Читать книгу The Song of Songs - Hermann Sudermann - Страница 15

Anna Marholz, the daughter of a doctor, had interesting particulars to impart about the young teacher, who was a patient of her father's. She said it was urgently necessary that he should go to the Italian Riviera for the winter, as it was probable he could not live through it in his native climate.

Lilly's heart stood still. The others laid their heads together to think of how he was to be helped. It could only be accomplished in a private way, because he had no money and no official position, and the town would therefore not bear the expenses of his foreign trip.

"We will start a committee," someone proposed, and all the others agreed to the proposal with acclamation.

"Thank God!" Lilly said to herself, and felt that now his life would be prolonged to fifty or sixty, at least. During the ten o'clock break a council of war was held, and Lilly, to her great delight, was appointed secretary of the committee.

The first meeting was held at Klein's, the confectioner's, a few days later. They dared not go to Frangipani's, the resort of young officers and barristers. Fifteen girls consumed fifteen iced meringues and fifteen cups of chocolate, the cost of which they shared, and at the same time brought forward some practical suggestions. Emilie Faber's idea was to get up a Shakespeare reading in the town-hall and to assign the part of Romeo to the leading "star" of the provincial theatre. Everyone approved, because all the girls were crazy about the favourite actor. Not less well received was a scheme of Käthe Vitzing's, whose cousin sang tenor in the college choir, to organise an amateur concert. Rosalie Katz, more businesslike than the rest, thought of getting blank subscription-forms printed and taking them round to all the well-to-do people in the town. This plan was not so popular, but finally it was decided to accept it and to try and put all three plans into execution. Lilly, in her rôle of secretary, made a note of all the suggestions, and kept saying to herself, "Hurrah, it's for him!"

Meanwhile, the lectures on the history of art continued, as well as the sittings of the committee. The bill for refreshments mounted higher and higher, but enthusiasm for the object of the meetings became visibly damped. Not that Dr. Mälzer's lectures were in any degree less fascinating. They still held his listeners in thrall with their rich imagery and flowery language, but serious obstacles arose in the carrying out of the plans to aid him. To begin with: the popular Romeo had to appear in another town during the autumn season, and was not available; secondly, the college chorus could not get leave to join with the Selecta in giving an amateur concert; and the house-to-house collection could not be set on foot without the sanction of the police, and this no one had courage to ask for. So the great scheme of lofty benevolence gradually died out, and Lilly found herself three marks to the bad for confectionery. She knew the way to the pawnshop, alas! too well, and it required comparatively little pluck on her part to sacrifice the small gold cross she wore round her neck--a last relic of more prosperous days. She did it gladly, because it was done for him.

Autumn came, and Dr. Mälzer grew worse. He coughed a great deal, and now and then covered his mouth with his pocket-handkerchief, afterwards examining it with an anxious, furtive eye. And then came the announcement that the lectures on Art would be discontinued till further notice. Anna Marholz brought the news to school that he had broken a blood-vessel. Lilly, without stopping to ask for further details, jumped to the conclusion that he was dying. After dark she found her way stealthily to his house, Anna Marholz having got his address from her father's books. There was a lamp with a green shade burning faintly in the window. Not a shadow stirred. No hand drew down the blind, but the lamp went on burning faintly the whole time that Lilly paced the damp street. Her conscience pricked her for not being at home helping her hard-worked mother; yet the next evening and the next she repeated the pilgrimage. She became more and more distressed, and fancied him lying there in his death-throes with no loving, gentle woman's hand to minister to him. On Saturday her anxiety took her from the work-table at home early in the afternoon. It was impossible to walk up and down before the house in broad daylight, but once there she didn't like to go back. Then suddenly she acted on an heroic impulse. She went to a florist's and spent the two marks fifty that was left over from the pawning of her little gold cross on a bunch of brownish-yellow autumn roses. With these she sprang up the steps of the house and rang at the door of the second floor, whence the light of the green-shaded lamp had proceeded. The door was answered by an old hag in a dirty blue-check apron. Lilly stammered forth his name.

"He lives at the back," said the old woman, and shut the door.

Then the green lamp wasn't his after all; it belonged instead to an old woman who wore dirty aprons and champed with her toothless gums. She had been worshipping at the wrong shrine for more than a week.

Lilly, utterly discouraged, was about to descend the staircase when his name caught her eye on one of the brass plates inside the lobby. Her heart gave a bound, and before she realised what she was doing she had knocked.

A pause ensued and then his head appeared through the half-opened door. The collar of his grey coat was turned up, apparently because he had no collar underneath. His hair was dishevelled, and the ends of his moustache drooped more than ever on either side of his mouth. His eyes seemed to ask in embarrassed surprise, "What have you come here for?"

"Fräulein--Fräulein----" He evidently recognised her, but could not recall her name. Lilly wanted to give him the roses and run away, but she was paralysed with shyness, and remained glued to the spot. "I presume you have been sent by your class?" he asked.

"Yes," assented Lilly eagerly. This saved her.

"I could not invite you to come in otherwise," he said, smiling nervously. "The consequences might be serious for both of us. But if you come as an emissary, that makes all the difference. Please come in."

Lilly had pictured him in a suite of lofty apartments filled with books, curios, instruments, and statues of great men. She was horrified to find that he lived in one small room. The bed was still unmade; besides the bed there was no furniture except a couple of chairs, a folding-table, a clothes-rack and a stand for books containing a few shabbily-bound volumes and paper-covered periodicals.

"This is a worse place than ours," she thought, and felt less shy as she sat down on one of the two chairs. Poverty seemed a bond between them.

"How very kind of the young ladies to think of me!" he said.

Lilly remembered the flowers that she held in her hand. "Will you accept these?" she asked, offering them to him.

He took the bunch of roses and held them against his face without a word of thanks.

"They have no smell," he remarked. "They are the last roses, but my first, so you can imagine how much I appreciate them."

Lilly's eyes grew dim with delight. "Are you still in great pain, Dr. Mälzer?" she stammered forth.

He laughed. "Pain? ... Oh dear no! I am feverish now and then, that's all. It's quite amusing to be feverish. One's soul floats away in an airship far away over cities, land, and sea, over centuries; one is visited by distinguished persons, if not so beautiful as----"

He paused in the middle of his compliment, thinking of their relations as master and pupil. His confusion seemed to clear his vision. He fixed his eyes, which burned like two flames in blue cavities, on her and asked in a voice which sounded higher pitched and hoarser than usual:

"What's your name?"

"I am Lilly--Lilly Czepanek."

The name conveyed nothing to him, because he had not lived long in the town.

"You think of taking up teaching?"

"Yes, doctor."

"Listen to my advice. Don't! Go to Russia and hurl bombs. Go to a hospital and wash feet. Marry a drunken scoundrel who'll ill-treat you and sell the very bed you lie on. Anything rather than being a teacher. You mustn't be a teacher, not you."

"But why shouldn't I?" she asked.

"I'll tell you.... The qualifications for a teacher are a flat chest, weak eyes, poor hair, and a character that can see one side of a question only. People whose nerves and blood are too feeble to live their own lives are good enough to teach others, but those whose blood courses through their veins like molten fire, whose eyes are filled with longing, to whom the problems of life are there for seeing and knowing, not for blind mechanical vivisection, they--but I mustn't go on, though I should like to."

"Oh, please go on--please," Lilly besought him.

"How old are you?"

"Sixteen."

"And a woman already!" He looked at her with an expression of tortured admiration.

"Look at me!" he exclaimed. "I too was once a human being, though you'd hardly believe it. I held my arms stretched out to heaven, full of burning desires. I too looked into a girl's eyes with longing, though they were not such a pair of eyes as yours. Let me chatter. You see, I am a dying man, and it'll do you no harm."

"You mustn't die! you shall not die, Dr. Mälzer!" she cried, jumping to her feet.

"Sit down, child," he said with a laugh; "don't excite yourself about me. A friend of mine once broke the backbone of a wild-cat with one blow of a stick. The cat couldn't run away, couldn't cry or do anything till the next blow came. It just crouched on all-fours, coughing and choking. That's like me. There's nothing to be done. You had better go, child. I've made my peace, but when I look at you it becomes difficult again."

She turned her face away not to show her tears.

"Must I?" she asked.

"Must?" he laughed again. "I'll devour greedily every minute of your presence here as the hungry beggar devours the crumbs he turns out of his pockets. You sat, didn't you, at the end of the first form on the left? ... Yes, of course I remember. I said to myself, 'What extraordinary eyes!' They are like the eyes of the magic dog in Andersen's fairy tale, which grew bigger the more they were asked not to."

It was Lilly's turn to laugh.

"There, you see," he said, "I've made you merry again. You shall not carry away from here nothing but the memory of a corpse and death's-head. We enjoyed our lectures, didn't we?"

Lilly answered with a sigh.

"You gasped for sheer longing when I talked of Italy. I used to think: she gasps like yourself, though she has no need to gasp."

"You want to go there very much, doctor?"

"You might as well ask a man on fire whether he'd like a cold bath."

"And it's the only thing that can do you any good?"

He looked at her for a moment with a dark savage expression.

"What are you cross-examining me for? Have you come to find out something? I am very indebted to you and the young ladies of the class for such sympathetic interest but----"

A fit of coughing stifled his voice.

Lilly sprang up to see if she could do anything for him. Involuntarily she snatched up a glass filled with a pale fluid from the table and held it to his lips. He took it eagerly, and after drinking fell back exhausted and gazed at her tenderly with grateful eyes. She returned his gaze with a faint smile, feeling it was infinite happiness to be there.

It was so quiet in the half-dark stuffy little room that she could hear the tick of his watch, which hung on the opposite wall. He made an effort to sit up and go on talking, but appeared not yet quite equal to it. Lilly gave him a look of entreaty and warning; and, smiling, he leaned back again. So they continued in silence.

"Oh, how happy I am!" thought Lilly. "How happy I am to be here!"

Then he held his hands out to her with a weary gesture. She caught them in hers eagerly. His skin felt hot and clammy, and it seemed as if his pulse beat in his fingertips. Hers was beating fast too, but could not keep pace with it.

"Listen to me, my dear child," he murmured. "I want to give you some good advice before you go. You overflow with a superfluity of love; three kinds of love--love emanating from the heart, from the senses, and from compassion. One or other is necessary to everybody who isn't a dried-up fossil, but two are dangerous, and all three are likely to lead to ruin. Be on guard where your power of loving is concerned. Don't squander your love. That is the advice of one on whom you cannot squander it, for God knows he needs it."

"Have you no one to take care of you?" she asked, dreading to hear that anyone but herself was privileged to nurse him.

He shook his head.

"Mayn't I come again?"

He flinched. The fervour of her question was startling. "It depends on whether the class send you."

Lilly now cast off every shred of deception. "That was not true," she stammered. "Not true! The class didn't send me. No one knows I've come."

He bounded to his feet--almost as if he were quite well. His face lengthened with dismay; his eyes filled with tears. He stretched out a trembling hand, as if he would ward her off.

"You must go at once," he whispered; "at once!"

Lilly did not stir.

"If you don't go," he went on excitedly, "your prospects will be ruined. It is not customary for young girls to call on unmarried men in my position, even when the man is their master, and such a wreck as I am. Mention to no one that you have been here, not even to your greatest friend. Remember, your living depends on your reputation, and I should be taking the bread out of your mouth if I let you stay. Go instantly!"

"Am I never to come again?" Her eyes pleaded.

"No!" he thundered in a voice of iron resolve.

The next minute Lilly was pushed out of the room and the key turned in the lock behind her.

She lost no time in disobeying his urgent instructions, and went straight to Rosalie Katz, her chosen friend for the time being, to whom she confided everything, and in whose company she relieved herself by having a good cry. The little brown Jewess was soft-hearted and desperately in love with him too, so they mingled their tears. They forgot to shut the door, however, and it happened that the portly and wealthy Herr Katz, whose waistcoat buttons were always bursting off, came in to ask his daughter to sew one on. Finding the two girls locked in a tearful embrace, he tactfully withdrew; but no sooner had Lilly left the house than he extracted the whole story from Rosalie, of the invalid master, the abortive committee meetings, and wasted iced meringues.

"I dare say we can arrange the matter," he said, twisting the thin gold watch-chain that dangled from the third button of his waistcoat. A thick gold watch-chain was the insignia of being left behind in the social race among the gentlemen of the corn trade.

So it happened that Dr. Mälzer received a few days later a registered letter from two "well-wishers." In it he was told that means had been found to defray the expenses of his foreign tour. All he had to do was to draw a cheque on the firm of Goldbaum, Katz & Co. He started on a chilly October evening, and the staff saw him off at the station. Lilly and Rosalie, who had found out the time his train departed, were there too, but they kept in the background. He passed close by them, muffled in a thick plaid, his eyes aflame, fixed on the distance. After the train had gone, the two girls threw themselves in each other's arms, and wept for joy and pride in what they had done for him. Rosalie stood her friend an éclair on the way home, it being too cold now for iced meringues. Half an hour later they were sitting in the confectioner's, smiling happily over pictures in the illustrated papers.