. But you can’t faint here. All the shops are closed. There is nobody about. Please don’t be so foolish.”

“Here and here only!” She indicated the exact spot and dropped quite beautifully, lying motionless.

“Very well,” I said, “faint away; but please hurry over it.”

She did not move. I began to walk home, but each time I looked behind me I saw the dark form of the modern soul prone before the hairdresser’s window. Finally I ran, and rooted out the Herr Professor from his room. “Fräulein Sonia has fainted,” I said crossly.

“Du lieber Gott! Where? How?”

“Outside the hairdresser’s shop in the Station Road.”

“Jesus and Maria! Has she no water with her?”—he seized his carafe—“nobody beside her?”

“Nothing.”

“Where is my coat? No matter, I shall catch a cold on the chest. Willingly, I shall catch one.... You are ready to come with me?”

“No,” I said; “you can take the waiter.”

“But she must have a woman. I cannot be so indelicate as to attempt to loosen her stays.”

“Modern souls oughtn’t to wear them,” said I. He pushed past me and clattered down the stairs.

When I came down to breakfast next morning there were two places vacant at table. Fräulein Sonia and Herr Professor had gone off for a day’s excursion in the woods.

I wondered.

AT “LEHMANN’S”

Certainly Sabina did not find life slow. She was on the trot from early morning until late at night. At five o’clock she tumbled out of bed, buttoned on her clothes, wearing a long-sleeved alpaca pinafore over her black frock, and groped her way downstairs into the kitchen.

Anna, the cook, had grown so fat during the summer that she adored her bed because she did not have to wear her corsets there, but could spread as much as she liked, roll about under the great mattress, calling upon Jesus and Holy Mary and Blessed Anthony himself that her life was not fit for a pig in a cellar.

Sabina was new to her work. Pink colour still flew in her cheeks; there was a little dimple on the left side of her mouth that even when she was most serious, most absorbed, popped out and gave her away. And Anna blessed that dimple. It meant an extra half-hour in bed for her; it made Sabina light the fire, turn out the kitchen and wash endless cups and saucers that had been left over from the evening before. Hans, the scullery boy, did not come until seven. He was the son of the butcher—a mean, undersized child very much like one of his father’s sausages, Sabina thought. His red face was covered with pimples, and his nails indescribably filthy. When Herr Lehmann himself told Hans to get a hairpin and clean them he said they were stained from birth because his mother had always got so inky doing the accounts—and Sabina believed him and pitied him.

Winter had come very early to Mindelbau. By the end of October the streets were banked waist-high with snow, and the greater number of the “Cure Guests,” sick unto death of cold water and herbs, had departed in nothing approaching peace. So the large salon was shut at Lehmann’s and the breakfast-room was all the accommodation the café afforded. Here the floor had to be washed over, the tables rubbed, coffee-cups set out, each with its little china platter of sugar, and newspapers and magazines hung on their hooks along the walls before Herr Lehmann appeared at seven-thirty and opened business.

As a rule his wife served in the shop leading into the café, but she had chosen the quiet season to have a baby, and, a big woman at the best of times, she had grown so enormous in the process that her husband told her she looked unappetising, and had better remain upstairs and sew.

Sabina took on the extra work without any thought of extra pay. She loved to stand behind the counter, cutting up slices of Anna’s marvellous chocolate-spotted confections, or doing up packets of sugar almonds in pink and blue striped bags.

“You’ll get varicose veins, like me,” said Anna. “That’s what the Frau’s got, too. No wonder the baby doesn’t come! All her swelling’s got into her legs.” And Hans was immensely interested.

During the morning business was comparatively slack. Sabina answered the shop bell, attended to a few customers who drank a liqueur to warm their stomachs before the midday meal, and ran upstairs now and again to ask the Frau if she wanted anything. But in the afternoon six or seven choice spirits played cards, and everybody who was anybody drank tea or coffee.

“Sabina... Sabina....”

She flew from one table to the other, counting out handfuls of small change, giving orders to Anna through the “slide,” helping the men with their heavy coats, always with that magical child air about her, that delightful sense of perpetually attending a party.

“How is the Frau Lehmann?” the women would whisper.

“She feels rather low, but as well as can be expected,” Sabina would answer, nodding confidentially.

Frau Lehmann’s bad time was approaching. Anna and her friends referred to it as her “journey to Rome,” and Sabina longed to ask questions, yet, being ashamed of her ignorance, was silent, trying to puzzle it out for herself. She knew practically nothing except that the Frau had a baby inside her, which had to come out—very painful indeed. One could not have one without a husband—that she also realised. But what had the man got to do with it? So she wondered as she sat mending tea towels in the evening, head bent over her work, light shining on her brown curls. Birth—what was it? wondered Sabina. Death—such a simple thing. She had a little picture of her dead grandmother dressed in a black silk frock, tired hands clasping the crucifix that dragged between her flattened breasts, mouth curiously tight, yet almost secretly smiling. But the grandmother had been born once—that was the important fact.

As she sat there one evening, thinking, the Young Man entered the café, and called for a glass of port wine. Sabina rose slowly. The long day and the hot room made her feel a little languid, but as she poured out the wine she felt the Young Man’s eyes fixed on her, looked down at him and dimpled.

“It’s cold out,” she said, corking the bottle.

The Young Man ran his hands through his snow-powdered hair and laughed.

“I wouldn’t call it exactly tropical,” he said. “But you’re very snug in here—look as though you’ve been asleep.”

Very languid felt Sabina in the hot room, and the Young Man’s voice was strong and deep. She thought she had never seen anybody who looked so strong—as though he could take up the table in one hand—and his restless gaze wandering over her face and figure gave her a curious thrill deep in her body, half pleasure, half pain.... She wanted to stand there, close beside him, while he drank his wine. A little silence followed. Then he took a book out of his pocket, and Sabina went back to her sewing. Sitting there in the corner, she listened to the sound of the leaves being turned and the loud ticking of the clock that hung over the gilt mirror. She wanted to look at him again—there was a something about him, in his deep voice, even in the way his clothes fitted. From the room above she heard the heavy dragging sound of Frau Lehmann’s footsteps, and again the old thoughts worried Sabina. If she herself should one day look like that—feel like that! Yet it would be very sweet to have a little baby to dress and jump up and down.

“Fräulein—what’s your name—what are you smiling at?” called the Young Man.

She blushed and looked up, hands quiet in her lap, looked across the empty tables and shook her head.

“Come here, and I’ll show you a picture,” he commanded.

She went and stood beside him. He opened the book, and Sabina saw a coloured sketch of a naked girl sitting on the edge of a great, crumpled bed, a man’s opera hat on the back of her head.

He put his hand over the body, leaving only the face exposed, then scrutinised Sabina closely.

“Well?”

“What do you mean?” she asked, knowing perfectly well.

“Why, it might be your own photograph—the face, I mean—that’s as far as I can judge.”

“But the hair’s done differently,” said Sabina, laughing. She threw back her head, and the laughter bubbled in her round white throat.

“It’s rather a nice picture, don’t you think?” he asked. But she was looking at a curious ring he wore on the hand that covered the girl’s body, and only nodded.

“Ever seen anything like it before?”

“Oh, there’s plenty of those funny ones in the illustrated papers.”

“How would you like to have your picture taken that way?”

“Me? I’d never let anybody see it. Besides, I haven’t got a hat like that!”

“That’s easily remedied.”

Again a little silence, broken by Anna throwing up the slide.

Sabina ran into the kitchen.

“Here, take this milk and egg up to the Frau,” said Anna. “Who’ve you got in there?”

“Got such a funny man! I think he’s a little gone here,” tapping her forehead.

Upstairs in the ugly room the Frau sat sewing, a black shawl round her shoulders, her feet encased in red woollen slippers. The girl put the milk on a table by her, then stood, polishing a spoon on her apron.

“Nothing else?”

“Na,” said the Frau, heaving up in her chair. “Where’s my man?”

“He’s playing cards over at Snipold’s. Do you want him?”

“Dear heaven, leave him alone. I’m nothing. I don’t matter.... And the whole day waiting here.”

Her hand shook as she wiped the rim of the glass with her fat finger.

“Shall I help you to bed?”

“You go downstairs, leave me alone. Tell Anna not to let Hans grub the sugar—give him one on the ear.”

“Ugly—ugly—ugly,” muttered Sabina, returning to the café where the Young Man stood coat-buttoned, ready for departure.

“I’ll come again to-morrow,” said he. “Don’t twist your hair back so tightly; it will lose all its curl.”

“Well, you are a funny one,” she said. “Good-night.”

By the time Sabina was ready for bed Anna was snoring. She brushed out her long hair and gathered it in her hands.... Perhaps it would be a pity if it lost all its curl. Then she looked down at her straight chemise, and drawing it off, sat down on the side of the bed.

“I wish,” she whispered, smiling sleepily, “there was a great big looking-glass in this room.”

Lying down in the darkness, she hugged her little body.

“I wouldn’t be the Frau for one hundred marks—not for a thousand marks. To look like that.”

And half-dreaming, she imagined herself heaving up in her chair with the port wine bottle in her hand as the Young Man entered the café.

Cold and dark the next morning. Sabina woke, tired, feeling as though something heavy had been pressing under her heart all night. There was a sound of footsteps shuffling along the passage. Herr Lehmann! She must have overslept herself. Yes, he was rattling the door-handle.

“One moment, one moment,” she called, dragging on her stockings.

“Bina, tell Anna to go to the Frau—but quickly. I must ride for the nurse.”

“Yes, yes!” she cried. “Has it come?”

But he had gone, and she ran over to Anna and shook her by the shoulder.

“The Frau—the baby—Herr Lehmann for the nurse,” she stuttered.

“Name of God!” said Anna, flinging herself out of bed.

No complaints to-day. Importance—enthusiasm in Anna’s whole bearing.

“You run downstairs and light the oven. Put on a pan of water”—speaking to an imaginary sufferer as she fastened her blouse—“Yes, yes, I know—we must be worse before we are better—I’m coming—patience.”

It was dark all that day. Lights were turned on immediately the café opened, and business was very brisk. Anna, turned out of the Frau’s room by the nurse, refused to work, and sat in a corner nursing herself, listening to sounds overhead. Hans was more sympathetic than Sabina. He also forsook work, and stood by the window, picking his nose.

“But why must I do everything?” said Sabina, washing glasses. “I can’t help the Frau; she oughtn’t to take such a time about it.”

“Listen,” said Anna, “they’ve moved her into the back bedroom above here, so as not to disturb the people. That was a groan—that one!”

“Two small beers,” shouted Herr Lehmann through the slide.

“One moment, one moment.”

At eight o’clock the café was deserted. Sabina sat down in the corner without her sewing. Nothing seemed to have happened to the Frau. A doctor had come—that was all.

“Ach,” said Sabina. “I think no more of it. I listen no more. Ach, I would like to go away—I hate this talk. I will not hear it. No, it is too much.” She leaned both elbows on the table—cupped her face in her hands and pouted.

But the outer door suddenly opening, she sprang to her feet and laughed. It was the Young Man again. He ordered more port, and brought no book this time.

“Don’t go and sit miles away,” he grumbled. “I want to be amused. And here, take my coat. Can’t you dry it somewhere?—snowing again.”

“There’s a warm place—the ladies’ cloak-room,” she said. “I’ll take it in there—just by the kitchen.”

She felt better, and quite happy again.

“I’ll come with you,” he said. “I’ll see where you put it.”

And that did not seem at all extraordinary. She laughed and beckoned to him.

“In here,” she cried. “Feel how warm. I’ll put more wood on that oven. It doesn’t matter, they’re all busy upstairs.”

She knelt down on the floor, and thrust the wood into the oven, laughing at her own wicked extravagance.

The Frau was forgotten, the stupid day was forgotten. Here was someone beside her laughing, too. They were together in the little warm room stealing Herr Lehmann’s wood. It seemed the most exciting adventure in the world. She wanted to go on laughing—or burst out crying—or—or—catch hold of the Young Man.

“What a fire,” she shrieked, stretching out her hands.

“Here’s a hand; pull up,” said the Young Man. “There, now, you’ll catch it to-morrow.”

They stood opposite to each other, hands still clinging. And again that strange tremor thrilled Sabina.

“Look here,” he said roughly, “are you a child, or are you playing at being one?”

“I—I—”

Laughter ceased. She looked up at him once, then down at the floor, and began breathing like a frightened little animal.

He pulled her closer still and kissed her mouth.

“Na, what are you doing?” she whispered.

He let go her hands, he placed his on her breasts, and the room seemed to swim round Sabina. Suddenly, from the room above, a frightful, tearing shriek.

She wrenched herself away, tightened herself, drew herself up.

“Who did that—who made that noise?”

In the silence the thin wailing of a baby.

“Achk!” shrieked Sabina, rushing from the room.

THE LUFT BAD

I think it must be the umbrellas which make us look ridiculous.

When I was admitted into the enclosure for the first time, and saw my fellow-bathers walking about very nearly “in their nakeds,” it struck me that the umbrellas gave a distinctly “Little Black Sambo” touch.

Ridiculous dignity in holding over yourself a green cotton thing with a red parroquet handle when you are dressed in nothing larger than a handkerchief.

There are no trees in the “Luft Bad.” It boasts a collection of plain, wooden cells, a bath shelter, two swings and two odd clubs—one, presumably the lost property of Hercules or the German army, and the other to be used with safety in the cradle.

And there in all weathers we take the air—walking, or sitting in little companies talking over each other’s ailments and measurements and ills that flesh is heir to.

A high wooden wall compasses us all about; above it the pine-trees look down a little superciliously, nudging each other in a way that is peculiarly trying to a _débutante_. Over the wall, on the right side, is the men’s section. We hear them chopping down trees and sawing through planks, dashing heavy weights to the ground, and singing part songs. Yes, they take it far more seriously.

On the first day I was conscious of my legs, and went back into my cell three times to look at my watch, but when a woman with whom I had played chess for three weeks cut me dead, I took heart and joined a circle.

We lay curled on the ground while a Hungarian lady of immense proportions told us what a beautiful tomb she had bought for her second husband.

“A vault it is,” she said, “with nice black railings. And so large that I can go down there and walk about. Both their photographs are there, with two very handsome wreaths sent me by my first husband’s brother. There is an enlargement of a family group photograph, too, and an illuminated address presented to my first husband on his marriage. I am often there; it makes such a pleasant excursion for a fine Saturday afternoon.”

She suddenly lay down flat on her back, took in six long breaths, and sat up again.

“The death agony was dreadful,” she said brightly; “of the second, I mean. The ‘first’ was run into by a furniture wagon, and had fifty marks stolen out of a new waistcoat pocket, but the ‘second’ was dying for sixty-seven hours. I never ceased crying once—not even to put the children to bed.”

A young Russian, with a “bang” curl on her forehead, turned to me.

“Can you do the ‘Salome’ dance?” she asked. “I can.”

“How delightful,” I said.

“Shall I do it now? Would you like to see me?”

She sprang to her feet, executed a series of amazing contortions for the next ten minutes, and then paused, panting, twisting her long hair.

“Isn’t that nice?” she said. “And now I am perspiring so splendidly. I shall go and take a bath.”

Opposite to me was the brownest woman I have ever seen, lying on her back, her arms clasped over her head.

“How long have you been here to-day?” she was asked.

“Oh, I spend the day here now,” she answered. “I am making my own ‘cure,’ and living entirely on raw vegetables and nuts, and each day I feel my spirit is stronger and purer. After all, what can you expect? The majority of us are walking about with pig corpuscles and oxen fragments in our brain. The wonder is the world is as good as it is. Now I live on the simple, provided food”—she pointed to a little bag beside her—“a lettuce, a carrot, a potato, and some nuts are ample, rational nourishment. I wash them under the tap and eat them raw, just as they come from the harmless earth—fresh and uncontaminated.”

“Do you take nothing else all day?” I cried.

“Water. And perhaps a banana if I wake in the night.” She turned round and leaned on one elbow. “You over-eat yourself dreadfully,” she said; “shamelessly! How can you expect the Flame of the Spirit to burn brightly under layers of superfluous flesh?”

I wished she would not stare at me, and thought of going to look at my watch again when a little girl wearing a string of coral beads joined us.

“The poor Frau Hauptmann cannot join us to-day,” she said; “she has come out in spots all over on account of her nerves. She was very excited yesterday after having written two post-cards.”

“A delicate woman,” volunteered the Hungarian, “but pleasant. Fancy, she has a separate plate for each of her front teeth! But she has no right to let her daughters wear such short sailor suits. They sit about on benches, crossing their legs in a most shameless manner. What are you going to do this afternoon, Fräulein Anna?”

“Oh,” said the Coral Necklace, “the Herr Oberleutnant has asked me to go with him to Landsdorf. He must buy some eggs there to take home to his mother. He saves a penny on eight eggs by knowing the right peasants to bargain with.”

“Are you an American?” said the Vegetable Lady, turning to me.

“No.”

“Then you are an Englishwoman?”

“Well, hardly—”

“You must be one of the two; you cannot help it. I have seen you walking alone several times. You wear your—”

I got up and climbed on to the swing. The air was sweet and cool, rushing past my body. Above, white clouds trailed delicately through the blue sky. From the pine forest streamed a wild perfume, the branches swayed together, rhythmically, sonorously. I felt so light and free and happy—so childish! I wanted to poke my tongue out at the circle on the grass, who, drawing close together, were whispering meaningly.

“Perhaps you do not know,” cried a voice from one of the cells, “to swing is very upsetting for the stomach? A friend of mine could keep nothing down for three weeks after exciting herself so.”

I went to the bath shelter and was hosed.

As I dressed, someone tapped on the wall.

“Do you know,” said a voice, “there is a man who _lives_ in the Luft Bad next door? He buries himself up to the armpits in mud and refuses to believe in the Trinity.”

The umbrellas are the saving grace of the Luft Bad. Now when I go, I take my husband’s “storm gamp” and sit in a corner, hiding behind it.

Not that I am in the least ashamed of my legs.

A BIRTHDAY

Andreas Binzer woke slowly. He turned over on the narrow bed and stretched himself—yawned—opening his mouth as widely as possible and bringing his teeth together afterwards with a sharp “click.” The sound of that click fascinated him; he repeated it quickly several times, with a snapping movement of the jaws. What teeth! he thought. Sound as a bell, every man jack of them. Never had one out, never had one stopped. That comes of no tomfoolery in eating, and a good regular brushing night and morning. He raised himself on his left elbow and waved his right arm over the side of the bed to feel for the chair where he put his watch and chain overnight. No chair was there—of course, he’d forgotten, there wasn’t a chair in this wretched spare room. Had to put the confounded thing under his pillow. “Half-past eight, Sunday, breakfast at nine—time for the bath”—his brain ticked to the watch. He sprang out of bed and went over to the window. The venetian blind was broken, hung fan-shaped over the upper pane.... “That blind must be mended. I’ll get the office boy to drop in and fix it on his way home to-morrow—he’s a good hand at blinds. Give him twopence and he’ll do it as well as a carpenter.... Anna could do it herself if she was all right. So would I, for the matter of that, but I don’t like to trust myself on rickety step-ladders.” He looked up at the sky: it shone, strangely white, unflecked with cloud; he looked down at the row of garden strips and backyards. The fence of these gardens was built along the edge of a gully, spanned by an iron suspension bridge, and the people had a wretched habit of throwing their empty tins over the fence into the gully. Just like them, of course! Andreas started counting the tins, and decided, viciously, to write a letter to the papers about it and sign it—sign it in full.

The servant girl came out of their back door into the yard, carrying his boots. She threw one down on the ground, thrust her hand into the other, and stared at it, sucking in her cheeks. Suddenly she bent forward, spat on the toecap, and started polishing with a brush rooted out of her apron pocket.... “Slut of a girl! Heaven knows what infectious disease may be breeding now in that boot. Anna must get rid of that girl—even if she has to do without one for a bit—as soon as she’s up and about again. The way she chucked one boot down and then spat upon the other! She didn’t care whose boots she’d got hold of. _She_ had no false notions of the respect due to the master of the house.” He turned away from the window and switched his bath towel from the washstand rail, sick at heart. “I’m too sensitive for a man—that’s what’s the matter with me. Have been from the beginning, and will be to the end.”

There was a gentle knock at the door and his mother came in. She closed the door after her and leant against it. Andreas noticed that her cap was crooked, and a long tail of hair hung over her shoulder. He went forward and kissed her.

“Good-morning, mother; how’s Anna?”

The old woman spoke quickly, clasping and unclasping her hands.

“Andreas, please go to Doctor Erb as soon as you are dressed.”

“Why,” he said, “is she bad?”

Frau Binzer nodded, and Andreas, watching her, saw her face suddenly change; a fine network of wrinkles seemed to pull over it from under the skin surface.

“Sit down on the bed a moment,” he said. “Been up all night?”

“Yes. No, I won’t sit down, I must go back to her. Anna has been in pain all night. She wouldn’t have you disturbed before because she said you looked so run down yesterday. You told her you had caught a cold and been very worried.”

Straightway Andreas felt that he was being accused.

“Well, she made me tell her, worried it out of me; you know the way she does.”

Again Frau Binzer nodded.

“Oh yes, I know. She says, is your cold better, and there’s a warm undervest for you in the left-hand corner of the big drawer.”

Quite automatically Andreas cleared his throat twice.

“Yes,” he answered. “Tell her my throat certainly feels looser. I suppose I’d better not disturb her?”

“No, and besides, _time_, Andreas.”

“I’ll be ready in five minutes.”

They went into the passage. As Frau Binzer opened the door of the front bedroom, a long wail came from the room.

That shocked and terrified Andreas. He dashed into the bathroom, turned on both taps as far as they would go, cleaned his teeth and pared his nails while the water was running.

“Frightful business, frightful business,” he heard himself whispering. “And I can’t understand it. It isn’t as though it were her first—it’s her third. Old Schäfer told me, yesterday, his wife simply ‘dropped’ her fourth. Anna ought to have had a qualified nurse. Mother gives way to her. Mother spoils her. I wonder what she meant by saying I’d worried Anna yesterday. Nice remark to make to a husband at a time like this. Unstrung, I suppose—and my sensitiveness again.”

When he went into the kitchen for his boots, the servant girl was bent over the stove, cooking breakfast. “Breathing into that, now, I suppose,” thought Andreas, and was very short with the servant girl. She did not notice. She was full of terrified joy and importance in the goings on upstairs. She felt she was learning the secrets of life with every breath she drew. Had laid the table that morning saying, “Boy,” as she put down the first dish, “Girl,” as she placed the second—it had worked out with the saltspoon to “Boy.” “For two pins I’d tell the master that, to comfort him, like,” she decided. But the master gave her no opening.

“Put an extra cup and saucer on the table,” he said; “the doctor may want some coffee.”

“The doctor, sir?” The servant girl whipped a spoon out of a pan, and spilt two drops of grease on the stove. “Shall I fry something extra?” But the master had gone, slamming the door after him. He walked down the street—there was nobody about at all—dead and alive this place on a Sunday morning. As he crossed the suspension bridge a strong stench of fennel and decayed refuse streamed from the gulley, and again Andreas began concocting a letter. He turned into the main road. The shutters were still up before the shops. Scraps of newspaper, hay, and fruit skins strewed the pavement; the gutters were choked with the leavings of Saturday night. Two dogs sprawled in the middle of the road, scuffling and biting. Only the public-house at the corner was open; a young barman slopped water over the doorstep.

Fastidiously, his lips curling, Andreas picked his way through the water. “Extraordinary how I am noticing things this morning. It’s partly the effect of Sunday. I loathe a Sunday when Anna’s tied by the leg and the children are away. On Sunday a man has the right to expect his family. Everything here’s filthy, the whole place might be down with the plague, and will be, too, if this street’s not swept away. I’d like to have a hand on the government ropes.” He braced his shoulders. “Now for this doctor.”

“Doctor Erb is at breakfast,” the maid informed him. She showed him into the waiting-room, a dark and musty place, with some ferns under a glass-case by the window. “He says he won’t be a minute, please, sir, and there is a paper on the table.”

“Unhealthy hole,” thought Binzer, walking over to the window and drumming his fingers on the glass fern-shade. “At breakfast, is he? That’s the mistake I made: turning out early on an empty stomach.”

A milk cart rattled down the street, the driver standing at the back, cracking a whip; he wore an immense geranium flower stuck in the lapel of his coat. Firm as a rock he stood, bending back a little in the swaying cart. Andreas craned his neck to watch him all the way down the road, even after he had gone, listening for the sharp sound of those rattling cans.

“H’m, not much wrong with him,” he reflected. “Wouldn’t mind a taste of that life myself. Up early, work all over by eleven o’clock, nothing to do but loaf about all day until milking time.” Which he knew was an exaggeration, but he wanted to pity himself.

The maid opened the door, and stood aside for Doctor Erb. Andreas wheeled round; the two men shook hands.

“Well, Binzer,” said the doctor jovially, brushing some crumbs from a pearl-coloured waistcoat, “son and heir becoming importunate?”

Up went Binzer’s spirits with a bound. Son and heir, by Jove! He was glad to have to deal with a man again. And a sane fellow this, who came across this sort of thing every day of the week.

“That’s about the measure of it, Doctor,” he answered, smiling and picking up his hat. “Mother dragged me out of bed this morning with imperative orders to bring you along.”

“Gig will be round in a minute. Drive back with me, won’t you? Extraordinary, sultry day; you’re as red as a beetroot already.”

Andreas affected to laugh. The doctor had one annoying habit—imagined he had the right to poke fun at everybody simply because he was a doctor. “The man’s riddled with conceit, like all these professionals,” Andreas decided.

“What sort of night did Frau Binzer have?” asked the doctor. “Ah, here’s the gig. Tell me on the way up. Sit as near the middle as you can, will you, Binzer? Your weight tilts it over a bit one side—that’s the worst of you successful business men.”

“Two stone heavier than I, if he’s a pound,” thought Andreas. “The man may be all right in his profession—but heaven preserve me.”

“Off you go, my beauty.” Doctor Erb flicked the little brown mare. “Did your wife get any sleep last night?”

“No; I don’t think she did,” answered Andreas shortly. “To tell you the truth, I’m not satisfied that she hasn’t a nurse.”

“Oh, your mother’s worth a dozen nurses,” cried the doctor, with immense gusto. “To tell you the truth, I’m not keen on nurses—too raw—raw as rump-steak. They wrestle for a baby as though they were wrestling with Death for the body of Patroclus.... Ever seen that picture by an English artist. Leighton? Wonderful thing—full of sinew!”

“There he goes again,” thought Andreas, “airing off his knowledge to make a fool of me.”

“Now your mother—she’s firm—she’s capable. Does what she’s told with a fund of sympathy. Look at these shops we’re passing—they’re festering sores. How on earth this government can tolerate—”

“They’re not so bad—sound enough—only want a coat of paint.”

The doctor whistled a little tune and flicked the mare again.

“Well, I hope the young shaver won’t give his mother too much trouble,” he said. “Here we are.”

A skinny little boy, who had been sliding up and down the back seat of the gig, sprang out and held the horse’s head. Andreas went straight into the dining-room and left the servant girl to take the doctor upstairs. He sat down, poured out some coffee, and bit through half a roll before helping himself to fish. Then he noticed there was no hot plate for the fish—the whole house was at sixes and sevens. He rang the bell, but the servant girl came in with a tray holding a bowl of soup and a hot plate.

“I’ve been keeping them on the stove,” she simpered.

“Ah, thanks, that’s very kind of you.” As he swallowed the soup his heart warmed to this fool of a girl.

“Oh, it’s a good thing Doctor Erb has come,” volunteered the servant girl, who was bursting for want of sympathy.

“H’m, h’m,” said Andreas.

She waited a moment, expectantly, rolling her eyes, then in full loathing of menkind went back to the kitchen and vowed herself to sterility.

Andreas cleared the soup bowl, and cleared the fish. As he ate, the room slowly darkened. A faint wind sprang up and beat the tree branches against the window. The dining-room looked over the breakwater of the harbour, and the sea swung heavily in rolling waves. Wind crept round the house, moaning drearily.

“We’re in for a storm. That means I’m boxed up here all day. Well, there’s one blessing; it’ll clear the air.” He heard the servant girl rushing importantly round the house, slamming windows. Then he caught a glimpse of her in the garden, unpegging tea towels from the line across the lawn. She was a worker, there was no doubt about that. He took up a book, and wheeled his arm-chair over to the window. But it was useless. Too dark to read; he didn’t believe in straining his eyes, and gas at ten o’clock in the morning seemed absurd. So he slipped down in the chair, leaned his elbows on the padded arms and gave himself up, for once, to idle dreaming. “A boy? Yes, it was bound to be a boy this time....” “What’s your family, Binzer?” “Oh, I’ve two girls and a boy!” A very nice little number. Of course he was the last man to have a favourite child, but a man needed a son. “I’m working up the business for my son! Binzer & Son! It would mean living very tight for the next ten years, cutting expenses as fine as possible; and then—”

A tremendous gust of wind sprang upon the house, seized it, shook it, dropped, only to grip the more tightly. The waves swelled up along the breakwater and were whipped with broken foam. Over the white sky flew tattered streamers of grey cloud.

Andreas felt quite relieved to hear Doctor Erb coming down the stairs; he got up and lit the gas.

“Mind if I smoke in here?” asked Doctor Erb, lighting a cigarette before Andreas had time to answer. “You don’t smoke, do you? No time to indulge in pernicious little habits!”

“How is she now?” asked Andreas, loathing the man.

“Oh, well as can be expected, poor little soul. She begged me to come down and have a look at you. Said she knew you were worrying.” With laughing eyes the doctor looked at the breakfast-table. “Managed to peck a bit, I see, eh?”

“Hoo-wih!” shouted the wind, shaking the window-sashes.

“Pity—this weather,” said Doctor Erb.

“Yes, it gets on Anna’s nerves, and it’s just nerve she wants.”

“Eh, what’s that?” retorted the doctor. “Nerve! Man alive! She’s got twice the nerve of you and me rolled into one. Nerve! she’s nothing but nerve. A woman who works as she does about the house and has three children in four years thrown in with the dusting, so to speak!”

He pitched his half-smoked cigarette into the fireplace and frowned at the window.

“Now _he’s_ accusing me,” thought Andreas. “That’s the second time this morning—first mother and now this man taking advantage of my sensitiveness.” He could not trust himself to speak, and rang the bell for the servant girl.