The Song Of Songs Part 99

Lilly rose s.h.i.+vering.

There was nothing to be hoped for from that quarter. She looked about her with a sudden feeling of estrangement.

"I'll never come back here again," she thought.

The next morning the uneasy desire to open up her heart and obtain counsel again awoke, even stronger and more tormenting than before. Her friend Jula occurred to Lilly.

To be sure, the clever, hot-blooded little woman had held herself aloof from the crew's jaunts. Her friends had not the least idea of what she was doing, and her red-head, when appealed to, became reticent. But Lilly felt sure Mrs. Jula would not withhold the bit of comprehending sympathy she needed.

It took Lilly a long time to find her.

The coquettish yellow silk nest her red-head had fixed up for her near the "Linden" was empty.

Mrs. Jula had migrated to a suburb, the porter informed Lilly. She had thought the neighbourhood too dangerous; which made no sense, because the street was never empty, day or night.

Lilly smiled. The porter gave her the address, and she drove out to Mrs.

Jula.

In a little bosky corner where the poets and philosophers dwell, Lilly found a very sober little house, brimful of books and ma.n.u.scripts and busts of eminent men.

Mrs. Jula seemed to have undergone a great change. She no longer wore her curly hair in a disorderly pompadour about her forehead, but smoothly parted and drawn down over her ears. This gave her a disquieting touch of virtuousness, although that way of wearing the hair was just then the height of fas.h.i.+on in the very world in which virtue for esthetic reasons has little value.

Though she came to meet Lilly, as always, with outstretched arms, her cordiality seemed not wholly genuine; and though she beamed with delight at seeing her friend again, her expression was somewhat distraught, as if she were holding much in reserve.

"Without asking Lilly about herself or paying any attention to her appearance, Mrs. Jula burst into an account of her own affairs.

"You'll be tremendously surprised, but I can't help it," she said. "I never kept my little scruples of conscience a secret from you--they were really superfluous--my sins had never been so dreadful--"

"Hm, hm," thought Lilly.

"So you shall be the first of our former circle--"

"Former?" thought Lilly.

"--to learn of my return to a decent existence. Well, not to beat about the bush, I'm going to get married."

"Your red-head?" asked Lilly, happy and sympathetic.

"Well, not exactly." Mrs. Jula regarded her finger-tips with a condescending smile. "My red-head has given me his blessings, but that ends his role."

"Then who is he?" asked Lilly, struggling to overcome her bewilderment.

Now Mrs. Jula hung back a bit after all.

"You see, it's a long story," she said hesitatingly. "To understand it thoroughly you'd have to know more of the circ.u.mstances of the past two years of my life. Did you ever happen to hear of an auth.o.r.ess by the name of Clarissa vom Winkle?"

Lilly recalled having seen the name in puritanic family sheets, which she had looked through in cafes and confectionery shops.

"Now listen: that Clarissa vom Winkle, who won a very acceptable reputation for championing the cause of simple, bourgeois morality as against the pernicious new-fas.h.i.+oned ideas of love--that Clarissa vom Winkle am I."

Lilly was too strongly under the spell of her own fate properly to appreciate the humour of Mrs. Jula's avowal. Just a glimmering suspicion dawned upon her mind of the monstrous farce we human beings figure in at life's bidding.

"Now on that account you're not to think me a convert or a bigot or something of the sort," Mrs. Jula continued with a certain little air of dignity, which became her as well as her quondam cordial cynicism.

"There never was a special Day of Damascus in my life. I've always had, as it were, two souls in my breast; the one which--" she hesitated a moment--"well, which you know; and another which craves self-restraint and white damask and so on. That's the reason your unsuspicious loyalty always impressed me so, my dear. You probably recollect that I urged you to cling to your loyalty through thick and thin, because--you can't deny it--it's the crown of a woman's life. That's just what I said. Do you remember?"

Lilly was unable to recall such sentiments, but she did recall many others scarcely harmonising with them. She began to feel quite uneasy.

Her friend's new conception of life seemed ill adapted for a source of peace to her in the joyful stress that had led her to seek sympathy with Mrs. Jula.

"Well, to continue," said the little lady. "I was always able to sell my essays and novels quickly, especially if I took them to the editors myself, and I found I was on the road to acc.u.mulating a tidy capital. My red-head became little more than an ornament. That's the beautiful thing about virtue. For the person who understands it, it is much more lucrative than sin." She ran her little red tongue over her lips in her knowing way, but maintained a perfectly demure face. "And then it was in disposing of my works that I met my husband to be. You know--I'm at last divorced from that old horror up there. This one is the editor of a new magazine for women. It stands for quiet domesticity and already has very good advertis.e.m.e.nts. He's a man of great intellectual gifts, and very firm moral principles, which, I suppose you've noticed, have not remained without influence on me."

She made a little double chin and folded her hands in her lap.

"And how did you manage to separate from--your old friend?" asked Lilly, from whose mind all these curious facts had almost driven her own concerns.

"Separate? What are you thinking of?" rejoined Mrs. Jula, beaming again with sunny foolishness. "I wouldn't be as heartless as all that. Even if I did say his role had ended, you're not to take it so literally. What's the poor dyspeptic fellow to do if I refuse to set a place for him at my table now and then? Why do you look so surprised, Lilly? Something of the sort can always be managed. In the first place, I swore to my betrothed that my red-head had never been more to me than a brotherly friend. All of us women swear such things and don't even blush."

Lilly nodded thoughtfully. That evening, had Konrad demanded it, she would have sworn an oath without a moment's hesitation.

"In the second place--I'm telling you this in confidence--he contributed a considerable sum toward establis.h.i.+ng the magazine. So the two gentlemen are partners. I arranged matters that way intentionally, because it seemed to me the best guarantee of a continuance of all-around friendly relations. Don't make such large eyes, dearie. Life is made up of compromises. Every bird feathers its nest. And if you think I'm afraid of disclosures, I shrug my shoulders. Tragedy is a matter of taste. _I_ don't like it. So it doesn't exist for me. I always say to myself: you must wear a smile on your brow, but beneath the smile your brow must be of iron."

Lilly experienced a sickish sensation.

"If that's the price to pay for uprooting tragedy from one's life," she thought, "then I'd rather have unhappiness--I can swallow it--than all this happiness."

She rose.

No matter how high above her this woman towered in force of intellect and will, no matter how firmly she stood on the ground of virtuous life, she was no longer suited to be Lilly's friend.

"I sincerely hope you will never be mistaken in your confidence," said Lilly.

Mrs. Jula threw up her hand contemptuously.

"Bah," she said, "_those_ men! A man who knows the world is a woman eater, and your 'pure' man is a simpleton. I can always get along with both cla.s.ses."

"There may be a third cla.s.s," said Lilly, irritated, as if Konrad had been insulted.

"Possibly," rejoined Mrs. Jula, shrugging her shoulders. "I've never come across it." Then putting both hands on Lilly's waist: "Tell me, child, perfectly frankly: if you look at me this way and compare me with what I used to be, does it seem to you that I'm posing?"

"To be quite candid," Lilly admitted, "it seemed to me so at first."

Mrs. Jula sighed.

"It's very hard to adapt your figure to a dress that wasn't made for you. Everybody has a certain moral ambition, the so-called non-moral person most of all. But there's one thing I'd love to know: what is really the more valuable in me, my former sinning or my present virtue."

She smiled up at Lilly with a melancholy yet sly expression.

This time Lilly did not respond. Beyond that complacent little scatterbrain her own happiness rose lofty and threatening as a storm-cloud.