Bertha Garlan Part 14

"Didn't you know?"

"I am certain he didn't tell me anything about it."

"We stood chatting with one another in the street for a quarter of an hour, perhaps. I had just returned then from my first concert tour."

"Not a word did he tell me--not a single word!"

She spoke almost angrily, as though her father had, at that time, neglected something that might have shaped her future life differently.

"But why didn't you come to see us in those days?" she continued. "How did it happen at all that you had already suddenly ceased to visit us some considerable time before my father's death?"

"Suddenly?--Gradually!"

He looked at her a long time; and now his eyes glided down over her whole body, so that she mechanically drew in her feet under her dress, and pressed her arms against her body, as though to defend herself.

"Well, how did it happen that you came to get married?"

She related the whole story. Emil listened to her, apparently with attention, but as she spoke on and remained seated, he rose to his feet and gazed out through the window.... When she had finished with a remark about the good-nature of her relations, he said:

"Don't you think that we ought to look at a few pictures now that we are here in the Museum?"

They walked slowly through the galleries, stopping here and there before a picture.

"Lovely! Exquisite!" commented Bertha many a time, but Emil only nodded.

It seemed to Bertha that he had quite forgotten that he was with her. She felt slightly jealous at the interest which the paintings roused in him.

Suddenly they found themselves before one of the pictures which she knew from Herr Rupius' portfolio. Emil wanted to pa.s.s on, but she stopped and greeted it, as she might an old acquaintance.

"Exquisite!" she exclaimed. "Emil, isn't it beautiful? On the whole, I greatly admire Falckenborg's pictures."

He looked at her, somewhat surprised.

She became embarra.s.sed, and tried to go on talking.

"Because such an immense quant.i.ty--because the whole world--"

She felt that this was dishonest, even that she was robbing some one who could not defend himself; and accordingly she added, repentantly, as it were:

"You must know, there's a man living in our little town who has an alb.u.m, or rather a portfolio, of engravings, and that's how I know the picture.

His name is Rupius, he is very infirm; just fancy, he is quite paralysed."

She felt obliged to tell Emil all this, for it seemed to her as though his eyes were unceasingly questioning her.

"That might be a chapter, too," he said, with a smile, when she had come to an end; then he added more softly, as though ashamed of his indelicate joke: "There must certainly also be gentlemen in that little town who are not paralysed."

She felt that she had to take poor Herr Rupius under her protection.

"He is a very unhappy man," she said, and, remembering how she had sat with him on the balcony the previous day, a feeling of great compa.s.sion seized her.

But Emil was following his own train of thought.

"Yes," he said; "that is what I should really like to know--what experiences you have had."

"You know them, already."

"I mean, since the death of your husband."

She understood now what he meant, and was a little offended.

"I live only for my boy," she said, with decision. "I do not allow men to make love to me. I am quite respectable."

He had to laugh it the comically serious way in which she made this confession of virtue. For her part, she felt at once that she ought to have expressed herself differently, and so she laughed, too.

"How long are you going to stay, then, in Vienna?" asked Emil.

"Till to-morrow, or the day after to-morrow."

"So short a time as that? And where are you staying? I should like to know."

"With my cousin," she replied.

Something restrained her from mentioning that she had put up at an hotel. But immediately she was angry with herself for having told such a stupid lie, and she was about to correct herself. Emil, however, broke in quickly:

"Perhaps you will have a little time to spare for me, too? I hope so, at least."

"Oh, yes!"

"So, then, we can arrange something now if you like"--he glanced at the clock--"Ah!"

"Must you go?" she asked.

"Yes, by twelve o'clock I ought really to...."

She was seized with an intense uneasiness at the prospect of having to be alone again so soon, and she said:

"I have plenty of time--as much as you like. But, of course, it must not be too late."

"Is your cousin so strict then?"

"But--" she said, "this time, as a matter of fact, I'm not staying with her, you see."

He looked at her in astonishment.

She grew red.

"Usually I do stay with her.... I mean, sometimes.... She has such a large family, you know."

"So you are staying at an hotel," he said, rather impatiently. "Well, there, of course, you are accountable to no one, and we can spend the evening together quite comfortably."