II.

THE YOUNG GIRLS

“They came to my pension the day after, Mrs. Kerr, Zita, and John; and Frau König turned up afterwards and sat there like a silent reproach as Mrs. Kerr poured out her own woes, while John at once went over to my typewriter and began fiddling with the keys, and being chased away opened a box which contained razor-blades. ‘John has been sent into my life as a punishment and thinks nothing of worrying his poor mummy. But Raymond is a saint and angel to me. Raymond has my eyes--the large, sorrowful eyes of the Madonna, you might say, kissing the finger-tips of her Child.’

“They liked the pension and took a room in it. They attracted me chiefly on Zita’s account. She had a wonderful way about her, as if on the brink of revealing much. ‘You know,’ she would say. ‘You know--it’s queer how--how--you know--’ And that sort of thing. And then her face had a sincere and curiously attractive, open, ‘you know’ sort of look. She was sixteen, and wonderfully built. Men were after her, all sorts of dingy barons and counts. I took her out to dances. She seemed indifferent to her success. But I was devilishly attracted by her. I suppose she had the most perfect figure I had ever seen, and she danced adorably. Once, after dinner, when we were alone in the pension dining room and she was standing warming herself against the great white stove in the corner, clasping it, her bosom against it, I ventured to press her from behind. She laughed and called it ‘artificial respiration,’ and I, grateful for a term, continued to interpret it, so to speak, in new and different forms, but calling it by the old name whenever she showed signs of decorous astonishment. And sneering the while at my rival, the young Count Kolberg. ‘Where have you picked him up?’

“‘In a restaurant. He stood by the door. In a tail coat, you know, all men look alike. Mummy called out: “Waiter!” And he came up and introduced himself: “Graf Kolberg.’”

“‘Just like that?’

“‘Yes. Clicked his heels: “Graf Kolberg.’”

“‘Fancy that!’

“‘But he is such a ninny. Twenty-eight, and hangs to his mother’s apron strings. She still holds him by the hand in the street, and each year makes him a Christmas tree.’

“‘Fancy that.’ And I kissed her on the spot where the nape joins the neck.

“‘But Mummy likes the old Gräfin who is nosing everywhere to find out whether I’d be a suitable wife for him, and tries to borrow money from Mummy thinking all English must be rich; and as she’s always expecting something, Mummy’s sent her a box of soap. But the old Gräfin took it in bad part. She thought it was an insinuation. I’m glad. She does look rather filthy.’

“‘She does, darling,’ I said, and kissed her on the brow.

“‘It’s beastly people thinking one has a lot of money when one hasn’t any. I want to go to England and take dancing lessons.’

“‘Whatever for?’

“‘To become a professional dancer. It’s a good thing.’

“She was now sitting on a table and performing a sort of Müller exercise with her legs and trunk, as she spoke. I began to take a tangible interest in her formation, in the shape of her limbs, softening the crudity of my curiosity with remarks like: ‘Fancy this,’ or ‘Fancy that.’ She was in my arms, warm, flexible, enticing. Her lips searched mine. But we had eaten of some horrible cheese at the close of dinner and didn’t dare to consummate the kiss. Nevertheless, getting on splendidly when interrupted by the mother coming in--to talk. Babble! gabble! blabber! twaddle! twattle! and if you please, about her younger girl in England, when this one had been in my arms. The mockery of love!

“‘Zita, go up and bring us Eva’s letter. I should like Ferdinand Feodorovich (she always got my patronymic wrong) to read it.’ The letter was to her sister.

“‘_We tell each other everything in our bedroom which is private. I am called Grandmother and give advice on all subjects. Kitty is called the Babe as she has never even believed herself in love. Marion is aged fifteen and one-half, Kitty fifteen. I am by age the youngest, but in everything else I am considered the oldest. We had gym this afternoon. Kitty got a giggling fit and couldn’t stop because Miss Hitchcock’s tummy made awful noises. Marion’s last remark was “Oh! I’m feeling so curly in my tummy, excited like. I’m expecting some more letters to-morrow from Bonzo.” You can guess who Bonzo is, it’s_ HIM _for Marion._’

“And so on in this strain.

“‘An awful imp,’ was Zita’s comment. ‘What I do, she must do too. What I have, she must have too.’

“‘When they were children,’ Mrs. Kerr explained, ‘Eva always said “Me too” to everything Zita did--“Me too.” And so we all nicknamed her “Me-Too.’”

“‘I’d like to meet her when I go to England,’ I said.

“‘She’d want to,’ Zita said, ‘if she knows _I_’ve met you.’

“‘Well, why not?’ said Mrs. Kerr. ‘I will write to her. Frederick Konstantinovich (again she got my patronymic wrong), a very charming, intellectual young man, a friend of ours. I am sure she’ll be very pleased.’

“‘She will!’ said Zita sardonically.

“When I was in England I wrote to Eva and we engaged in some correspondence, exchanging photographs, before I was able to go down to meet her. She could not understand this long delay and wondered what might be the cause of it; and Marion, it seemed, scrutinised my photo through a magnifying glass to see if perchance I hadn’t spots on my face. And Eva wrote to me:

“‘_Even if you have spots on your face, show yourself._’

“We met. She was lovely. Unbelievably so. And she wrote to Marion, who had gone home for the vacation:

“‘_He has no spots, is tall, not elegant but clean looking. And says he loves me five times more than before. Am I not a lucky girl?_’

“When I went abroad she continued writing to me, mostly about Marion and Kitty. ’ ... _Marion, Kitty and I are sleeping together like last term. I like Marion and Kitty. We have arranged that we are going to have a house in Canada together as we are afraid we are going to be old maids. If one of us marries she is going to stay in Canada sometimes. We are also thinking of becoming missionaries. Marion is too funny. She thinks she is in love!! but she still thinks she will be an old maid. Marion, Kitty and I are making rules for a Committee. We are the Members of the Committee. We have agreed that everything is secret, but that I can tell you, and Marion can tell her brother. We have to tell each other everything except our worst sin. It sounds funny, but we are all very wicked and have each done something we couldn’t tell other people. So we have agreed that we haven’t got to tell that. You may know mine, but I’m not shure. There are lots of By-Laws besides. I will give you further perticulers later. All matters must be discussed in privacy. All members are equal in_ ALL _affairs. T. C. (password) must only be used on urgent occasions. Any member wishing to leave the Committee can do so if her word of honour is given to remain silent consuming all matters discussed in the aforesaid Committee. If remaining members agree that a certain Member has broken a rule, that Member must pay a penalty fine of 2d. and also if a Member has lost her rules. Those are the rules. I think it’s a very good Committee, don’t you? I’ve been informed by Miss Hitchcock that I’ve got to go in for Junior Cambridge exam next. I don’t think I will. I think I should get brain fever, my brain being already weak. It’s ever so hot to-day--more so than userlay. I had to undo my coat coming out. In the garden there are lots of snow-drops, crocuses, primroses, tulips and hyasinths out. I hope you apprechiate this lengthy episel._--YOUR EVA.’

“‘_P.S.--Mummy writes that Count Kolberg is still after Zita, who cannot bear his soppiness._’

“In the winter I was in Innsbruck. They were expecting Eva, who had left school as they could not afford to pay for her. We all went to meet her. Even now I can see the long Paris train steaming into Innsbruck Station, and Eva alighting, rather more the young lady than when I had last seen her in England. When Zita that evening showed me her albums with snaps, ‘Me-Too’ insisted on doing the same. Their mother, encouraged by the thought of the economy effected in sparing Eva’s future school fees, deemed it well to celebrate the release in terms of midnight frolics--‘Making a night of it,’ she called it. She got us all to join some dancing class of a certain Fräulein Stube, and Count Kolberg came along too, and brought his cousins and friends. Eva danced with all the counts and barons and smiled into their eyes. And Zita, you could see, hated that smile. She knew her ‘Me-Too’ inside out. But the barons adored it; and Zita, who had not cared for Kolberg and the barons, now that Eva deflected them, grew visibly jealous. ‘I don’t want to be seen about with this lump!’ (Eva’s legs were ripening fast). ‘I’ll make her get up and take exercise,’ and like remarks. And she never called her Eva, but ‘Me-Too,’ with a certain venom of intonation. But Eva, coy, continued smiling at the barons, who were like flies round her.

“New Year’s Eve we spent at the Maria-Theresien Restaurant. A huge brass band from the public park installed in the dining room---- deafening music. The room crowded to overflowing. Men prowling about in the hope of stealing a chair. Some Johnny actually seizing one of ours: ‘May I?’ I open my mouth to say ‘Indeed not!’ but that moment the band crashes into martial vehemence--and my words are lost. Mrs. Kerr happy, her lost château, lost income, debts, all forgotten in the excitement of the moment, sits near me, praises all and everybody: ‘Ah, that dancing mistress Fräulein Stube! A charming, intellectual young woman. So nice! so educated! speaks English like a native!’ Presently I dance with the said Fräulein Stube and ask her in explicit English:

“‘What is this dance?’

“‘Please?’ says Fräulein Stube.

“‘What is this dance? A fox-trot?’

“‘Please?’

“‘Is this a fox-trot?’

“‘No, de Schimmey,’ she replies.

“‘In England we dance differently,’ I say to her after a while.

“‘Please?’

“‘We dance differently in England.’

“‘Please?’

“In the effort, I stepped on to her toe. ‘I beg your pardon,’ I stammered.

“‘Please?’

“‘I beg your pardon.’

“‘Yes, dis de Schimmey,’ she said.

“And then again I am in the midst of Mrs. Kerr’s amazing volubility, praising all and everybody: ‘You dance so gracefully, so elegantly. And Fräulein Stube, such a really nice and cultured, intellectual woman! So pleasant, well brought-up, and educated! Knows languages, talks English like a native.’ Suddenly all rise, holding up mugs of beer. ‘Prosit! Prosit! Prosit!’ And, indeed, the hand of the big clock points midnight. The band crashes on for a full two minutes. And stops. Noise and confusion. Friends and strangers alike are drinking _Bruderschaft_. From the table next to ours a man rises (he is unshaven, but in a sort of dinner-jacket suit with a reddish velvet waistcoat) and introduces himself: ‘Lieutenant-Colonel von Wiesendorf,’ then introduces his daughter. We rise and introduce ourselves and one another. They drag up their table to ours, and we are one large party. The Colonel says he can speak English, his object in hooking himself on to us being either to show off or to practise our language, which, he says, he picked up in Africa.

“‘In the Foreign Legion?’ I ask.

“‘Pfui Teufel, no!’ he says. ‘Only desperados serve in the Foreign Legion.’

“Evidently a _faux pas_.

“‘_Bruderschaft!_--Hoch! Hoch! Hoch!’ And the Colonel and myself are linked in brotherhood and call each other ‘thou.’ Mrs. Kerr and Fräulein von Wiesendorf drink _Bruderschaft_ and become inseparable. Zita and Eva, in their turn, drink _Bruderschaft_ with Fräulein von Wiesendorf. Finally Graf Kolberg with the Colonel. The band now crashes with unheard-of vehemence. All drink.”

Here Frank Dickin stopped reading and helped himself to more champagne; then continued with unction:

“Fräulein von Wiesendorf, whose great virtue, according to herself, is that she is very jolly: ‘I’m so jolly!’ she squeals, and kicks her heels up, becomes a bosom friend of Mrs. Kerr. ‘Ah, Ferdinand Vassilievich,’ she says (getting me wrong again), ‘you have no idea what a sincere, cultured, jolly, well-informed and intellectual girl she is! Her father, in his position of Comptroller of Public Morals, cannot take her out to all the cabarets and night clubs and she hasn’t even been to the Austria-Bar or the Odéon! But I will chaperone her and take her everywhere, and she’s so pleased!’

“And together, they drag us to a cellar-restaurant, the barons like hounds on Eva’s scent--Zita neglected, forgotten. And the Colonel, the Comptroller of Public Morals, scratches his head, says ‘Na! The New Year is not all the year, nor New Year’s Day every day,’ and comes along too, Fräulein von Wiesendorf kicking her heels up with joy. In the cellar-restaurant the goings-on have been going on five or six nights running, ever since Christmas Eve. Shaky waiters with small, red, sleepy eyes. The head waiter--it is the third night he hasn’t closed his eyes--but propped up with drink, sings along with the band and, as a special favour, right into my ear, occasionally spluttering on my cheek and forehead:

“_Da sprach der Tut-An-Kamen:_ _‘Tun sich die Leut’ nicht schamen?’_ ...”

And we eat and we drink and we revel, till the music grows plaintive and sorrowful, and I dance with Zita, while the band complains:

“_Wenn ich dich seh,_ _Da will ich weinen_....”

And she, poor girl, looked it. Eva had robbed her of all her admirers, including Count Kolberg. Melancholy music breeds melancholy thoughts. As we return to the table I overhear Mrs. Kerr complaining to the Colonel: ‘We cultured Russians of the intellectual class have suffered badly in the Revolution....’ And there she was, pessimistic about life, pessimistic about the outcome of their lawsuit, no money, no home, lawyers mostly frauds....

“‘Stop that music!’ cries the Comptroller.

“The music stops. ‘What will you have instead?’ the head waiter and bandmaster ask readily.

“‘_O! Katerina!_’

“And Mrs. Kerr shuffles along in the clumsy Colonel’s arms to the ragamuffin beat.

“‘A very nice, sincere, understanding man, and a deep thinker,’ was her comment as, bowed out by the band and the waiters, we come out into the early morning frost.

“‘Zita, dear, what is the matter with you?’

“She did not answer. I walked home beside her, not then aware of what she thought and felt; but afterwards she told me. Ever since she was a child she had a sort of psychic complex: she thought that she was mad and that everybody was hiding it from her. Her old grandfather in Ireland could not see Zita, who had golden hair, without tears, for her flaming hair recalled to him her dead grandmother. Whereas Zita thought that Grandpapa cried because he knew that she was mad. Her stern old grandfather, who thought nothing of saying to his guests sitting out on the stairs during a ball, ‘The stairs were made to walk on, not to sit on. Get up!’ crying at the thought of her affliction! And now she knew that she was mad, ghastly, desperately mad, and that they were all hiding it from her. She thought, thought, thought of it, and all to no purpose. She knew an uncanny lot without thinking; but when she _thought_ she knew nothing at all. And she decided that she was uncommonly dull--that was it: mad, mad beyond hope and repair!

“The sudden cessation of attention on the part of Graf Kolberg and the barons was due to her madness. Somebody must have blurted it out. Clearly they shunned her. Going over, in a body, to ‘Me-Too.’ How awful. This was the end of all things.

“There are moments when we positively seek humiliation. ‘Me-Too’ had taken all her partners from her, had left her destitute and lonely. But she felt, in her extremity, the need to propitiate the victor by an admission of her helplessness, her complete prostration, put all her cards before her, make her responsible for her next move, the invading enemy who must needs assume responsibility for the welfare of the population in the area he has occupied. Take it, curse you, my last rag of self-respect and exult in the completeness of your victory! This is the spirit in which, on reaching home, Zita must have faced her younger sister. She confessed that she was mad and that she knew that they were hiding it from her. She stood ashamed, expectant, with head bent, as if to say, ‘Now there! What can you think of it?’ while ‘Me-Too,’ half undressed, lay on the bed, and pondered. She pondered a long time over this doleful piece of news, with insight, a profound and melancholy understanding. ‘I think,’ she said at last, ‘we are both mad....’

“‘You’re _crazy_!’ Zita cried.

“Suddenly she felt sane, terrifyingly, devastatingly sane.”