The Song Of Songs Part 90

He eagerly showed her the lord of the heavens and five or six constellations. Lilly clapped her hands like a pleased child.

"Now I'll always feel at home up there when I'm alone evenings and look out of the window." She refrained from saying more of what was in her mind.

While he waited in front of the door, she ran upstairs, turned off the light, put the key in her pocket, and hastily told Adele she would take supper out that evening. She lingered for nothing else and came hurrying down again.

Outside the apartment door she reeled with joy and clung to the post and sobbed.

But by the time she reached the street her bearing had become quite proper.

"If you are willing to entrust yourself to my guidance," he said, "I know a little corner no one would dream of finding us in. It's practically in Italy."

She drew a deep breath.

"If only he wouldn't speak so much of Italy," she thought, though for nothing in the world would she have gone elsewhere than to his Italian restaurant.

They walked along the ca.n.a.l for about five minutes talking nonsense. The medley of lights of the Potsdamer Brucke was quite near when he paused in front of a narrow, dimly lighted shop window, where about two dozen wine bottles wreathed with green cotton vines grew like asparagus out of sand.

"Here Signor Battistini serves a Chianti, than which none better is to be had in Florence," he explained.

They entered the shop and crossed a small anteroom, in which the proprietor, black as the ace of spades, was pasting labels behind the bar.

"_Sera, padrone_," Lilly's friend greeted him.

From the anteroom they pa.s.sed into a rather long, hall-like room filled with simple tables and chairs. The only decoration consisted of crisscrossed garlands of s.h.i.+ny green paper bits, evidently ambitious of being considered vine leaves, which twined about the bare gas brackets and fell over hooks in the walls. To inform the guests of the occasion for this luxuriant display, a placard hung from the centre wis.h.i.+ng them on this March evening a "Happy New Year."

"What do you say to this fairy garden?" asked Lilly's friend, while the waiter, black as his master, with an improbable pair of fiery wheels in his face, beseechingly held out his hands for her cloak.

At the other tables sat young fellows with thick hair, who rolled long, thread-like cigarettes between their teeth and nearly thrust the knuckles of their clenched fists in one another's eyes while spouting Italian with fascinating rapidity.

"Marble cutters," Dr. Rennschmidt explained in a low voice. "Our great sculptors employ them as a.s.sistants. They earn a great deal of money, and as soon as they have saved enough they return to Italy to establish a household."

Two women sat apart from the men. Their black, l.u.s.treless hair drawn very low on their foreheads gave their eyes the appearance of torches burning in sombre woods. Gold rings hung in their ears, and their dresses, cut too deep at the throat, were held together by roughly made brooches. They looked at Lilly's tall figure in envious admiration, then fell to whispering busily.

Dr. Rennschmidt nodded to them cordially, yet with an indifferent air, as one who has nothing to conceal or reveal.

"Ballad singers belonging to a Neapolitan folk-song troupe. Their leader deserted them, and they're now looking for an engagement."

"Where am I?" thought Lilly.

It was like a dream, as if an Aladdin's lamp had transported her to a strange land. The one thing by which she knew she was in Berlin, Germany, near the Potsdamer Brucke, was the placard's complacent "Happy New Year."

"I've been coming here every day since my return," said Dr. Rennschmidt, after they had settled themselves comfortably in a corner. "I cannot cure myself of homesickness for the south. The best German cookery has no charms for me, and I must have my Chianti. But to-day we'll order some other wine, because you have to cultivate a taste for Chianti."

He nodded to the waiter, Frances...o...b.. name--Francesco, as if he had just stepped from a romance about knights and brigands. The two held a lively conference, the result of which was a dusty, light-coloured bottle.

The dishes were strange confections of macaroni and meat swimming in yellowish red gravy.

Lilly could not recall ever having eaten anything so delicious. She told him so. But what she did not tell him was that she had never in her life, never since she could remember, felt so good.

The last course was a "_giardinetto_," a "little garden," of mandarins, dates, and Gorgonzola cheese.

The frothy, yellow wine with an aroma of nutmeg bubbled into the gla.s.ses scattering bright drops.

Leaning against the wall, Lilly let her eyes rest dreamily on her new friend's face.

He turned his head now this way, now that, with rapid little movements like a bird's. He seemed constantly alert to observe and absorb. Or perhaps his manner was due to his desire to bestow some additional attention upon her. His eyes gleamed with eagerness and exuberance of life, and the network of wrinkles on his brow rose and fell nervously.

The cloud of wrath on his forehead apparently was nothing more than his seething ardour.

He had a dear, droll habit which increased the impression of eagerness.

He would raise his outspread fingers to his head as if to run them through a heavy ma.s.s of hair. But the ma.s.s was no longer there, and his hand clapped against his bare forehead and rested there a second or two.

Everything about him bespoke force and decision--to Lilly's admiration, well-nigh to her dread. Nevertheless, although a golden brown tinge of health from the south still coloured his cheeks, his body was not robust. His throat was delicate, his breath came and went hastily, and sometimes, when a veil fell over his eyes as if he were looking inward, a soft weariness crept over his features which gave him an extremely youthful appearance and evoked motherly feelings.

"So _that's_ what you are," she thought and stretched herself in blissful peace. "At last."

"Why are you closing your eyes?" he asked solicitously. "Aren't you feeling well?"

"Yes, oh, yes," she said caressingly. "But speak to me, tell me about down there where I've always wanted to be and never could be."

Lilly went on to tell him of the great yearning which the consumptive teacher had awakened in her, and how it had continued to smoulder under all the ashes life had cast upon it.

"I in your place would have made a pilgrimage there barefoot."

"Pshaw," she said. "I've had money enough. But I've never been free. Once I got as far as Bozen and had to turn back--as a punishment--because a young man ogled me."

"Oh, dreadful," he laughed, "that was hard luck. Much harder than you divine."

"Oh, I divine it," she sighed. "I need merely look at you."

"Why at me?"

"Because you s.h.i.+ne like Moses after he witnessed the glory of the Lord."

He became serious.

"There are glories up here, too. But you're right. I have so much life and light stored up in me from down there, so many sources have been opened up, so many germs have begun to sprout--sometimes I hardly know what to do with all my wealth. I write my fingers b.l.o.o.d.y, and more keeps coming. I would like ever to give, give, give. But I don't know to whom."

"To me," she implored, holding out her hands palm upward. "I am so miserably poor."

He looked at her with great, severe, clairvoyant eyes.

"You are not poor. They have simply let you starve."

"Isn't that the same thing?"

He shook his head, continuing to keep his gaze fixed upon her rigidly.

"What was your husband?" he asked.