Читать книгу The Song of Songs - Hermann Sudermann - Страница 22

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One grey, hazy October morning, when winter's approach was tempered by a muggy warmth, a wonderful thing happened. Frau Asmussen's runaway daughters returned.

Without giving a hint of their coming beforehand, they suddenly appeared in the library, gave Lilly an astonished stare, and asked her to pay their cab as they had no change. Lilly's heart beat with excitement. Directly she saw the two imposing figures of the girls, who, though somewhat travel-stained and jaded, victoriously took possession of the field, she had no doubt who they were. She gave a scared glance at their pretty little snub-nosed faces, out of which their bright grey eyes looked inquiringly from the door of the back room to the door behind which the broom of welcome stood. Its hour had now come, and Lilly ran out in a panic to escape the painful scene that would inevitably follow on the opening of Frau Asmussen's door.

She gathered up from the floor of the cab two faded bouquets of stephanotis, a tartan shawl rolled up in a hold-all, from which two bizarre umbrella-handles, topped with blue glass balls, projected in company with two soiled embroidered cushions and a flask. Besides these, there were a tin box of acid drops without a cover, a cardboard box falling to pieces, and disclosing not only hats, but such miscellaneous articles as a comb and pieces of bread-and-butter.

Lilly, with the things in her arms, paused in the entrance, listening in terror for the sound of cries. But all was quiet, and when she ventured into the room she saw mother and daughters locked in each other's arms, hugging and kissing.

As there was no time before the midday meal to kill the fatted calf, in addition to the ordinary cabbage a huge pile of cakes from the confectioner's was provided as a second course. The daughters helped themselves to these before the meal began, laying them aside for a rainy day, Frau Asmussen beamed with maternal tenderness and pride.

"Well, did I exaggerate?" she asked Lilly. "Aren't they a splendid pair? Isn't it a wonder that I could do without them for so long? But I mustn't be too greedy; I am only thankful to get as much of them as I do, for I know their filial hearts are torn between their father and me. They cannot bear to pain either of us by absenting themselves," And she seized and patted the hands of the girls sitting on either side of her, and all three exchanged looks of rapturous affection.

The absent husband and father was also touchingly alluded to. The girls said that the lively, talented darling was on the point of giving up his business to manage vast estates in south Russia, where he had been urgently summoned. Later, in a gloomier hour, Frau Asmussen interpreted this announcement as meaning that the spotted scoundrel had to hide himself in the fastnesses of Odessa till the air cleared, owing to some shady transactions of his about bonds.

At first, to Lilly's unpractised eyes, the two home-flown birds appeared as like as two sparrows. Both of them were pert, quarrelsome, fickle, and flirtatious. After a time she learned to distinguish between them. Lona, the elder, she discovered to be the best-looking in a coarse, barmaidish sort of way. Her hard commercial character was also the stronger. She led Mi, who set up for being a wit, by the nose. For the time being their attitude towards Lilly was one of friendly neutrality. So far she gave them no cause to adopt a hostile line, though hints were dropped that if a certain young lady dared to usurp their position she would be taught her place and war to the knife would follow.

When, however, they had satisfied themselves that Lilly was tractable and inoffensive, they made her the recipient of their confidences, which they poured forth late at night as all three girls sat together on the bed, undressing and brushing each others' hair. They sucked contraband bonbons and discussed different styles of coiffure. Now Lilly, whose mind had hitherto remained pure and innocent, was enlightened on subjects she had never dreamed of. They whispered mysteriously of love intrigues and man-hunting, revealed sexual secrets in a stream of sordid chatter.

What they cared for more than anything, it would seem, was to have their figures admired.

"When I turn my shoulder like this, am I not like a Greek statue?" one would ask.

"Isn't my bust like marble?" was another question.

"If I were not so modest, I should like to let down my night gown and show you my hips. They are divine."

Much more rarely did they challenge Lilly's criticism of their features.

"We know we are good-looking; we've been told so hundreds of times. There can be no doubt about it," they would say.

All the same, when the draughts of a chilly autumn necessitated their throwing scarves over their heads in the house, they did not fail to draw attention to the classic way in which their hair grew on their foreheads, and to the fascinating curve of their profiles.

Sometimes they were even severe critics of themselves.

"We haven't fine eyes, we know--yours, for instance, are, strictly speaking, finer. But if you were to make eyes at anyone it wouldn't have any effect, whereas if we so much as cast a sidelong glance out of the corner of ours, the men are after us like lightning."

Their small cat's eyes would sparkle with satisfaction in their sense of limitless sway and triumph over the weaknesses of masculine strength.

The advice they generously gave Lilly was summed up in the phrase: "Go as far as you like, so long as you don't make a present of yourself to any man."

They told, without stint, piquant stories, describing exciting and thrilling situations in which they themselves had been true to this motto. There was patent in everything they said a strong vein of coarse sensuality. Once, when one of them remarked, "I should like to be a Queen of the Bees, but have no children," the other, whose temperament appeared to be more given to ethical contemplation, quickly retorted, "I would rather be a nun, only with no morals."

She pursued the topic, shocking Lilly's pious reverence with Boccaccio-like details. In spite of their latitude of thought, all their hopes and dreams were really centred on marriage. Marriage, the speediest and most advantageous possible, appeared to them in the light of a career and salvation from all earthly troubles, the consummation of all heavenly bliss. That was to say, the bridegroom must be old, he must be rich, and he must be a fool.

They demanded this triple qualification of fate. In the same way as others invested their intended husband with a halo of all the virtues, these maidens revelled in depicting his infirmities, and showing him as the miserable dupe of their abounding power and superior strategy.

They were not always at one on the point as to how this valuable acquisition so indispensable to their happiness was to be obtained, and a favourite bone of contention between them was the question of whether it was expedient or not to compromise oneself before marriage.

Lona, whose daring in dealing with problems of conduct knew no bounds, was of opinion that it was expedient. Mi, who was more cautious and liked to feel her ground, took the opposite view.

"If you knew what men are as well as I do," Lona snapped at her sister, "you'd know that the best way to get hold of them is to make them afraid.... Let them sin, and then make their sin a halter to hang them with. Then you've got them fast."

Mi ventured to wonder that Lona had not tried to put the theory into practice; if she had she would certainly long ago have----

Here she discreetly came to a pause, for her sister's fingers looked like scratching.

And, in fact, only eight days after their return, these two did come to blows, and the air was thick with flying hair-pads and petticoat-strings. Mi emerged from the fray with a wound, which Lilly spent the night in bathing with vinegar and water.

The cause of the quarrel was a "swell" who had followed them during their afternoon walk, and who, according to Mi's account, had been put off from making further advances by her sister's discouraging reception of him.

Lona maintained that it was a dangerous principle to take up with "swells," while Mi asserted that he might, at any rate, have been good enough for a husband.

The chief and all-engrossing occupation of their daily routine was parading the streets and getting spoken to by men. Lilly's fears that they might take the reins of management into their own hands she soon discovered were groundless. They lay in bed till nine, took two hours to dress, and then started for their morning walk, to take stock of the garrison officers who at this time were promenading the town in groups.

The first half of the day being thus devoted to the military, the second half was given up to civilians. Afternoon coffee was, as a matter of course, ordered and partaken of at Frangipani's, where a handful of lieutenants joined city magnates and young barristers at chess or bridge, and where perhaps a solitary schoolmaster, priding himself on his smartness, would put in an appearance and attempt to cut a dash with the rest.

After an hour spent in devouring all sorts of sweets came the twilight stroll, very favourable for making chance acquaintances, and serving as a subject of conversation afterwards in the house.

It cannot truthfully be stated that Frau Asmussen had given this mode of life her sympathy and blessing. It was scarcely likely, considering that the first spell of seraphic calm that succeeded the homecoming of her prodigal daughters had given place to mutterings of a storm, and the storm itself had soon burst. Rows took place in rapid succession and became such a matter of course that Lilly, who had at first wept and howled with the combatants, began to accept them as part of the normal family life. Abusive epithets of extraordinary vigour flew hither and thither, boxes on the ear resounded through the library, and even the broom, the existence of which at first had been ignored, was now introduced into its limited sphere of activity.

Not till the evening, when Frau Asmussen's soothing medicine claimed her attention, was peace restored. The sisters were now at liberty to take more walks, only their sense of propriety forbade them to go out at so late an hour.

"Anyone who met us now would take us for fast girls," they said, "and then it would be all up with marrying."

Indeed, it was hardly credible how many were the rules and restrictions by which these young ladies ordered their apparently unlicensed method of life.

You might be kissed, but on no account must you return kisses. Men might address you by your Christian name and call you "du" in conversation, but to write in the same familiar strain would be an unpardonable insult. You would allow a man to pay for your coffee and cakes, but not for your bread-and-butter. A stranger might press your foot under the table, but should he squeeze your hand you must instantly rise, and so forth.

Lilly had not the slightest comprehension what all these pros and cons meant. Man in the abstract for her, up till now, had been merely a part of existence that had no separate individuality--that passed her in the streets without attracting her notice in the least. The only men she had admired were those who existed in her dreams, in her novels, and imagination. The creature that stared at her from the pavement, that came to get books and found ridiculous excuses for starting conversations with her, that held aside the baize curtain at the church door for her to go out, that smiled over the counter in shops--this creature was something stupid, contemptible, scarcely tolerable, to whom she was utterly indifferent, and to give a thought to whom would be degrading.

She was now to learn that a girl could exist solely for the sake of that gross, coarse thing called "man," that she could think of nothing but him from the moment she got up till the time she went to bed, as if she were created for him, and must put him before her work and faith and God.

Though Lilly knew that she was far above being influenced by the two girls' example and precepts, she could not help feeling a slight curiosity awake within her to learn more of what these creatures were like who caused such a flutter in the dovecot of feminine emotions, whose approval was so keenly to be sought, and whose coldness meant absolute annihilation.

A nervous dread began to torment her about that unknown vortex of wickedness outside, from which dirt was now brought every day and laid at her threshold, and about the timid curiosity that it aroused within her. Whether she would or not, her thoughts were always recurring to the panorama of pictures, painted in vivid poisonous colours and unrolled before her nightly by the two degenerate sisters. It was quite a relief when the hot friendship, after a month's duration, began to cool.

The coolness was caused by an unaccountable deficit, which occurred not once, but many times, in the cash-box, and became a standing mystery. Lilly, in a fever, added up the figures. She counted every pfennig over and over again; at last she was forced to conclude that someone had taken advantage of her absence for a moment to open the drawer and dip into the cash-box.

She knew that she would be accused of the theft when it was discovered, so, in order to save herself, she took the key of the drawer with her when she left the room, as if by accident. She repeated the ruse several times till she was certain that she was on the right track, by the change of manner in the girls, who regarded her with increasing scorn and displeasure.

At last they could no longer contain themselves for wrath and disappointment. Did she, miserable interloper, imagine that she was mistress of the business? they burst forth. She should have both books and keys taken out of her hands if they chose. In her terror, Lilly ran to their mother, and threatened to leave the house on the spot if she was not allowed to have a free hand in the control of the shop as hitherto.

Frau Asmussen, knowing too well her daughters' character, took Lilly's part and the storm blew over. The girls resumed their intimacy with Lilly, and again confided to her the secret depths of their soul. Did she think that they wanted money to spend on ices and meringues at Frangipani's? She was very mistaken. They were cute enough to lay up for the future. It was impossible to stay for ever with the old tippler, especially as the place had turned out a barren wilderness as far as the prospect of making a good match was concerned. How could Lilly, with her petty ambitions, have any conception of theirs, and of what they suffered, struggling against the temptations of meringues and chocolate cakes at the confectioner's? They had been saving up for a long time for another journey. They were literally starving themselves for this praiseworthy object.

Lilly remained unmoved. She refused to be wheedled or talked over again, and black looks were turned on her. They began to regard her with an offended air of hauteur without speaking, and approaching events were to fan their smouldering wrath into a blaze.