The Song Of Songs Part 100

When out on the street the feeling of restless isolation took stronger hold of her than ever. Yet she was glad she had not spoken. She knew that if she had held up her beloved's picture to Mrs. Jula's sly understanding, it would have come back to her desecrated.

Now there was actually not a soul to whom she could pour out her heart.

A few days later in glancing over the paper, as was her daily habit, her eyes were caught by a sentence which suddenly sent a ray of light into her soul: "St. Joseph's Chapel--Mullerstra.s.se--evening services," and so on.

Then her old, long-forgotten friend was still alive. He even possessed his own church here in cold, heretical Berlin.

In all the years she had been in Berlin she had not entered a church.

After having seated herself among the Protestants at Miss von Schwertfeger's advice, she had felt she was a renegade, and had not ventured to seek solace in religion.

And now she was an atheist.

But the name St. Joseph in the paper warmed her heart. She felt as one who has wandered long in foreign lands and suddenly among a throng of strangers beholds a dear face from home.

Now she knew to whom to turn without fear of having to depart misunderstood and unheard. Even if the great scholars had done away with him a thousand times, he still existed for her stupid, surcharged heart, ready to receive the confession of her happiness.

Mullerstra.s.se was somewhere on the extreme north side, "somewhere around Franz-Josephs-Land," her green grocer, to whom she had applied, informed her.

She went through a maze of streets, from one electric tram to another--past the Reichtags buildings, the Lessing theatre, and the Stettin station--along the endless chausse. Beyond the Weddingplatz, which the Berlinese consider the end of the world, was where Mullerstra.s.se began.

n.o.body had the slightest notion of where a St. Joseph's chapel was, not even dwellers in the immediate vicinity. Finally somebody remembered seeing "a Catholic something or other," and Lilly at last found the object of her search.

A low frame structure which might have been taken for a barn, and some blossoming trees set between towering tenements.

The side door was open. Pine wreaths said "Welcome." Lilly saw a simple white hall permeated with the sepulchral smell of incense, laurel, and freshly cut pine, and in the background a niche decorated to resemble the starry heavens. Beyond the wooden bal.u.s.trade separating the pictureless shrine of the high altar from the hall, rose two glorious palms. The low rumble of an organ came from the choir. The organist had probably stayed after the funeral to dream a bit.

In suspense Lilly's glance glided along the walls in search of her saint's abiding place. Was he smiling and holding up his finger here, too, with the same benevolent, threatening manner as the good old uncle in St. Anne's?

There was no place for side altars. The s.p.a.ce was completely filled with benches. But that large picture there in the garish frame, with a console-table beneath covered with dusty bouquets--

She saw it--and started in terror.

Her saint, her dear, beloved saint, was simply ridiculous.

He had a sharp-nosed, wax-doll face with a golden yellow beard and eyes cast down in pious modesty, and he was smiling mawkishly. The infant Jesus clad in pink triumphed on his left arm, while his right arm gently clasped a spray of lilies.

Lilly's disgust turned into pity.

How remote, how inconceivably remote, was that world in which one implored St. Josephs for signs of favour.

Could it be that her good, true monitor in St. Anne's had been just as comical?

Perish the thought. He should not be, he must not be so absurd. There must be _one_ place to which one's memory could travel homeward in hours of pleasant mourning.

The organ was playing the prelude of a beautiful ma.s.s by Scarlatti, which Lilly well knew from of old. Gradually she began to feel at ease.

She kneeled on the last bench, closed her eyes, and tried to imagine that instead of that blond caricature, her old friend was looking down upon her.

A saying of St. Thomas Aquinas occurred to her, which she remembered from her Sunday school lessons: "G.o.d has granted other saints the power to help us in _certain_ circ.u.mstances; to St. Joseph he has granted the power to help us whatever our need."

Once he had been so powerful in her life.

She spoke to him across the hundreds of miles and hundreds of years that separated her from the altar in St. Anne's--the last time on earth, she was fully aware. There was no longer place in her soul for such childishness. And just because it was her farewell, she told him without reserve of her great experience--how infinitely happy she now was--how everything that had lain dead within her blossomed forth with fresh life--and how the entire universe was one great symphony of joy.

And she told him of the monstrous deception she was practising, and her fear of discovery--and the sweet, impatient tremour for which there could be no image or name.

Then she told him she no longer believed in him in the least--she had become an "atheist."

Then, reconciled, she laid the carnations she had brought along for the poor out-of-the-way saint among the dusty bouquets and left with lightened heart, smiling at the spring which smiled upon her.

Beside this Lilly, whom the stormy wind of her new life bore aloft to the heavens far above all earthly hindrances, a second Lilly lived, who spent every other evening with her old friends, and was the marvel of her circle, because of her triumphant mood, her merry wit, the youthful liveliness of an awakening intellect.

When Richard came for his afternoon tea, he met with daily surprises. In place of the dragging gloom, which had long coloured her days, he found sprightliness and activity, a creature of novelties never still an instant. Though now and then abashed at his inability to keep pace with her, he gladly accustomed himself to this side of her being, and praised the magical qualities of the haematogen which the physician had prescribed that spring instead of the usual iron.

The same scene was enacted each evening that Richard wanted to take Lilly out. At first she pleaded a cold or said she was not in the mood for meeting people. But once she had consented and was in the swing, she played with her admirers as with puppies, and awed the ladies by telling them things to their faces. Sometimes, to be sure, she sat as formerly, absorbed in dreamy silence, though now, if anyone attempted to liven her up, she no longer blushed and suffered herself to be teased without an attempt at self-defence. She paid back every intruder with such prompt, haughty satire that the men soon found it wiser to leave her to herself.

In all this time she drank herself into a state of exaltation only once, and that on the day on which--at last!--she decided to tell Richard of the existence of her new friend.

She had wrestled with herself for two months. Sometime or other it had to be, she knew; for what if they were seen together! But since she could not decide in what form to clothe the avowal, she had deferred it from day to day.

Chance helped her out of the dilemma. One day Richard, in order to obtain her judgment, brought along some sketches of vases which had been submitted to him for purchase. On leaving he forgot to take them along.

Konrad happened to see them, and in a few rapid strokes drew the outline which corresponded to the original draught, and which the artist in developing the plan had failed to insert.

The next day when Richard saw the work he looked at Lilly in astonishment. The corrections were splendid--who had made them?

Lilly, still suffering from the intimidation induced by her bungled work on the transparencies, did not dare to tell him she herself had. So taking heart she said:

"My teacher, who's giving me lessons in the history of art."

"Since when, I'd like to know?" asked Richard, his eyes growing round and severe.

In her great embarra.s.sment she took to scolding as best--or as worst--she knew how.

"Do you think I can stand such a dull, inane, idle existence? Do you think it's a crime for an unoccupied young woman to strive for a bit of culture? Don't you think I'd be a better friend if I could keep pace with you and other clever people than if I go to my ruin jabbering a lot of nonsense and dressing myself up for show and behaving like any silly thing?"

The turn about "clever people" flattered him.

"All very well and good," he replied more mildly, "but why didn't you tell me before?"

She concocted a long story.

About three months before she had read an advertis.e.m.e.nt in the _Lokalanzeiger_ in which a young scholar offered his services to gentlemen and ladies possessed of a thirst for knowledge. She wrote to the scholar, he came, and the lessons began. Pupil and teacher had grown to be friends. Though their friends.h.i.+p, of course, was of a purely ideal nature, she dreaded awakening Richard's jealousy; so she had decided not to tell him until time should prove beyond the shadow of a doubt the absolute purity of her endeavours.

He wrinkled his forehead, and a cunning grin, inexplicable to Lilly, played about his mouth.

"So your friend's a young scholar?" he asked. His eyes twinkled, and he looked at her sidewise, his head inclined entirely to the left.